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Arvida Svenske, 33 years old, is participating in the 6th International Literary Creation Competition, from Bagarmossen (Stockholm), Sweden. We are grateful for the participation and wish her success.

Ballad of Michael X

Gather round me people, hear this story full of blues
About a revolutionary who strayed into a noose 
From the island they called Trinidad, where palm trees seduce and sway
He was brought up with God save the Queen, they taught him to obey.

Called him Michael de Freitas, out of Belmont, Port of Spain,
Mother practicing obeah
And his father far away.

Coming up they called him Red Mike, headstrong youth, kicked out of school
At the tender age of fourteen after questioning The Rule.
So he travelled, ten years later, to the Empire’s beating heart
Which he had heard such good things of, and where he could make a start

Called him Freitas, the enforcer
Working for the slumlord’s gain
He sure claimed he didn’t like it
It sure brought in his pay.

Then the battle came to Notting Hill, between the Black and White
Couple of thousand Afro-Brits against the whole Empire’s might
And when they fights had started, and he’d met with Malcolm X
All the pieces on the chess-board were set up for what came next…

Call him Michael Abdul Malik, the Black Power exponent
No longer a face you saw when you hadn’t paid your rent
In fact, call him Michael X, founding RAAS and gaining press
An almost self-proclaimed ”authentic voice of black bitterness”

Michael emerged a hero, friends with Lennon, Cohen, Bacal
And the carnival of Notting Hill was not his only cabal
Out on Holloway Road, North London, when he emerged from jail
He co-founded the Black House, and then claimed to ”keep it sane”

Call him benevolent Michael X, John and Yoko sure helped him there
Benefited him financially and cut off and sold their hair
Or call him criminal arsonist, as the Black House soon burnt down
Under mysterious circumstances in the ”slave collar”-affair.

So the Black House closed, and Lennon paid for the bail of Michael X
And he soon left for Trinidad, above the Letter like a circumflex
There he started two new communes, and one of them burnt down
When they found two dead bodies he had already left town.

Call him Trouble, instigator, cult-leader and guilty
Of murdering Gale Benson, daughter of a Tory MP
Call him threat against the nation, call him master amongst slaves
Putting Skerritt and Gale Benson into their early graves

They captured him in Guyana, put on trial in Port of Spain
But the Save Malik Committee could not get him saved
Along with Stanley Abbott, was found guilty, and was hanged
While his other friend, Edward Chadee, got a lifetime in the clank

Well, call him terrorist, or vain, or a freedom fighting man
It all depends upon the means and ways of one’s land
History call him Michael X, he did some good, he did quite bad
And maybe our complacent world deserve the heroes that we have.


This body will stand here

after a member’s kick-off with Män för Jämställdhet, March 2025, dedicated to them
and to Luis, Gem, Eleonora, Misho och everyone (especially LGBTQIA2+-persons)
in Armenia, Georgia, Moldava, Romania and in other places, struggling

Call me Arvida. This is just a shell of flesh.
Call me Armenia. Call me Georgia, Moldova. Or Transnistria, even South Ossetia.
Raise decrepit Lenin statues on my skin. It’s still my queendom within.
I know what flags I’m flying.
Come at me from the Sublime Porte 	nd from the land of the Unsullied flame
at the very same time – watch my hands not shake.
There’s a category in a tattoo competition: Best healed.
Let’s make that the competition. But it’s a team competition.
And we are all in the same team.
You have so much skin– but only so much skin Much skin… but not all the skin.
New flesh form around the scar tissue.
Calm lake wield a deep bottom, and all the rivers lead to the ocean
… eventually. In the unbridled power of river upon river I stand.
I am stardust, but also flesh. Beating heart, resilient mind.
Non-violent but not compliant.
Should this veil of flesh falter back into earth
Flowers shall grow and they are in me
and that is eternity.
This body will be standing here.
Brave, resilient and scared.