Poems of Oppression

WHITE MAN’S BLACK DOG (1979)
For Clarence, Condolezza, Colin and Ward Connally

White man's black dog barking through the fence,
Giving hate a bestial and savage sight.
It was not I who first took the offence,
To challenge and risk your dangerous bite.
I work here secure upon my own soil,
And peace and labor I seek to subdue.
For four hundred years I was made to toil
For being righteous, strong and black- like you.
Though well-restrained, your bark brings terrror,
Since we're taught to ignore our common plight;
Your gnarling shows me I'm not in error-
You seek to hurt me with your angry bite.
Now I question my very sense and soul,
I move through my yard with caution and care,
And think with what bile he's filled your bowl
Against the same black armour that you wear?
Has my mind come to such a wretched state,
To think white man teaches his black dog hate?


TARZAN

he lives upon the high chimneys and rooftops
of towering stone jungles
beating his chest and scaring the inhabitants
with his yelling
he swings from electric wires and lamp posts
chasing the natives through back alleys
and side streets of the treeless forest
preserving his jungle from peacebreakers
change and warlike niggers
looting and
burning and
shooting and
marching and chanting and beating
drums of freedom from the slums and ghettoes
threatening the little animals of the storefronts
and marketplaces and
slightly leveled suburban jungles
he defeats their leader
makes a treaty gives them more radio an tv
and puts cheetah once more
on their backs
he wants no one in his jungle he cannot
call boy
and no one who might cause jane
to pick an apple.




SOMEWHERE....

somewhere there is a white jury
sentencing an ecomomically
academically politically
castrated black man
a revolutionary black man
to sixty years to life
or death.

somewhere there are white policemen
aiming cocking shooting
their blind pistols
into some black child's back
into some chicano's skull
into some indian's gut and
calling it
justifiable homicide.

somewhere there are white teachers
executing black minds
patrolling desegregated classrooms
teaching the love
of racist white writers
slaveholding politicans
teaching the lies of bloody
white amerika
processing manufacturing training
good obedient
smiling friendly GI negro
bucks and
agreeable
straight-haired
anythingthewhitemansaysisright
wenches.

RESISTENCE

However the white hounds may track me,
Their negro-noses licking up my trail;
When the beasts and their masters attack me,
It shall be I, not the fiends, who prevails.

When the pigs and their dogs then, have found me,
Weak and worn, torn and harried out of breath,
When with fangs and with guns, they surround me,
I shall stand and resist them to the death.

When with lies and shackles they've bound me,
When Mighty God is my sole Defender,
And with laughter and Death they compound me,
My heart's cause I shall never surrender.


ONE MORNING

one morning
one black morning
four hundred years of patience
popped like an over-strained rubber band
eyes opened feet moved and voices once soft
became voluble
ears once deaf listened as a shiftless lazy race
died forever
one morning
one black morning
religion became and enterprise
as preachers marched from their churches
behind little singing children
who were dragged clubbed water-hosed
dogged and sometimes shot
while nat turners fought on
one morning
one black morning
dreams died with their dreamer
peace had but one cheek to be slapped
and patience forgot itself unfolded its arms
and became lost in broken storefront windows
smoking buildings and cold
still eyes that see
nothing
one black morning.




NOW THAT WE’VE ENDURED

'Tis an honor, O mighty God, that we
Were chosen to give our tears, sweat, blood.
What a forceful folk Africans must be
To uplift ourselves from misfortune's mud.
Great God! Bound in chains we were carried far
To be beaten, broken, and made to slave;
One can conclude how powerful Blacks are
To raise ourselves from the six-foot grave.
Blessed with strenght and soul, we had no choice
When bound and bent by a white, racist thing,
But to uplift our eyes and send our voice
High to heaven to petition the King.
We've not forsaken, but endured, O Lord,
Now we humbly seek Your promised reward.



MILA

mila, mila, exotic sight
wants so badly to be white.
silken black hair, flowing down,
golden skin, pecan brown.
mila, whom the men love so
is quite ashamed of mexico.
laughing day, weeping night,
mila wants her children white.
hates the sunshine, loves the snow,
so ashamed of mexico.
her poor world, so out of order
since she came across the border.
she's a strumpet for her foe,
dancing to the sound of woe,
so ashamed of mexico.




MAN SHOOTS WIFE-KILLS SELF-
LEAVES SUICIDE NOTE

my sanity slips, my judgement trips,
my reason begins to stagger;
Love's wild passion has changed to fashion
my pain into a dagger.

hard path I'd trod down to road to God
is diverted by a devil's spell,
for though I try, I can't justify
not sending the woman to hell!

for she betrayed all that I prayed
would bless her and my daughter;
now with every breath I wish her
the death-
nothing short of slaughter!

because she foiled all for which I toiled,
although I too made excesses,
they do not equate with the hideous fate
that she now so warmly caresses.

has this obsession sprang from my oppression
that I now wish my woman disaster?
but this woman so blind has never been mine;
she sleeps in the bed of the (white) master.

my sanity slips, my judgement trips,
my reason is a shattered wave,
for I must infringe, moved by revenge
to send her, and myself, to the grave.



