194 Racism and discrimination poems

After Martin Luther King Jr. The day they killed Martin we could not return to New York City our visiting senior class stuck in Huntsville streets blazed with suffering in that small Alabama town in the dull shroud of morning the whole world went crazy devouring whatever light that lit our half-cracked windows.

I don’t mind the human race. I’ve got pretty used to them In these past twenty-five years. I don’t mind if they sit next To me on streetcars, or eat In the same restaurants, if It’s not at the same table. However, I don’t approve Of a woman I respect Dancing with one of them. I’ve Tried asking them to my home Without success. I shouldn’t Care to see my own sister Marry one. Even if she Loved him, think of the children. Their art is interesting, But certainly barbarous. I’m sure, if given a chance, They’d kill us all in our beds. And you must admit, they smell.

And that other time after we got carjacked in L.A. on the way home from Spago. Like a scene outta that movie I don’t like about those hoes I don’t love. It is hard out there for a pimp. A white woman and her brown babies /brown babies in a fancy car with unlocked doors. Most everything is semi-automatic. Two black men hopped into the front row seats and started waving guns like pom-poms.We made it! We made it! Right against the rim of her porcelain brain. All they wanted was the car and the color. The car was white like her. She saved our lives. Then the penguins came over with a book full of photos of black men, so serious like kings in their mugging, and they asked us to pick which two it was. I was five but I could feel the shrugged evil of it so true and impossible to touch as I pretended to recognize us. We closed our eyes and pointed at you, and said,I don’t know that man. Je ne connais pas cet homme. We saved our lives. We tugged at the flashlight looking for bruises and found you awake, and found a way.

Do not embrace your mind’s new negro friend Or embarrass the blackballed jew with memberships: There must be years of atonement first, and even then You may still be the blundering raconteur With the wrong story, and they may still be free. If you are with them, if even mind is friend, There will be plenty to do: give the liars lessons Who have heard no rumors of truth for a long time But have whatever they hear on good authority, Whether it concerns Chinese women or the arts. Expose the patrons, some of whose best friends Are brothers, and who are never now anonymous: What kind of credit do they expect for that, Ask them, or better, ask their protested brothers, The grateful tenants who can’t get their curtsies right. Finally the injured, who think they have no friend, Who have been convinced by the repeated names That they are jews or negroes or some dark thing: They must be courted with the lover’s touch And as guiltily as if yourself had turned them inward. If you complete this program, you will have friends From all the rich races of your human blood: Meantime, engage in the often friendless struggle. A long war, a pygmy war in ways, But island by island we must go across.

uuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuu   uuu   ray light morning fire lynch yet uuuuuuu, yester-pain in dreams comes again. race-pain, people our people our people everywhere . . . yeh . . . uuuuu, yeh uuuuu. yeh our people yes people every people most people uuuuuu, yeh uuuuu, most people in pain yester-pain, and pain today (Screams) ooowow!      ooowow! It must be the devil (jumps up like a claw stuck him) oooo wow! oooowow! (screams) It must be the devil It must be the devil it must be the devil (shakes like evangelical sanctify shakes tambourine like evangelical sanctify in heat) ooowow! ooowow! yeh, devil, yeh, devil ooowow! Must be the devil must be the devil (waves plate like collection) mus is mus is mus is mus is be the devil, cain be rockefeller (eyes roll up batting, and jumping all the way around to face the other direction) caint be him, no lawd aint be dupont, no lawd, cain be, no lawd, no way noway, naw saw, no way jose — cain be them rich folks theys good to us theys good to us theys good to us theys good to us theys good to us, i know, the massa tolt me so, i seed it on channel 7, i seed it on channel 9 i seed it on channel 4 and 2 and 5. Rich folks good to us poor folks aint shit, hallelujah, hallelujah, ooowow! oowow! must be the devil, going to heaven after i die, after we die everything going to be different, after we die we aint gon be hungry, ain gon be pain, ain gon be sufferin wont go thru this again, after we die, after we die owooo! owowoooo! after we die, its all gonna be good, have all the money we need after we die, have all the food we need after we die have a nice house like the rich folks, after we die, after we die, after we die, we can live like rev ike, after we die, hallelujah, hallelujah, must be the devil, it ain capitalism, it aint capitalism, it aint capitalism, naw it aint that, jimmy carter wdnt lie, “lifes unfair” but it aint capitalism must be the devil, owow! it ain the police, jimmy carter wdnt lie, you know rosalynn wdnt not lillian, his drunken racist brother aint no reflection on jimmy, must be the devil got in im, i tell you, the devil killed malcolm and dr king too, even killed both kennedies, and pablo neruda and overthrew allende’s govt. killed lumumba, and is negotiating with step and fetchit, sleep n eat and birmingham, over there in “Rhodesia”, goin’ under the name ian smith, must be the devil, caint be vortser, caint be apartheid, caint be imperialism, jimmy carter wdnt lie, didnt you hear him say in his state of the union message, i swear on rosalynn’s face-lifted catatonia, i wdnt lie nixon lied, haldeman lied, dean lied, hoover lied hoover sucked (dicks) too but jimmy dont, jimmy wdnt jimmy aint lying, must be the devil, put yr money on the plate, must be the devil, in heaven we’all all be straight cain be rockefeller, he gave amos pootbootie a scholarship to Behavior Modification Univ, and Genevieve Almoswhite works for his foundation Must be niggers! Cain be Mellon, he gave Winky Suckass, a fellowship in his bank put him in charge of closing out mortgages in the lowlife Pittsburgh Hill nigger section, caint be him. (Goes on babbling, and wailing, jerking in pathocrazy grin stupor) Yessuh, yessuh, yessuh, yessuh, yessuh, yes- suh, yessuh, yessuh, yessuh, yessuh, put yr money in the plate, dont be late, dont have to wait, you gonna be in heaven after you die, you gon get all you need once you gone, yessuh, i heard it on thejeffersons, i heard it on therookies, I swallowed it whole on roots: wasn’t it nice slavery was so cool and all you had to do was wear derbies and vests and train chickens and buy your way free if you had a mind to, must be the devil, wasnt no white folks, lazy niggers chained theyselves and threw they own black asses in the bottom of the boats, [(well now that you mention it King Assblackuwasi helped throw yr ass in the bottom of the boat, yo mamma, wife, and you never seed em no more)] must a been the devil, gimme your money put your money on this plate, heaven be here soon, just got to die, just got to stop living, close yr eyes stop breathin and bammm-O heaven be here, you have all a what you need, Bam-O all a sudden, heaven be here, you have all you need, that assembly line you work on will dissolve in thin air owowoo! owowoo! Just gotta die just gotta die, this ol world aint nuthin, must be the devil got you thinkin so, it cain be rockefeller, it cain be mor- gan, it caint be capitalism it caint be national oppression owow! No Way! Now go back to work and cool it, go back to work and lay back, just a little while longer till you pass its all gonna be alright once you gone. gimme that last bitta silver you got stashed there sister, gimme that dust now broth- er man, itll be ok on the other side, yo soul be clean be washed pure white. yes. yes. yes. owow. now go back to work, go to sleep, yes, go to sleep, go back to work, yes owow. owow. uuuuuuuuuu, uuuuuuuuuuu, uuuuuuuuuuu. yes, uuuuuuu. yes. uuuuuuuuuu. a men.

