Happiness is a Rainbow

Happiness is a rainbow.

Often found after heavy clouds unload,

often missed in the condensed light spectrum

of eyes who have been trained to see danger

and protect us from it.

Fuck happiness.

Hatred is a weather front.

Storms stay when we build bio-domes

to try to control the weather.

Storms want to pass through.

They have come from hot and cold’s warm love

only to clear the air and quench the earth

and remind us of the patterns in chaos.

How do I walk around naked

with out being cardiac arrested by fear?

I don’t want to be under your umbrella statements,

I want to be wet.

Dripping.

I want to make a splash

like souls impact on pooled down poor,

head cocked back into the sky cackling

gorging in the riches of simple

Love.

Don’t tell me nothing but the lion truth,

the lyin’ truth is the only thing you could tell me in words

so shut the fuck up and tell me the truth

in the silent reso-nation.

We can never be illegal here.

We don’t immigrate, we make pilgrimages

to our home land,

the reso-nation,

where there are no reservations.

Although this seat is reserved

for eyes that can see rainbows everywhere,

anywhere.

Why do you think they call us people of color?

Put your arrows in your rain bow Avatar,

and point it to the sun.

Pierce it and drink what comes gushing out.

Plant yourself.

You and your dirty mind.

Sterilization is the only filth worth sterilizing.

Settle your debts in settling mud,

and watch the sky come out in a large community of raindrops

gathered by the gravity of this life,

here on the ground.

Hope Springs Eternal

I had such a good heart
There was so much space
I coulda been an astronaut
Looking at this place
Floating quiet with the stars peaceful and embraced
Instead they told me both feet on the ground
And laid to waist
The planet that my great greats
Loved with so much grace
And the hearts of all my mates brake
They carry so much weight

I remember when i swore
Not to love anymore
'Cause it hurt beyond belief when pops gave up and out the door...

I couldn't trust my mom then
They told me that i must be strong
Never felt belonging
'Cause we had that strong thing wrong
Around the world we bombing
1 by 1 my homies gone
We often feel belonging wronging someone else who's done us wrong

I felt right when i wrote
I made it right when i spoke
My truth to my God
And to that space in which i used to float

Lock 'em up
Kill 'em all
Seems like we need some new
Stories to change history
I can see the brand new view

When you peak out with your heart
Spacious as the all outdoors
When you take me down to
The center of this burning core
When we both remember that anything can be so
Because we are the gardener, the garden, and what gardens grow
Heed the seeds we planted there
Seeds are the trees we climb
Grown up on their fruitfulness
Closer to the heaven's shine
One day we will tippy toe
At the top of canopy
And lift off in our glow
And shine back at our family tree...

Paul Simon's 'Graceland' was one of the few albums me and my mama agreed on. On road trips it was Bob Marley, Tracy Chapman, and Graceland. That combo; Paul's smooth, clever, abstract poetry and guitar and Ladysmith Black Mambazo's vibrancy, the power of their harmony, the joy and the depth, the playfulness and heart! I felt so free as we flew down the highway all singing 'boy in the bubble' or 'call me Al'. 

I few years ago i started to fulfill a hunger i had always had, a longing to know my ancestry, to feel another language in my mouth, to celebrate the way my people did when they knew the land was a relative, when they spoke the language the land showed them, when they intuited the way their souls wanted to live...

I found the most satisfaction in music.
Dene Peyote songs, Sanskrit mantras, Lakota flute prayers, Dogon star ritual drum circles, gaelic hymns, anything that came from a direct connection to this earth, these stars, this heart, this life...

I started weaving these prayers into my beats, and i would dance around my room for hours each time :) grinning, praying, laughing, sometimes crying, sometimes making up words or singing the languages my mind did not speak. In July of 2011 i spent a month in Peru with some curanderos and i returned with the jungle in my veins, the mountains in my stance, and the people in my ears... i spent the next few months noticing how indigenous we all are, how we gather in circles to smoke, or freestyle, or just t alk, how we pour out libations for our loved ones who have past, how much we use story to teach and understand each other, how we claim the 4 directions (or at least one :) Most of us unknowingly carry so many of the traditions of our ancient families everyday...


For a few years now, i have been blessed to sit in circle with young men in juvinille hall a few times a week within this awakening my brother Gerardo Marin and I began to learn rites of passage rituals, sage ceremonies, flute and drum meditations, and explorations celebrating, honoring, mourning and expanding our whole lineage remembering what had been stolen from us to make us real slaves.


And as we awaken to our ancient wisdom we notice how interwoven it is in our lives, slightly twisted, slighty confused under imperialism and capitalism but alive and well, and patiently waiting for us to recognize it again
So here is an album born of this awakening, born in the hearts of the medicine carriers in Peru, in East Oakland, in Berkeley, in South Africa, and in the constellations around us, born of our entire lineage dancing with our descendants into a beautiful future...

