Poem of the Month: Democratic Womanism

DEMOCRATIC WOMANISM

Alice Walker

You ask me why I smile

 when you tell me you intend

 in the coming national elections

 to hold your nose

 and vote for the lesser of two evils.

 There are more than two evils out there,

 is one reason I smile.

 Another is that our old buddy Nostradamus

 comes to mind, with his fearful

 400 year old prophecy: that our world

 and theirs too

 (our "enemies" – lots of kids included there)

 will end (by nuclear nakba or holocaust)

 in our lifetime. Which makes the idea of elections

 and the billions of dollars wasted on them

 somewhat fatuous.

 A Southerner of Color,

 my people held the vote

 very dear

 while others, for centuries,

 merely appeared to play

 with it.

 One thing I can assure

 you of is this:

 I will never betray such pure hearts

 by voting for evil

 even if it were microscopic

 which, as you can see in any newscast

 no matter the slant,

 it is not.

 I want something else;

 a different system

 entirely.

 One not seen

 on this earth

 for thousands of years. If ever.

 Democratic Womanism.

 Notice how this word has "man" right in the middle of it?

 That’s one reason I like it. He is right there, front and center. But he is surrounded.

 I want to vote and work for a way of life

 that honors the feminine;

 a way that acknowledges

 the theft of the wisdom

 female and dark Mother leadership

 might have provided our spaceship

 all along.

 I am not thinking

 of a talking head

 kind of gal:

 happy to be mixing

 it up

 with the baddest

 bad boys

 on the planet

 her eyes a slit

 her mouth a zipper.

 No, I am speaking of true

 regime change.

 Where women rise

 to take their place

 en masse

 at the helm

 of earth’s frail and failing ship;

 where each thousand years

 of our silence

 is examined

 with regret,

 and the cruel manner in which our values

 of compassion and kindness

 have been ridiculed

 and suppressed

 brought to bear on the disaster

 of the present time.

 The past must be examined closely, I believe, before we can leave

 it there.

 I am thinking of Democratic, and, perhaps

 Socialist, Womanism.

 For who else knows so deeply

 how to share but Mothers

 and Grandmothers? Big sisters

 and Aunts?

 To love

 and adore

 both female and male?

 Not to mention those in between.

 To work at keeping

 the entire community

 fed, educated

 and safe?

 Democratic womanism,

 Democratic Socialist

 Womanism,

 would have as its icons

 such fierce warriors

 for good as

 Vandana Shiva

 Aung San Suu Kyi,

 Wangari Maathai

 Harriet Tubman

 Yoko Ono

 Frida Kahlo

 Angela Davis

 & Barbara Lee:

 With new ones always rising, wherever you look.

[This pretty much speaks for itself. Thanks to Meizhu Lui for submitting it.]

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Poem of the Week: jewels of thought (for gil scott-heron)

jewels of thought (for gil scott-heron)

Ras Moshe

to all the times i saw you/floating/passing through the streets
all bones and clothes
eyes ablaze
a lightening rod for new york elements
but quite ready to put some disrespectful child in check with wisdom at any given time/we still laugh with you
i actually saw your pain when you realized that this revolution is televised after all/dashikis and pharaoh's records collecting dust in the closets of the defeated
i hope you can see that some of us took heed to your etchings in red/the point of it all/made very clear/these earthly battles fought

but, what if there's only a battle here on earth and not in the star trek hereafter? ah yes..that's what you were saying after all.
we rode the no. 2 train together and that was like a lifetime of school for me/class in session/the end of concession
we be your graduates/in jazz splendor


 


[Ras Moshe is  a NYC-based jazz musician and composer. A good interview with him is here. If you are in the New York area his gigs at the Brecht Forum are well worth catching. This appreciation of Gil Scott-Heron is based on actual experience, and addresses in passing what the British Marxist historian Christopher Hill called "The Experience of Defeat." ]

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Poem of the Week: Pangaea

Pangaea

Sendolo Diamanah 

a queer black man is not
like asia
with lungs the size of the old union of soviets
and india lodged like a heart under ribs

despite Bahia’s longing to settle once more inside an African pelvis
(i am) not like south america
forced westward by magma

a queer black man is
from a time when the word continent could find no body on
which to be born and pronounced
no one male or female was there to record
what may have occurred
and so
our geography is not of interest
in the signing of treaties about carbon or sanctions against iran,
nor in the managing of economies that consume the future

in the age of men, agriculture, domesticated dogs, private property,
condoms, televised religion,
water bills
queer black men burn like everything else prehistoric
our love, unwieldy like a mastodon
survives under the pressure of a trillion tons of sediment
as something called crude
extracted only to power the technologies of other genders

we groan, as any planet does
when we remember how our skin was burst apart in order
to transform the earth into a map laid flat—that is to say,
into men and women

