Rain barrel near the back porch

 

January 23, 1978
 
It must have sat there since before my grandfather was born,
rusted rings holding together the splintered wood,
too many years collecting the drips rainstorms delivered,
like a dream catcher reflecting the gray sky
as the drops fed its open mouth,
my reflection showing in the surface each time I look in,
with me expecting to see something else,
some vague notion of something I feel must be there,
the sparkle of streetlights reflected in it as night
as I climb up the steps to the porch,
flowers in season spouting up around its bottom as if by design.
I keep wanting to ask who put it there and when,
attempting to stir up some memory of someone
who might have heard the tale from before I was born,
but none had memory they could give me any more than I already had,
that barrel having been there before them, too,
filled with gas lamps before the electric lamps came,
and likely firelight before that, sitting where it has always sat,
back in that corner near the steps,
full of things we could only imagine.
 

Slave trade poems 1991

 

October 1, 1991

Straight, mostly white men

Like a Magritte painting

Stand on cold concrete

Waiting for an already late train

Hands clasped like bored teachers

Politics plastered on their faces

From New York Times newsprint

Thoughts consumed with making money

These Wall Street soldiers

Ever losing the war to age,

As newer, younger soldiers

Pop up like mushrooms

To take their place.

Oct. 16, 1991

They poison America’s ears

With left wing plots

Mistaking conspiracy for Democracy,

Alternative voices inside my head,

Specters lying wait in the grass

Of every front yard

Waiting to gobble up our children

And sell them as slaves

Your child first, then mine,

TV quoting experts of their own choosing

To sell their own paranoid brand

Sound-bites like bullets

Not so much “keep America free,”

But to kill it,

Murdering off each new decenter

Until no other voices survive

October 18, 1991

All they do is remind you

Of how bad it is on the line,

The sweat and struggle

Of people who have to do

What all bosses tell them

Earning wages and woes

Lost for an afternoon

The briefest of time

To think, sigh, or mumble

Don’t talk, Jerk!

Work, work, work!

October 10, 1991

This should be no surprise

Americans have always been greedy,

Beating up the defenseless

To make a buck,

Daniel Boone built up

into a hero over time,

the tick of the clock

justifying mass murder

as if history has

a statute of limitations.

October 22, 1991

Factory life, brick-faced

People bruised with labor

No sweat shops here in Jersey

But slavery non the less

Monarch bosses

Exploiting high price

In attorney fees

Workers making too little to sue

And those that do,

Won’t.

October 10, 1991

Ragged figure huddled

In the train station

Proves hippies still exist

Thought dirtier

Than memory paints them

And more hungry

Stepped over and on

By marble-faced

Wall Street crowd

Men who read

Newspapers

But don’t sleep under them.

October 24, 1991

They want us dead

Rewriting history

From the losers

Point of view

Turning heroes

Into tainted saints,

Telling us they cheated

When they won.

October 25, 1991

Mad rush tea hour kettle

Boiling point of humankind

Locked into a chrome insanity

No mercy for the innocent

Just waiting to get home alive

And in one unaltered piece.

October 26, 1991

Dreamy children

Look for answers in the sky

Lottery numbers,

Grumble for love

No importance to existence

Breathe, eat, shit and fuck

Until they can’t anymore

October 27, 1991

Mercy? What’s that? Weakness?

You fight for your space on a line

Not like the Russians do, but with

The dream of being number one,

No shortage of losers in this game

Just us winners, sad saps with ideas

Of being kind and finishing last.

October 30, 1991

Oh Jefferson, you old fraud,

Confused purveyor of human rights

Who still kept slaves until his dying day,

You should have shot Hamilton

While you had the chance,

Before he betrayed us,

Before he turned our dream

Into pieces of the machine,

Not leaving it up to Burr

Who was no better.

November 3, 1991

Better fuming than dead,

Anger feeding the hero,

Jousting windmills without it,

We with no sword or shield

Merely rage.

