Long Griot Poems

Political Poetry

Obama: what bard, what griot, what poet wouldn't want to tell -the miracles of our times in tales.
What courage, what evidence that man can endure; fulfilling the destiny for which he was bore.

Stones were...

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(Apropos of Black Poetic Griots)

We may not be deemed apostolic recorders
But we poets, guided with divine wisdom, are
The lay scribes thereof in the chronicling of
Our life’s sojourn in the shadowing times
we spend here on this...

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On a Los Angeles street - play it brother, ladle it on black delirium
         A wind blows – from trumpets, oboes, and saxophones
    ...

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EULOGY TO MRS (Ph.D) ALIHAJA, AMINAT OLABOOPO                            ...

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Chromatic
Voglio chetu sia mio
Ibi locutus sum
J 'espere que je ne le
regretterai pas
Na ia jeg takkle meg
selv
Daar is geen skeuring 
tussen jou en my nie
Es un honored haberna 
sentido asi
Jeg vil gifte meg med 
deg: Ja...

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He danced on the decks of tossing ships, danced only for dimes
He danced to the lash and sound of whips, hip moving like dream
And when he reasoned, his words sublime brought heavenly climes
Dance from plantation...

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SHURI

Ba Ru Raa a bomb buray
Ba Ru Raa a bomb buray
Ba Ru Raa a bomb buray
A 

SHURI african princess
genis

Wakanda forever

Ba Ru Raa a bomb buray
Ba Ru Raa a bomb buray
Ba Ru Raa a bomb buray
SHURI...

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Tirelessly rising, like cerosee tea to them, and apple to me
Tell them I am the Sankofa of the morning, shall we dance again
I was the Nightingale Midas could keep in the cage, the new sea
To...

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What do think they are doing
Calling young and unsuspected children
Eager to please
And break glass ceilings
To shake the trees of old taboos
From the lap of colleges
The subterfuge of lives sparkles
In the eyes deprived
Of commercial baubles, and...

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A bird’s eye view 
conversation overheard in a park 
somewhere near you


Hey, Ori ... what’s up?

Nothing much, Marque.
Just flying low, bro.

Big Ollie, the Ruby Cleaners rooftop dove,
shared some bad popcorn news.

Oh, yeah. What’s the latest...

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It is fad these for people to assuage my rage
As if words can bring back innocence and faith
As if words alone is enough for this angry age
Where his mother died with her eye on the...

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He was our best, an urn in time
With all the fragments of jewelled history
But now today hear how the bells chime
The griot's pen scroll another pain on memory.

For all his knowledge of the scrolls, 
the...

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Manifestation of pain
inside walls of your gospel
Penned up truths that 
haunted your psyche but
you made the pen a weapon 
that prospered against all 
that troubled you
Troubled King with skeletons 
married poetry 
crowning her the help...

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So you too
Read and was self hypnotized
And thought I knew
The chiaroscurro
Was not the branches shadow
As you heard and went in and out of light
Ah poor self blinded griot
And dumb guilotine to which he stumbles
I wanted...

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(In loving memory of my big brother, Reg)


Right within my den
Calligraphic letters you penned
Surfaced as reminder of the love we shared
I see picture perfect portraits
No negatives.

You do appear on wings of time
Like sun's penetrating light
In...

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Jali, jeli
African historian
You’re a storyteller;
Praise singer;griot

Griot, jali, jeli
You’re a storyteller;
Singing, telling your tales;
Words songs in harmony wails;
Poet or musician;
Oral repository tradition;
Seen often as leader;
Advisor to royal personages;
Kings and Queens

Jali, jeli
African historian
You’re a storyteller;
Praise singer;

Sometimes called...

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Here, friends, let me say, I went but could not stay
And coming found messages from a few
That let me believe life is more than another day
O poetrysoup friends, what I am going through
  ...

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I almost thought she was the one that made
Neil Diamond sings like a confetti parade
You know that sweet Carolyn thing, why not
She has the warmest soul, this sweet griot
This investigator of mysteries, and writer 
Of...

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They consume the hot dogs
Too
Like you
But they don’t eat the dogs
Never, never
They do not eat the cats
They do not eat the pets
Never, never.

Immigrants eat the wild hogs
That’s hot Griot
They don’t eat the rabbits
But they eat...

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They kept a record of time,
They were history’s shelves,
They were memory pages,
An honour that ran through the family.

They sang songs of the land,
To them, the sand was more than the traveller’s pathway,
It spoke volumes of...

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Tell us, you say, in your profound complexity
Prophet, griot, artist, word maker
Why do you litter our hearts with song?
I do not write for the crowd in Dubai
For the poetaster and rhyme maker
I write for the...

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They are eating the dogs
They are eating the cats
They are eating the pets
They are eating the wild hogs.

In the early 20th “c”, Germans used to eat blockade mutton
That’s absolute truth. It’s a shame that this...

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You should have heard the steaming riot
Of the village carnival
The beating pans, the conversing griot
And the boys bright bacchanal
You do not know what relief the moment give
To a village's quiet life, the hope
For a hero's...

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My son, speaking like a true griot, 
A body of things rejected 
By the sinister profile of language 
Spoke one clear prophecy to the riot's 
Heart, before he from this world was ejected 
He named...

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Reba, you are big now, much too big to enjoy the fog
Sitting in different shapes of everything we fear
When trust was only those we know. There is no log
Of wood, or time the stories that...

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