M y S o u l L i k e s T o T r a v e l… I am tangled up in the webwork of the universe, in the ebb and flow of my breath. I am swimming in the whispers of visions that caress my sorrows while I sleep under the blanket of the heavens. There are prayers in the roaring ocean waves, there are unasked questions in the moonlight... there are stars whose ancient energy promises the rescue of our luminous being. I am a collision of forces that have found their way to awareness... to mystery... to light. And all this... all of this is the spiritual thunderstorm, the whirl of dark translucent clouds, the luscious waterfall of human voices carrying me towards what I know of love, what I feel of gratitude, and towards miracle and wonderment. I feel pushed to the edge... but ready to fly. I feel like a gathering of forces and elements whose nature is this loose and momentary confluence that I call my body... and my mind. But my soul... my soul likes to travel in the exquisite nothingness of long before. Before me, before you, before this and all this is. Before beginning and ending... before being and becoming. My soul likes to travel the endless nothingness of forever. ...and ever... and ever… My soul likes to travel the earth and sky to places near and far and so totally beyond my reach. My soul likes to travel the depths of love to the timeless embrace of you and I. My soul likes to travel eye to eye to the mystery of being and being so alive. My soul likes to travel the early morning light and be bathed in the sweet wonderment of another day. My soul likes to travel the webwork of our miracle humanity and the tangle of our inter-connected languages. My soul likes to travel with the first kiss of soon-to-be lovers, hanging on every word, on every need to be touched and known, and on every chance to lift our spirits to the heavens and dance, and sing and re-jump for joy. Oh Yeah… my soul likes to travel. My soul likes to travel the infinity of night in an ocean of stars surrounded by worlds beyond any easy comprehension. My soul likes to travel the terrain of my fingertips whose touch conveys whole new worlds of wonder. My soul likes to travel the whispy clouds that are the breath of this earth and the respiration of this living planet, just like, just like my soul likes to travel among the angels as they accompany our arrivals and departures, our loves and our losses, our laughter and our every moment under the influence of awe. My soul likes to travel at the edge of sunrise, where the sky begins to whisper the first rumors of light and where the pure blue-black of night lets go of its hold on darkness. My soul likes to travel up through the shallow waters near the shore and burst into the first light of summer. My soul likes to travel along the flight paths of music imagined and made real by those so totally under the influence of our eternal rhythms. My soul likes to travel the long forgotten waterways of deserts that were once great forests. My soul likes to travel in the footsteps of dinosaurs and ancestors, of soothsayers and prayer-makers, of story-keepers and rule-breakers… My soul likes to travel far beyond the wings of flying creatures and into the heaven for dreams. My soul likes to travel on empty pockets, on the wet and luscious overflow of darkness and rain in a forgotten forest. My soul likes to travel lost and found and totally under the influence of gratitude. My soul’s travels have taken me to injured and forgotten, into the labyrinth of fear and abandonment, into the jagged terrain of love badly lost and no way home… and still my soul likes to travel in the rivers of our tears and in the rivers of prayers we send to the heavens, to ourselves, and to each other, asking to be forever guided towards the light, forever in each others thoughts and embraces, and forever and ever riding the ride of our traveling souls. My soul likes to travel…. across time and space, through dark and light, deep into the nothingness of eternity and back again to the on-and-on of on-and-on… through spirit and emptiness, through the weave and sparkle of consciousness as I seek and I am sought, as I teach and I am taught, as I love and I am loved by the nature of our nature, by the pathos our being, and by how and why my soul… likes to travel. I’ve seen us breathe new life into our bodies by the magnetism of our souls… I’ve felt the heartbreak of our attempted self-denial and the self-defeating pretense of ineptitude. I’ve watched us avoid our reflections for fear of catching a glimpse of our magnificent humanity… and I’ve seen myself and us all rise up from impossible just to behold the awe and the roar of creation that surrounds us, and that we now have to fully claim to be within us. It’s time to ride in the jet-stream of our being… It’s time to kiss and make love to our dreams… It’s time for us to embrace the sorrow and the joy of leaving behind all that has brought us here… so we can re-claim and freely travel our unknowable future. It’s time… it’s time… it’s time.