BLACK BUTTERFLY

How late you emerged black butterfly,
Your season should have been in June,
But in brown September you flutter by,
And icy winter will come soon.

Red robins now seek some warm, southern place,
As cold, white Death looms by the hour.
Perhaps Nature will grant you of her grace,
And the nectar of some late-bloomed flower.

Like you, I emerge from darkness anew
In the autumn of America's time,
And lo, late in nineteen eighty-two,
I must seek a more peaceful clime.



ALONG THE DARK SHORES

Along the dark shores of unexplored time,
Where man's long memory retreats no more,
Far beyond that dim unforeseeable clime,
We find him standing stately by the door.
Beneath massive tons of sandstone and earth,
Under restless, running waters, old and wild,
Before the mountain's explosive birth
Lay fossilized bones of Egypt's child.
Thick, full lips and wide African nose,
Cut and formed in gold and burnt brass;
Wherever man searches, he learns and knows
He'll find Nubian eyes staring from the past.
Lovely flowers spring from a simple bud:
And all men sprang from Black African blood.

GOVERNMENT PROTECTION

You say I need government protection
From the evil, growing terrorist threat;
Though I vote in each four-year election,
No safety, no security, has come yet.
Now the communist threat has subsided,
You request national ID cards
And your faith with my facts have collided,
As you seek more police and national guards.
You say I need federal protection
From illegal drugs and violent crime,
And based on your wise projection,
Income taxes must elevate in time.
You say I need government protection
From the danger of terrorists and spies,
And from your wise, cynical perception
The military budget must rise.
You wildly wave the flag, red, white and blue,
And blind loyalty you firmly demand;
You bomb a building, and spread anthrax, too,
And then cleverly blame the Taliban.
With freedoms and liberties eroded,
With no privacy nor justice to save,
I’ve become, since the building exploded,
No more than an over-taxed, willing slave!
Like the Mafia you offer protection,
From fascism and dictatorship, too,
But upon making closer inspection,
What I need is just protection from you!


THE MORALITY OF COLOR

How unseasoned, bizarre and very strange
To think pigments have natures – foul and fair;
Red so passionate; blue of sadder range,
And green possessing a fine, fertile flair;
That pigmented people must yet behave
According to how their skin reflects light,
And be regulated as the dark slaves
Of pale-skinned people who call themselves “white.”
Mutations shouldn’t erase what is normal,
For color is absent of moral’s grace,
And can be neither casual nor formal,
As fate can’t find fortune on a fool’s face.
Not strange or difficult to comprehend-
To clothe a black devil in pale, white skin!


THE SLAVE

Night, star-less, blind,
A huge, pale, unmolested moon
Sailed across the satin sea sky.
So grim, so secluded, so white,
Sanity had to swim or swoon
Or be content to coldly die.
The shadows, silence, beastly men!
Can we forget the cold touch
Of his sharp, burning canine mouth,
The new vision of my life when
we couldn’t bleach our dark skin too much
And fled crucifixes of the South.
We were in love with lies, with winds,
Drunk from a bite and near insane,
we chase the moon and all its dread.
With necktie and blue contact lens,
Deep cuts into our jugular veins,
we stalk and hunt with the Undead.

THE SOLDIERS WILL LEAVE

When the Han Gang mud runs red with blood,
And the pink azaleas no longer bloom;
When fields of rice are white spears of ice,
And vision is like a windowless room;
When children deny tradition and fly
To fields of greatness or to graves of doom;
When the people believe they can achieve
What no foreign foe can ever deny;
With heart and with gun, freedom may be won,
Then the US soldiers will leave.
When Seoul is sacked, Busan attacked
When the smell of death fills every breath
As aromatic as Gilead’s balm;
History’s repeated, traitors defeated,
Soldiers will leave “the land of morning calm.”


FREEDOM

Freedom, justice, Peace are as incompatible
With ignorance and disunity
as spiders with butterflies,
As Asian honesty are with American lies,
As European loans are with African debts;
As Palestinian children are with Israeli tanks.
Freedom is the absence of government
The absence of concentrated power and greed
It is the realization and acceptance of death and need
It is un-technological primitive tribal dance and ritual
Custom and curse and circumcision spun across a wild web
Of naked, raw barefoot family and superstition
An English-less, French-less, German-less whirl of magic,
Un-televised, non-commercial, un-controlled,
Mixture with moaning sorrow and screams of happiness
REFLECTIONS

Over one hundred short years past
You were a slave, branded like an ox.
Today, you bow, bark and run fast,
Chasing a helpless, brown-skinned fox;
Your wet nose hunts his desperate trail,
Seeking its raw, red disaster,
Followed on horseback through hill and dale
By your pale, red-coated master.
Think cause you stroke twixt pale thighs
The dream of the red, white and blue
Is yours. Haven’t you realized one
Can’t be black and American too!
Call yourself a Laker or a Ram
You say you are a Greek!
Did you massacre in Viet Nam!?
Did you hear Malcolm or Kwame speak!?
You think there is protection
Cause master is white and strong
And believes your vote wins elections
That black prisoners all did wrong.
You weep over master’s sorrow
Like his sadness was your own
If his kinsmen die tomorrow
For forty day’s you moan.
And you smile when master’s happy
When he’s angry, you pout and frown
Never heard of Lumumba, Allende or Chappy,
And you won’t let his house burn down.
You wear a Yankee’s t-shirt,
A Marlin’s blue baseball cap
With no idea how much you’re hurt
How deep within the mortal trap!


