gone abroad amma birago

my country is
gone Page | 1

abroad

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

Page | 2

I
hoax country

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

Page | 3

my country is gone abroad

all bets are off;
my country is gone abroad,
i have seen the blueprint.
my country of origin is gone abroad:
the big house by the village square is empty
and so is the one in the heart of the city.
there is a new one under construction on the outskirts;
i have seen the blueprint. …
however because the city conjugates overnight
we have a blueprint for another in the hinterland.
my country is gone abroad
and will be back when there is no country:
it is the reason the lights are off.
my country is gone abroad,
and i have seen the blueprint:
all bets are off.

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

The Scavengers -
Waiting Our Turn
Page | 4

Mourning our demise is a

Luxury we cannot afford -

Anger is not classy.

Hand to mouth and too
busy to strike -

Our other citizens are

Tourists with other
Citizenships appendaged -

Ladies and gentlemen,

We do not strike –

We ogle kleptocrats, the

New bourgeoisie
Waiting our turn at the
Trough.

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

walantu walansa; the city & the citizens

their subjects have lost their votes,
their victims their voices, their gofers the plot.
musical chairs time
and the gods left to their own devices Page | 5
pull the strings to none but themselves;
b-boy stance they cop stinking attitude
and at pants down, scat and beat box,
possessed by strange sound and song
they douchebag and skank shuffle
right there at the intersection of
kawukudi and walantu walansa;
their subjects have lost their votes,
their victims their voices, their gofers the plot.
the city skewing and skirting outliers
cowers under torrents of mudslinging and finger-pointing;
blame-gaming and name-shaming by draughtsmen
like furious checkers take their turns;
and the citizens en vogue are called denizens,
they by the dozen and the second drown in debris,
and all over the landscape darkness
and no water humongous
near puts middle passage and the restless
and deep archival atlantic to shame.
musical chairs time
and the gods left to their own devices
pull the strings to none but themselves;
their subjects have lost their votes,
their victims their voices, their gofers the plot.
under ahanta blue black skies
silhouettes of sleepy disillusion rouse
from deep disgruntle and insomnia,
growling they yawn and stretch,
denigrating true north they prowl eastwards,
disembowel the sun and country borders
even at aflao and hope.
at kawukudi and walantu walansa -
we are up for grabs.

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

Page | 6

II

be longing

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

english marmalade Page | 7

dreams brownstone, alien and indigo

undocumented, not at all handout bound and soon to be dreamy

why i like them alien, illegal will do; out of bounds, untouchable
dreams unhinged in eyes, wits pricked, heightened, enlivened,
vibrate fresh with families, two wives back home about his neck
sweet noose, the voodoo of those whose lives given for his pillar
to post, stowaway on florida water and talisman breast pocket.

undocumented, not at all handout bound and soon to be dreamy

i like them alien, indigo will do; boldly different, casually diffident,
unguardedly seductive, his ashy hands from raw and hard work,
reverently ask permission in code as raw stare of his eyes broken
delivering his name via west african tongue and within earshot,
broken english-french guttural wolof ask directions to the ymca

alien and indigo, tucked in halfway house sparse room and board,
upgrade of heart break hotel barn in florida country orange grove,
oranges spit-shine crawling in heaps on plantation burial grounds
en route deluxe grocery stores from manhattan to santa monica;
see here halfway house man now assistant manager and finally,
woes of 'marry my daughter give me' to stiff corporate cuff at rest

undocumented, not at all handout bound and soon to be dreamy

indigo and still alien, a day prays five times and makes love twice
for his own rejuvenation and to his brownstone touchstone dream,
not bypassing french colonial kissing of this here chief blogger of
english marmalade equipped with an abandoned, biological clock
long forgotten bury gilded hope of sunny climes, terracotta lands.

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

america wants you Page | 8

like a ho, the hospital comes home to you.

he was bleeding, he said, bleeding like a ho
he explained, painting it most colorfully,
a ho when she came home to him.
the hospital, blazing all of her red lights
up in his district … she was lit with desire,
and flowers bleeding heart to boot …
flashing all red with unscrupulous intent.
like a ho, he emphasized, she comes home to you,
prompt and speedy gonzalez, when you are down and out,
flat on your back and near knocking on heaven’s door.
the hospital, coming down the street,
her honeysuckled, thickly sweet and whiny bark,
her loving and bloodsucking arms gurney,
stabbing you in the back pocket,
breaking your back,
break your back
and then your bank.

your woman, she don’t love you?!!

