194 Racism and discrimination poems

There is a coal-black Angel With a thick Afric lip, And he dwells (like the hunted and harried) In a swamp where the green frogs dip. But his face is against a City Which is over a bay of the sea, And he breathes with a breath that is blastment, And dooms by a far decree. By night there is fear in the City, Through the darkness a star soareth on; There’s a scream that screams up to the zenith, Then the poise of a meteor lone— Lighting far the pale fright of the faces, And downward the coming is seen; Then the rush, and the burst, and the havoc, And wails and shrieks between. It comes like the thief in the gloaming; It comes, and none may foretell The place of the coming—the glaring; They live in a sleepless spell That wizens, and withers, and whitens; It ages the young, and the bloom Of the maiden is ashes of roses— The Swamp Angel broods in his gloom. Swift is his messengers’ going, But slowly he saps their halls, As if by delay deluding. They move from their crumbling walls Farther and farther away; But the Angel sends after and after, By night with the flame of his ray— By night with the voice of his screaming— Sends after them, stone by stone, And farther walls fall, farther portals, And weed follows weed through the Town. Is this the proud City? the scorner Which never would yield the ground? Which mocked at the coal-black Angel? The cup of despair goes round. Vainly she calls upon Michael (The white man’s seraph was he), For Michael has fled from his tower To the Angel over the sea. Who weeps for the woeful City Let him weep for our guilty kind; Who joys at her wild despairing— Christ, the Forgiver, convert his mind.

they move in swift on the Swift Plants in six states & sift through the faces to separate the dark from the light like meat & seat them in the back of vans packed tight like the product they pack & who's to pick up the slack the black & white can't cut it so the beef stacks sell single to feed the pack       the flock who block passages & clog the cogs of the machine       the process not so swift to give & grant a wish of a place       a stake in the land handling the steaks for the rest to take in       to sate the mouths of the stock who have stock in the business of beef & beef with the brown who ground them

There are black guards slamming cell gates on black men, And brown guards saying hello to brown men with numbers on their backs, And white guards laughing with white cons, and red guards, few, say nothing to red inmates as they walk by to chow and cells. There you have it, the little antpile . . . convicts marching in straight lines, guards flying on badged wings, permits to sting, to glut themselves at the cost of secluding themselves from their people . . Turning off their minds like watertaps wrapped in gunnysacks that insulate the pipes carrying the pale weak water to their hearts. It gets bad when you see these same guards carrying buckets of blood out of cells, see them puking at the smell, the people, their own people slashing their wrists, hanging themselves with belts from light outlets; it gets bad to see them clean up the mess, carry the blue cold body out under sheets, and then retake their places in guard cages, watching their people maul and mangle themselves, And over this blood-rutted land, the sun shines, the guards talk of horses and guns, go to the store and buy new boots, and the longer they work here the more powerful they become, taking on the presence of some ancient mummy, down in the dungeons of prison, a mummy that will not listen, but has a strange power in this dark world, to be so utterly disgusting in ignorance, and yet so proudly command so many men. . . . And the convicts themselves, at the mummy’s feet, blood-splattered leather, at this one’s feet, they become cobras sucking life out of their brothers, they fight for rings and money and drugs, in this pit of pain their teeth bare fangs, to fight for what morsels they can. . . . And the other convicts, guilty of nothing but their born color, guilty of being innocent, they slowly turn to dust in the nightly winds here, flying in the wind back to their farms and cities. From the gash in their hearts, sand flies up spraying over houses and through trees, look at the sand blow over this deserted place, you are looking at them.