INFAMOUS

Your reputation precedes you
No introduction needed.
Quite justly you’ve received your due;
To be infamous, you’ve succeeded.
The whole world knows your story
Of Panamaians you’ve recently killed
How you wave your flag in glory
Over tortures in Argentina, Chile and Brazil.
We know of your atrocities
From Viet Nam to Wounded Knee
And the horrors you heaped on others
Were magnified when done to me.
We know of your covert poisonings
Of your murders and brutal castrations;
We know of your chemical and germ warfare,
Of drug running and secret operations.
We know about the children of My Lai
The poor civilians of No Gun Ri
The world knows the folk you caused to die
And the holocaust inflicted upon me.
Don’t pretend to be about human rights
Your record is so widely known;
Your reputation precedes you,
And the sheep’s skin you wore is gone.
Don’t pretend to prescribe to democracy
When fascism is more your speed
You’re known well for your hypocrisy,
For assassinations, and for greed.
Known for genocide in Africa
For tortures and spreading HIV
But you’ve done naught to the rest of the world
Compared to what was done to me,
And continue to do to me….

Silence
In the grotesque, fascist face of tyranny
Before bloodied, dismembered liberties, freedoms, rights
Is akin to cowardice
like a tortured child
Cornered by a drunk, sadistic, abusive parent.
Silence
When transparent lies cannot justify
Stripping personal privacy naked and medieval torture
Is a foul form of insanity, of denial, of the subconscious hope
Of the safety of silence
Silence
At the threshold of any dangerous, non-sanctioned thought
Analogies slipping through shattered minds
Fear of perceiving logical errors
Hoping stupidity and ignorance can protect
Silence
Before criminal activities in political halls
Before broken promised political lies
Before groundless unsubstantiated excuses for military actions
Social suicide and sheepish surrender.

Cannot explain salt-less evidence of an alleged
Terrorist attack.




SENSE IN MAN

Oceans of darkness give knowledge dire thirst
As we travel treacherous seas of night.
Twinkling all around the dark universe,
How very few tiny islands of light
To give clear vision and pure direction
From the unknown, unseen monsters of fear.
Fire’s flame is the only fair protection
In a lightless world, so blind and unclear.
Ignorance dominates the black night seas
Though brief day alternates with yawning night;
Intelligence survives on its hands and knees
And Darkness devours each morsel of light.
Simple wisdoms the wise can’t understand;
There’s more light in darkness than sense in man.



MY SUN

The sun she sinks in spirited splendor
Like a Savior sets in soft surrender.
I solemnly stare, ever realizing,
To some it sets, but for me it’s rising.
Not made with flesh of mortal meat and bone,
Age nor Death may ascend my lofty throne.
The cycle of Time is a bell to some,
A march to the rhythm of Death’s dark drum.
I shall remember to never forget:
My sun is a sphere that shall never set.





REALITIES

The menu surely is not the meal
And the territory is not the map.
The wagon is surely not the wheel
The tree is not the sap.
Goodness certainly is not right,
And life is not of Time;
Of course, the sun is not the light
And Reason is not the rhyme.
There is more than one Reality;
Too many for most to find,
So policed, imprisoned by society
To expand and open up the mind!


ABORTION

Crowning bloody from wretched wombs of life,
To what chains of comfort have you resorted?
Have you confronted foes of freedom, endured strife?
Has your birth been comfortably aborted?
Birth of heart, mind, spirit and noble soul
Means more than diversions of cheer;
Give freedom’s embryo no golden toilet bowl
Flushed in the sewer of football and beer!
Raise your voice against all war
Against dropping bombs and rolling tanks;
Against establishing a global czar;
Against terror of the courts and the greedy banks!


EXPLOITED

My youthful days of growth were not quiet
Taught to pray to the pale, white Annointed;
Fed a blinding white supremacist diet,
All my ambitions were disappointed.
My people marched and demonstrated
Against freedom’s greatest odds.
No more would we be raped, castrated,
Despite racism’s rigged deck of cards.
But oh, so new on struggle’s long field,
Could we know some leaders were appointed?
For diligent study has truly revealed
Our best resources are still exploited.


POLITICIANS’ PROMISES

Strands of hair bound our minds and memories,
Tight in climatic and cultural chains;
Egos are blinded with hard frailties,
And transcendence requires Promethean pains.
The Elite boast of powers to subdue
Nature’s vast arsenal to their vile Will.
Their vain deceptions are nothing new;
They come frequently to loot and to kill.
Whatever cause for which he claims he fights,
No matter what adorns the flag he waves,
The people lose more liberties and rights,
And mortgage their children eternal slaves.


DYSFUNCTIONAL

As a child I was deserted
Little wonder I’m introverted
And a little bit perverted
By society’s ways.
Because of my oppression
I have a strange obsession
Listen to my confession
Hear my demented craze.
I am most desirous
To create a deadly virus
To which children of Osirus
Would be totally immune.
I would soar so high
Then drop it from the sky
And watch my oppressors die
To John Coltrane’s tune.


