Parable of the Beginning of Sorrows

In the history of the world, no one has suffered more than the so-called Negro who was the perennial victim of kidnapping, rape and involuntary servitude that even after his emancipation was written into the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution. Yes, he was freed but could be easily duped into a constitutional slave down to the present hour. Lacking proper legal representation, suffering drug abuse and mental illness, 80% of prison inmates serve time unjustly, and let us not ignore illiteracy in the plethora of maladies that cause their victimhood under the 13th Amendment. 

Imagine, 2.4 million mostly North American African, non-white and poor persons make up the US prison population at the cost of $80,000 per prisoner per year. For juveniles the cost rises to approximately $250,000 per year. Yes, as Ancestor Dr. Julia Hare reminded us, "The public schools are the holding cells for the prison / university/industrial complex President Eisenhower warned us about. 

Rather than import computer designers from India, why can't America educate the 2.4 million prison population? But alas, America won't even employ her own college graduates in computer engineering, in her capitalist agreed, she prefers to import computer engineers from India at $150,000 per year. 

Black computer engineers suffer as well. In the capitalism system, the blood suckers of the poor do not discriminate, alas, capitalism is an equal opportunity destroyer of the 85% deaf dumb and blind wage slaves who retire broke after enriching the boss, board of directors and shareholders. 

Yet, no matter the above capitalist paradigm, what is even more problematic is the notion that the globalist/capitalist agenda far transcends capitalism since the 1% already own the majority of global wealth, thus their concern is not financial but myth-ritual, i.e., to perpetuate the mythology and rites of trans-humanism, the most hypocritical and psychotic notion to evolve from the Smarter Than God People, i.e., smarter than love, sex, family and the plethora of isms and schisms they concoct in their Smarter Than God imagination. In my 1968 interview with James Baldwin at his cold December New York apartment, he said, "Nothing else happened here except us, nothing. And they talk about the Prince of Peace while they bomb the hell out of Vietnam. Your condition proves they don't believe in the Prince of Peace!"

So let us go then into the present conundrum, chasm, stand at the precipice to decide if we shall fly headlong into the chasm of our woke fantasy wherein truthfully we wander in abject and utter darkness, trembling in fear and dread, for we are utterly afraid to imagine the next hour may be precisely as Jesus noted, "The beginning of sorrows."

--Marvin X

3/15/22

Marvin X is one of the founders of the Black Arts Movement, along with Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, The Last Poets, Sun Ra, Askia Toure, Larry Neal, Haki Madhubuti, et al. The author of 30 books, he has taught at Fresno State University, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, San Francisco State University, University of Nevada, Reno, Mills College, Laney and Merritt Colleges and gives readings and lectures coast to coast, most recently at Duke University on Black Muslim Atlantic. Duke Professor Ellen McLarney recently delivered a paper on Marvin X at Columbia University on his status as the Father of the Genre Muslim American Literature. Dr. Mohja Kahf has deconstructed and  declared the Black Arts Movement poets as the fathers and mothers of Muslim American literature. Bob Holman calls him, "The USAs Rumi, He's got the humor of Pietri, the politics of Baraka, and the spiritual Muslim grounding that is totally new in English--the ecstasy of Hafiz, the wisdom of Saadi...."

Ishmael Reed says, "Marvin X is Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland." Dr. Cornel West notes, "He's the African Socrates in the hood, a combination Thelonious Monk and Marianne Williamson!"

Hip Hop Critic James G. Spady wrote, "When you listen to Tupac Shakur, E-40, Too Short, Master P or any other rappers out of the Bay Area of Cali, think of Marvin X. He laid the foundation and gave us the language to express black male urban experiences in a lyrical way."

As community planner and organizer, Marvin X was recently awarded a generous grant from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation to organize the Black Street Vendors Association. See the BVA official publication Black Street Magazine. jmarvinx@yahoo.com

Black Bird Press News & Review

Marvin's Black Bird Press is honored to publish a limited edition of the writings of Retired US Congressman William Clay.

Release date: May, 2022.