Nov. 11, 1991

No one’s important here

But everybody thinks they are

Hard work pays little in dignity

But defiance pays less,

A starvation wage

That weeds out the unworthy

Those of us with too much to say

And risk ruining the game

Nov. 12, 1991

They chatter outside

The black barber shop

On Veteran’s day,

Waving not flags

Over the rumors of war,

Rotting under the shroud

Of unemployment,

Even the old men chatter

Harsh voices lost in the cold wind,

Talking of the 80,000

Cast off welfare in Michigan,

And of homeless dying

As winter comes.

November 11, 1991

Law and order men

Ride around town in Lincolns

Indignant as spoiled children

Yet with children of their own,

Five, ten, fifteen years married

With stores on Main Street downtown

Rushing through red lights

And poor mixed neighborhoods like this

As if exempt from the law.

November 15, 1991

They come out in twisted threes

Social Security a refuge

To the tired and hungry masses

The Statue of Liberty once embraced,

Making the rounds of Passaic

As if one large game board,

Knowing that sooner or later

They will eventually

Pass GO.

November 16, 1991

Dream meal, mixed mind

Images of iron day

I wake, wonder, worrying

About the blank TV

And the heart-empty sense

Of me and my race.

November 26, 1991

Spoiled entitled people

Ride the back of the bus

Screeching laughter

Odd people out to test

The patience of an already

Over-stressed bus driver

Seeing how long it takes

Before he goes crazy.

  

Nov. 11, 1991

Never the same

The slave trade requires

Family attitude,

Even blacks expected to love

Their master,

Though these days

We trade

Skin color for

Economic opportunity

But the message remains the same

One of feeling trapped.

December 1, 1991

No sweat, dreams of

Waking up alive is

Sometimes the best

You can get, cold

Winds streaming down

The streets, passed

Cardboard shelter

And bare skin (often brown skinned)

Blankets

A hard life is when

You don’t wake up

December 2, 1991

Not yet anyway

That’s what the man

Said when I asked

If anyone has frozen

To death, putout

From the Port Authority,

Not yet, but then

The temperature hasn’t

Fallen below freezing

This year yet either.

December 10, 1991

Right or left wing

Bigots speak delusion

As they spill propaganda

Into innocent heads,

Their hope to raise them

To some higher level of hate

December 12, 1991

Innocent boy with blond

Hair, pressed, molded,

Made to feel guilty

When he sees his black twin

Dying in the street

For lack of love

December 13, 1991

Workplace slave trade

Living at the whim of a boss

Losing hours to his desire

Can’t plan a life

Just wait and perspire

December 16, 1991

What do you expect

From stupid people,

These children

Of the children of the sixties

Who can’t find Viet Nam

Or even Afghanistan

On a map,

Telling pollsters they’d be

Willing to redo The Bill

Of Rights, jail drug

Addicts on found

Evidence, break

In without warrants

Condemning their own

Children to a future

Where such things

Might well be done

To them.

December 9, 1991

Rude shoppers rule the mall

With middle class indignity

Ownership slave mastery

Mentality of peasants

Who themselves are really

Slaves only

They don’t know it.

December 20, 1991

No one is clean,

You wash laundry

In strong bleach

And it still comes

Out with stains

This is called

Being human,

And it hurts like hell.

Oriental is a bad word

 

I went to a College in New York City

Earlier this year and saw the list on the wall

of all the words that are not allowed to be said

anywhere on the campus.

these were not the usual four-letter words

that were forbidden in Catholic school

but ordinary common everyday words

 that people apparently use without thinking

but have since been blacklisted (racist term)

and therefore, must be racist

the one that really surprise me was the word Oriental

we're not allowed to use that word anymore

part of the litany of terms

colleges claim as colonial,

 one more word to the growing list of forbidden text

some enlightened professor somewhere

has declared as offensive

 building on the color divide

nothing so obvious is Jim Crow laws

yet obvious equally odious

to the over-sensitive new generation

who can’t possibly tolerate as society

that permits free speech

we all can drink from the same water fountain

use the same bathroom

sit up front in the bus

but we can't say what we want to say

or think what we want to think

Oriental or white

Yet when it comes to admission at this college

Orientals are even less welcome than whites

perhaps they do too well in college entrance exams

and therefore, not entitled to get a language lesson

from these arbitrators of good and bad words,

who actually believe these are signs of racism

and assume anyone who says any of them

must be a secret white supremist.