THE HEAD

A head can be such a heavy thing
That swells with smiles, shrinks with sighs,
That hangs like a fruit, like a blackbird sings,
Or crawl in sewers or soar heaven’s skies.
Whatever the weight of the worry,
Whatever horror halts or hurries by;
Be it a crown, or a cross so gory,
We must ever hold our heads up high.


LIKE MY TROUBLES

Day dies down to dark villany
As white government shackles liberty.
A daily dose of dear, dauntless dread,
A despot's desire to crown his head;
Dusk to remind us of Death's protection
And Dawn to dream of resurrection.
A whisper, a sigh, as shadows grow;
An arthritic smile, a healthy woe.
How with silent dews the evening sweats,
How many hoary days my heart regrets!
See that sun a-sinking down so low,
Like all my troubles will someday go.






THE VAMPIRE

The vampire is no fable;
Its deeds and acts are true.
It doesn’t dress in black robes,
But wears red, white and blue.
The vampire is not mythology;
It needs blood and darkness, too.
But if it may not suck red blood,
A little green blood or labor will do.









FOR VERONICA

What has Saturn taught me since, at last, it's gone?
That it's worst with so-called friends
Than to be alone.
What have I learned from suffering the absence of your touch?
That other women and so-called friends,
Don't really mean too much.
What do I painfully realize now that my life’s so bleak?
That women are usually more loyal and wiser,
And men are so very weak.

OUR ENEMY

our enemy comes armed with massive might,
moving men with magic, deceptive guile.
now would be foolish to openly fight-
we must seek cover to plan and plot awhile.
with wild white weapons of mass destruction,
he bribes, intimidates and coerces.
behind his dress of peaceful construction,
on the bitter breast of war he nurses.
terrorism is his excuse to kill
and none under his spell realizes
that as he bends governments to his will
at home and abroad, he terrorizes!
While revolving stars of heaven keep him sound,
Our rebellion must now go underground.


PROGRAMMING

Fallacies of illusions evaporate
The innocence of youth like desert dew
Before burning experience can conjugate
The flashing episode of desire it knew.
Before savoring, or understanding,
The quick, orgasmic, painful sensations,
Instinctual drives, so deaf and demanding,
Or the un-retractable ejaculations
Of hot laughter that tickle to the bone,
Or fascism of a so-called free nation,
The energy to recollect is gone.






DUSK

Dreary evening, dawning dust,
Sleep we will and die, we must.
That moment of magic when dreams arise
To lighten the way and to dim the eyes.
When mischief plots and the monster stalks;
With fangs, with claws, with tail, it walks!
Watch the dusk swallow the waning light.
Then summon your strength to face the night.







LIKE I WAS NEVER THERE

When I escape this prison
Drop not head or tear
Continue in your diversion
Like I was never here.
When I have given up the ghost
Shrink not to dread or fear;
Work on to make the master rich
Like I was never here.
Recall not warnings that I made
As you kneel in coward’s fear
Forget I said to be strong
And that I loved you so dear.
When my stench is faint and foul
My form so rant and crude,
Continue to horde your silver coins
Your knowledge and your food.
Pause not in your fun and frolic
Your path should then be clear.
Take wine and dance and laughter
Like I was never here.


OPTIMISM

When waxing moons in a waning winter womb
Ripen the world while pregnant dreams grow,
It’s time to smile away the bile so bitter,
It’s time to contemplate, it’s time to sow.
Foul failure, cold, dead whiteness all around
The casket of your lost hope, to sing
Grim elegies of how Life brought you down;
But the dawn of hope resurrects each Spring.
When unfolding famines of misfortune
Widen your dark, dreary doorway to doom
Each tear makes discovery more opportune
And one spring ray destroys all winter’s gloom.

A SONG (written in Bangkok along the Mekong)

Because the hand is spending, spending, spending,
The back is bending, bending, bending,
And banks are lending, lending, lending,
For debt’s the chain of slaves.
When folk are depending, -pending, -pending,
On government defending, -fending, fending,
Freedom will be ending, ending, ending,
Unless someone is brave.
There has been lying, lying, lying,
A lot of dying, dying, dying,
And little defying, -fying, -fying
That government of thieves.
There must be burning, burning, burning,
And people yearning, yearning, yearning
For freedom returning, -turning, -turning
To crush political thieves.
There must be fire, fire, fire
And strong desire, -sire, -sire
That won’t expire, -pire, -pire
In the face of government guns.
The Church has been sinning, sinning, sinning,
Its prayers thinning, thinning, thinning
The devil winning, winning, winning
The hearts and minds of sons.


ASSESSMENT

We have let them know we can speak, and not stammer;
We have let them know we can use perfect grammar.
We’ve shown that shuffling isn’t what we’re about;
We’ve shown we can use logic, and we can count.
They see we can be loyal to master or nation;
We can run a football or a major corporation.
We can fly a jet across mountain or ocean;
We have memory, and they know we have emotion.
Show them that we love freedom, and justice true;
We can recognize our friends, and our enemies, too.
They already know we have a multitude of skill;
We can plan, plot, and we know well how to kill.
Our genius is clear from what we’ve achieved,
But like Othello – so easily deceived.



COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Thousands made to cry for Oklahoma City;
Some so shocked they’re unable to sleep!
I’m called heartless, cold, without pity
Because I think wisely before I weep.
They worry what might be next to go!
“They” may explode the busy Brooklyn Bridge!
But I’m still confused about Waco,
And I mourn the horror of Ruby Ridge.
When I recall Tuskegee and Rosewood
And where dogs lay I couldn’t sit or enter!
I would not shed a sob, sigh or tear
For a single soul in the World Trade Center!
What! You say they did naught! Were not involved!
Benefiting, supporting, giving consent
To oppression has been clearly resolved-
Accessory to crime’s not innocent!

HASN’T LEARNED

He still hasn’t learned
But will by and by
It’s better to tell the truth
Than to lie.
He still hasn’t learned
I don’t feel
That it’s better to ask for
Than to steal.
He still hasn’t learned
And this is well known
To mind his own business
And leave other’s alone.
He still hasn’t learned
For thinks he’s too smart
To feel sympathy for others
In the ice of his heart.

FACE YOUR FEARS

Face your fear though it seems an open tomb
Inscribed in bold letters in your name
Bravery and courage know not doom
And mark the road to illustrious fame.
Face your terror whether slander or bruise
Suffer and bleed until you prevail
Confront the terror to win, or to lose-
Though it cost you breath, or chains you in jail.


STRUGGLE

Struggle with uncompromising desire
For the beauty of justice, pure and right;
Flames of Freedom will rise from the fire
That you so selflessly set and ignite!
Disregard news denouncing each brave turn
And fantasizing your coming defeat;
One bold flame and their oppression will burn,
And the red smoke of liberty smells so sweet.
Struggle against the vile money-lenders,
Their insidious goal of global rule;
Resist the cunning political pretenders
Clothed as elephants and humble mules.

ANGKOR WAT

Standing amidst these tumbled, ancient stones,
Worn, weathered, and by history forgot,
Enduring longer than man’s dusty bones,
These immortal faces of Angkor Wat.
Miscegenated masters carved and cut
With Vishnu’s sword and Buddha’s sacred pose;
With mythical serpent and elephant,
They shaped Afro-Asian lips and nose.
From where did they come, and where have they gone,
Those architects and prophets of such graces?
To Heaven? To Bliss? in some great beyond!
Only these sacred stones portray their faces.
Though its killing fields were sadly served,
The majesty of its past is preserved.





MANIPULATED MAN

Do wealthy bankers sleep in blemished beds?
Do the damned dastardly die in a ditch?
Must workers wear war helmets on their heads,
As they fight and kill and die for the rich?
Whose liberties legislated away
Like unpaid debts for Shylock’s purloined purse;
Whose freedoms, rights diminish day by day,
On what bane propaganda do they nurse?
If Ruby Ridge didn’t raise a blind eye,
The massacre of MOVE or Waco’s grief,
Then there’s no sunshine glowing from the sky,
No light or knowledge to change the slave’s belief!
Maneuvered and manipulated minds,
Keep plugs in their ears, and wear thick, dark blinds.


TRAVELING BLUES

I had to pack up my meager belongings
Leave home to follow a long black highway;
No more to suffer the white man’s wrongings,
And his cold jails along Tampa Bay.
Had to say good-bye to my sweet darling,
She was difficult, but so dear to me;
When I left, there was no quarreling;
Just bitter tears, sorrow and misery.





PHOBIA

I fear the pale stain of whiteness, everywhere,
The abnormality of Nature’s stress;
Like some mad mutation from Grendel’s lair,
Whiteness comes like a sheet of death, to dress
The world in delusions of sanity,
In white satin gowns of ribbons and lace.
I dread the bleached, narcissist vanity,
The wild obsession with power and race.
I abhor clear, white clouds on soft blue skies,
To watch my movements, they’re sent and deployed;
So pale like his skin, so blue like his eyes-
Everything white I seek to avoid!
The malice of milk that sickens my gut,
My colorless palms that reach out and take,
Molars, incisors that tear and cut!
Whiteness, Oh God! is a divine mistake!





PROTEST

The vocal ascendance of displeasure
Colored with the blood red rhythms of protest
Painted with courage too blind to measure,
Oblivious to pain, shame or arrest;
It is people representing themselves!
Democracy is the demonstration
Of revolution against Elite desires;
A sacred political castration,
Capitalist dreams woke with freedom’s fires,
Silence is the coward’s sad submission
To politicians feathering their nest;
Silence suffers in its sick condition –
It must raise its fist and voice in protest!

THE SPOILS OF WAR

The cannons fire and the rockets soar
And the fool must fight the unjust war.
Poverty’s fangs are ever feared
And the weak of mind have volunteered
To invade, to kill, to plot and plunder,
Murdering for the god of thunder.
Seeking illusions never enjoyed,
They volunteered to be deployed;
To deny the truth and believe the lie,
To defend elite Whiteness, and to die.
There is no draft so the rich evades
The battlefield field where the poor parades.
In bloody fatigues they groan and choke,
Their spirits dispersed in bursts of smoke.
With eyes closed to the mass deceit,
Their spoils of war are so un-sweet.
One pagan pen, a tyrant’s poison stroke
And justice becomes a fiendish joke
Where the fraud of freedom in withered cloves
Reigns in white supremacist robes,
There is no for clock for blood to cease-
No pretense of justice, no illusion of peace!