I f I C o u l d M a k e I t R a i n There is something about rain that just sets my spirit free. The feel of rain on my upturned face, as if each drop was a kiss of liquid sky to help me balance on my way through a precarious world. I hear there are places on this water-planet where rain is so very rare, where water is a miraculous and transformative elixir… where beings look to the skies with hope… with worry and with wonderment… and I watch myself gather in a delicate whisper of a thought, something like “what if we could bring the rain?” I can’t help thinking there are those who say “we have done such things.” My mind swirls into a fast-forward through the space/time continuum and I’m staring into sun-lit clouds, under the influence of flying high in the skies above America… I’m looking down onto lands so very blessed… and then fast forward and I’m home and thrown into a world overflowing with the machinery of mass distraction, where dreams slip through the graceful hands of so many who’ve never really been immersed in the deep waters of our luminous being. In this place… in this place I call home, rain is the plaything of children whose delirious laughter is all part of their ritual celebration. They are dancing in the liquid gold matrix of the most precious life-giving commodity in all the cosmos… dancing as if all they knew was the deep oneness of all things… while so many of their elders sleep-walk in spiritual free-fall in a land where… where everything is possible. The genii of my child-mind conjures me one wish right out of thin wet air and I hear myself say… If I could make it rain… If I could make it rain in this place…the rain would fall across this water-blue planet and we would wash the blood off bloodstained city streets where the horrors of war have sometimes twisted love to hate, have threatened to crush our precious embrace of the next generation and fill their hopeful eyes with the blood shot terror of destruction. If I could make it rain the clouds would cry until the machinery and minions of war fall to rust and ruin, until the new-green of a thousand plants re-weaves our precious web of life, until flowers reclaim the concrete, making a new terrain so sweet that all creatures who gather there are filled with wonder and dreams of how new things might grow from within them, of how new realities always transform from the old, and how even death will bow… and worship… and embrace the perpetual lunge of all things towards life. If I could make it rain the feathery cargo of our souls would gently float downstream on a caravan of forest leaves, back to the oceans of our beginnings, back to the glimmer and sparkle of the first living things, back to the time before mind and so forward into the re-minding, as in re-minding us all in the now of now, that we are among the great miracles of a wondrous cosmos. I would want the rain to find us finding our way together, filling the air with our music, filling our souls with songs of wonder, filling our minds with bold visions of past and future worlds, healing our wounds and growing lush gardens where love flourishes and fills the next generation with dreams… only they can realize. If I could make it rain… I’d make it rain like this… and we would be forever more immersed in miracle, where our forever minds would wander endlessly into the wet inviting oneness of rain. …and we would drink in these waters. Every rain drop would carry the sun’s glow from above the dark gathering clouds, covering the earth with it’s sparkling energy, and filling the souls of each living being with an energy beyond comprehension to be perpetually shared and re-shared among us all in an eternal rebirth of wonder. Yeah baby. Let it Rain. So … yeah. Let It Rain… Let it Rain…

