Monday, October 31, 2011

Artist Lepadah Weekend

The weekend was simply interesting and full. . . New York's unexpected snow storm wet, cold and windy for October oh well I dug it. Love wrapping myself my body locking in the heat and venturing out into the day; especially night.
First after all my Saturday errands to the bank, important all the time. After the chaos of the day a visit to my Forest Hills man in my life at present; enjoyed the conversation our usual pontificating and political protest pretty quiet evening in total. Sunday was fast moving with a steady peaceful mood. Happy to spit a little something yesterday on Blog radio and later at the cafe. Drove through Forest Hills Garden checking out the architecture of all the beautiful houses ended our tour at Pampas Argentine Steakhouse great food, wine, black & mild and the conversation was stupendous. Let me not forget the brilliant music of Toots Thielemas please note everyone this CD is on my wish list.

Peace Lepadah

Medical Apartheid Part 1

Check out this video on YouTube:


Lepadah

Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington « Commentary Magazine

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Monday, October 24, 2011

The God of Pyramids by Obatala

The God of Pyramids (oba)

I am a god
living in some
orgasmic paradise
where the night crawls
into new midnight where
the corners of my skin
creeps into the breaks
between my body when you
are away, just, just a little,
a little out of reach. I am
the god who tucks all lovers
into bed leading them into deeper
embraces. I am the god of a billion
laughs who presses each tear away from
all dreamer's doors. When you ask for my
guidance fold your little hands into the
shadows of a pyramid that hides the lust
of my need to taste you now now God
now now...

Obatala. . . poet, my friend, mentor and brother to the street submitted by Lepadah

Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving Dinner

Another Day in the Park

A day in the park Washington Square with Maulene. Representing to the fullest natural Afro and natural hair dress in our black attire ready for the day events. Maul a born vegetarian missing her favorite Hare Krishna veggie spot on the lower East side of the village substitute meal at Vegetarian Paradise on West 4th. Ok I'm beginning to see the light of eating delicious food without eating flesh. Still suffering withdrawals of a thick Porterhouse on the grill but this day I ate potatoes with cheese and had a satisfying cup of coffee. Trying to make our way up to 14th street Union Square Rally after a diversion intentional with incorrect info. You know I think all matters concerning the mass are a conspiracy. Don't you all take me so literal. After a wonderful sunny fall day in the Village we hit the subway and purposefully missed our train back to Queens listening to the funkiest drummer's in the subway. "Listen to the drummer's beat . . .

Peace Lepadah

Friday, October 21, 2011

A Writer's night out at The Parsons Ale House Pool Time

Last night after work had me some Fat Bastard Chardonnay and played pool @ Parsons Ale House. Reminisce with Ronnie, Ricky and brother about Studio 54 and Stratton and promise to try Sweet Bitch next time.

Peace Lepadah

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Thoughts, Commentary on Gaddafi and United States Involvement

My prayers for the world. Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi dead. Question for America now what? Greed is a bitch. Take care of America first before you go seeking property of others.

World Love and Peace

US involvement in Libya saves lives
Originally Published: 03/29/11 8:04pm |Modified: 03/29/11 8:05pm | 8 comments
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The American involvement in the international intervention in Libya is drawing a lot of negative attention. A Gallup Poll conducted last monday found only 47 percent of Americans approve of the military role the U.S. is playing in the campaign; 37 percent flat out disapprove.

This is the lowest approval rating Gallup has reported for any American military action in the last 30 years, going back to President Ronald Reagan’s jaunt into Grenada in 1983. In contrast, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq had 90 percent and 76 percent approval ratings, respectively.

More Americans should approve of the military action against Libya. The intervention is the closest thing to a “humanitarian war” the U.S. has participated in for almost its entire history. Here we have a clear-cut case of a maniacal dictator carrying out a violent, systematic military campaign against his own people.

I understand there are material (read: oil) concerns for the nations taking part in the intervention — more so the European nations than the U.S. However, the existence of material concerns for the intervention, even as primary or secondary motivators, should not make us ignore the positive effects of the bombing campaign.

Muammar Gaddafi’s forces, which had been busying themselves lobbing shells indiscriminately into rebel-held towns — killing at least 8,000 people according to the transitional government in Benghazi — have been stopped.

The airstrikes and missile attacks have helped negate Gaddafi’s technological and equipment advantages over the rebels, paving the way for a successful drive west by the rebels.

As of Sunday morning, there was news the rebels had retaken the key cities of al-Brega and Ras Lanuf — providing observable evidence of just what the United Nations, or U.N./NATO intervention is enabling.

As it stands now, the intervention appears to be working. We can look to a previous intervention (and lack thereof) for guidance about what to do in Libya.

In the 1990s, as Yugoslavia was falling apart and the Balkans degenerated into a bedlam of ethnic cleansing and massacres, NATO and the U.N. stood by hemming and hawing at the corpses piling up on their doorstep.