CONFUSED

I got an older brother
He’s blind as he can be
Can’t see the bars for the prison
But he swear to God he’s free.

I got a little brother
Who claims he’s a democrat
Sometimes he votes republican-
He’s blind as a cross-eyed bat.

I got a little sweetheart
She’s blinder than a mole in Spring
She watches the television
But she can’t see a thing.

Cause I don’t believe the propaganda
And the racist corporate news I see
They say I’m just plain ignorant
And crazy as crazy can be.

NO WAR!!!

to hear the young voices scream down the hall
to see the young militants make the righteous call
to feel their spirits cry “justice for all!”
informs me we’re not so brainwashed, after all.

to see the young minds all filled with zest
to watch them fearlessly face the political pest,
and raise their fists in united protest
reassures me we can pass freedom’s test!

their brave struggles don’t stall or cease
to see them brutalized by paid police
abused, jailed, yet their numbers increase
I know only the people can establish true peace!



THE CONQUERORS

First they came killing under the crucifix
Claiming the black, brown and yellow heathens,
the tan and olive pagans must be saved, or killed.
Then they came and claimed their killing was to stop communism,
Un-free they said for people and their enterprises.
Then they claimed their killing was to spread democracy
Because voting they said is the best government.
Now they come killing to stop terrorism,
Killing blacks, browns, olive skin people,
Leaving the usual sterile, malignant virus
of white supremacy.


A courthouse is the home of heinous crimes
Where judges and lawyers rob hopes and graves;
They learned deceit from Medieval times,
They mean to be lords and make others slaves.
They’ll have to lay me in a cheap coffin,
And seal it with hammer and rusty nail,
And I’ll be haunting their souls quite often
‘Fore I’ll be dehumanized in their jails.



THE GREAT WALL

Shanghai’s stench of raw sewage, piss and pork
Smells like San Francisco and New York.
Beijing is blurred with a heavy smog,
Like money-changers in a synagogue.
Beneath Beijing’s ancient mountainous views
Hustlers and hawkers trade jade like Jews.
Skyscrapers and lights play a tragic song
In mighty Shanghai and corporate Hong Kong.
Businessmen scheme while the poor slave and pout;
Greed welcomes in what the Great Wall kept out.


THE KHAZAR

he comes blond, lipless, with lying tongue
on cloven feet, with thick, pale hairy legs
his odor the pungent smell of tiger’s dung;
it kills only after its victim begs.
with heart colder than from where it comes
it has evaded a million suns
an infant to love, no rhythm for drums
it attacks its victim only after it runs.


"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both
instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly
unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air,
however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
(Justice William O. Douglas)


so many fled, so many were sought
so few escaped, so many were caught
how did I – so black and frail
escape his dark and savage jail?
How did I avoid his poison dope
And escape the noose of his choking rope?
How did I – so denied and raw
Elude his unjust web of law?
Perhaps some kinsmen from whom I came
Spread walls of fire about my frame
Maybe the God of the African land
Raised Her voice and waved her hand
That I may grow and see the light
And organize Black people to fight!
To tell, to warn, to make aware
To challenge those who will dare
To destroy the devil, white and cruel
And prevent its dream of global rule!



WHITE SUPREMACY

Like little flakes of snow riding the air
Symbols of winter’s savage artic bite
Like vile supremacist they float everywhere
Giving white beauty and horror to the night
Like false flurries of friendship, warm when felt
So swiftly upon dark deceit to drift
Like those whirling white flakes soon to melt
Leaving dead corpses of love cold and stiff
So must the white plague that sickens the earth,
That spreads and sucks every cult and clime,
That aborts new freedom Spring seeks to birth
Must wane like a moon in the anus of Time.
The death of whiteness shall quickly come
That gave privilege to white skin, chains to some.

Privileges seduced from being “white”
Make naked nepotism seem most fair
And justice seems confused over what is right
While the majority is neglected common care.



THREE JACKSONS

Rhyme and rage, preach and prophesize behind fearful loins,
Shout nonviolent compliance carrying a double-crossing Christian white lie!
While hoarding a heart of deceit and greed for silver coins
They’ll call you Jesse Judas Jackson, though you deny.

Transformed your face to a pale, hideous horrible sight,
Attempting to hide self-hatred with a melanoma lie,
And singing no songs of your people’s plight,
And panting to lay with any cur, so long as it’s white,
They call you Michael jackass Jackson for the foolishness you buy.

An unbroken, un-bought, untamed, undomesticated bobcat you must be,
Quick to scratch, eager to bite, quicker to fight and ready to die
Wild and unwilling to bow, beg and be anything but free.
They’ll call you George Jesus Jackson with awe, and sigh.