YOU AND ME AND ALL HUMANITY (Lyrics from the recorded version.) (Mamadou Ndiaye) Salam (peace) (Tantra Zawadi) Time to stand up for all humanity… You and me. (Mamadou Ndiaye) I’m the missing piece of the “World Peace,” No, “CEASE FIRE!” You’re the missing piece. I don’t want to live this fantasy life, turn up your light, stand for your rights. (Tony Vacca) Whether you stand up tall or take a knee, Ain't no wrong way to honor our humanity. We are miracle creatures, look at us and you'll see something magic about love and how we can go soul to soul, and eye-to-eye, looking for wisdom till the day we die. From "peace and love" to "on and on," from "gonna take you higher," to “above and beyond the beyond.” (Tantra Zawadi) Miracle talk of a spiritual kind, escaping the prisons of a colonized mind. Turn up the volume on our sweet energy, it's all about how we set ourselves free. We're in this together, you and me, time to stand up and live up to how we want to be.... CHORUS You and me and all humanity, time to stand up and live up to how we want to be. You and me and all humanity, time to live up to how we want to be. You and me and all humanity, time to stand up and live up to how we want to be. You and me and all humanity, time to live up to how we want to be. (Tantra Zawadi) Miracle talk of a spiritual kind, escaping the prisons of a colonized mind. Cosmic wonders of souls lost. Blinded, hoodwinked, smacked, shackled, and tricked into darkness. What’s going on planet earth? Children of spirit? Time to make a move and embrace the questions. At the beginning and the end, LOVE is the lesson. Kissing the universe with unparalleled intimacy that reaches beyond our future dreams. You and Me and All Humanity, time to stand up and live up to how we want to be. You and Me and All Humanity, time to live up to how we want to be. Our real history founded on truth and positivity. From the lips of griots pledging allegiance to the common good. Spiritual creatures disrupting institutions and misguided political perspectives… transforming this gift of life with the magical consciousness of love. Time to live up to how we want to be. Descendants of all that is magnificent, third-eye-free. It’s time for you and me, representatives of all humanity to live up, to show up, and kiss all humanity. You and Me and All Humanity, time to stand up and live up to how we want to be. CHORUS You and Me and All Humanity, time to stand up and live up to how we want to be. You and me and all humanity, time to live up to how we want to be. You and Me and All Humanity, time to stand up and live up to how we want to be. You and me and all humanity, time to live up to how we want to be. (Tony Vacca) Time to kiss the earth, live up to your dreams. Cause everything is even more than everything seems. Sun and moon, the earth and sky, it’s a paradise planet once you and I realize nothing is beyond our infinite reach. We are the spirit creatures we hope to be. We are the children of earth, descendants of stars We know what war is, we bear the scars but the light of love is what I see, time to live up to how we want to be… You and me and all humanity, time to live up to how we want to be. (Bideew Bou Bess) Stand up, and speak up, sing out in harmony Stand up, and speak up, sing out in harmony. Together we help us all to be strong, to find our way, we all belong to our human family, every woman and man can see together we are the future of humanity… (Mamadou Ndiaye) I’m the missing piece of the “World Peace, “CEASE FIRE!” You’re the missing piece. I don’t want to live this fantasy life, turn up your light, stand for your rights. Get up humanity, show your positivity, ……………… unity ……………positivity Jammala nexh. You and Me and All Humanity, time to stand up and live up to how we want to be. You and me and all humanity, time to live up to how we want to be. (Abiodun Oyewole) So let it be that we cherish the humanity we see in everyone who breathes. Life should not be to deceive… be a blessing to each other, treat each other like a sister or brother. Be the light we were meant to be. Love and nurture our humanity. We are here to make our dreams come true and do all the good things we want to do. Let this human connection give us direction to a higher place where we can heal, and feel the love for the entire human race. You and Me and All Humanity, time to stand up and live up to how we want to be. You and me and all humanity, time to live up to how we want to be. You and Me and All Humanity, time to stand up and live up to how we want to be. You and me and all humanity, time to live up to how we want to be.