The four-year siege of Sarajevo tragically represents the length and magnitude of the region’s suffering. The conflict in the former Yugoslavia was extended unnecessarily by the international community’s inaction; the mass graves and scorched villages remain as silent monuments to this fact.

When powerful nations finally got involved in 1995 with an extensive bombing campaign against Bosnian Serb forces, the military capability of the Serb forces was reduced significantly and the conflict came to a conclusion soon after.

Although the agreements and divisions following the intervention are deserving of criticism, the events in Yugoslavia have shown us decisive military action against genocidal and repressive forces can be successful, at least in the short term.

There is such a thing as the right side in a war. That side is the human side — that which protects innocent people and fights for liberty and justice. Even if these ends are side effects of a materially motivated act, they still are good. It is the obligation of powerful nations to protect the people who are being repressed and murdered by their leaders.

What the intervening countries need to concern themselves with is keeping up the campaign, lessening or widening the scope of the intervention as needed and allowing what happens in Libya to remain natural and endogenous.

Last Saturday, I attended a discussion on the events in Egypt and the Middle East. Eventually, the discussion turned to the Libyan intervention. Juan Cole, a professor of history from the University of Michigan, was one of the speakers.

Although he was referring specifically to hesitance about the intervention in the minds of leftists, I think one thing he said can be applied more broadly. He said we must not let our aversion to imperialism — and seeing all Western military action as such — blind us to the humanitarian potential of the intervention in Libya.

I hope my fellow Americans will not ignore the positive potential in the Libyan intervention if it is carried out properly.

Matt Korovesis is a State News guest columnist and a political science and Russian senior. Reach him at koroves1@msu.edu.


My question is Libya's new government better for the people and what is the future of Libya's interaction with the United States? I want to know. . .
How are we the United States of America able to mandate, maintain guidance over foreign countries when America is in dire straits. Poverty, Racism, Unemployment and will the rallies enlightened the politicians to change government that currently exist.

Lepadah

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Banished American Ethnic Cleansings Independent Lens

The Making Of  The Filmmaker Filmmaker Statement Film Credits
Map Harrison, Arkansas Forsyth County, Georgia Pierce City, Missouri
The Browns The Stricklands

Forsyth County, Georgia
"There were 1,098 blacks living there in 1912. Within a matter of months, it had dropped to 30. It's the largest racial cleansing in America that I know of."
—Cox Newspapers reporter Elliot Jaspin



In the early 1900s, there were more than 1,000 African Americans in Forsyth County, Georgia, comprising 10 percent of the population. But in 1912, whites violently expelled all black residents from the county. Today, Forsyth County is home to about 150,000 people, more than 95 percent of them white.

In January 1987, a white martial arts instructor in Forsyth County organized a brotherhood march in honor of the first federal holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and with the intent of countering the area’s racist image. But en route to the event a bus full of marchers was assaulted by a crowd of white supremacists chanting racial slurs and throwing rocks and bottles. In danger of physical harm, the marchers turned back.


Two weeks later, a much larger march involving 20,000 civil rights activists and supporters from across the country headed back to the county in protest. An estimated 5,000 counter-demonstrators also showed up. This large demonstration cost Forsyth County approximately $670,000 in police overtime, angering many local taxpayers who were unhappy at having to foot the bill for what they saw as outside agitators. The town subsequently levied large parade permit fees to discourage future demonstrations, but that effort was disallowed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Forsyth County, Georgia v. The Nationalist Movement, 1992.


These events brought national media attention to the area. News crews and The Oprah Winfrey Show descended on Forsyth County to investigate. The governor set up a biracial commission to try to heal the racial rift, with little success, and a legal team began to assemble a lawsuit on behalf of the descendants of the black families expelled in 1912. While no suit was filed in the end, the team gathered compelling personal stories and hard evidence of widespread land loss.

Adverse Possession

Building on this evidence, Cox Newspapers reporter Elliot Jaspin was inspired to trace land deeds and tax rolls back to 1912. He found further proof that the majority of the property owned by the banished African Americans was never sold, but instead taken by their white neighbors. Called adverse possession, this process is partly statutory and partly common law, and involves the legal acquisition of a title to a property without having to pay for it. In the case of the land in Forsyth County, white residents simply held the property belonging to black residents following their banishment. In the state of Georgia, the period of adverse possession is seven years. After this period of time, whites legally owned the land.

White title attorneys such as Phil Bettis plead ignorance regarding the appropriation of black-owned land, but some descendants of these black families have declared that the property is rightfully theirs. With missing title transfers and deeds of sale between former black residents and current white property owners are often missing; therefore, returning the land in Forsyth County to the descendants of its rightful owners remains a controversial and legal challenge.

