Mama

                             “O ALLAH

if You must take her now

please give her the paradise”

is fulling me with its somber petition

and delivering me

on here in the door of this room

where you’re lying there

in its sterile and guilty ambience

your regal maternal splendor

covering-up the clinical remission

leaving you here cold

all alone with no cover

on a bed that’s not your own

                                                     “. . . renting, son, what I’ve always owned

so just to be here near you . . .”

your brown plum lips are solemnly emfolding

in a darkening purple and stubbornly

proclaiming the purpose of your life

keeping me safe and warm

here we are Mama

as we’re always wanting

together on with in one the other

holding hands in our still alone

Copyright © 1990, 2015 Asili Ya Nadhiri

prisms 

thuh man sitting somewhere
there in a room full of broken rhymes
his eyes blaring slowly staining red
echos leaning ‘gainst duh side of his vision
a moment shifting lone through his head

random tracks of sleepwalkers colliding
laying here on melting snow
brown coloring the moment of each sound
laughter ‘cross the beggar’s pain

circles moving
close kin to one another
longing ‘cross a distance
honed close to ah edge

smooth muscles poised
becoming smooth curves soft
silently waiting in silk
paternal urges here slowly led away
blending in a round bubbular world

fear surrounding and pulling
moulding mystical suasions
doled out at vicarious occasions
in stone blurred forms
colored live ‘cause of flesh

Copyright © 1978 Asili Ya Nadhiri

**drowning on in themm’d themmings
(ensconcing inside this blurring obscuring) 

them themms keep on themming mo’ themms
who strutting on out the mouth of this womb
pompously adorning their anxious disdaining
of oracular warning of proverbial sins
they perpetrating with themm’d themms they
offering when to themm covetting themms
who callously moulding and coldly pouring on
through vicariousing veins of other themms
social matrixationing so for libating our thrones

themms fenestrating venderers jes like themm’ds
run’n scared trying to hide from what them too
pandering vitiating hustlers as heroic themms
who blowing slow low mo’ mo’ humping sounds
resounding in the holds of emptying arms
whining bags fulling on pretensifying mimes
self-cowarding pawns so prostrating in place
‘fore rusing algorithming pixillated rhymes
pervert’n on in the blues like themm’d themms

just surling swirling desperating redoundings
as this ever deepening invasive fingering
is enthralling us deeper on here inside
of our own swallow’n invisiblizing
swaggerly staggering arm-in-arm
invisiblizinglying invisiblizing
babbling mesmerizing mesmerizers
so ’cause all we all is just themms

**nothing in this creation is in isolation. If one mentally isolates a small piece, that person will be able to decipher it, almost, in any manner desired. Needless to say, herein lies a most fertile grounding for desperately holding on to excusings.

Copyright © 2015 Asili Ya Nadhiri

oracular
only the smell is raising up
from the deep tribal markings
on the dark bodies laying there
in they kin folk bowels
shackled down to the bottom
on this cold damp floor
in the belly of Jonah’s slave whales
!and we was told they was coming!
was told long long before
eating things for living they cannot name
scared about the night it filling they head
they listening for the drumming off yonder
low going lower it fading away fast
they left naked there humming
humming here alone
in the loud throbbing silence
resounding there
in the undulating rhythm of the ocean’s roar
a mama crying there gnawing on she baby throat
so he never! gone die here no more
they have to feed them ones
they burdened there my Lord to carry on
and sown here in this dirt
by many other hands
like it done been told
it was long meant to be

Copyright © 1995 Asili Ya Nadhiri

choral-lizing juba-lizing       a stultifying dis-synergizing
(chess-mastering is serpentine-ing mathematizing:
a wise one will always be smart,
but a smart one may never be wise)

coffling eyes numbing in the humm drumm sunging
of clamorous hustlers pluming in talented tenth–ing clubs
this ancient hubris   still scheming in gangs gangling on
leeching the blood of us all   spilling here looking
it mo’ insidious now nesting in nefarious vocalizings
anesthetizing synthesizings   of old rhythmating charms
dissolving all of us denying on in our rusing refusals
to just pause while here inside   and reverently muse
scared   we all stumbling running ‘round trying to hide
from this colding emptying   swelling torridly inside us
desperately fusing   propagating on out here all around
aloning is eroding the sands of our beaches
swallowing ourselves on in our own entangling arms
playing to the blaring sirens of this persistent dismaying
coffling eyes numbing in the humm drumm sunging
of clamorous hustlers pluming in talented tenth–ing clubs
this ancient hubris   still scheming in gangs gangling on
leeching the blood of us all   spilling here looking
it mo’ insidious now nesting in nefarious vocalizings
anesthetizing synthesizings   of old rhythmating charms
dissolving all of us denying on in our rusing refusals
to just pause while here inside   and reverently muse
standing up leaning we feeling around on our knees
snorting vain delusions of masturbating hands
shuffling our scant aborting ponderings of why
consuming all everything grabbing way ‘fore it comes
there is no anchoring ground to which we will bound
hypnotically sucking our dry brittle bones of renown
and rehearsing our vaunting howling enthrallings
so you knowing my face is the one that’s in vogue
just in case it be the case that we come to be found
coffling eyes numbing in the humm drumm sunging
of clamorous hustlers pluming in talented tenth–ing clubs
this ancient hubris   still scheming in gangs gangling on
leeching the blood of us all   spilling here looking
it mo’ insidious now nesting in nefarious vocalizings
anesthetizing synthesizings   of old rhythmating charms
dissolving all of us denying on in our rusing refusals
to just pause while here inside   and reverently muse

