the louderARTS Project

Ngoma

Ngoma is a performance poet, multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter and paradigm shifter, who for over 30 years has used culture as a tool to raise sociopolitical and spiritual consciousness through work that encourages critical thought. A former member of the Spirit House Movers and Players with Amiri Baraka and the Contemporary Freedom Song Duo, Serious Bizness, Ngoma weaves poetry and song that raises contradictions and searches for a solution for a just and peaceful world.

Ngoma was the Prop Slam winner of the 1997 National Poetry Slam Competition in Middletown, CT and was recently publishd in African Voices Magazine, Long Shot Anthology and The Underwood Review. He was featured in the PBS Spoken Word Documentary, "The Apro-Poets" with Allen Ginsberg.

Ngoma@ngomazworld.com
ngomazworld.com

Great Exploitations

Disney treats 101 Dalmatioins
better than he does poor Hatians
tryn'ta earn their quota
living on sunshine & coffee water
Where the science of exploitation
serves a diet of desperation,
desolation, deprivation
but no rations
maybe
coffee water for your dawta
maybe a cup of soup for one,
divided by four or five to stay alive
a leaky tin roof shack-in-fact
no electricity or running water
for Haiti's dawtaz
sewing Disney's Pocahantas shirts
for less than dirt
4/10ths of one percent
not enough to pay the rent
living on credit like indentured servants
no time to pee
or wash your hands
so much for Disneyland
The Zombies like living dead
dread each sunrise in the Haitian sky
where many workers died
for trying to organize
living hand to mouth, maybe 3 meals a week
a days work won't buy bread
ten dollars seventy seven cents a week
a decent wage is all they seek
Michael Eisner acts like he's clueless
about a land where people are shoeless
where poverty is no mere fantasy
workers pleadin'
Please God-Speak Out for Haiti
Exploitation sure aint Mickey Mouse

© Ngoma

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