Marvin X
Last Rites for Lil' Joe
Revolutionary Intellectual Activist
Last Rites for Lil' Joe
Revolutionary intellectual/activist
For
Lil' Joe Johnson
In-naa lil-laa-hi wa in-naa i-layhi raa-ji-'oon
Surely we are Allah's and to Him we shall return.
Oh, Lil' Joe
I see you tonight
oh, it is early morn
but I see you
spitting your wisdom to all who seek
thank you for coming my way
Central Valley
cotton raisin land
lending your hands
to us deaf dumb blind
you and your blessed crew
conscious soldiers
bsu revolutionaries
I appreciate you L.A. peoples
strong dedicated troopers
My valley people will one day understand
your lending hand
they did what they could
my very best student
photographic mind
went to prison
burned down computer center
my
A Student
recited pages word for word
what a time then
what a time now
Lil' Joe
those who don't know
who never heard of you
your comrades in L.A.
who gave me that tour
Of UCLA
where Bunchy and John died
BSU room
BLOOD ON THE WALL
BLOOD OF WARRIORS
BUNCHY AND JOHN
LONG LIVE THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY WARRIORS
LONG LIVE BLACK STUDENT UNION WARRIORS
COMMUNITY BLACK STUDIES
FK TENURED NIGGA BLACK STUDIES
NEO-COLONIAL BLACK STUDIES
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
POWER TO THE REVOLUTIONARY BLACK STUDENT UNIONS
BLACK POWER MATTERS
IN THE NAME OF LIL' JOE
BLACK POWER MATTERS
NO POWER NO LIFE
PART II
I suspect Lil' Joe would expect a poem from me in his honor
on his joining ancestor world of eternity
he loved my revolutionary poetry
told me to publish a collection of revolutionary poems
I shall do so in his honor memory
Lil' Joe loved some of my not so revolutionary poetry
love poems
he found a way of radical analysis
no matter what I wrote
put me in historical and ideological perspective
when I had no idea what I was writing
Lil' Joe knew
like my mother knew everything about me
when I didn't know shit
Mama said I needed a maid secretary mistress
not a wife
said she wouldn't have me for a husband
she knew I dwelled on another plane beyond husband wife
In My Solitude Duke said
Like Mama, Lil's Joe's perception of me was acid tight
no one surpassed his revolutionary scholarship on any subject
footnotes plethora of references
who studied more than Lil' Joe?
he emailed me voluminousness replies to my writings
I shall treasure returning to his notes for edification
education
there was pure joy in his scholarship
like the joy in my writing
sometimes I write to "keep my chops up"
We think Lil' Joe wrote to wake up the dead
He didn't matter about overkill
No matter what Mao said,
"Cure the sickness to save the patient.
Don't doctor the patient to death."
Lil' Joe wrote on on on
As if I don't do the same
We both guilty of overkill
It is crystal clear to me the people can only take so much
their brain cells explode
even a black bourgeoisie school superintendent told me,
"I'm only using 25% of my brain."
You know that old joke about the white brain, Mexican and Black Brain.
A buyer wanted to know why the black brain was the most expensive?
The seller said, "Because it is the most unused!"
Yet, didn't Chairman Mao said, "When the black board is blank and unused, the most
beautiful inscriptions can be written upon it!"
Still, the people will let you know when your revolutionary knowledge is overwhelming their fragile minds. Many people tell me they can only take 30 to 60 minutes of conversation with me. I only know it is my duty to teach. You with Supreme Wisdom know the duty of the civilized man is to teach the uncivilized. If he fails to perform his duty he shall suffer a severe chastisement from Allah. I bear witness when I diverted from Sirata Al Mustaqim, i.e., the Straight Path, I did indeed suffer a severe chastisement by Allah, yes, administered by the people, e.g., I was bum rushed, robbed at gun and knife point, teeth knocked out by youngsters, suffered all manner of diseases for being in a toxic environment; suffered homelessness, slept in alleys, doorways, cardboard boxes, cars, subways, until I was ready to do as Shirley Caesar says in her song, "Come to the front of the line. You've been in the back of the line too long, it's time to come to the front...." Imagine, one day I departed from San Francisco's 6th Street to arrive in New York City, picked up by chauffeur and dropped off at my hotel around the corner from Wall Street! Did God take me to the front of the line? Well, we know God helps those who help themselves. As I say, the tide turns because you are turning the tide! And God is good to you, but are you good to God. He was standing there all the time waiting for you to take one step so he could take ten for you. But how could He put your blessing in your hand while your fist was balled up?