1 I always wonder what they think the niggers are doing while they, the pink and alabaster pragmatists, are containing Russia and defining and re-defining and re-aligning China, nobly restraining themselves, meanwhile, from blowing up that earth which they have already blasphemed into dung: the gentle, wide-eyed, cheerful ladies, and their men, nostalgic for the noble cause of Vietnam, nostalgic for noble causes, aching, nobly, to wade through the blood of savages— ah—! Uncas shall never leave the reservation, except to purchase whisky at the State Liquor Store. The Panama Canal shall remain forever locked: there is a way around every treaty. We will turn the tides of the restless Caribbean, the sun will rise, and set on our hotel balconies as we see fit. The natives will have nothing to complain about, indeed, they will begin to be grateful, will be better off than ever before. They will learn to defer gratification and save up for things, like we do. Oh, yes. They will. We have only to make an offer they cannot refuse. This flag has been planted on the moon: it will be interesting to see what steps the moon will take to be revenged for this quite breathtaking presumption. This people masturbate in winding sheets. They have hacked their children to pieces. They have never honoured a single treaty made with anyone, anywhere. The walls of their cities are as foul as their children. No wonder their children come at them with knives. Mad Charlie man's son was one of their children, had got his shit together by the time he left kindergarten, and, as for Patty, heiress of all the ages, she had the greatest vacation of any heiress, anywhere: Golly-gee, whillikens, Mom, real guns! and they come with a real big, black funky stud, too: oh, Ma! he's making eyes at me! Oh, noble Duke Wayne, be careful in them happy hunting grounds. They say the only good Indian is a dead Indian, by what I say is, you can't be too careful, you hear? Oh, towering Ronnie Reagan, wise and resigned lover of redwoods, deeply beloved, winning man-child of the yearning Republic from diaper to football field to Warner Brothers sound-stages, be thou our grinning, gently phallic, Big Boy of all the ages! Salt peanuts, salt peanuts, for dear hearts and gentle people, and cheerful, shining, simple Uncle Sam! Nigger, read this and run! Now, if you can't read, run anyhow! From Manifest Destiny (Cortez, and all his men silent upon a peak in Darien) to A Decent Interval, and the chopper rises above Saigon, abandoning the noble cause and the people we have made ignoble and whom we leave there, now, to die, one moves, With All Deliberate Speed, to the South China Sea, and beyond, where millions of new niggers await glad tidings! No, said the Great Man's Lady, I'm against abortion, I always feel that's killing somebody. Well, what about capital punishment? I think the death penalty helps. That's right. Up to our ass in niggers on Death Row. Oh, Susanna, don't you cry for me! 2 Well, I guess what the niggers is supposed to be doing is putting themselves in the path of that old sweet chariot and have it swing down and carry us home. That would help, as they say, and they got ways of sort of nudging the chariot. They still got influence with Wind and Water, though they in for some surprises with Cloud and Fire. My days are not their days. My ways are not their ways. I would not think of them, one way or the other, did not they so grotesquely block the view between me and my brother. And, so, I always wonder: can blindness be desired? Then, what must the blinded eyes have seen to wish to see no more! For, I have seen, in the eyes regarding me, or regarding my brother, have seen, deep in the farthest valley of the eye, have seen a flame leap up, then flicker and go out, have seen a veil come down, leaving myself, and the other, alone in that cave which every soul remembers, and out of which, desperately afraid, I turn, turn, stagger, stumble out, into the healing air, fall flat on the healing ground, singing praises, counselling my heart, my soul, to praise. What is it that this people cannot forget? Surely, they cannot be deluded as to imagine that their crimes are original? There is nothing in the least original about the fiery tongs to the eyeballs, the sex torn from the socket, the infant ripped from the womb, the brains dashed out against rock, nothing original about Judas, or Peter, or you or me: nothing: we are liars and cowards all, or nearly all, or nearly all the time: for we also ride the lightning, answer the thunder, penetrate whirlwinds, curl up on the floor of the sun, and pick our teeth with thunderbolts. Then, perhaps they imagine that their crimes are not crimes? Perhaps. Perhaps that is why they cannot repent, why there is no possibility of repentance. Manifest Destiny is a hymn to madness, feeding on itself, ending (when it ends) in madness: the action is blindness and pain, pain bringing a torpor so deep that every act is willed, is desperately forced, is willed to be a blow: the hand becomes a fist, the prick becomes a club, the womb a dangerous swamp, the hope, and fear, of love is acid in the marrow of the bone. No, their fire is not quenched, nor can be: the oil feeding the flames being the unadmitted terror of the wrath of God. Yes. But let us put it in another, less theological way: though theology has absolutely nothing to do with what I am trying to say. But the moment God is mentioned theology is summoned to buttress or demolish belief: an exercise which renders belief irrelevant and adds to the despair of Fifth Avenue on any afternoon, the people moving, homeless, through the city, praying to find sanctuary before the sky and the towers come tumbling down, before the earth opens, as it does in Superman. They know that no one will appear to turn back time, they know it, just as they know that the earth has opened before and will open again, just as they know that their empire is falling, is doomed, nothing can hold it up, nothing. We are not talking about belief. 