… she don’t give a fuck!!
he declared vehemently,
accentuating the moral of the story,
… she don’t love you, no way!
like a ho, he repeated,
i was bleeding when she left me …
america wants you
... bleeding like a ho.

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

birth for a nation.

and where we take our lives.

we belong to a nation, where we give birth, Page | 9

where we blood, toil and tears.

we belong to this nation,

so also all of our inheritance,
the land we think we own,
first owns us, this land of our birth,
this land daily in our pagan prayers
we choose as lord, pray to as grave.

birth for a nation

we give birth for the nation, where
we blood, toil and tears.

we are then like slaves

who may not take their lives
but to altars for sacrifice
and exile now sacrifice in guise.
exile country with a higher altars,
higher sacrifice an arm and a leg,
even stocks and shares,
public and private offerings.
and you would think more reward.
but why swear allegiance
where the same effort of
blood, toil and tears
fetch you little?
for the same blood, toil and tears?
for the birth and blood you give?
exile promises a bigger sacrifice,
bigger guises of freedoms,
a constant and unrelenting
noose you pick up daily
and put around your own neck.
we belong to nation, altars for sacrifice
and in disguise where we give our lives,
and where we may
under no circumstance live our lives.

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

driven places
Page | 10

love carefully, love expediently;

the things we love drive us places,
through the window at times and out of our minds.
so be careful what you love and what you desire.
be careful what you pray for,
be careful also what you give your heart to
because the things we love drive us places.
we pay for the things we love, you know …
these things destined to break our hearts
destined to break our minds
and for which we pay dearly,
paying for the joy they bring us,
at times two or three times the price
by this price which we seek to make them stay,
these things we love destined to break our hearts
we pay for dearly with our lives;
we pay for the things we love. love carefully, then;
love expediently for the things we love drive us places,
through the window at times and out of our minds.
be careful what you pray for,
be careful also what you give your heart to
for the things we love ...

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

Page | 11

III
travel and see

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

home Page | 12

you have a home.

it is where you know you will go to die,
if you could reach there,
if you could make it across,
across town, across country and across border,
across flood and field, across the river
and then across you.

you have a home.

it is where you know you will go to die,
it is where dying comes easy,
it is where dying is a lover sure of you,
it is where dying is a lover reaching for you
at the intersection of sleep and wake.

so you see, my dear darling,

you have a home.

it is where you know you will go to die,

home is where dying makes love to you,
alone or among the living and the dead

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

Page | 13

driftwood and high rising.

I once met a young boy who told me he had in his head
a growing high-rise up there in his brain.
armful I waded over to see and heard him say
what you would think were his next to last words
and that what he wanted most
was help to get ashore, to a harbor he once knew before …
he had in his head a growing high-rise, he said, up there in his brain.
and he told me what he wanted most.

With the growing high rise up there in his brain,

he said he needed help getting ashore, a shoring up
before the building got too high, and his sights too sky, too far …
and so well before the water took him down and
his bloated dreams ashore mangled and bungled …
he told me what he wanted most …

armful I waded over to see and heard him say

what you would think were his next to last words
and that what he wanted most was help to get ashore,
to a harbor he once knew before …
at the time I was gathering pieces of debris from my shipwreck,
its pieces adrift and fire still in my belly, …
and I can’t get out of my mind the memory-feel and picture of
the high rising in his head
and if the water took him down …
or somehow he made it ashore

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

Page | 14

broken; I sabi am.

you hear broken and bam!, your world opens up:
memories of sounds of men guarding the city and breaking English like bread,
like jazz on my mind, these memories like jazz.
memories of men who get the job done so they owe you no explanation in queen’s english.
you hear broken and bam!, your world opens up:
the private world of long ago, of parents and significant others, back in the day when life
was not fast enough, loose or unbroken.
broken and the queen’s one comes tumbling down, crumbling along.
broken and the shamwow patch of memory holds all your carnal and bodily dreams in tropical and
bumper harvest of longing, belonging and by heart shamwow will not break its water.
memories of sounds of men guarding the city, their savoir-faire and savoir-flair, connoisseurs of the
dregs of French and Portuguese, their saber and savoir bleeding into their ‘I sabi am’ ‘I sabi am’,
‘you no sabi?’
memories of sounds of men guarding the city and breaking English like cola,
like jazz on my mind, these memories like jazz.
English broken like cola in their hands where bread dreams of payday and drink blind spots,
farsighted and far away from north, south from the royal reputation south of the Sahelian and north
of Ashanti and Yoruba country.
you hear broken and bam!