Part III
Por favor, let me make it clear that Lil' Joe was a Communist, thus he did not believe in God. We never debated this point of difference as I did not with most of my Communist or Marxist comrades, e.g., from the time I arrived at Oakland's Merritt College, 1962, e.g., Ernie Allen, Kenny Freeman, John Thomas, Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Carol Freeman, et. al. And later Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis, Amiri and Amina Baraka. I experienced many of my friends switch from spirituality to Communism and back and beyond, some felt the need to experience all the isms and schisms, some reached a synthesis or perhaps a symbiosis in their ideological and spiritual quest.
We all change, after all, life is change and for sure experience changes everyone. Eldridge and Amiri were in constant change, especially from midlife to their endgame. Much change is due to experience, though some people change just to experience new things, new thought, myth-rituals. And some of us are simply lost and turned out on the way to Granny's house as the Whispers told us in their song Olivia.
As per Marxism and spirituality, I know my very dear friends, the Barakas, accepted prayers when their baby son Ahi was carjacked and shot in the head with a 357 Magnum. And let me ask my dearly beloved atheist friends and long time revolutionary comrades, to whom do you call when that plane hits turbulence at 30,000 feet? Do you call Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro? Hey, I believe in Allah but if that motherfuka' keep shakin', I might call on Jesus. LOL
PART IV
I don't know Miller Lite
Did Lil' Joe?
What did Miles tell Coltrane about his long solos
"Just take the horn out yo mouth!"
You know Lil' Joe loved jazz, aka Black Classical music
his scholarship blessed with jazz references
Cornel West may out do him with his jazz/blues leit motif
Yet, like Cornel, Lil' Joe was about finding one's revolutionary voice in our communal music and psyche, somewhere down in the deep structure of our North American African mind, body, space, time abyss, precipice, chasm, quagmire, conundrum as we forever seek our trek up the eternally eluding sisyphusian mountain with rock in hand.
PART V
Lil' Joe came in my life among black students from Los Angeles
UCLA, LA State, Compton College, Southwest College, LA City College, 1969
Los Angeles black student unionists conscious marxists black nationalists
my struggle in the media day after day
too much stress for baby boy everyday on nightly news too much
"Marvin X you still out there messing with them white folks?
You ain't dead yet?'
FSU not intense like black student strike at San Francisco State University
longest and most violent student strike in American academic history
well, no deaths like Kent State or Orangeburg massacre, South Carolina
You only know Kent State
never heard of Orangeburg
Yet bloody all SFSU visionaries morphed from Negro Students Association to Black Students Union
some wanted to stay negroes, even me
we wanted equity as per Associated Student funds
black students got none yet paid student fees
why no equity
wanted black ethnic studies
plenty white studies
drove us mentally ill with white studies
even told Nathan Hare he wasn't qualified for Creative Writing
greatest writer ever lived
Lil' Joe loved Dr. Nathan Hare
Two PhDs, Sociology/Clinical psychology
father of black studies at sfsu
too qualified too black
too black for Howard U yes
kicked out
should have followed Dr. E. Franklin Frazier
Black Bourgeoisie
Nathan said we Black Ango-Saxons
too black for black howard
Sfsu invited Nathan to be first black studies chair
major american university
too black
please go
sonia sanchez came
leroi jones/amiri baraka came
askia toure came
Marvin X first play produced by SFSU drama department
tone it down please
tone it down down down
Marvin X dropped out
founded black arts west theatre in fillmore
marvin x, ed bullins, ethna wyatt, hillary broadous, duncan barber, danny glover
jimmy garrett's We Own the Night
X's Flowers for the Trashman
Ed Bullins It Has No Choice
The Job and First Militant Preacher Ben Caldwell
First Militant Preacher turned out George Murray
departed daddy's Church of God in Christ
became strike leader, English lecturer
Minister of Education, Black Panther Party
Job turned out Benny Stewart
became Strike leader
power of drama what?
Eldridge Cleaver Marvin X founded Black House on Broderick St.
Black arts culture political center
Came Emory Douglas soon Black Panther Party Minister of Culture
Came Samuel Napier Black Panther Party Newspaper Minister of Districution
MX took Eldridge to meet Bobby Seale
Eldridge BPP Minister of Information
PART VI
Lil' Joe and Los Angeles students
drove up grapevine to FSU
supported my struggle to teach Black Studies
I came from Harlem, invited by Black Studies
same time Gov. Ronald Reagan kicked Angela Davis out of UCLA
black Communist
Gov. Reagan said go
White communists stay Marcuse et al.