[It is difficult to describe how thrilled I am to be posting this poem.
First, because it is a fine and subtle creation in its own right. 
Second, because it is a sneak preview of  a collection of the writer's poetry and other works due to be published soon, under the title Difficult Miracles.
Best of all, by me, is the fact that Sendolo Diamanah is the newly elected general secretary of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization/Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad, the group I have been a proud member of since its founding in 1985.]

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Poem of the Week [UNTITLED]

[UNTITLED]

Chuc

On March 16, at dawn
Birds twittered and hens called out to their chicks,
Homes were burned to the ground and turned to cinders,
The buffalo and the cow lay cold and twisted in their death,
The people were all killed.
Only the pig survived, all alone and helpless,
Who's left alive to care and feed you, poor pig?

1968

[Chuc is or was a Vietnamese peasant living in My Lai village in Quang Ngai Province. He wrote this lament directly after the 1968 massacre of 500 Vietnamese, mostly women, children and infants by troops from Charlie Company of 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, Americal Division, US Army. I found it quoted in a study of the massacre entitled Four Hours In Mai Lai by Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim (Viking, 1992). A title and Chuc's family name were not provided.]

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Poem of the Week: Malcolm X, February 1965

MALCOLM X, FEBRUARY 1965

E. Ethelbert Miller

i will die this month. how

i do not know. still there

is much work to be done. i

am afraid not for myself but

for betty and the girls. some

nights i stay awake looking

out the window, a gun in my

hand. i know how cruel people

can be. i have known hatred and

blindness. there are brothers

waiting to do me harm. i will

die for them. i will love them

as only i can. may allah be my

witness.

 

 

from

First Light: New and Selected Poems (1994) 

 

[The last of this February's Poems of the Week, all memorials to Malcolm X. This one by E. Ethelbert Miller, puts the reader into Malcolm's head as his death looms, a different approach from that taken by the three previous poets.]

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Poem of the Week: X.

X.

Raphael Peterson 

X,
The letter representing the unknown,
You made this your name,
You put this in place of the name the slave trader gave you,
   
Little, you are no more, you are much too large, too powerful,
And your soul too unconquerable, you frighten them,
The White man, bedevil for,
They never know what's coming,
   
Always on edge, always uncomfortable,
When the unknown is near, undeniable leader of the black man and woman,
     
 Indomitable fighter of the white devil's oppression,
 And, finally, everlasting spirit of true good,
 You rose from under the ugly weight of hatred,
 Your body is dead,
 But your power is still vast, unmeasurable, unknown
 X.

1999

[An unusual tribute to Malcolm, in that, unlike the two posted earlier this month it was not written in the immediate aftermath of his death. The author, a 16-year-old high school student when he wrote it, first learned of Malcolm X from Spike Lee's film! He got it, though.]

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Poem of the Week: It Was a Funky Deal

IT WAS A FUNKY DEAL 

Etheridge Knight

It was a funky deal.
The only thing real was red,
Red blood around his red, red beard.

It was a funky deal.

In the beginning was the word,
And in the end the deed.
Judas did it to Jesus
For the same Herd. Same reason.
You made them mad, Malcolm. Same reason.

It was a funky deal.

You rocked too many boats, man.
Pulled too many coats, man.
Saw through the jive.
You reached the wild guys
Like me. You and Bird. (And that
Lil LeRoi cat.)

It was a funky deal.

1965

[This is the second PotW about Malcolm X this month, and there are two more slotted for the last two weeks of February. The late Etheridge Knight, acclaimed today as a great poet, wrote this in the days he discovered his poetic vocation, while doing a 10-25 year bid in the Indiana State Prison for a mugging. (He wound up serving eight.)]

