to move up and down
Be-Side
The Home of Hakm's B-Side e-alter ego...his auxiliary brain or external hard drive...
It is a distinct honor to represent the city I now call “HOME” in my hometown paper! Humbled, that a readership of 70,000 in the Philadelphia/South Jersey area is proud of how I serve community 2,000 miles away. Thank you Kim Mulford, the City of Albuquerque, my parents, the Albuquerque Poet Laureate Program, and the Courier Post! Read the article here.
The official poem commissioned by the City of Albuquerque for the New Mexico Centennial Celebration, delivered on the Main Stage at the Summerfest Centennial Celebration on June 16th, 2012 before Los Lobos and after Robert Mirabal.
To: New Mexico
From: Hakim Bellamy
100 Years of Corridos: A song for the New Mexico Centennial
In the 1st chapter
Of the Gospel
According to Anaya
Rudolfo writes
“All of the older people spoke only Spanish,
And I myself understood only Spanish.”
In English
Bienvenidos Albuquerque
I myself
Understand only English
In Dine
We speak many languages
But mean the same thing
And manana
Will be more of the same
Familia
Food
Fiesta
Forever
Come on and sing along
We’re going to
Familia
Comida
Fiesta
Forever
For 100 years B.C.
Before the Commodores
Before Lionel Ritchie
And for a 100 years more
We’ve farmed
Feasted and fixed cars
We’ve moved people
And mixed razas
We’ve got an appointment
With the curandera
As soon as we leave the doctors
A lust for livestock
Like chupacabras
Afraid of God
And the inexplicable
Dinosaur fossils
So in love with space
And the people who live there
That we speak Chewbacca
The 47th state
Admitted to the Union
We might as well have been The Moon
…of Endor
To our forefathers
With the oldest
And highest
State capital in the country
People on both coasts
Should look up to us
Instead of wondering
If they have to exchange their money
Before coming
Yes,
Dollars is our official currency too
And though
We don’t have much of it
Money can’t buy cultura
Our History Book
The King Alfonso Version
Is a canon
Of wars and peace
A Bible
Of you and me
That was written in Madrid
By missionaries and mestizos
We are men of magic
And women of wizardry
Who speak in spell and song
Wing words
And fly them like a flag
All yellow
Between red and green
Like a traffic light
Like the state question is
Hurry up
Or slow down
Never stop
All of the older people sung only corridos
However,
In those corridos…
Me?
I only heard gospel
Maybe it’s me
Maybe it’s a stage
But every time
I hear the clap of thunder
It sounds like a blessing
Every time
I hear the pitter, patter
Of the rain
It sounds
Like a round
Of applause
And even the monsoon roars
“Encore”
And the flash bloods
Flood
Our hearts
With love
One hundred
New Year’s Eves
Of trying to puncture precipitation
Where the sky never dies
And the clouds wear bulletproof vests
Where we perpetually live
In the shadow of a hot air balloon eclipse
We are not a city
That speaks “Good Morning”
We are a city that speaks
Mass Ascension
Like Grandpa
Only spoke Spanish
While he was drinking
Buenos Dias
Like Grandma
Only spoke Latin
When she was praying
Buenas Noches
Where water
Is so sacred and scarce
That we pot it
In puddles
On our flat roofs
Pool it
In vestibule stoups
Of steepled temples
Where pigeons swirl and roost
Pond it
In mountaintops
On our not-so-flat horizons
We bottle it
In our bodies
And set fire to it
In our forests
Where it sounds like
Acequias babble “amen”
And bosques
Smell like baptisms
Where the rain
Doesn’t speak any language
It only understands dance
And sometimes
We miss it so much
We need TWO rainbows
To promise us
It is coming back
After thousands of years
Of owners
For this little piece of hacienda
It’s been us as tenants
Together
Roommates for the past hundred
Call it a trust
Call it a Zia-shaped symbol for eternity
Over our right ring finger
Call it the interconnectedness of cultures
Call it married to each other
Speak now or forever hold your “chisme”
We are
Actions speak louder than wordsmiths
Storytelling rituals
We don’t speak Project Runway
We Cowboy Cosmopolitan
Urban Traditional
Where our children
Dare not say or see
Cucui or La llorona
But are lucky
Santa speaks Spanglish
And has a sweet tooth
For leche y biscochitos
Where birthdays
Are miracles
And each one
Has a spirit
Holy Spirit
Or patron saint
Where we celebrate
100
Today
In the beginning
The Greatest Spirit
Created America
And the earth
And it was
Bueno
I don’t speak perfect English
Barely even speak passable Spanish
But it’s okay
Because there is no such thing
As “perfect English”
Except for the word
Nuevo Mexico
© Hakim Bellamy June 12, 2012
Urban Verbs coming to a Barelas near you…(June 17th, 18th & 19th)
For tickets visit Brown Paper Tickets
MY50-TV Artist Spotlight with Leah Black (Segment 1)
On a broadcast TV segment with Leah Black called “Artist Spotlight” on My50-TV. A chance for me to do my “real sh#t” (Thanks Seth Rems, hahaha). Just kickin it with my girl Leah (a dope musician in her own right, look for that collabo in the near future). Happy for the opportunity, even my boss and chair of my department at UNM saw it, AND liked it (at least they were nice enough to say so!). The following 5 segments are blogged below in sequential order. Give thanks.
I couldn’t think of a better way to spend 4:20, yesterday, than at Rio Grande H.S. with students on the anniversary of Columbine. Yes, schools can be a place of healing and community instead. Thanks to Levi Romero for taking the time as well.
A little under a year ago, I had the pleasure of doing a performance poetry workshop and performance at the First Unitarian Church in Albuquerque. A church that has a GLBTQ Ministry. A church that has their UUA President who will be in Albuquerque from Boston doing a talk on immigration (April 21 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.) A church that has a social justice ministry. I was honored to bring some of my work there and feeling like poetry belonged in the pulpit (as if it’s not there already). You should check this church out and support them in your community. Odds are, they support you already.
2011 Revolutions launches with rhythm and rhyme by Duke City Fix
I have to confess that, with a few exceptions, I’ve never been a huge Hip-Hop fan or rap fan. I liked some early rappers from the 1980s and Arrested Development from the 1990s. Lately I’ve been listening to MC Yogi, whose album “Elephant Power” is a wonderful exploration of the stories of Hindu gods like Hanuman and Ganesh, as well as historical heroes like Mahatma Ghandi.
But Hakim Bellamyand Carlos Contreras showed me a whole different side of Hip-Hop this week.The two are spoken word artists and poetry slam champions performed “Urban Verbs: An Autobiographical Intersection of Hip-Hop & Humanity in Five Acts.” It officially kicked off the 11th Annual Revolutions International Theatre Festival, the amazing three-week event created by Albuquerque’s own Tricklock Theatre Company, that every year brings us some of the best performers from around the world, especially from fringe festivals. (read on at the link above…)
