For “Nikki”… by hakim bellamy



i.



I feel like you’ve always been mine

though you’ve been proclaiming emancipation since before

since before we was slave or citizen

since we was love and laughter and light

we don’t own each other no mo’

some stopped saving one another too



but you

have turned borders into water

language into papers



death into understanding

and day-to-day into magic



does being a sHE-RO ever get old?

or just old-fashioned?



ii.



Some people want to be like you when they grow up

I want to be like you NOW



Edward, son of Edward Frederick, they call me Hakim



Yolande Cornelia Jr.

they call you Nikki



third sign of the Zodiac

they call us talkers



we come from East Coast and Appalachia

Philadelphia to Tennessee and Black



back and forth

blonde and ‘fro



we come from Black People

Black Churches and Black-Eyed Peas, sista



poets and not quite poets

if you ask Ivory Tower

instead of Ivory Coast,

but who asked them anyway?



for the record,

I too, prefer my wine…red



iii.



When I heard the news

I thought of you



I had a few friends that went to Virginia Tech

none at that time

at that time

you were the only person I knew, but did not know

that went there



I think about the sanctuary of the sentence

where we sometimes hide

sometimes say come and get me

I think about how schoolhouses

ain’t never been safe in the South

I think about how everywhere is the South



and though hip hop is the new underground

your words have always been a railroad



WE ARE VIRGINIA TECH



iv.

Do you ever get tired of fighting fire with paper?

this many books in,

do you still feel like people misread you?

will you figure out a way

to bottle “relevance” and sell it to the next generation of Giovanni’s?

will you blueprint your survival of America,

cancer and Black womanhood…



or is it already embedded in the hieroglyphs

of your “codexes”



do your codices, code exist?

how do you commit our existence to script

with such vivid depiction?



and I know you been chasing her

like an old game of tag

maybe even laid an index finger on her once

or twice

but next time you get close enough to Utopia

close enough to smell her hair

you tell her I am looking for her…please



v.

They will call you distinguished, Professor

activist, human or civil



they will call you an American writer

or an African American writer



a great poet

or a great Black poet



never both

when you are both

and more



but a wise person once said,

“Once you know who you are,

you don’t have to worry anymore.”



© Hakim Bellamy November 2, 2013

The above poem was written for and delivered to Dr. Nikki Giovanni at her Chasing Utopia book tour stop in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Read my Local iQ review of her new book http://www.local-iq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3465&Itemid=68