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Poem of the Week: in memory of malcolm x

in memory of malcolm x

William F. Mack

we are listening
dead malcolm to
your lingering music

damnit they killed
you/by not listening /

so we burned making
flames as a
sacrifice to you/
dead malcolm/

your words are true
so we paint this
country black with
smoke/

brothers and sisters
brothers and sisters/
listen to your black
malcolm who calls
from another place
with black music
from black voices

oh my God Malcolm
rescue us . . . .
must we die to
listen

brothers and sisters
brothers and sisters/
spread his music
through the streets
we are listening
dead malcolm

damnit they
killed you.


winter 67

from Arts In Society, Vol 5, No 3,, 1968

[What with February being Black History Month and the 21st marking the anniversary of the assassination of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, or Malcolm X, as he is best known, all the Poems of the Week this month will be be related to Malcolm. In searching for and selecting them, I was reflecting on how massive an outpouring of poetry his murder provoked. Much had to do with the rising Black Arts movement which grew up as part of the overall Black Liberation Movement. But the same thing didn't happen when MLK was gunned down, on a guess because he came out of a movement marked above all else by singing. Not so Malcolm X. That in turn reminded me of this poem, bluntly speaking of "dead malcolm" and insisting on "his music" from start to finish.

I have been unable to track down anything about the author, William F. Mack, described as "a young black poet with interests in acting, writing and film-making. If you know anything further, please write something in the comments section.]

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Poem of the Week: Landlord

LANDLORD

Langston Hughes

Landlord, landlord,
My roof has sprung a leak.
Don't you 'member I told you about it
Way last week?

Landlord, landlord,
These steps is broken down.
When you come up yourself
It's a wonder you don't fall down.

Ten Bucks you say I owe you?
Ten Bucks you say is due?
Well, that's Ten Bucks more'n I'll pay you
Till you fix this house up new.

What? You gonna get eviction orders?
You gonna cut off my heat?
You gonna take my furniture and
Throw it in the street?

Um-huh! You talking high and mighty.
Talk on-till you get through.
You ain't gonna be able to say a word
If I land my fist on you.

Police! Police!
Come and get this man!
He's trying to ruin the government
And overturn the land!

Copper's whistle!
Patrol bell!
Arrest.
Precinct Station.
Iron cell.
Headlines in press:
Man Threatens landlord
Tenant Held Bail
Judge Gives Negro 90 Days In County Jail! 

[Poem of the Week is back. I fell off toward the end of 2012. I'll try to come correct this year. So much of Langston Hughes is well known that I was steered to this one by the fact that three people I know have been without heat recently. And it's cold out.]

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Poem of the Week: A Whole Wheat Poem [For Peggy]

A WHOLE WHEAT POEM [FOR PEGGY]

Gary Allan Kizer

When a friend bakes you bread,
You eat their labor, which requires respect and teeth.
Eating the bread is your own labor, exchanged fairly
And no longer a commodity.

I cannot bake bread in return, I cook cans
On a lightbulb and they would be cold in the mail.
But I can write poems for bread bakers
And give them away free.

The bread you buy in the store is sour,
Too many hands have passed it toward the market.
You can no longer taste the bread bakers love,
All you can taste are sadness, routine.

Next time you go shopping, ask the man for
Bread with love in it, the free bread.
Free bread? With love in it? We're fresh out,
He'll answer, if he answers at all.

If our work tastes bad, think of those
Who own it, who buy it for enough to eat
Stale bread with. Think of those who stamp
A price on things we should do for each other.

When a friend bakes you bread, it in no way helps
Build your body strong in twelve different ways,
Or keep phony monks in business. It quietly asks you
To eat the revolution without rat shit mixed in.


from Let A Single Flower Blossom
(the greenfield review press, 1977)

[This poem touches several issues, especially the question of labor done for love as opposed to labor done for hire, one also addressed by Morris Rosenfeld in an earlier PotW, "For Hire."

Gary Allan Kizer wrote several superb poems. This chapbook is out of print, unfortunately. To give you a better idea of where he's coming from, here's part of his introduction to the chapbook, as it has more information than is readily findable on the Internet:

I was born on a farm outside of Salamanca, New York. Soon after, my parents moved to Buffalo and went to work in the munitions industry toward the end of WWII. My dad split when I was five and I was raised in Buffalo by my mother and two older sisters. Following that came public school, young romance, juvenile delinquency and my first experience as a ward of the State. After 13 months of that, I cam home at 16, forged a birth certificate for 18 and went into the merchant marine. I also met a good woman. We lived common-law for 6 years and raised 5 children. I worked in the steel plants and as a roofer during the last 3 years I spent with my family. Then a man died and i went to Attica State Prison with a life sentence on my back. That was 9 years and 5 different prisons ago. I began reading Karl Marx during my third year in prison. About the same time, the State judged me as being incapable of rehabilitation. I hold the same opinion of the State. Read the book and see who's right.]

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