STATEMENTS - Nia (Purpose)

' There is a method to my madness. '

He told me this one day.

Stayed in my mind for what seemed like eternity.

The way he said it.

It took root.

And it grew into something

Large.

Blocking the sun.

Taking up space before me

As it reached toward the sky.

But I am a person who enjoys aerial views.

So I climbed.

' I rose to the occasion. '

My statement of choice.

To see this madness

And the method for which it worked by.

Walking the walk

With the wind to my back,

Witnessing all that is truly good in us all,

I became crazed.

Much like he.

So now we practice this method of madness

Together.

Committed for all the duration.

Crazed for life.

Talking the talk

Of words.

Work is the sole property of Shazza Nakim and is published with written permission by the artist.

 (c) Copyright 2013 

Silent Art Auction 2013

CULTURE OF THE CUT 2013

WHEN MORNING COMES A World Without AIDS

JOINING FORCES Living Art on the Hill Exhibit

ART AND PROTEST Images of Peace Struggle and Human Rights Exhibit 2013

POMPinc Black and White Vol 1

THE LANGUAGE OF URBAN CHILDREN THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY

I Remember the Day I Died

I remembered when I had died.

That’s right I had died.

Not in the figurative sense.

Literally.

Dead.

No heart beat.

No pulse.

Stopped breathing.

Cold.

In the cradle of Dead.

Let me describe the experience.

It was like a weakening.

From all over.

My breaths had grown shallow.

My eyes began excepting a quickly approaching sleep.

My legs and hands grew heavy.

Then a shadow like cold,

slow but transitioning crept over me.

Then my words began to slur.

And in my fight to stay alive my eyes tried to capture the last images of a living world.

Sparks of blurred light danced around my body.

Later I was told that this experience was my body going into shock.

But it was more than shock.

Now I can call it beautiful

But then, it was consumingly bright.

And as the people who were present on the street gathered around me

I heard everything.

I saw everything.

And that’s when I knew I was dying.

You just know.

Like when the elderly say they’re going to sleep and it’s like different the last time.

Or when you walk out of your house and you know that it’s going to be one of those days.

It was almost like that but much more.

You see, my heart gently started to fade into the background noise of the world.

And finally I was cold.

Ice cold.

The blood that poured from my body no longer mattered.

Part of me thought that it felt good.

The sensation.

It was like singing the gospel before a pulpit of angles

When that shiver hits giving you those chills that run down the back of your spine.

And at the one exacting moment

My body felt warm.

In that moment, it wasn’t the sensation of my life flowing from my body that I sensed,

It wasn’t my pure essence flowing from me.

It was something else.

And all the while that I was dying in the streets of Harlem

I was living again in heaven.

And while part of me was calling for GOD to keep me safe,

Me bellowing to God to take care of my spirit,

To stop the physical pain,

There was a calming.

Like a second consciousness telling me to, “Shhhhhhhhh.”

And that’s when I closed my eyes one last time.

I closed my eyes.

And I was warm.

Warm like I was when I was in my mother’s womb.

Because at that point, I remembered what it was like.

Nurturing.

Healing.

Complete.

I heard everything.

The people on the street,

the crying of women,

radio and cell phones,

the police asking questions about what happened,

the ambulance coming,

the doctors testing my blood type,

hurried feet squeaking floors,

the metal and wheels banging,

the machines beeping,

the nurses clapping when they heard a heart beat.

But there was one thing that I remember more so than any other sound.

One voice.

My voice.

I asked,

“Can I go back?”

In my “No light at the end of the tunnel” state I asked GOD,

Can I go back?

And then I woke up.

Alive.

In my stay at the hospital I was numb.

Not from the drugs given to me to hide the physical pain

But from the fact that I was sent back to this simply by asking.

Why I asked to stay?

I still don’t know.

Why I was allowed to come back?

I don’t know.

But since my arrival I have noticed

every religious and spiritual person has been telling me what God has told them.

What they have heard from God.

Everything  according to God.

What I am suppose to do. According to GOD.

To Be.

To say.

To see.

What God had ordained for me and all of mankind.

But the words don’t sound like what I heard.

They don’t feel like what I felt.

The voice is different.

What I hear is like asking for directions and giving a recipe for Stir Fried Rice.

You know its wrong from the first word.

Preachers, and Popes, Ministers, and Muslims

They all sound empty.

They sound wrong.

Try as they might, they fall short of the voice I heard in my death.

It’s somewhat sad and comical

Cause none of these Motherfuckers have a clue.

No clue.

Not one fucking clue.

