Sister Scribe: For Kiilu Nyasha, 1939-2018

by Dee Allen

Kiilu-Nyasha-1939-2018-by-Dee-Allen, Sister Scribe: For Kiilu Nyasha, 1939-2018, Culture Currents
Kiilu Nyasha 

Your words, which sprang
From your keen, razor-sharp steel-trap mind,
Dancing to life from your sashaying fingers
Across desktop computer keyboard
Onto the bright screen before you,
Across typewriter keys
Onto held-down paper,

Were to support
The freedom of captives:
That is, brothers & sisters
In the racial, political, mental senses
Captured by government agents,
Confined to penitentiaries because
Black Liberation & self-determination
Are too dangerous for this system to take –

From your wheelchair, you
Fought the good fight
On the radio, on TV, at street demos, printed in
The Bay View newspaper because
Ain’t no MS* gon’ slow down Miss Reporter
Sister Scribe from exposing what the State
Denies: There are political prisoners in the U.S.A.
By the thousands – and on both sides of the razor wire-crowned wall,
Freedom is a constant struggle.

*Multiple Sclerosis

Dee Allen, an African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California, active in creative writing and spoken word since the early 1990s, is the author of three books, “Boneyard,” “Unwritten Law” and “Stormwater,” all from POOR Press, and 15.5 anthology appearances, including “Poets 11: 2014,” “Feather Floating on the Water, Rise, Your Golden Sun Still Shines,” “The City Is Already Speaking” and the newest from MoonShine Star Co., “What Is Love?” He is in the process of producing his upcoming fourth volume of poetry, entitled “Skeletal Black.” Email him at deeallen415@gmail.com and visit his webpage, at http://www.poormag.info/static/dee/index.html.