Gov. Reagan say Black Muslim Marvin X go too
Nigga refused to fight in Vietnam for white supremacy
go nigga go
Nation of Islam separation go
didn't allow whites in classes go
Message to the Black Man textbook go
Muhammad Speaks Newspaper journalism class go
Mormons taught at FSU
believed in separation too
Mormons stay
Gov. Reagan say, "Get him off campus by any means necessary!"
FSU President Ness resigned, "pressured from above and below"!
Lil' Joe, Los Angeles bsu students rallied to my side at FSU
Drove all the way to my draft trial in San Francisco.
Yes, I refused to be a running dog for US imperialism in Vietnam.
Agreed with Muhammad Ali, "No Viet Cong called me a nigga!"
Lil' Joe and L.A. students issued press release:
"We, the United Black Students of California,
demand Marvin X not go to Vietnam or prison
We demand Marvin X teach black studies at Fresno State College/University!"
I love all you Los Angeles Black Student Union members
Especially those who came to Mexico looking for me when I
went into my second exile as Vietnam war resister
When you students came to Mexico
I had departed to Belize
against advice of my Mexico City contact
Elizabeth Catlett Mora, Grand Diva of Black revolutionary art
Betty Mora begged me not to go to Belize, aka, British Honduras, still a British colony.
Betty was right (ain't women always right? LOL)
Soon deported back to USA for teaching Black Power
One night on island hut I rented for $7.00 US monthly, drunk man came by the shack my pregnant wife Barbara Hall ( a student I kidnapped from FSU, LOL) singing,
"Day comin ta git ya in da mornin'
Yeah, day comin in da mornin'
Ya been down here teachin' dat black power
day comin' in da mornin'"
Barbara and I laughed and wished that drunk nigga get away from our door.
But in the morning I had to get on the boat to the city as our food was running out
I didn't know when I got on the boat I was under arrest de facto
A man was on board holding a rifle
undercover police no doubt
he said nothing during the five hour ride through the jungle to the city.
I got off the boat and went to my black power brother's house.
They were on trial for sedition
Sedition is saying or doing anything the government wants to charge you with saying or doing, anything.
The said the government's harassment of their black power movement was "games old people play." Simple stupid shit like claiming the January 6 riot in the US capitol was an insurrection.
In Mexico City I was blessed to meet young brothers from throughout the Americas who has really attempted insurrections and revolutions against their banana republics. I cannot forget the day we were sitting on an island in the middle of the street, brothers from Venezuela, Columbia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, all of us refugees. I shall speak for them and say, "Thank you, Mexico, for giving us refuge from US imperialism and her banana republics where a few families own all the land, along with US corporations, e.g.., United Fruit, and, of course, the Catholic Church.
FYI, it was Lil' Joe who deconstructed the reason priests and nuns do not marry in the Catholic Church: so property would remain in the church and not be subjected to probate, thus sexual abuse of boys and girls was preferable to loss of church property in inheritance disputes if priests and nuns were married. Didn't Martin Luther (not King, Jr.) have a problem with this? Thank you Joe for your constant elucidation and ideological clarification when my poetic mind slipped into the darkness of poetic passion and emotionalism.
You had to pull my coat when I went stupid on the election of President Obama. You told me not to be moved but I was drunk on the passion of the moment. As you warned, Obama proved he was simply an imperialist in black face, as if Africa, Asia and Latin America doesn't have a plethora of such characters, no matter how many begin as revolutionaries but soon submit to neo-colonialism, best described by Kwame Nkrumah as "colonialism playing possum"!
Lil' Joe, I loved your critiques of my non-fiction or shall we call it creative non-fiction, since most of it is based on reality. I truly loved your deconstruction of my parable The Maid, the Ho, the Cook: "The Maid, The Ho', The Cook was one of the most beautiful pieces about real love that I've ever read. The image of 'crack-heads' as scandalous and without human dignity is destroyed by Marvin's recollection of this sister with whom he fell in love."
Thank you, Lil' Joe, for ideological clarity and revolutionary esthetics, and most especially your contribution to the revolutionary Black Student Unions throughout these United Snakes of America.
--Marvin X
6/6/21