You Don’t Know Me… Spring of 2000, in the Philly train station, complete with a 20 foot high bronze angel holding a fallen soul in her strong arms. Her wings are open and ready. There’s a distraught equanimity to her gaze, and she seems to be looking at everyone… everyone in this very large station. She is a luminous presence. I am in this station, waiting for someone to arrive… someone I have totally fallen in love with… and I feel so very connected and so very alone. I look across the many faces in this wide open, mostly empty room where so little happens and so much is anticipated, and I imagine the telepathic calls we are sending out to ourselves and to others… so much like this guardian unseen-angel of souls calling out to each of us… and mostly going unheard. I try to listen in for what she might be saying, but she’s not using words. What I am hearing though, what I am hearing are delicate undefended monologues rising like prayers to the heavens, rising like beacons of light in a storm, from traveling souls in search of a place to go… I hear them, like… like “I see you looking. You don’t know me. I walk through the halls of our giant train stations, I sleep on the wooden benches, worn beautiful and smooth by the countless others who’ve passed here before me; by generations who were probably waiting for the sight and sound of someone they love. But me, I’m just here holding on to whatever I can. You don't know me.” And then another… “You don’t know me… I sit alone with my headphones cranking the music of the streets that I know, calling to me to survive another day. I’m tuned in, but running out of time. I’m thinking maybe those who sat here before me hummed the songs of their lives just under their breaths to accompany them in these moments of such strange lonliness… So yeah, maybe I’m wishing I was waiting for someone I love, like maybe they were wishing they were waiting for someone they love…and it hits me that you and others are looking at me like you know me or something… but hey, HEY, you don’t know me.” And another… “You don't know me… I have just enough energy to get on the bus to get to the train station. Just enough energy left in my arms, my legs and in my heart to make one more journey home to where they all know me. To where we talk about and remember times long gone just like they were yesterday. To where the loves lost and found resonate loud and true. To where some tears will find their way from the sadness I've known… find their way down my wrinkled face and somehow heal the pains of what I've lost by being part of so much that I've gained by being so very alive… I laugh more than you think, I cry more than I want to admit, I’ve seen more, risked more, lost more and found more than anyone even knows. But right now… right now I sit alone on this hard bench that's even older than I am. I hear the sounds of lives so much younger than mine, I feel the energy of the people, the roar of the trains, and the purr of my sweet memories that are mine and mine alone to share when the moment comes. I look around at the people here when they’re not looking. I suppose they look at me. A lot of people in this world. And then I realize, then I realize that so many of you… so many of you… you don't know me. You don’t know me.”

HE WAS STANDING IN THE RAIN He was standing in the rain…eyes turned up to the sky. His arms were open wide, like an old timey antenna, in search of a signal that just might gather enough invisible energy to form a coherent image. Every drop of rain was a tear drop of cosmic possibility, as he gazed to the skies and into the ever-deepening blue of infinity. One by one these precious droplets found him.They were whispers that cooled his skin, blurring and finally annihilating any separation between him and the forever changing flow of an ever changing everything. These sweet waters rolled down his face… He cried in empathy with a crying sky that formed the mystic envelope of life on this living, breathing third-sphere-from-the-sun. These were the original tears of joy from which all others flow into the rivers that carry us forward and deeper into the great reservoir of our being… and somehow back again into the ribbons of energy from which we began. He felt the cascade of rhythms as each piece of the falling liquid sky kissed his skin, as he danced among the patterns of their patterns… as he savored their overlapping starbursts, like the caress of a fading moment… again.. and again. He was standing in the rain among a billion breathing creatures on a living breathing planet that was circling a tiny star at the edge of a remote galaxy, virtually lost in a sea of galaxies forming en ever-expanding cosmos that itself was a tiny raindrop on the face of God.