I walk along streets and see rows of dapperly dressed men and women

Noble men in black and white collars

Men draped in silk and embroidered gold

Staffs of reflective substance

Statues and Stained Glass images haunting and still

Halls filled with shouts , and hymns, the Negro spiritual ringing to the roof of  heaven

and I sense in it all great emptiness.

Oh my God, why is it so empty to me?

Why is it so hollow?

Absorbing?

Enveloping?

And people; week after week continue to feel good.

They feel rejuvenated.

But when I walk into those halls of holy healing

I feel sick.

I feel the opposite.

At home God talks to me.

No musical scales and screams

No preacher prattle

No reminders of Satan and his fall from grace.

No plates filled with the evils called money to be counted behind closed

doors by accountants.

Accountants dressed in Armani and Alligator shoes.

No overlapping calls of Amen.

No great book of by James or psalms upon psalms.

It’s the sun that rises in the morning to greet my opening eyes.

My breath that allows me to say, “Thank You” for another day.

The water that washes away a past life of guilt and sins

and refreshes me for a day of saintly thoughts, deeds and sanity.

It’s the wind that touches my face

And the earth underneath my feet that tells me what is right.

I may not have traveled a heaven

I may not have traveled 10 feet above the streets of Harlem.

But I see the stars more clearly now.

Angles held both my hands and my head on that night

And God had awaken me gently into a World that is still sleeping.

And  I know I am blessed.

Everyday. 

Why am I here?

I still don’t know

But I am here everyday of my new life.

Work is the sole property of Shazza Nakim and is published with written permission by the artist.

 (c) Copyright 2001 

Don’t Steal My Art

I stand before you grounding myself

Planting myself in this spot.

Not like a seed in Mother Earth

Not like a man’s seed in the womb of a Nubian Goddess

I am standing here before you.

Physically speaking.

Man.

Physically speaking.

I am not the person who shouldered a nation.

Not one whom has picked up arms against the White Devil Establishment.

I didn’t bring with me tools from the Motherland

Or awoke with nightmares of being chained with my African brother’s songs keeping me alive.

Or having the spirit endowment of a continent that is in fear of castration.

Nope.

I’m just a Black Man, born in Harlem, to a teen-aged mother

Who’s father was too caught up in irresponsibility and fucking other Ho’s to stick around.

So why am I up here before you?

I’m here to inundate whomever listens with

words of metaphysical expletives,

then have those words bounce back many times

thus giving me a semblance of a room full of self gratification

and maybe,

just maybe I’ll get it through to a third party.
Become bought.

Finally understand the voices of  Black Poetry.

I mean, I saw the pyramids of Egypt and they didn’t call to me.

I felt the sands of my African ancestors between my toes

…. and by the way, it did more to burn my corns than emotions of traditions lost.

I saw the chains that were used to bring my ancestors to the shores of America.

Ivory Coast to Plymouth Rock.

And I wasn’t mad.

I was more informed if anything else.

Milk and honey that fed mankind,

Rice and beans the food of a nation.

Goya … Oh Boya and 2 for $2.99.
I had food for thought and on my table.

What I guess I’m saying is that I know where I came from.
I know where I am.

And with the resource of mind, body, and spirit, I know I’ll be all right in the future.

I am not lost.

So I ask,
where is my Black poetry?

Where is my hate.

Where is my poor.

I know my History first hand.

I haven’t been whipped, stripped, dipped, raped, castrated, or fucked over.
I don't sing the Blues
and Rap in Rage.
My soul music sooths
and my Jazz music grooves,

so where is my Black poetry?

I can’t see a Celestial Gate held open by a King of Kemet

Or the ancient embodiment of an Isis something or another.

I don’t see African blood washing to the shores of an evil nation,

Or the bludgeoning of a young mind by a legion of devils who fear my penis when I walk into a room.

I never felt it, never saw it, never really cared about it like that.
My conversations with GOD is loving.
My kisses with my Mother loving
and I have my father's eyes.

So where is my Black Poetry?

I am a Black Man

That I know.

I know I can’t escape that shit.

Call me African-American,

call me Nubian,

call me Hemetic,

call me a Warrior,

call me a person of color,

call me a Son of Shabazz,

call me a Son of a Bitch.

But if you have an issue with any of that, I have a Ph.D. in Psychology
so you can call me direct too.

I’m paid by the hour and I round up for the extra minutes.

First initial visit is free
cause I know how you all like the free shit.

Ignorance aside,

I am Black.

Darker than most, privilege even less.

I know I lost 10 cool points from birth

And you know what?

I’m not pissed off cause I always liked being the underdog.

The underestimated.

In me, in you, in her, in him, in us.

Minus 10 cool point for everyone.

We all live in a minus 10 cool points of society.

We are a family of Underdogs.

Minus 10 out of a scale of 1 to 10.

