POETRY
Throw
Prose and Poetry II
As a follow-up to my first book of poems, Throw is a second collection of prose and poetry, beginning with the current social trends that cross cultural boundaries and the election of the first American African U.S. President. It’s now post-gentrified Harlem. West 125th Street’s row of colorful Pan-African flags have been replaced by storefront ads. Local bookstores have been swallowed by major book dealers. The Mart is still suspiciously vacant. Familiar mom and pop shops are now names you typically see at suburban shopping malls. They stand as imposing towers of urban capitalism within a community still in both financial and socio-psychological crisis. It gives the appearance of a great place to live in, now that all the crack vials and needles have been removed from the sidewalks and children’s playgrounds. But it’s an awful type of irony to look like Marcus or Malcolm, but can’t afford to live where streets and avenues are named after you.
A harder; perhaps darker tone, this Collection is the witnessing of a way of life gone and replaced my super-materialism and anti-intellectuality in the Black community, with pieces on inter-cultural wars, the Black Lives Matter Movement, the immerging of Donald Trump as the great White Hope, sexual identities in the face of changing times, and the mystic of the American Southwest. Throw is ultimately the doing away of things you thought were skin but now no longer needed, as we all try to sort out our lives in the quest for individual emotional justice within the confines of an unpredictable, fractured state of affairs.
“When Kahlil performs his poetry, his voice resounds with a deep, rich timbre, as well as gentle undertones using raw and poignant imagery. This winning combination elicits, simultaneously, a presence of calm and a feeling of empowerment”