Debridement Black men are oaks cut down. Congressional Medal of Honor Society United States of America chartered by Congress, August 14, 1958; this certifies that STAC John Henry Louis is a member of this society. “Don’t ask me anything about the medal. I don’t even know how I won it.” Debridement: The cutting away of dead or contaminated tissue from a wound to prevent infection. America: love it or give it back. Corktown Groceries ring in my intestines: grits aint groceries eggs aint poultry Mona Lisa was a man:

I The weight of my son at the emergency room for an eye injury, sack of flour, sack of salt, dusty bag of bones collapsed after all those tears. Why does Turner come to mind, those shackled ankles, those drowning slaves? II And horizons. Each measure, each cleaving of flesh to soil, breath to sentence, body toward earth. The shepherd watches his flock cross the stream; nymphs bathe and flirt and sun themselves on rocks. Water against ankles, pebbles beneath feet. III An old woman sits next to us, and every time she shifts in her seat, I can hear her bones click. Dying, her faulty architecture like an old radiator, cooling engine. IV The burden of seeing, explosive sunlight, the swirling painted water pouring over Turner’s slaves. My son sleeps. Have you ever walked out into the sticky heat of a Memphis night and asked for gunshots to stop for just one hot hour? O heap of body, heap of bones, heap of dreams, heap of moans. V A story with a happy ending and no answers, slight corneal scratch healed with anti-bacterial rinse, the eyeball’s protective pocket cupping the universe like a calm inlet offering a foundering ship protection from rough seas. You tell me: What washes blood from a balcony? I’m listening. I’m saying please. The sun rises quickly. And so do sea monsters.

I. T HEIR B ASIC S AVAGERY Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room, Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable, Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, Pounded on the table, Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom, Hard as they were able, Boom, boom, B OOM , With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom, Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, B OOM . T HEN I had religion, T HEN I had a vision. I could not turn from their revel in derision. T HEN I SAW THE C ONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK , C UTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK. Then along that riverbank A thousand miles Tattooed cannibals danced in files; Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong. And “B LOOD ” screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors, “B LOOD ” screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors, “Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle, Harry the uplands, Steal all the cattle, Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle, Bing. Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, B OOM ,” A roaring, epic, rag-time tune From the mouth of the Congo To the Mountains of the Moon. Death is an Elephant, Torch-eyed and horrible, Foam-flanked and terrible. B OOM , steal the pygmies, B OOM , kill the Arabs, B OOM , kill the white men, H OO , H OO , H OO . Listen to the yell of Leopold’s ghost Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host. Hear how the demons chuckle and yell Cutting his hands off, down in Hell. Listen to the creepy proclamation, Blown through the lairs of the forest-nation, Blown past the white-ants’ hill of clay, Blown past the marsh where the butterflies play: — “Be careful what you do, Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo, And all of the other Gods of the Congo, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.” II. T HEIR I RREPRESSIBLE H IGH S PIRITS Wild crap-shooters with a whoop and a call Danced the juba in their gambling-hall And laughed fit to kill, and shook the town, And guyed the policemen and laughed them down With a boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, B OOM . T HEN I SAW THE C ONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK , C UTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK. A negro fairyland swung into view, A minstrel river Where dreams come true. The ebony palace soared on high Through the blossoming trees to the evening sky. The inlaid porches and casements shone With gold and ivory and elephant-bone. And the black crowd laughed till their sides were sore At the baboon butler in the agate door, And the well-known tunes of the parrot band That trilled on the bushes of that magic land. A troupe of skull-faced witch-men came Through the agate doorway in suits of flame, Yea, long-tailed coats with a gold-leaf crust And hats that were covered with diamond-dust. And the crowd in the court gave a whoop and a call And danced the juba from wall to wall. But the witch-men suddenly stilled the throng With a stern cold glare, and a stern old song: — “Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.” ... Just then from the doorway, as fat as shotes, Came the cake-walk princes in their long red coats, Canes with a brilliant lacquer shine, And tall silk hats that were red as wine. And they pranced with their butterfly partners there, Coal-black maidens with pearls in their hair, Knee-skirts trimmed with the jassamine sweet, And bells on their ankles and little black-feet. And the couples railed at the chant and the frown Of the witch-men lean, and laughed them down. (O rare was the revel, and well worth while That made those glowering witch-men smile.) The cake-walk royalty then began To walk for a cake that was tall as a man To the tune of “Boomlay, boomlay, B OOM ,” While the witch-men laughed, with a sinister air, And sang with the scalawags prancing there: — “Walk with care, walk with care, Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo, And all the other Gods of the Congo, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you. Beware, beware, walk with care, Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom. Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom. Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom. Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, B OOM .” Oh rare was the revel, and well worth while That made those glowering witch-men smile. III. T HE H OPE OF THEIR R ELIGION A good old negro in the slums of the town Preached at a sister for her velvet gown. Howled at a brother for his low-down ways, His prowling, guzzling, sneak-thief days. Beat on the Bible till he wore it out Starting the jubilee revival shout. And some had visions, as they stood on chairs, And sang of Jacob, and the golden stairs, And they all repented, a thousand strong From their stupor and savagery and sin and wrong And slammed with their hymn books till they shook the room With “glory, glory, glory,” And “Boom, boom, B OOM .” T HEN I SAW THE C ONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK , C UTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK. And the gray sky opened like a new-rent veil And showed the Apostles with their coats of mail. In bright white steel they were seated round And their fire-eyes watched where the Congo wound. And the twelve Apostles, from their thrones on high Thrilled all the forest with their heavenly cry: — “Mumbo-Jumbo will die in the jungle; Never again will he hoo-doo you, Never again will he hoo-doo you.” Then along that river, a thousand miles The vine-snared trees fell down in files. Pioneer angels cleared the way For a Congo paradise, for babes at play, For sacred capitals, for temples clean. Gone were the skull-faced witch-men lean. There, where the wild ghost-gods had wailed A million boats of the angels sailed With oars of silver, and prows of blue And silken pennants that the sun shone through. ’Twas a land transfigured, ’twas a new creation. Oh, a singing wind swept the negro nation And on through the backwoods clearing flew: — “Mumbo-Jumbo is dead in the jungle. Never again will he hoo-doo you. Never again will he hoo-doo you. Redeemed were the forests, the beasts and the men, And only the vulture dared again By the far, lone mountains of the moon To cry, in the silence, the Congo tune:— “Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, “Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you. Mumbo ... Jumbo ... will ... hoo-doo ... you.”