And speaking of Dogs, I’d like to tell you that I cheated before.

I cheated several times.

And did that shit come back on me like a wave of Bad Karma.

You damn right.

Put my Black Ass in the hospital.

So now that I suffered,
I felt that pain.

Where is my Black poetry?

I live alone.

Up in Harlem.

And since then,

I’m still waiting for it to come back.

By the way of time I’ll reach an over ripe, lineal age of half over the hill

Eating cat food,

piss poor health care,

Clintonized ……

and living in a building full of White folk.

Yeah, that’s when Harlem will be back.

I can’t wait.

Along with that last living Black poet.

I missed the Million-Man March

But I sucker punched a cop at the Million Youth March.

I got back 1 cool point for that.

Now I keep thinking “They got my ass on video.”

Like that show on American’s Most Criminal or something.

Yeah, then I’ll get snatched up and serve 40 years for a crime I tried to lie about and said I didn’t commit.
And still I won't get it.

So somebody tell me,

Where is my Black poetry?

 Cause I ain’t got that much time.

Work is the sole property of Shazza Nakim and is published with written permission by the artist.

 (c) Copyright 2013

REVOLUTION

I’ve seen sparks flare and rocks fly

Crashing against brows that pulsate blood

feeding

Knowledge and pride

for a tribe.

my Home,

our family.

It’s a light,

like stars,

that dance

Smack

HARD

And wakes the senses

allowing you,

and everyone present know

that THIS is reality.

Be it live or recorded

you now stand at the front line of the Revolution.

I took a side and it is Hot, and Violent, Physical

Wonderful.

This will be the re-start of that circle in Mayan history

where everything repeats because as Man and Men

we keep forgetting the struggle

That life, liberty and the over pursuit of prosperity

eventually and ultimately

kills us.

Bible Qur'an Torah taught us,

this.

We have embraced humanity’s less exorcised

and re-swallowed pea-soup of bile and blades

served up on money green platters and platinum card dreams.

Swooned and swayed to diamond jingle bells

and shook bags of sugar ‘till it dropped like its Hot.

Cars like deadly caterpillars munching on black filled pipes,

sucking hard on the excremental breast milk of Mother Earth.

People followed and realized that the beat they heard was not of the heart

but of the cellular ringtones from bill collectors calling

cursing your ass out to pay your bills.

It was a beat that burped and belched that your stomach is tight and empty

It was a hollow treble that echoed from your foreclosed home

And the hammer knocking in your neighbor’s lawn

signs reading,

… AND YOU 2 GET THE FUQ OUT.

Here everyone in the land is looking to the sky for a Superman

while rocking back and forth counting beads and molesting crosses

with dirty fingers that once traced remotes that channeled every talk show created.

in this reality sits a people who

stopped singing Negro spirituals praising Jesus …

a long time ago,

and replaced him with Pink Floyd

The gospel:

“We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the class room
(yells) Hey, teachers! Leave those kids alone!”

Because the man got it right:

I and we were just another brick in the Wall.

Praying for simple solutions,

the devil in us turned GOD into DOG

And in return

got a nation that shit and pissed all over each other.

Funny thing about shit and piss,

it is the one true method that dogs communicate

and the World made sure we did not become pedigrees

living in our own American backyard.

Unlike thunder or like lightning, the rumble in the distance

is missing.

No more can we count on the people to carry pitch forks

German Sheppards and high pressure hoes,

or spit and slur words of hate.

This is a different time, a different place

This whole party goes beyond Race.

Mutts, junkyard and strays in our own diversity

where television sells us on the notion that Poor is Fashionable and Cheap is Cool

SPAM is caviar and Ramen noodles is part of the 4 basic food groups.

Holy Men dancing with baby boys and Women becoming famous for their anger and pain,

who could ever image a bunch of dirty kids from New Jersey’s shore

would be the welcoming ambassadors for a generation.

We look around

 and become rabbit when what little is left is thrown in the middle

of a hungry pack,

and we draw blood.

Ethnic blood

 in a frenzy, and we still can’t see that it is all Red.

Because in truth, we are dead inside.

Hollow.

A cesspool of mediocrity and mendacity.

Dank and dark even in our most enlighten moments.

Complacent like meat fried up to give the next generation heartburn and diabetes

We medicate on the idea that we are great only because we are American.

And if we turn down the music, just enough

we just might hear the scant chuckle of Shaitan

and the quite tears of GOD,

opposite ends,

opposite sides of Ying and Yang.

Like the center of the circle in history,

 this is now cause,

 this the catalyst

for

The Revolution.

Work is the sole property of Shazza Nakim and is published with written permission by the artist.

 (c) Copyright 2013