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

Page | 15

lekki blues on apron strings

in lekki we can’t shake our blues, o!

travel and see, they say.
travel alone or not, your hungers come along with you, tugging along, new cities and good
faces, and new hopes butterflies in your belly starting fires, big and small: call nine one one
for bush fires and a sudden and unmanageable desire rearing its unexpected head in the
tropical heat of the moment.
travel and see, they say.
... it is by your hunger you see. the hunger in your mind and the fire in your belly through
your eyes a window shop as you go through life window shopping, investing and risk
taking, hunger prowling and comeback from beyond to this place and here taking your
desire like a bull by the horns.
travel and see, sha! …
in lekki we can’t shake our blues, o! our hungers ride along on apron strings, hankering the
nights of our parents behaviors and misbehaviors directly from which we spring.

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

Page | 16

my home is in the dark

heart of africa.
and artificial darkness.
because I am at home in the dark,
I make my home where the dark is.
so bring on the power outages.
my secret self finds its feet and gestures once stifled
now break free in the dark:
so bring on the power outages.

bring on the power outages,

bring them in bulging bulks and wholesale,
in them I discard my shell, from under which I crawl
and emerge a story teller, weaving truths like yarns
of my hidden desires and alien secrets in the caress
of relationships skyped from exile and aliens native
and love-lighting bush fires, bringing down the wires
of the old telephone poles, the sweet sag in their wires,
telling indiscretions loose on the lips of distant lovers
how sacrifices too costly have impressed their weight
upon runaway renegade minds and now breaking them.
heart of africa.
and artificial darkness.
because I am at home in the dark,
I make my home where the dark is.
so bring on the power outages.
artificial darkness

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

Page | 17

glossolalia, I am the unremembered.

my name is glossolalia, i am the unremembered …

before my first memories, i had lost my limb and do you know i did not know it? … then i
lost my head and did not know it either, and then finally my tongue … it was not till i began
speaking in tongues, in several tongues, bleu-blanc-rouge, and other assemblages … i began
speaking bleu-blanc-rouge till blue in the blackface, my stars and stripes and spangled
banner appendages in bandages and upholstered amongst the silent trees and forests
booming with collapse …
that is when it occurred to me.
when i could not speak of what happened to me …
when their words failed me, was when it occurred to me …
i lost my tongue and on the way away from home.
my name is glossolalia, i am the unremembered …
and the dismembered and do you know i did not know it?
before my first memories, i had lost my limb and do you know i did not know it? … then i
lost my head and did not know it either, and then finally my tongue … it was not till i began
speaking in tongues, ….
glossolalia, i am the one who lost my tongue and did not know it till i began speaking in
tongues. please do not tell me what hit me. … please don’t you tell me.

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

Page | 18

be free
be grateful for what a place has taught you, or you could never leave there, wake up every
day and stuck.
be grateful for what the priest with the knife to you and the desire to cause your heart and
your neck to bleed into your throat and into the pit of your stomach. be grateful for what
this priest has taught you or you would never rise up and walk away from this high-end
and big-spender altar and place, …
be grateful for what time has thought you… the jail it put you in, the exile and the sacrifice.
time and its tide, how it never waited for you, how time left you and took with it your heart
and mind away, time like a thief in the night, in the middle of the night and time in broad
day light … how time left you wallowing with grief and your heart still broken, unable to
walk, and time upping and leaving never telling you why …
be grateful for what your mother’s birth canals have thought you, their expulsing you out
into this bright and garish and unmerciful light, this place the belly of the beast, what it all
has thought you, or you will never live to learn, or you will die again before you are born
again and never get to see the light of day.
be grateful, it is the only balm of gilead we got left out here.
be grateful here on this earth.
be grateful so you be free to go where you please,
to heaven here on earth
or away from here
and whenever you please.

