Friday, September 25, 2020

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.

Thursday, September 24, 2020

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.

Saturday, September 5, 2020

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.


Friday, September 4, 2020

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



Wednesday, September 2, 2020

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.



Tuesday, September 1, 2020

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