No justice; no peace

 

the drums start off slowly then grow faster

not loud persistent then a chant

peace, peace, we want peace

no justice no peace

this is meant to sound hopeful and full of love

and yet comes off as a threat

the naïve people in all such movements

have in the belief they are pure

when all else is not

that they seek peace when

they are actually at war

emboldened by those who speak

with forked tongues

when love doesn't counter hate

if it imitates hate

when justice this is justice

imposed on others,

these people imposing their view

on someone else

innocents who are not innocent

the passive who like the werewolf at night

turned rabid in the wrong phase of moon.

no justice no peace

the drumbeat goes on

I am struck by the fact

that they have a token white man

with dreadlocks doing the drumming too

as if this somehow is inclusive

when the real movement

won't ever include him

or the Democratic mayor

who sits up in front

and smiles and nods and applauds

as if he is fully cognizant of what is going on

when there is shooting in the background

and people being murdered

in the name of justice and peace

no justice no peace no justice no peace

what the piece they mean comes

with a full clip of ammunition

and an itchy trigger finger

full of rage that is not completely justified by history

only by media reports and perpetual mythmaking

the gradual rewriting of history that is not history

into a history and not what really happened

no justice no peace no justice

 the drumbeat goes on and on and on and so do the bullets

Keeping the home fires burning

 

Even when you stay silent you ain't safe

someone will stick a fist in your face

and tell you to support them or else

they make assumptions about you

based on the color of your skin

they envy you for the clothes you wear

the car you drive, the home you live in

they blame you for things you didn't do

would never do or think of doing

until now

they riot in the streets on the least report

of some possible atrocity they won't walk back

Even when facts prove them wrong

you can't walk back burning someone's business

and black lives do not matter

if the business they burn is owned by a black man

even the press won't walk back

 Having claimed this time that an “innocent black” man

 was shot seven times in the back in front of his kids

when the man shot had raped the mother of his kids

stolen her car, wielded a knife and wouldn't put it down

despite repeated commands by the police to do so

starting a riot is like starting a forest fire

a lot of trees burned before someone manages to put it out

the fire keeps on burning because media keeps on relighting it

searching for some new “innocent” black men to exploit

so that they can make headlines

the fire keeps burning because it is convenient

for some leaders to use it to

clear away the forest for their own behalf

encouraging sports people to sit out games

when everybody knows the shooting was justified

A lynching of history

 

They don't even wait for the dark of night

to tear down the statues these people claim to hate

The mad Hatters throw ropes around the neck of a history

they hate, which is not their history

a repeated lynching, they do not realize is a lynching

white and black claiming to be social justice warriors

wearing no robes, the way the KKK did

but black faces as if mockery vaudeville shows they despise

pretending to be doing this in opposition to hate

when they are so full of hate they drip with it

not one or at least many having any clue

as to the actual history they are tearing down

people they oppose a Confederate flag

as effective as a red one waved in front of a mindless bull

mob rule in infecting again the way it was

when carpetbaggers just like these came South

to inflict as much pain on the arrogant people

who would die rather than be dictated to

 by self-righteous villains like these.

Statutes of limitations on white guilt

 

How long before the payback runs out?

How many generations do people have to pay,

for crimes ancestors committed?

Even OJ got parole for good behavior

and did not admit guilt for the crimes

We all know we believe he did.

This is a never-ending guilt trip

we can never get out of alive

payments on the installment plan

like a mortgage that never gets paid off

even for those of us who now kowtow

and lay our souls to bear,

accepting a guilty plea for a crime

we never imagined committing,

our statues lynched because these

symbolize our refusal to give in,

our seeking to keep our keep pride

in a nonexistent culture that you hate

you want totally erased from existence

the way Nazis tried on the Jews

annihilation not justice

a Stalinist purge in which no one other

than those who become

the mental slaves of former slaves

can possibly survive

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

showing more mercy than you do

and with fewer scalps,

you tearing down statues and culture,

you can’t compete in

and so, need to change the rules

so, we can’t either.

