Blood Reckoning
Wouldn’t it be nice
to synthesize the blood
to separate the DNA
to follow each strand
back to Genesis
Fulani
Tikar
Hausa
to drink this ancestral history
Unadulterated.
To know my mother’s line
also bears the
Bubi
from Bioko Island
Where I remember drowning
fighting the Spaniards
Bantu.
Descendants of Khemetian Pharoahs
Shattered noses a frail denial
symbol of a world’s implosion
Nice to retrace steps
all the way back there
to observe how we rose pyramids
telekinetically
How can one know
the unknowable?
My father’s line pure
Angolan,
nothing else.
The Mbundu from the North,
tribe of Queen Nzinga
who fought the Portuguese
over 40 years
But then
as now
colonial mentality never relents
just as a predator never
loosens its jaw on captured meat
and rues wasting even a drop
of blood or fragment of bone
So perhaps that’s why
my father was so angry
and why I am
unable to stop fighting
But how can one fight
simply by holding vigil?
I don’t know.
But I know
somebody
must.
Fantastic Demonstrations to Come
The most important aspect of being on the spiritual path may be just to keep moving.
— P. ChodronIn the spiritual journey you cannot be a wine taster you have to become a drunk.
— Mooji
I write sitting on a hill
overlooking fields I have bought
in Africa.
Drunk with gratitude and wonder
at how far
this soul from the Harlem projects has
come
by the Grace of God, the Angels,
Survival instinct,
Sheer luck,
and spiritual practice.
I see glorious crops
structures and generations to feed.
This is what infinity looks smells feels like.
On impulse I scoop a pinch of dirt
and savor its taste
swallowing its gooey richness.
Strains of moringa, neem, cassava and banana
burst to life in my drunken heart.
I am at home
and can feel the ancestors dancing
lighting fires
calling the children
to the story of my return.
The scars from our capture and occupation
keloid into fantastic works of art.
We are born to this.
As the wind takes lead
we sit in silence
and join the chorus of whispering stars.
As new predators stalk
they too are subsumed
by the beauty of our eternal song.
We know they demand our just reckoning
and we offer peace and blessings
as we sever them from our limbs.
The time of healing has begun.
The fire lights the faces of the unborn children
in the bellies of the mothers of Africa.
They are smiling and cooing
awaiting the fantastic demonstrations to come.
I taste every nutrient imaginable in this soil.
The gratitude I feel has me weeping.
I know my life and All Life
is a testament to the Goodness and the Grace of God.
So I celebrate All Life
with the same deep reverence I feel
here on God’s fields
with their Fantastic Demonstrations to Come.
About the Author
Kenshaka Ali is a poet, play maker, performing artist, and licensed spiritual practitioner whose work spans more than four decades in Black theater and cultural excavations. Born in central Harlem, he splits his time between Los Angeles and his land on the mountain of Dodowa, Ghana. He is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection The Lonest Person I Know and the manuscripts Blood Reckoning, The Erotic Ramblings of a Scorpio Poet, and There Will Be Songs. His work appears in the forthcoming issue of Konch Magazine. He began writing poetry as a child in Harlem, with an early poem broadcast on WLIB radio — a frequency he has never stopped transmitting on.
Feature image by Patti Black on Unsplash