Banished American Ethnic Cleansing's


Lepadah

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Trouble by Lepadah

Rising aside light of God
his sunshine
troubles along the way
force one to brave this time alone

they belong to me and only to me they belong
showing up the void of notice
electricity turned off; i'll wait for turn on
phone shut; wait for the tone
and the sound of the Beep!

but the eviction
holds one to tremble in entirety
wandering, walking for days
careless through one's fathom the way
pirouette breath complicate urgency

waited until the conductor keys
and the battering door
shaken into brisk ambiguity
neither lover, man, woman or child

them mine; all mine
only time will achieve amenity
occupancy of this fall descending
a dead leaf to concrete

chasing wonderment of prosperous Ivies
fissure between bricks
of subsidized houses oppressed

acorn's sequentiality
tarries strange baldness of Autumn's gray days
brim sorrowed nucleus with aimless beats
pursuit of fine chronology

them troubles belong to me
cast in iron and everlasting burdens . . .
ferry a lifetime

ode to forgone ghettoes
my real love of trashed streets
it's familiar retreat burrowed in graffiti blocks
my sweet young callousness
sorry I ever left you for change


© 2011 Lepadah

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

I Love Waxpoetic

The subway ride to work was void of anything or anyone. I sat ravished by my copy of Waxpoetics featuring articles on Theophilus London, Gil Scott and Nina Simone just a few delightful reads. So I snatch this from the Nina Simone article which I love. She is truly an inspiration. A quote by Lorraine Hansberry's . . . "Let no Negro artist who thinks himself deserving of the title take pen to paper--or, for that matter, body to dance or voice to speech or song-- if in doing so the content of that which he present or performs suggests to the nations of the world that our people do not yet languish under privation and hatred and brutality and political oppression in every state. . . The truth demand its own equal." BRAVO!

Listen up everyone go get your copy of Waxpoetics you won't be sorry. This meticulously written magazine is so preciously put together you won't put it down.

Peace Lepadah

Great pics from Wall Street Shut Down

GREAT pictures. Wish I could have been there. Seeing the signs, the peace symbol shirts, reminds me of my youth. I remember my brother was in Viet Nam in 1967 and 1968. I was aboy 13 years old. As time progressed, my record collection started--Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Ike and Tina, Otis Redding, Creedence, The Doors, Dylan being my first that represented the time period. I received a draft notice in 1968, but it was a mistake and they did not take me, I was just 13. The music--Started by seeing concerts by Traffic, Jefferson Airplane, Ten Years After, The Allman Brothers, The Jerry Garcia Band, Neil Young, The Grateful Dead (three times), Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Lightnin Hopkins, Roy buchanan, Willie Nelson. My hair was long, the jeans had patches and wore desert boots, and T shirts, homemade tie-dyes. Outdoor concerts; topless women. We didnt shoot the finger, we said "peace" with our fingers. In junior English, conservative town, I wrote a pro pot essay, and crafted it carefully in such a way, the instructor didnt know what was said, as she made me stand up to read from what she thought was more conservative stemming from a play on words from then TV ads from the times, yet I got all my research from liberal publications, kids snickering as I read a liberal perspective, titled, "Why Do You Think They Call It Pot?" I bucked the system. Every-other-word in conversation was "man." We had our own group of merry pranksters. I was against the war back then, too. The tales I could tell... Those braless, mini-skirted, peace loving times make me want to go back and do it all over again.

By Larry Mayfield
Editor/friend

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

East Village Paper, Pen and Pocket Knife by Lepadah

As I walk the streets of the East Village
a bag full of paper, pen and a pocket knife
the tight fright upon the face
obvious I'm in the right place at the wrong time

band of banshees
sadistic meth heads
one possibly could be the next vic
tomorrow's daily news

tonight unhinged
faux fear; I'm really scared
an alley cat timidly stalking the dark side
near the watchmen of life
wait to harvest unsettled bones
rattling along Village streets
marking their tombstones

tether those idling church restroom
his Father shadowing stain glass
removal of the last candle
and here you come mama and papa flower child
without your invitation . . . stoned



© 2011 Lepadah




Poems for Comment


East Village w/Paper, Pen & Pocket Knife


From: GuyBlakeKett (GuyBlakeKett)
Last Visit: 10:20 AM
Posts: 10566


To: lepadahxxx
Unread
Posted: Oct 05 11 01:23 PM
Message: 
57730.2 (2 of 2)
Reply to 57730.1

nice work, Lepadah. I type this in a third floor apt overlooking the top of tompkins square park - the sunlit version of the deep night poem you've written here. quite a world out there. you've done it justice.

cheers,
g

Monday, October 3, 2011

As I walk the East Village alone with paper , pen and a pocket knife. . . Thinking about you Brother . . .