B l a n k S l a t e I am a blank slate of wonder…a 548 mile-per-hour passenger on flight 2418. I am in a twilight zone of cloud and color, and under the spell of Alice Coltrane’s music of ecstacy. I am under the illusion that I am floating, and in way over my head over an ocean of vapor and wonderment. The horizon is divided into all things above and below the clouds. Its earth and sky, its blinding white under endless blue, blue, and more blue, into the infinite sacred chaos of all things. I’m at thirty-three thousand feet, hurtling through the luscious atmosphere above what I call my home… and I can’t see our petty complaints. I can’t see our significant others. I can’t see our wondrous creations nor the horror of our wars. I can’t see our car loans and compound interest, I can’t see the axis of evil nor the Tao de Ching. I can’t hear the anguish of our lost loves, nor the cries of ecstasy from the healing touch of passion. I can’t see the scams and schemes, I can’t feel the crush of dreams denied. I can’t hear the drums, nor the voices of the faithful singing their prayers. I can’t see the children’s eyes. I can’t feel the hopes and pride of young parents. I can’t see the barred windows on our inner city schools, I can’t see the drug deals and cheap highs that insult our strengths and our ability to survive through the living hell of misfortune beyond our cruelest fears. I can’t see the self-inflicted wounds of self-denial. I can’t see the triumph of getting back up after we fall. I can’t see where my life unraveled, nor where I found the strength to find my way. I can’t see the life-long friendships held together by love and selfless honor. I can’t feel the swing of Ellington and Basie. I can’t hear the groove laid down by Bernard Purdie behind Aretha Franklin. I can’t see the soul of Marvin Gaye. I can’t even feel the silk-lined glide of the Temptations. I can’t see Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Mr. Blind Seer behind those dark glasses, coming back from a stroke and still kicking ass with his music. I can’t even see where Don Cherry is buried, and all the beautiful, multi-kulti magic of his musical being. I can’t see the arrogance and petty thievery. I can’t hear the lies and collusion, I can’t see the genocide, the drug and oil wars, the killing fields… I can’t see the way-back spin on a Pedro Martinez curve-ball. I can’t hear the fiery words of The Last Poets. I can’t see the barbed-wire of hatred. I can’t feel the raw silk of sex with those we love. I can’t hear the sweet devotion in our calls to prayer. I can’t hear our conversations and confessions to ourselves, spun under influence and in the illusion that we are speaking to God… But from up here… even from way up here… I can almost sense our immeasurable strengths, and our undeniable optimism that we have literally written into the stone work of our creations. From up here I can just begin to see the curve of the earth, and the wondrous chaos of our journey through space on this one-and-only planet that is our home. I can see the evidence of forces from which we are made and to which we return, and I can ride, I can ride this steel-winged bird of my flight home like I ride the rocket of my instincts, the rocket of my mind, and the rocket of my soul…into what there is of heaven.

21st Century Re-calculations…. It would seem that I am a bystander in the hyper-cyber of the 21st Century… and it's trying so hard fill my mind and empty my soul of its otherwise intrinsically valuable contents. I’ve heard we’ve got wi-fi at my Body/Mind Repair Shop, but I'm still struggling to get a clear enough signal to fully enable my extra-sensory perceptions in an honest effort to polish my soul. I've posted and shared my life and I’ve even partially funded my visions on a cyber-cloud… that seems to mostly rain and thunder on the parade of my otherwise semi-magical reality. Now, don't get me wrong… I see and truly enjoy the sweet smiles of the new-next hyper-tech generation. They are kinda cool in their own way. All of a sudden I hear the seductive voice of my inner-spirit guide; she is ticker-taping a message for me and it says… it says, “I dig where all this just might take us… but if our ever-evolving technologies fail to support our ever-evolving humanity, then I want no part of this Brave New World detour.” You know… you know sometimes I think I can see and hear the faint whisper of the word "dinosaur" as it scrolls just behind the eyes of, well pretty much anyone under 20… as if "dinosaur" is their best easy-access description of who and what I seem to be to them. Hey, maybe they're right. Maybe I am a lost traveler… you know, a fully committed soul on a disoriented express in search of the temple of our limitless humanity. So I turn down the noise of all this 21st century machinery-in- motion; I turn down the deafening, obscene buzz of our appliances and the lifeless ice-blue glow of our ubiquitous devices, and I hear the distant call of gongs… gongs, man. I sense and then I see the first light of a new day. I feel the sweet, sinewy, luscious sex of our interconnected minds and bodies in a web of connection… It’s calling me… Calling me, and I am fully immersed in the liquid being of our wondrous souls. Yeah, I mean I have travelled in the Mother Lands of Human Beginnings… I have danced and felt the embrace of our perpetual oneness… and I have fallen, I have fallen completely in love with how exquisitely irresistible we are to one another. The feel of a smile crosses what's left of my self's consciousness. And then, from way, way, way beneath the ruble and debris of the 21 Century… I hear the pseudo-soothing, Euro-hip nondescript female voice of my discarded GPS… She’s saying, "Recalculating… recalculating… recalc…" But I'm still swimming in the deep and delicious sound of… g o n g s )))))))) ) ) ) ) ) ) ). G o n g s, man. Dinosaur. Dinosaur? Me? Really? How about Multi-Culti Astral Traveler… ? … y e a h. Recalculate that.