The planet of love,
the 1st and last star in the sky
kissed the sun today.

And we spoke of being ourselves,
we spoke of faith
and fear,

learning to fit in,
to shave down our octagonal edges


to fit in square boxes
to grow edges on our circular beings
to fit in rectangular peg holes.

We found scars
filled with the hardened tissue of judgment and discrimination,
we softened scar tissue
with our own tears and the un-owned tears of our lineages.

We looked our beliefs in the eyes;
the guards to our sacred temples,
and we held them dearly
and thanked them for their hard hard work

we knew it was time to let the world in
to let them in,
to bend and bow and pray.

We are all puzzle pieces
but the world will not fit together
as long as we are hiding our true shapes,
distorting our true visions
emanating through our surfaces
from our depths
and in the amalgamations of our interconnected being.

The planet of love,
the 1st and last star in the sky
kissed the sun today.

I wanted to kiss you
Instead we kissed our love
from heart to flesh
from flesh to seed,

and we planted our love in our presence and grew faith,
a loving knowing flowering field
choreographed in wind
basking in the sweet force pouring from the earth,
the heavens, and within.

We harvested the audacity to drop concern for opinion like fall leaves
and to surrender to the rhythm abounding from our seed
as life itself made sweet love of us, to us, with us, from us…

the planet of love,
the 1st and last star in the sky
kissed me today
and reminded me we’re in love.

ALMOST INVISIBLE WEBS
it' s a delicate dance
to let flow what we need flowing,
and to ride the current out of it's same old course...

we talk in story,
we wanna chance at a different author-ity

so we double dutch,
waiting for the perfect moments
to dance with tight ropes,

weaving almost invisible webs
we dream of being fly & flying free...

we joke on the side,
cracking up, we notice mud flakes making way for an (un)familiar gleam...

Make your Decision
To have Precision
with your Incision
and Go De-Pr-In :)

Yesterday, walking home, marveling at a gorgeous woman
I said "excuse me, in the most respectful way, you are soooo beautiful!"

She smiled and said,

"Tell me i'm beautiful by being beautiful with me,
Show me my beauty by being my reflection,
Surrender your hunger for my beauty,
To the nourishment of (y)our own.
Thank you"

I grinned big, held my tongue and shone in a deep bow...


Thank you for the reminder Sister.

Meet me with Love

When i meet you with love

You meet me with love

wether you know it or not : )

Life is our Altar

eyes open
kiss myself
thank the life for living in me
around me
with me

thank the sun
the stone people
the standing ones
water mother
earth breath
kinfolk
we move
hug
open in each other
dance
sing
juice
drink
cut pick
pluck
cook
eat

bathe in the love we gardens grow

dance through the streets singing in our families eyes
pollinate hi vibes
gather and harvest the sweet honey
make a honey comb hive of the galaxy

in drum beat
in swirling revelatory stillness
in surprise glimpses of our hearts and souls
in justice returned
true power remembered
in listening to falling leaves and trickling water and crashing waves and devouring fires

we remember our family together
we tell new stories
sing new songs
dance old dances in new bodies
and catch the mirror behind the subject in the mirror

we find each other
we dream each other up
and up and up and up
until there is no up and down
no side to side
not even side by side
only one
won
simply being
as an act of victory

life is our altar
and in each miraculous act of creativity we place our love upon her

The time of the Dragon is hear

The scales are balancing

The heart and the feather see eye to eye



Qetzalcoatl

Let your mind wander...

after thoughts,
in fields of awareness,
what matters?

In matters of the heart
We have Miss-ed and Sir-ed the real

De-sense-atized

Reeling from reel to reel

What do you feel?

For real.


The time of the Dragon is here

We collect ourselves in our surroundings
Gathered by firelight with a choir of molecules
quirks and quarks
Turning our qualms to psalms

Press your palms open
Let everything u never knew u always wanted pour in
Let everything u thought u needed be you
let secret strands of DNA
dissolve these genetically engineered mind states
we picked up in the produce sections of our self consuming consciousness

The time of the dragon is here.

Breathe fire in the lifeless corners of the hardened hearts

Scale up, or down, or back or IN!

Let claws come out, let feet leave cliffs behind
remember the bed of clouds you dreamed yourself up on

heart of moon
wrapped in sun
wrapped in moon
mirrors for scales
as many hearts as scales
each scale the gateway to heaven
hearts see eye to eye

The time of the Dragon is here...

i.Ameni Beat Collages

Home from Peru with vivid dreams in sleep and visions during the day coax the birth of the ArcoIris i.Ameni video collages...

Peru: Day 1.2

:) havent really slept in 3 days, going right now, lima was intense and beautiful, had a whole crowd ready to welcome in the new president taking pictures of me and the afro (and feather) instead :)

they know how to show love...