SHAKESPEAREAN POLITICS

A crippled Richard has captured the blemished and bloodied throne,
The conquering lair of Grendel’s carnivorous daughter;
With beastly incisors, he devours flesh and breaks nonwhite bones
While Shylock holds the gold, and Macbeth directs military slaughter.
Cleopatra, his African whore, declares Richard the rightful heir,
While promising the national security nor the economy shall stagger;
Marc Anthony decries the election, the patriot act, aren’t fair,
And Othello contracts A.I.D.S. from Desdemona,
and falls upon his dagger.



UDAY AND QUSAY

Sons
Assassinated sons of Saddam
Ruthless wreckless ravenous sons
Spoiled selfish sybarite sons
So it has been said.
Their bombed corpses displayed
like murdered Cape buffalo
like prized, wide-antlered bucks,
their hands so bloodied with guilt so unproved,
their murderers, more savage, so unmoved.
their innocence more enduring than death.
So wide-chested before their clock’s ebb;
Let’s wish the same of george and jeb.
George and Jeb
Sons
The Bush boys
Celebrated sons of the corporate elite,
Incurably, corrupt custodians of covert cash
Crossbred, crippled crusaders of Croesus
One governor and robber of savings and loans
One president, executioner, author of moans
Uday qusay george and jeb
All elite spiders spinning a political web.


VENCEREMOS (For Victor Jara)

Your fertile garden of democratic dreams
Were drowned in a bloody fascist sea;
Your guitar plucked smiles, instead of screams,
Though the Yankees, bankers and bourgeoisie
Drank the people’s blood and darkened their day.
Lone flower of freedom, sweet song of yore
Silenced by Kissinger and Pinochet,
Your lyrics will be lighted forever more.
Not in misery did you faith forsake
Nor yearn for wealth, arrogance and splendor;
Under demonic torture, you did not break,
Nor Chilean people’s hope surrender.
Tyrants may murder, terrorize the throng,
But never shall silence freedom’s sad song.



PROFILING

Stop my black skin with blue lights flashing,
White claws on the trigger, yellow teeth gnashing
Choke my neck with deadly hugs
Search my ride for guns and drugs
Spread my legs and crack my jaw-
Say I’m a fugitive from the white man’s law
Push my face on the asphalt street
Cuff my hands
Throw me in the back seat
Splash my blood for which you thirst
Then to jail, or maybe killed first!
Beaten, booked, then convicted
Say that I’m to crime addicted
To Raiford and Angola sent
Guilty until proven innocent
All my “rights” were in denial-
No Witnesses, discovery, no jury trial…
Yet he declares the land is free!
Free for the white rich, not for poor black me!



THE TIGER (Sept. 10, 2003)

A tiger still stalks the jungle bush
With sharp claw, fierce fang and subdued rage;
It strides with a shadow’s dark, ghostly hush,
And knows not the horror of net or cage.

It knows not fear of pistol, whip or chair,
Ever the seeking hunter, rarely sought;
Moving unchallenged, no caution, care,
Predator supreme, un-bossed, un-bought.

Its stripes suggest the commission of crimes,
A captive of Nature’s irresistible Will;
At home in artic or tropic climes,
It kills to live, and lives to kill.

White tiger tortured, starved in dirty cage,
Denied the freedom of his wild jungle joy,
Bleached of its beauty and poisoned with rage
Exploited by the fiends Siegfried and Roy;

Like a broken dog made to beg and bow
By racists in red, white and blue top hats;
How much injustice do they think you’ll allow?
Do they know you’re the greatest of the cats?

It’s not a tiger’s nature to be fearful
With its fangs and claws and criminal coat,
But to make its victim bloody and tearful
When its long teeth sink deep into his throat.
Black people have been tigers chained with fright;
Some day soon the trainer will feel their bite.



SONNET 13

Those same old hypocrites of freedom’s lease
Still howl false fables of democratic yore,
And declare love for democracy, for peace,
While grinding sharp spears and arrows of war.
Those same old imperialists declare
To caste and color their blue eyes are blind
As they descend bloody oppression’s stair
While they confuse, darken and frighten the mind.
Those same old war-mongers preach liberty,
Promise justice and equality for all,
But practice the same fascist tyranny,
That caused Greece and Rome to fall.
The leopard’s spots nor the flag’s stripes will change,
And white racism today should not be strange.




Ode to Mede

Still running in the field,
Oh black and graceful thing
To a white command, you yield, you fight
And wrestle in a ring.
To fight friends in foreign trenches
Your muscles stretch and swell
A stud to please black wenches
Whose children your master sells
Ah, but Blanche you may not touch
Or touch, you may not breed
Or breed, the offspring must fulfill
Master Hammond’s need
So Master Hammond has decreed
Although Blanche yearns the vengeance
Of feeling your black strength and seed
You and she both are slaves
To slate Master Hammond’s greed.
*Character from K. Onstott’s Mandingo

Who knew?

Who knew
the white sewage of judicial in-justice
Would be scavenged by foul multi-colored materialistic, military maggots
Sucking on rotting carcasses of demonic democratic disciples,
Fornicating with Christian Zionists in the dissolving red and blue skies?
Who knew
Hallowed hyprocrites, federated felons and pornographic police
Would ruthlessly rape the pissy venereal whore of Washington
Splitting her infected anus with legislation of mass destruction?
Who knew
The unpatriotic pyromaniacs of plunder,
the poisonous prostitutes of public trust would scream “terrorism”
and lynch a fellow felon with a rope of lies and ignorant mercenaries?
Who knew
The bastards of incestuous whores of murder the mothers of their grands,
That negros and revolutionaries would collude, conspire and rob revolutionary banks? That the gravy on the grits of freedom was the diarrhea of deceit
Browned in the swine gut of a Christian cannibal?
Who…who…who
Knew?







