Poet Ngoma’s Just Anutha Nigga From Palestine

A former member of Amiri Baraka’s “The Spirit House Movers and Players” and the contemporary freedom song duo “Serious Bizness”, Ngoma weaves poetry and song that raises contradictions and searches for a solution to a just and peaceful world.

Just Anutha Nigga From Palestine

I’m trying to find out
why salaam alaikum
and thou shalt not kill
can’t seem to
just get along on the same page
especially when the holy books tell us
in my fathers house there are many mansions
if it were not so
I would not have told you
It seems like there should be enough real estate
to go around
certainly there is room at the table for everyone
but I guess they weren’t listening
pissed off that all the loaves, fish and wine ran out
when they crashed the party
rowdy, unruly and not listening
figured they need not pay attention
nobody told them he was a graduate
of Egyptian Mystery Schools
dread head melanin copper skin
to them he was just another bastard
a single teenage mother’s son
from across the road on the poor side
of territory occupied
washing feet and hanging out with lepers
a carpenter who earned a living
doing manual labor without a union
how dare the nigger question empires
kicking money changers out of the temple
a revolutionary advocating liberation of the soul
he was framed on false charges and arrested
sold out for 20 pieces of silver
a political prisoner in a kangaroo court with no trial
stoned and crucified at daybreak
now karmic debt stands forever
like a mountain on a rich man’s chest
ignoring the fact
that God has many names
after all peace on earth good will to men
has no profit
when they buried the nigga
how could they know he’d forever rise again

Ngoma
©12/25/20018

Ngoma is a performance poet, multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter, Artivist and paradigm shifter, who for over 50 years has used culture as a tool to raise socio-political and spiritual consciousness through work that encourages critical thought.

Ngoma was the Prop Slam Winner of the 1997 National Poetry Slam Competition in Middletown,CT and has been published in African Voices Magazine, Long Shot Anthology, The Underwood Review, Signifyin’ Harlem Review, Bum Rush the Page/Def Poetry Jam Anthology, Poems on the Road to Peace — (Volumes 1,2 & 3) Yale Press and Let Loose On the World — Amiri Baraka at 75. The Understanding Between Foxes and Light – Great Weather For Media and New Rain/Blind Beggar Press 35th Anniversary Issue. He was featured in the P.B.S spoken word documentary The Apropoets with Allen Ginsburg. Ngoma was selected as the Beat Poet Laureate of New York for 2021 by The National Beat Poetry Poetry Foundation