(and curiosity, and appreciation, and perplexion ;) and...)

just got to cusco this morning and it feels like days ago, the air, the earth, the mountains are special here! the elevation thins the bloods and quickens the vibration, the cobblestone streets and old colonial stylings built on top of incan architcture tell so many stories, the big small city feeling makes community accesable and flux and excitement rampid... so u know i{m vibin serious!!!


met hella cool folks, the kind that feel like fam right away, it´s a serious practice to stay open cuz there are so many people tryna sell you things here and what they´re selling is so amazing, it´s so exhausting telling all the good people on their hustle no every 2 minutes (literally!)...

more investigations into the class system and the nature of the gov´t here when we meet up with the homies Fred and Luzma... so many with so little and so much... you know how it is...

overwhelming, refreshing, great practice in boundaries and openess, great reminders of community and culture and play, and as always i am expanding...

give thanks
live love

holler with more soon...

my pictures are on the video camera with no computer connection so you¨ll see those later...

1

I Am The BE-Ginning



Waiting on The Pre-Sent Meets The 365 Mama Tree Project!

Amanda WouldGo Will create an art altar for The Mama Tree, the Beginning every day for the next year! BE-Hold! www.AmandaWouldgo.blogspot.com

Amanda WouldGo Meets Flat Stanely Meets i.Ameni and The Place To BE



see Amanda WouldGo and more of her whimsical genius @ Amanda WouldGo.blogspot.com

Los Rakas-Soy Raka

It's been amazing to watch people's responses to this beat, i made it pretty quickly one night, probably spent more time dancing around the room than i did making it :)

The song gets played all over the place in the bay, made national news for the Turf dancing in the video, and it's on the radio in Panama!

Los Rakas does there thing! They are hard working professional artists with big hearts, making beautiful music.

and...it's sad to watch the gunz and gold ones get all the play, how much more work we have to put in to feed the people something different, how much we gotta sneak it in...

I know we're hungry for nourishment, keep working on the recipe :)

fLOWERS fOR tHE dEAD

From all the Attik house spirits, the ancestors, and the decendants... Flowers For tHE dEAD...

flowers for the dead
flowers for the dead
they've got time to smell 'em now
and think on what they've said
me i haunt myself so much i only hear my head
flowers for the dead


at my wake i'll finally wake and like a snake i'll shed
all the things that killed me and i'll start to live instead
my skin and bones i'll give 'em to the next on down the line
to resurrect a monument to this big me of mine
turning in my grave the page that booked marked what i knew
i'll reach up past the pain and sang a little song for you
i'll give the bee's and birds desert and be there for the dew
and soak up all the rain and sun so you can smell what's true


flowers for the dead x2
we've got time to smell em now and think on what we've said
me i haunt myself so much just help me clear my head
flowers for the dead x2


sometime i hear the spirits
sometimes i fear the spirits
sometimes i'm near the spirits
sometimes i feel the spirit


i've been pining in my boxes
no more boxes for me
any dirt on me
is right under your feet
feeds the flowers
feeds the fruits
look in closely you'll see


fowers for the dead x2
we've got time to smell em now and think on what we've said
me i haunt myself so much just help me clear my head
flowers for the dead x2

OPPORTUNITIES

Amidst the rushing rivers of opportunity is
the constant flowing possibility of creating exactly what you want
each moment and every detail of exactly what you want.

Opportunities gone unrecognized and missed
are reflectedin each star with whom you have not made friends
but there is no loss, because opportunity is perpetual.

You have become the person you are
a flower of life; a rose
forming an individual unique variety
responding to and utilizing opportunity like a spider
catching a fly floating on air.

You have nothing to fear; you are taken care of
your god self realization is inevitable
so relinquish your protection and go with the wind of god.
A fine, fine wind; the wind of time
blowing the total unrestrained love of isness
that which is all, all of it.

And in each moment, there is opportunity to shed the husk
peel away the skin down to the fruit
and be wide open to all that is
and live without fear on behalf of your own best interest
creating fresh love in every moment
and loving perpetually and perfectly
each and every person, animal, blade of grass, and insect.

the opportunity to be your God Self
out of the closet
is yours
and you know it's realization is inevitable

-Harrison Simms Happy Birthday!!!!

sometimes the truth
feels like a burning flame
when the flame is licking you
when you’re done calling to the rain

sang
con su mi fuego
take me to the sky again

sometimes the truth
feels like the ocean the way it moves
i can be shore
but there’s only so much those shore knew
con su mi mar
a tear returning home again

burning through fuel
energy, money
my cool
all i could puff was smoke
and i felt like such a fool
the fire forgave me to the air i needed

con su mi fuego
take me to the sky again

we're so powerful we can even deceive OURSELVES into thinking we aren't...

Sneak Peak 'Grace' footage in Loyan Warsame's Demo Reel

DEMO REEL 2010 from Loyan Warsame on Vimeo.