Lepadah

Soul Kissing a Poem by Lepadah

Soul Kissing like soul music
soul dancing; so entrancing it's so beautiful . . .
you kissing me
I'm soul kissing you

your summer's taste
tongue tobacco laced
steeping docile nips
clip a tease effortlessly godly

braided spirits
nibbling height mounting
corkscrew malleable a thrust
thundering ancient girdles

genuine fatness around
his manly hold under each thick cheek
nice . . . to be held in such a way
where one is lost entering Holy Canaan

one should never hush a murmur
a lofty suspire
or the submarine gullet of lust

cast glory to beat against fury
forgo her rescue
award the stay
as long as this world shall last



© 2011 Lepadah




From: cumin (cumin)
Last Visit: Oct-5
Posts: 7946


To: lepadahxxx
Unread
Posted: Oct 05 11 10:00 PM
Message: 
57721.4 (4 of 4)
Reply to 57721.1

Love this one.....my all time favourite of all of yours....so far.......


Comment

I'm not in this forum constantly, but I have read a few of your poems and like your work, as well as your wide range
of voices.

YEAH You go to my editor/friend nice job man

You Gotta Believe: Playing Catch
Blitz Weekly Story of Interest

Sept. 28, 2011 - By Larry Mayfield - approachthedrum@yahoo.com

Baseball has long been a part of my family life—the way it bonds one human being to another. Some of my earliest recollections are of baseball. Sitting at the dinner table, Dad had exclaimed his excitement about the home run race between Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle back in 1961. Those were the first two professional players' names I can remember. To hear Dad talk, baseball was important. Baseball cards became my most important possession as a youngster, as I learned the players, the stats, and the game.
Baseball pictures and memorabilia decorate my living room, and at a glance a memory can be relived. A picture of my dad on a team in the 1940's reminds me of those days when there were area hardball and semi-pro teams scattered about the state. He played shortstop and second baseman. When I was a kid, Dad taught me to catch the ball properly. When playing catch, he would throw the ball very hard, and my body would wince every time the ball hit the glove. "It will stop hurting when you learn to catch the ball right," and he was right—within a couple of days the sting in the mitt lessened from making adjustments on catching the ball. His old 1940's style baseball mitt is still within eye's distance from my writing desk, and once in a while I put it on my hand, pound my fist with an audible smack into the pocket, then place the glove to my face to smell the old leather to remind me of those days when we played catch.

Another picture on the wall reminds me of a time farther back in my family's past. My granddad is in that photograph—taken in 1906 in a barren field near Johnsville, Texas. "That team was hard to beat," he had said when handing me the picture. Just a bunch of country boys, they didn't have uniforms or baseball shoes—only gloves and a couple of bats.

One branch of my family tree built a baseball field—out in the "middle of nowhere" in rural Texas surrounded by pastures with a juniper-covered mountain as a backdrop to centerfield. There is no field like it, excepting maybe the baseball diamond in the movie Field of Dreams. Our family field has a backstop and a surrounding fence. There is a scoreboard and an announcer's booth. There is a flag, and we sing the national anthem before our yearly family-reunion softball game between the Slammers and Bombers. In this family—baseball is important.

As time went forward from the days of playing catch with my dad, I became a player. But first my dues had to be paid by playing neighborhood ball. As a kid there were two yards we used when playing ball, and even though they only look like a front yard to today's passersby, I can still see them as baseball fields—complete with last year's license plates as bases and rules like "automatic outs" and "ghost runners" made up by kids. Those ghost runners are still out there somewhere in time—running those bases with imaginary crowds cheering and witnessing some of the greatest games ever played—games that only ended because of darkness or the call of "suppertime" by Mom. As time passed, my dad continued to prepare me for Little League try-outs by playing catch daily and teaching me how to hit. He made me a special ball for batting practice by drilling a hole in the middle, attaching a long string and swinging the baseball-attached string around his head like a lasso. I would stand nearby and wait for the ball to come around…and swing! With his help, I made the team, and just like anyone who has ever played the game, the memories are permanent. Reflecting on those days, I can still remember standing in the on-deck circle, waiting to become—a hitter.

My love for the game was the initiative needed to raise my hand and volunteer to be a coach when my two sons were ready to be "ballplayers" back when they were kids. We shared that bond for over ten years, as I watched them grow in stature and ability. After those formative years were gone, I found myself helping my oldest son coach a team—a continued realization of the strong bonding effects baseball can have when a person takes a "time out" from life for a game of catch. Upon meeting a close friend's grandson for the first time, he approached with a ball in his hand and threw it to me. It was his way of saying "Hi," and when I asked if he had a bat and glove—excitedly off he went to retrieve both items. Our game of catch created an instant friendship, as he sat next to me later that evening, and we talked about playing catch the next visit.

There is one baseball game from the past that often comes to mind. It was the last game I would coach my oldest son. I wanted to refresh the event time and again to remember the last time he came to bat.