I. T HEIR B ASIC S AVAGERY Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room, Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable, Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, Pounded on the table, Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom, Hard as they were able, Boom, boom, B OOM , With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom, Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, B OOM . T HEN I had religion, T HEN I had a vision. I could not turn from their revel in derision. T HEN I SAW THE C ONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK , C UTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK. Then along that riverbank A thousand miles Tattooed cannibals danced in files; Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong. And “B LOOD ” screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors, “B LOOD ” screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors, “Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle, Harry the uplands, Steal all the cattle, Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle, Bing. Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, B OOM ,” A roaring, epic, rag-time tune From the mouth of the Congo To the Mountains of the Moon. Death is an Elephant, Torch-eyed and horrible, Foam-flanked and terrible. B OOM , steal the pygmies, B OOM , kill the Arabs, B OOM , kill the white men, H OO , H OO , H OO . Listen to the yell of Leopold’s ghost Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host. Hear how the demons chuckle and yell Cutting his hands off, down in Hell. Listen to the creepy proclamation, Blown through the lairs of the forest-nation, Blown past the white-ants’ hill of clay, Blown past the marsh where the butterflies play: — “Be careful what you do, Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo, And all of the other Gods of the Congo, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.”

When you come, bring your brown- ness so we can be sure to please the funders. Will you check this box; we’re applying for a grant. Do you have any poems that speak to troubled teens? Bilingual is best. Would you like to come to dinner with the patrons and sip Patrón? Will you tell us the stories that make us uncomfortable, but not complicit? Don’t read the one where you are just like us. Born to a green house, garden, don’t tell us how you picked tomatoes and ate them in the dirt watching vultures pick apart another bird’s bones in the road. Tell us the one about your father stealing hubcaps after a colleague said that’s what his kind did. Tell us how he came to the meeting wearing a poncho and tried to sell the man his hubcaps back. Don’t mention your father was a teacher, spoke English, loved making beer, loved baseball, tell us again about the poncho, the hubcaps, how he stole them, how he did the thing he was trying to prove he didn’t do.