White is the new black

 Universities build walls

Between the races
Like new segregation
Determined to blot out
With black anything white
Rules of order
Like new Jim Crow
Telling us what words to say
Or not say, or things to do
Or shouldn’t,
Not yet banning us from toilets
Or water foundations,
Nor making us sit
On the back of the bus,
No new “whites only,”
Yet, but soon,
Orange once being the new black,
Meaning jail birds,
But these days,
You dare not show your white face
Any place like this
With lists posted
Martin Luther-like
To the gates of
Higher education saying
“Whites need not apply.”

 

It didn't start with Uncle Tom

 It didn't start with Uncle Tom

or even the black men

who pretended to be white men

who owned slaves in the south

it started in the heart of Africa

long before any black man

saw a white man to blame

black selling black

 slave owner being slave

 in a Madness that had most of the continent

enslaved at one point or another

so that when the Muslims came

 to take 14 million black men

nobody thought much of it

or when the Portuguese

saw the Muslims making money

they wanted their share,

then the Dutch, the French, British

and finally, Americans

black Kings sending black bodies

to the coast to be sold

friends, enemies, ex-lovers

even their own children

Kings angered when they heard

About Quakers in the west

Who wanted to stop

This flow of black gold

Kings who sent their victims along

In long chain lines to the coast

many not surviving the journey

many arriving so starved

that black agents for white slavers

killed them on the spot

or let them get thrown into the sea later

after disguising their frailty

Black kings who knew and could care less

as long as they were not the ones on the ships

in some cases, selling their own sons

into slavery or unwanted wives

This did not start with Uncle Tom

or even the Native American Indians

who had their own black slaves

or freed blacks who pretended to be white

it didn't start with white people at all

but in the rotten heart of Africa,

and black kings who got rich

until the west finally put a stop to it.

Social justice warriors

If you bleed right away

and willingly for the

they won't suck you dry

when they get to you

these self-righteous moral Crusaders

that hide their fangs behind innocent lips

and masks by which to keep secret

who and what they are

mocking their victims

terrorizing you with the illusion

of their good deeds

claiming they attack you

because you are evil

because your ancestors wore hoods

This pack of savage rats

 who wear hoods of their own

justify them with historic wrongs

they claim they suffered

coming at you with fangs exposed

telling you to bare your throat willingly

Admit your guilt to all the crimes

They claim your ancestors committed

if you submit and let them bleed you

they may not take it all

only your pride

only your dignity

 only those elements of past and present

that define who you are,

the historic resistance to tyranny

this rat pack hates you most for

needing to strip you of everything,

but if you let them bleed you,

they may let you yet live

on their terms.

Antifa

He has a megaphone for a mouth

Even when he doesn’t know

What he’s talking about.

Radical chief

Who lives with the belief

Other people he sees

Are always in need

Of the words he spouts

Whenever he shouts,

A propaganda Kungfu master

With his head full of rhetoric

As thick as plaster

Strutting around with big flat shoes

Ready to stomp on others

With alternative views

Needing only the big red nose

And clown outfit from head to toes

A port of john overflowing

With piss and vinegar from all his knowing,

His bullhorn announcing what he’s all about

An overflowing piss pot without a spout

He’s the man with a megaphone mouth

With very little intelligence coming out

The all mighty media

If they printed it must be true

the arbitrators of truth we must accept

dictating what we ought to know

if we are to know anything at all

advertises each day with a tale of news

we need to have like a fix

a Savage attack dog on the edge

not yet foaming at the mouth

not yet completely rapid

just rancid drink of the poison

we must digest each morning

like a health drink that’s not healthy,

each word snapping off in us

like broken fingers or toes

worse torture for anyone

who challenges their version of truth

puke poured on paper

would seem no different

or bile of some internal indigestion

inspired by some inadequacy of the author

each acquired in youth

needing to prove themselves

needing to create enemies

against whom they can measure

sad, pathetic deluded souls

whose lust for power

corrupts all its touches

and with every word they print.

might makes right in Portland?