Let fools salute with folded hands
The colors of a foul, unfurled flag
And march to murder those of distant lands
With superior weapons, then laugh and brag.
Let others proclaim divine rites and hymns
From mosque or Christian steeple!
I seek the most universal of gems –
The freedom and power of the people.
They say the many must bow to the few
And that salty sorrow someday passes.
They say god belongs to the Russian Jew,
But I shall struggle, fight with the masses.


What dream of anima in perfumed blouse
May I plan and pray that she should prevail
When karmic Saturn haunts my twelfth house
When foul friends and enemies wish me in jail
In America?
What secret desires assault my hot heart
With malefic aspects benign and gray,
What wretched luminaries alight my chart
With marvelous misfortune day to day
In America?

FEAR

With a display of long ivory daggers shining,
An array of dry bones broken between its jaws
It unfurled its furry tail while reclining
With a white femur between its sharp claws
It told tales of bloody victories sweet
Of how it marched to conquer unhindered
Of enemies shattered, crushed beneath its feet
And without a fight he surrendered.
Preceded by fearful fables of its might
Told by the cowards who kneel and cow
Before this beast, so terrible and white,
He surrendered his sword and fell to bow.


An eve of spotted shadows
A perfect night to snipe
A moon pregnant with vengeance
Psychotic, wild and ripe
Frost is on the drooping leaves
Ice glows on the frozen mud
Smiling ghostly enemies
Longing for my blood
A world of war and cycles
Dreams so mute and dumb
Still waiting two thousand years
For the murdered Christ to come.


REFLECTIONS

Things fall apart along the famished road
Of this victimized invisible man;
The weight of the world is a heavy load;
I may never again see my native land.
I am no Macbeth, killing to be king;
Nor a Richard III with stately desires;
I am not an Edward, a crippled, ugly thing,
Nor a Caesar, hungry to rule empires.
I am more a curious Cyrano,
Fighting windmills and weaving worthless verse;
A gullible, black-faced Othello,
Tragic Afric hero, marked by a curse.
To fly to the heavens, my dream since birth;
I flew like Icarus, fell hard to earth.

It is not enough
That we have run this pale ghost
From our bleeding land
Its vaginal blood sucked dry by europe
His purse filled with our people’s blood
Sweat, sinews, souls
It is not enough
That he left running to London to Paris to Lisbon and Belgium
That he left burning all we built
That he left bitterly as our anger flowed like lava
To burn with swords and bullets even his demon-soul
Did not know
It is not enough
That he has fled
Abandoned his plantation of passive peons
Of praying smiling negroes whip-lashed and happy
Christianized and crippled
It is not enough
We must follow him
Track the trail of blue blood
The foul stench of greed to the European cave
Where he hides and plots his return
It is not enough
He must die,
Obdurate devil of the West
For he shall come again.


Women always take
Men always give
Men die wide awake
Women always live.

Close cropped hairy head lobotomized
And buried in mythological museums
Powerful prehistoric phalluses castrated
And erected as pistols upon Hellenic faggots
In Vatican Squares French Parks German Centers.
Her hysterectomy assures there shall be no more heroes
Crossing the Strait of Gibraltar
No more sacking the cities of Rome
Bouncing, running or dunking balls
No more kicking Caucasoid asses
And fucking Europe’s blondest and bluest nymphs.



I have felt the hatred choke the sweet air;
I have witnessed last screams and heard guns shoot;
I’ve seen “colored” and “white” signs here and there;
I’ve seen the bitter crop of strange, strange fruit.
I’ve heard white-robed men would lynch for sport
Taking body parts for prized souvenirs.
Black-robed klansmen fake justice in court
Sentencing death or a lifetime of years.


What majestic, noble music
Marches from the misery and mire
Groans from the ravaged huts and ghettoes
Swings from sanguine suffering and blue agony
of the powerless pitiful poor
magic music that marches barefoot
from the muddy Mekong to the misty Mississippi
beaten upon brown stretched leather
plucked from straightened negro hairs
blown from the bottoms of black buckets of emptied souls
up to celestial heavens where every ear hears and understands
how gentle like a friendly ghostly wind
how warm like fresh goat’s milk.

how empty of life is the laughter
of the rich
more dry and devoid of compassion
than the Mojave, the Gobi and Sahara
for deserts do sustain some life.






A cohiba
A glass of cognac
Spirits wrapped by the brown fingers of poverty
Aged by the opulent masters of oppression
Serving the capitalist carnivorous appetites
Of the veterans of vampire vandalism
Soft white smoke of a cohiba
The smooth sweet taste of cognac
Accentuating dominance, complementing successes
For the predators
Dulling pain, deluding dreams for the prey.
Long sterile phallus for fellatio
Strong stagnant piss for a golden shower
Sperm and semen, sedative and speed
A cohiba
A tall glass of cognac.