Copyright © 2009Asili Ya Nadhiri

atlantic mooring

glistening sheets of scrolling waters
drumming on in resounding billows
wet humming oracles unfolding there
nourishing darkening trepidationings
reverently enthralling wondering tongues
in loud roaring echoes leaving their trace
undauntingly entangling on
here across your face

by the stark emancipationing of this moon staring
on through holding cavern crevices homemade
silently kneading assuaging this fear inside
wrap’n’round the musclings of our strides
so these bronze shackled imprinting soles
aint froth aloning for the leave of wet sands
drying scared in hubrisating emulationings
who here begging unbeknowingly awaiting
the mutual beholding of kindred hands
emanating of our native humane

obediently you feeding this tumultuous
flooding here in our wondering souls
with snarling notion-nings crashing there
attacking foreboding wallings of this hold
nourishing the epic will of all them daring . . .
when so quietlying on back out on into then
and now on your way forth on up here again
embracing us all in this womb with your sway
pronouncing on and on of this cosmic way

Copyright © 1983, 2014 Asili Ya Nadhiri

collaging collagings
(smearing-duh-ing) 

thick dark lips they strolling smug mugged
scared ofay ophidians jes desperationing
iberian populate’n cannibaliz’n politico
and the other hues clawing in between
they all leeching us all who’re sopped
’cause we sopping in here just like them
‘round and ’round and on back on around
every one at the nother just like any other
holding on to the nipples of abusing agenda
petrifying in the mouth of legacy mongerers
so us aint feeling how this one size fitting all
“!So What!mother Fucker!long as i git’n mine!!
aint this here the Greatest Greatest there is!!
so powder your nose where the camera it on
and just gone requisition yo’ ownself some”
dastardly scrabbled by clamoring babblers
in doodaded stalls full of tird prosaic altars
and amended amens there amen’n aloudly
“this all like’it is cause dis how it all is-ing”
wearing our own posturationing norms
tatoooos disguising our emptying arms
delusive porn of this invisiblin karma
aint no body screaming being heard
in the grand callousive numbing
of this mastur-a-bationing om

Copyright © 2012, 2014 Asili Ya Nadhiri

waiting and tomorrow
(are pregnant with eternal costs) 

everything else is always
wantingly conjugating conjugations
hungrily synergizing synergizings
embracing in a boundless beholding
mutually enfolding unfolding on
in with all the other things
. . . and we’re here wantonly aloning
burrowing up under some bottom line
of our own obsessing orchestrating
and imploding wallowing here
so busily serpentine-ing in the ruse
of all our purpled red midnight rougings
rolling vitiationinged souls in tabloid news
and surging swirling dirgings of the blues
scrolling faster’n’faster’n’faster’n’faster!!
shooting up snorting smoking it all
try’n to make like this aint what it seeming
and pretending so vulgarly loud!!!dinning
vicariously dancing marchinged on
desperately transmorphing our selves
absconding on inside the schisms
of serially perversive legislationings
we’re desperately hustling in between
and coffling on in the corrosive arms of
our own self deluding excusings
as we’re rapidly erasing ourselves
“but if i spread my wings and fly
which whom will i touch
and which one will touch me
what then will i do and
then what will be done to me” 

Copyright © 2015 Asili Ya Nadhiri

en-clevering decadencing

splashings loudly bodaciously bodacious
loquaciously splatterings in the pupil-ling of our eyes
hooching things hazing synthesizing fantasizings
paralyzing socializing with infantizing mesmerizing
resonating burrowers here sucking on in our wallowings
who they just our aloning soliloquys begging for enfleshing
spinning making so like us aint doing what’us doing
us wrapping up in the charmings of our potionings
wantonly colding   on the face of a numbing retarding
snorting the whims of transgendering enthrallings
squandering on in this scattering en-folding
worshipping bloodsucking hustlers mogulizing
mobilizing in-visible-lizing with visiblizing
amen-ing rationalising in a marching disregarding
canonizing this libation us keeping coming on around
drama-tizing its’ anthems as salvation for us all
here bragg’n ’bout how’us swagg’n like’us spose’n
aint no mattering ’bout druming the rhyming
or however else us syncing this sloshing in our heads
us just all in here seeing one another
as some what-ever who-ever else-ing instead

Copyright © 2007 Asili Ya Nadhiri

em-bitteringed
(counting en-timed)

you here acting like you hid when you standing wide out in the open
there ‘hind them long painted fingers you covering over your eyes
in here looking at yourself peeping out there from in between

short nibbling hair it greying scared you just clinging on
to stiff slippery ends of those desperate pretensions
cussing at somebody ‘cause it aint’a’nuff to weave

memories you worn still dress’n for wearing
with your slip hanging down surrendering
notions of a you forgot it was never is so

grab’n onto the tail of whatever words
in’a rhythmic loud hypnotic droning
masturbate’n ina swoon’n humdrum

wrap’n up in how it would’ve been
and how it now is no longer then
flailling inside a-lone-n renown
chewing on this edge of everyday
you amen-ing it quiet-ly-ing on down
powder’n the frown ‘fo your face on it seen
strutting in little lines ‘and still smiling on time

Copyright © 2003 Asili Ya Nadhiri