Things Gotta Change (Bideew Bou Bess) Ah yay yela yay… hey things gotta change. Ah yay yela yay… oh things gotta change. Ah yay yela yay… hey things gotta change. Everywhere we go, things gotta change. Yeah, here we are sending out greetings to one and all. We’re right here on the mic saying how are you doing today? Listen up, we can all see, it’s always time to make change that takes us further on the road to peace. Time to make clearer your mind, make clearer your soul. All this and more is right here for us all, you and me and everyone… it’s a time for change. (Tantra Zawadi) Young minds, fertile and anxious to deliver truths passed down from griots with open minds, prophesying on street-corners, in townships and villages, about movements and phrases, finding ways to celebrate the rhythm of humanity…and change Shattering glass with our third eye for a clearer view of real love… How many dreams must die for poems of life to rise? Things… things…Things gotta change. Although we struggle to survive, we thrive in clay, steel, and concrete, through the valleys, deserts and homelands…love provides, and is sufficient to grow soulful beings, capable of letting go and letting live… Purpose being freedom, we believe. For every man and woman, every land and nation can join hands and lift their voices for a cause, because some things, some things… Some things gotta change. How many dreams must die for poems of life to rise? For the fight is purely spiritual. Our souls are at stake, and baby, baby, baby. Some things gotta change. Some things gotta change. Some… things… gotta… change. (Tony Vacca) Hearts and minds gathered here to find the sound, to put the rhythms and the words down, to rock the time and open your mind, to re-align our visions and set our minds on peace. World hanging by a thread-bare thread, some nearly gone, some already dead, I'm not looking for trouble, it's already found me, I'm not trying to bust your bubble but I can see things gotta change… In every village and city in the world there's gonna be love. (Mamadou Ndiaye) We want to talk about something. We’re fighting every day for change. The word on the street is the world in my rap, and it’s the message we’re here to pass on. Listen: Everything’s gotta change today. Every human being has a chance today. Look at yourself in the mirror. You’re the one who can change tomorrow. The best of me is not something I take off when I shower. That’s the way it is. Dig deep in your heart. Let’s stop all this self-defeating madness.There’s craziness going on, the world’s a mess. If we’re going to get to where we want to be, peace is what will lead us there. (Tony Vacca) In every village and city in the world there's always going to be love… I see there are troubles to face and rise above, ain’t no trouble can erase the power of love to free our minds and open our hearts to start today to make a new start, to find a way to heal the past, to love every moment and make love last, to honor the lessons of loss and pain and hear me when I tell you again and again. We are the change... Things gotta change… Abiodun Oyewole of The Last Poets taking us way back, to the way they did it in the way, way back… (Abiodun Oyewole) Revolution…There will be a revolution…and we will take it to the streets, armed with the knowledge and the love we have, spitting flames of truth, melting away frozen dreams that never had a chance to come true. There will be a revolution… governments will collapse like a deck of cards. The King and Queen won’t exist anymore. Class will be something everyone has. Wealth will be judged by your deeds that turn a frown into a smile, a weed into a flower, and hope into reality. There will be a revolution… what once was small will be big, what once was silent will be heard. Whoever is hungry will be fed. Diseases won’t sell as commercials pain won’t be our closest friend, and all the scars on our bodies and minds will heal, and will become the mirror of a beauty not seen or felt before… shining in our eyes, blossoming in our smile. There will be a revolution… and children will be wise again. Our ancestors always speak through them, and we must listen. Fairy tales will not exist. The magic of us will make the possible possible, the unreachable reachable, and turn the nightmare into a dream that is faith walking by our side. There will be a revolution… oh yes, blood will be shed, lives will be lost, bullets will fly, bombs will drop, buildings will be set on fire, laws will be broken, lives will be shattered, deceit will be left standing in the rain. Major battles will be fought… inside of us… inside of us… and we will regain the trust of ourselves and each other. There will be a revolution… And we… will… win. And we will win… and we will win… and we will win… and we will win… a n d w e w i l l w i n… a n d w e w i l l w i n…