We keep telling ourselves

we are good people

we all love the right things

and hate those things that are wrong

we create posters to protest things

we see as evil as if like gods

we can see deep into the hearts of others

and condemned them

so, we whose pure hearts

show best at what we hate

our raised voices against things

we know (for certain?) are wrong

Our raised fist in symbolic gesture

like a middle finger

and we paint all those people

who believe differently from us

as if demonic agents who we must throw down

we being right in our own intentions if not in methods

that sometime seem so much like the methods

evil people employ we could not tell the difference

if we did not already know

just how good we are at heart we are

a distinction that clears our conscience

over the horrible things we actually do

Lord’s Prayer revised

Lord,

Save us from the insufferable

Do-gooders who do more harm than good,

Who preach at us ad-nauseum

Stamping on our carbon footprint

As they run us over on their bikes,

The arrogant and self-righteous

Whose sole word replace the word of God,

The judgmental asses, who burn down our cities

In order to save us from grace,

The masked men (and women) in black

Who act exactly like those white-hooded

KKK people they always accuse us of being,

The misguided children of Howard Zinn

Who are utterly convinced they will save the world

Blaming us for destroying it as they ravage our cities,

Save us from the wicked who call us wicked

And the thieves who steal to keep us honest

Who shout for us to get out of houses

Because they want to move in,

Save us from those who profess to be color blind,

Who decorate our windows with slogans and flames

Who hit us with bricks, stab us with knives

Spit in our faces – all to save us.

Oh, Lord, save us from these messengers of righteousness

Who tear down our statues and flags,

Who accuse us of crimes our grandfathers

Or even their grandfathers

Never imagined they had commit,

But for which we must pay reparations,

Save us from the well-meaning white folks

Who felt guilty about not being black,

Thick with guilt for having hardworking parents

Who loved them and careful them,

Who they now reject as racists,

Save us from the true believers, the wholesome souls

Who curse us, beat us,

All in the name of justice,

Who loot, burn, stab, cheat, lie, curse, abuse

All in the name of justice,

The sinners who pretend to be saints,

The murderers, thieves, scoundrels

Who hire in sheep’s clothing,

Demanding ransom to keep our businesses safe

All in the name of justice,

Save us from those haunted by

400 years of suffering they never suffered

From the imaginary racists they never experienced

From the hunger they never felt,

Save us from the greed we see

Glinting in their eyes

As they tear us down and destroy all we have worked for

All in the name of justice.

3 a.m. Passaic

January 18, 1980

I am walking the streets of Passaic with the cool air swirling around my face. I can taste the impending day on the tip of my tongue, tainted with the fiery touch of frost, the chill of it kissing my cheeks with hints of snow.

In the dark, under the blue glow of ghetto street lights, these bits of frost look a little like bugs, swirling around me and the immobile objects that proliferate in the night, the wind stirring up all that can move, newsprint rising with paper wings to wrap around my legs as I walk, the rattle of trash can lids an unsteady imitation of the ghetto kids who drum by the tracks during the day, this music at night more haunting when all else is silent.

My feet stumble over the pebbled surface of a sidewalk beaten down by rock salt and the heavy traffic from the church to the factories along 8th Street, with me, pausing near the porch where Loretta Swit used to live and where I last saw her father puddling around in the flower beds, all frozen in time, a brief memory I think of each time I pass it, how close to fame we all come, and how pointless it becomes when we do.

How we have all become trapped in our own lives, my coming here attracted by artist friends who came for the cheap rent, flying off to leave me behind when the landlords changed, and I roam these overnight streets sometimes searching for what was lost, a little drunk, weary but not enough for sleep, thinking of the girl was my girlfriend, who might still be, although as much a mystery to me as the universe it.

I step off the curb into mush, the chill not yet chill enough to turn the wet to ice, my breath stretching out ahead in steam caught too in the street lights as if spirits are rising out of me to haunt this place at this ungodly hour.

I run away from something in a staggering walk, but I don’t know what it is I run from, the flick of the snow on my check like cold tears, my life tied to this place in a tender bondage, something gnawing at me from the inside, maybe jealousy, that Othello curse but not over my girlfriend, but over something less concrete, that sense of ever elusive success I suspect I will not achieve, the same specter Miss Swit likely chased, and certainly did my friends, out here in the chill air, at this hour, in a season when we should all be snug in our rugs aching for spring.

3 a.m.

Passaic.

In the snow.