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

Page | 19

roots and wings

try not to, if you can, he told me, as though on his death bed,
to own things that are very fixed to the ground.
things very fixed to the ground will come to rule over you,
inhibit you and come to possess you,
and then you are not but dispossessed of it
and of yourself.
so try, if you can, to own things that are not fixed to the ground.
things which will come along with you, things which travel with you, …
… own things that you complement
and things which are not quite complete without you.
such things will always come along with you and easily to where you please.
if you have roots let them travel with you.
go where your roots will gain ground and room to gain more depth,
and you will find that these roots will thrive where you are.
so try, he repeated, as though with his last breathe,
to be mindful of your freedom at all times.
remember that freedom
that cannot come along with you and easily where you please
is freedom not worth having
or fighting for.
because things very fixed to the ground will come to rule over you,
inhibit you and come to possess you,
and then you are not but dispossessed of it
and of yourself where this very thing that you give your blood to
is concerned because it is not but very fixed to the ground,
like a country, say.

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

miracle mile

dawntime
on miracle mile. through broad glass windows, Page | 20
the city streaming by. rapid buses on miracle
mile, three rapids back to back and thinking
overland train undercover heart of the city vein
near pacific ocean at world’s end ...
world without end.

nighttime
on miracle mile multicultural and psychedelic
the city streaming by. rapid buses on miracle
mile, knife sunk into the hub of the city thinking
someone broke the heart of the city and a river
zigzags through at world’s end ...
world without end.

daytime
on miracle mile. through broad glass windows,
the city streaming by. rapid buses on miracle
mile, three rapids back to back and thinking
of vistas of sidewalks of beautiful people
tired of waiting, without agents, flock
into the city, behind the scenes on movie sets
on miracle mile at world’s end ...
world without end.

at dusk
on wilshire on miracle mile
the city foreign transmogrified …
homely in essence and serengeti;
here come the giraffe,
there go the zebra,
here bambi
and there okapi
minus agents
unleashed on miracle mile,
pacifica city at worlds end.
world without end.

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

Page | 21

heart of darkness

whose pain is that? …

out there, alone and haunting the landscape?
you do not, my child, want your pain
to remain outside of you, disembodied like that.
pain not loved,
pain dispossessed,
is a most dangerous thing.

you want your pain inside,

embodied, buckled down and in,
and tight, like a seed about to take a leap
into the dark and then the light.

embodied pain: that is love.

it is the only way
it will grow out of you,
not on you, forever haunting you like that.

embodied;
it is the only way for it to grow
out of you, and you out of it,
both free.

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

Page | 22

homecoming - window shopping

homecoming -
- turtle packs on their backs like passion houses
- two push carts towards mirage sunrise prizes
- towards each other like ships in the night
as broad daylight equip unwashed silences.

window shopping -
- turtle packs of worldly goods on push carts
- two stand transfixed at the mirage car wash
- its power rainmaker of water and sudsy soap -
thrilling hygiene enshrined in gas chamber.

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

Page | 23

master shape shifters

Do you hear it, ye Wolofs?

master shape shifters, master shift shapers
they are the shapers of time and the clock
history begins at home and so does charity
charity for whom the bell tolls …
every race comes home to Africa
every race comes from home in Africa
it is from this race
the race begins
and ends.

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

Page | 24

IV

clan & commonwealth

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

Page | 25

harmattan country

rain like mad strikes unannounced,

tropical monsoon like a tilman, a bulging pair
of animal skin pouches sirloined,
he is looking once again homeward;
catapult in hand, moving target, capital gains
on capitol grounds, a mind rampage sown, prone,
darkly rolling clouds like a fleet of chariots,
and rain belts the surrounding submissive
like so.

pour mud like fire on to loving river bosom,

harmattan reeds like elephant and lemongrass,
iron wrought, buckled and braced; on sixteen hundred
pennsylvania avenue they prostrate through the night
and at riverbank, at early morning light, tranquil,
rainwashed environs, clinical and not unvarnished,
refuse to yield anew.

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning
gone abroad amma birago

Page | 26

leimert park
leimert park is village square. it comes alive on Sundays and Saturdays at
noon till well into the night, the translucent and neon orange of the street
lights glowing in the implacable dark, leimert park like tropical African village
square comes alive and will be left to its own devices.
I once walked from Baldwin Hills to Leimert park on a Sunday afternoon. I
would never feel lost in the world, I thought. Wherever I am the drums my
compass, the landscape and the sweet handclaps and voices showay and quilt
codes.
leimert park village square come alive. I will never feel lost in the world.

…. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else.
It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.
Chris Hedges - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning