99 Swang / That New Millenium Dime

Advertisements

99 sheep woke up/came in from the toxic fields/in search of a song/full of tic bites/wolves

against no walls/on a come up/calling bluffs/tea parties full of donkeys&elephants

99 sheep/infiltrated/media affiliated/99 sheep

awake/from a long slow dance/a tango w/existence

insistent on voicing the relevant/trying to remember the song

/seeking the face of god

/in small foot prints/& elevated empathy

/99 sheep sitting by the last tree/

near a polluted sea/

under a dirt colored sky/listening

for the dust/wanting to know what it know/trying to remember the song/

undoing/unlearning/unwilling to continue under standing/

over standing.imminent/not willing to stand under falling skies/

while a woman in white cried/a poet hypothesized/& the band dont miss a beat

ya know this a dime/see it swang/see it swang

anybody seen my song/?/

/maybe too late/did we stay too long

swang pendulum/did we stay too long/suns set/

aquarius on the dawn/so long in coming/spring forward for me/spring

unseal fates

the poor are getting poorer/greedy getting greater/

the poor stand in line after line/opening up store doors/

never getting enough/99 sheep want more/see them stomping on

what held them up before/but still cant get enough/

camping on wall street/city plazas and outside retail stores

open open we want more

/shiny bull shit/more lies/more open eyes/more of the sheep to realize

/in real life/the winners live and the losers die/no one testifies/

watch it swang/watch it swang/does the movement mean anything

/or is it just the latest dance/as the sun sets in babylon/

somebody wake nero/tell him its time to go/

are they selling humanity in the store/? can we find it by the fire

as the sun sets/will the truth finally feel safe in the open/or remain hidden

behind/the lies?/is there a final truth

/big enough to sing us human/ so far from

the garden/driven by the wheel/ whose driving the wheel/who stole my song/

i know i should be singing/wake me up

99 sheep/? still trusting polytricksters/take their ritalin

& march/ hoping for brighter tomorrows/should have remembered from the

start/we the people/we invented the wheel/we let them drive it/wolves at our table

driving the wheel/99 marching sheep/say they long to be free/

sorrowland rebellion/

who own this army/who own this revolt/who are these sheep

pharoahs army watches/barely distracted

from setting fires/ burning forest/designer drug and king making/god build us a better reality/show they just faking/war waging/culture caging/world carnage/ for cash consumption/dollars over you management of everything/no social medicine/

let em die

/less of them to kill/lock up/case manage

disconnect/foreclose/evict/leave them without a song/

waiting to go/

/raid/disperse/reassemble/sheep movement/

one planet

/occupado/in search of a song

a place for everything/how things get so out of place/

wolf movement/

/disrupt tyranny/cry the sheep/

stay in ya lane reply the tyrants/

?s at the end of a paradigm/sheep remembering the wheel

sheep want the wolves out of the circle/wanna slow down the wheel/

want to remember/beginning to want to understand/what they ought to know/should never have forgot/dirt and dust lessons/leaping backwards/with authority/never should have forgot/remembering the days before the wheel/and the day we let a wolf come to dinner/woke up sheared/fleeced/out to sea/wrapped in red velvet/surfing the internet/looking for the wave of tomorrow/they fenced the wild west/young men get on a ship/the new frontier is the front line/middle east/africa/make us a market/we got shiny shit for sale/made in indonesia/99 sheep woke up/ & marched/like shearlings/worried about tomorrow/confused about yesterday/lookin for the wheel/

got to take it back/

99 sheep finally see/maybe eligible for freedom/singing

want a dialog/turned off the tv/repurposed twitter/

signed out of facebook/went into deep sleeper status/went underground/came out the closet/

became diverse/longed for polarity

leaderless/leaderfull

messy/like democracy/confused like a slaughter yard

sheep/wont drink the water

turned off the news and became the lead story

/revolution televised/from cairo to oakland/

from the foothills and in the flatlands/fall fell on sheep

springing forward/spring around the world/the day of the lamb/song heard round the world

lamb rising/sorrowlands rebelling/arrested/encamped/blind folds off/still marching blind/in need of an end game/funky/dog shit/hay and tents/wall street/ogawa plaza/san jose/ berkeley/ sebastopol /boston/denver/ campuses /washington /the state of the states restated/by sheep on a wolf hunt/no time for a blue blooded tea party/invitation to rebellion/sorrowland rebellion/sorrowland spring/day of the sheep/ sheep take the street/but/can they take the day

/?/

dignity aint free/anarchist/scientologist/bar keepers/ barbers/free range/candle making bakers/itt techs/ bee keepers/buddhist& baptist/organic/green/unemployed/underrepresented/unarticulated.disenfranchised/

othered/unimpressed north mericans/one paycheck away from it all falling down/or living in the shadow of their lives //

after it fell down/broke on the hill and crashed into the abandoned merican dream//

wolfs offer permits

?how civil can civil unrest be?

/tired being run over by the wheel/

would buy american/aint got no money/

aint got no job

aint got no house

aint nuthin made in merica any more no way

/we export broken dreams

/99 per cent got

broken lives/out of warranty/sold with a balloon payment

/& its pass due/

aint got enough faith to keep dancing\99 sheep

&/ the band dont miss a beat/

chronic homeless as a frontline/absurd in america/the displaced embraced

?/too poor for the 99/wait one more payday/living a foreclosure away/?are they crazy before they lose their houses/invisible now/99 look at ya real face/

sheep is sheep

or would you rather be a wolf/tics/against no walls/ask a veteran how it plays

on a slow day/after your killings done/ya just another one of the 99/

they told us

jesus was with them/in search of the one/but i remember the camels eye

/& wolves lie/

divine dope/

duplicity/

& sheep/

miles to go/

awake now/dont sleep

dawn might come/breaking paradigms

like running yolks/thrown off/by sheep standing

/we are the people/hear us singing/we are the people/

About Ayodele Nzinga, MFA, PhD

I create; therefore I am.
This entry was posted in Black Arts, North American African Perspective, Poetry, spokenword, That New Millennium Dime, Uncategorized, work in progress and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

3 Responses to 99 Swang / That New Millenium Dime

  1. Ali Baba the OG – Oakland, CA (mentally) South Bend, IN (physically) – Zahieb "Ali Baba" Mwongozi (Craig 17x Erving) began writing at an early age. He was a member of his high school journalism department, wrote for the school newspaper and was first published in The Oakland Tribune newspaper at the age of 17 years old. Since that time he has published three books of poetry (under the name Zahieb A. Mwongozi), and has had his articles published in national magazines such as The Source Magazine and 4080 Magazine. From 1988 through 1989 Baba was a staff writer for The Monroe Free Press in Monroe, LA. His ties to media are numerous: He worked for a year in college radio at the University of California Berkeley KALX, has been a stage actor with prominent roles in works performed at the Oakland Ensemble Theater, the Black Repertory Theater in Berkeley, CA, and Laney College Theater in Oakland, CA. His background in theater includes mentoring and direction by such black theater luminaries as Ed Bullins (known as the Godfather of Black Theater), Charles Gordone (R.I.P.), author and director of the famed stage play No Place To Be Somebody, and poet/writer/social activist Marvin X. He has also trained in workshops at the San Francisco ACT under the tutelage of Danny Glover. Baba has been equally prolific as a recording artist and performer. He signed his first recording contract at age fifteen with MUSIC CITY RECORDS in Oakland, CA and is said to have written over 200 individual original songs including the album "From Debasement to de Penthouse" which sold over 15,000 units throughout Europe and the United States.
    Zahieb Mwongozi says:

    Vivid and lucid as usual.

  2. Powerful and yes as Zahieb says “lucid”. Continue on sis, with your amazing song.

  3. Naru Kwina says:

    You are so amazing!
    I love this piece.

    Naru

Leave a Reply to Mama Ayanna MashamaCancel reply