3 I wonder how they think the niggers made, make it, how come the niggers are still here. But, then, again, I don't think they dare to think of that: no: I'm fairly certain they don't think of that at all. Lord, I with the alabaster lady of the house, with Beulah. Beulah about sixty, built in four-square, biceps like Mohammed Ali, she at the stove, fixing biscuits, scrambling eggs and bacon, fixing coffee, pouring juice, and the lady of the house, she say, she don't know how she'd get along without Beulah and Beulah just silently grunts, I reckon you don't, and keeps on keeping on and the lady of the house say She's just like one of the family, and Beulah turns, gives me a look, sucks her teeth and rolls her eyes in the direction of the lady's back, and keeps on keeping on. While they are containing Russia and entering onto the quicksand of China and patronizing Africa, and calculating the Caribbean plunder, and the South China Sea booty, the niggers are aware that no one has discussed anything at all with the niggers. Well. Niggers don't own nothing, got no flag, even our names are hand-me-downs and you don't change that by calling yourself X: sometimes that just makes it worse, like obliterating the path that leads back to whence you came, and to where you can begin. And, anyway, none of this changes the reality, which is, for example, that I do not want my son to die in Guantanamo, or anywhere else, for that matter, serving the Stars and Stripes. (I've seen some stars. I got some stripes.) Neither (incidentally) has anyone discussed the Bomb with the niggers: the incoherent feeling is, the less the nigger knows about the Bomb, the better: the lady of the house smiles nervously in your direction as though she had just been overheard discussing family, or sexual secrets, and changes the subject to Education, or Full Employment, or the Welfare rolls, the smile saying,Don't be dismayed. We know how you feel. You can trust us. Yeah. I would like to believe you. But we are not talking about belief. 4 The sons of greed, the heirs of plunder, are approaching the end of their journey: it is amazing that they approach without wonder, as though they have, themselves, become that scorched and blasphemed earth, the stricken buffalo, the slaughtered tribes, the endless, virgin, bloodsoaked plain, the famine, the silence, the children's eyes, murder masquerading as salvation, seducing every democratic eye, the mouths of truth and anguish choked with cotton, rape delirious with the fragrance of magnolia, the hacking of the fruit of their loins to pieces, hey! the tar-baby sons and nephews, the high-yaller nieces, and Tom's black prick hacked off to rustle in crinoline, to hang, heaviest of heirlooms, between the pink and alabaster breasts of the Great Man's Lady, or worked into the sash at the waist of the high-yaller Creole bitch, or niece, a chunk of shining brown-black satin, staring, staring, like the single eye of God: creation yearns to re-create a time when we were able to recognize a crime. Alas, my stricken kinsmen, the party is over: there have never been any white people, anywhere: the trick was accomplished with mirrors— look: where is your image now? where your inheritance, on what rock stands this pride? Oh, I counsel you, leave History alone. She is exhausted, sitting, staring into her dressing-room mirror, and wondering what rabbit, now, to pull out of what hat, and seriously considering retirement, even though she knows her public dare not let her go. She must change. Yes. History must change. A slow, syncopated relentless music begins suggesting her re-entry, transformed, virginal as she was, in the Beginning, untouched, as the Word was spoken, before the rape which debased her to be the whore of multitudes, or, as one might say, before she became the Star, whose name, above our title, carries the Show, making History the patsy, responsible for every flubbed line, every missed cue, responsible for the life and death, of all bright illusions and dark delusions, Lord, History is weary of her unspeakable liaison with Time, for Time and History have never seen eye to eye: Time laughs at History and time and time and time again Time traps History in a lie. But we always, somehow, managed to roar History back onstage to take another bow, to justify, to sanctify the journey until now. Time warned us to ask for our money back, and disagreed with History as concerns colours white and black. Not only do we come from further back, but the light of the Sun marries all colours as one. Kinsmen, I have seen you betray your Saviour (it is you who call Him Saviour) so many times, and I have spoken to Him about you, behind your back. Quite a lot has been going on behind your back, and, if your phone has not yet been disconnected, it will soon begin to ring: informing you, for example, that a whole generation, in Africa, is about to die, and a new generation is about to rise, and will not need your bribes, or your persuasions, any more: not your morality. No plundered gold— Ah! Kinsmen, if I could make you see the crime is not what you have done to me! It is you who are blind, you, bowed down with chains, you, whose children mock you, and seek another master, you, who cannot look man or woman or child in the eye, whose sleep is blank with terror, for whom love died long ago, somewhere between the airport and the safe-deposit box, the buying and selling of rising or falling stocks, you, who miss Zanzibar and Madagascar and Kilimanjaro and lions and tigers and elephants and zebras and flying fish and crocodiles and alligators and leopards and crashing waterfalls and endless rivers, flowers fresher than Eden, silence sweeter than the grace of God, passion at every turning, throbbing in the bush, thicker, oh, than honey in the hive, dripping dripping opening, welcoming, aching from toe to bottom to spine, sweet heaven on the line to last forever, yes, but, now, rejoicing ends, man, a price remains to pay, your innocence costs too much and we can't carry you on our books or our backs, any longer: baby, find another Eden, another apple tree, somewhere, if you can, and find some other natives, somewhere else, to listen to you bellow till you come, just like a man, but we don't need you, are sick of being a fantasy to feed you, and of being the principal accomplice to your crime: for, it is your crime, now, the cross to which you cling, your Alpha and Omega for everything. Well (others have told you) your clown's grown weary, the puppet master is bored speechless with this monotonous disaster, and is long gone, does not belong to you, any more than my woman, or my child, ever belonged to you. During this long travail our ancestors spoke to us, and we listened, and we tried to make you hear life in our song but now it matters not at all to me whether you know what I am talking about—or not: I know why we are not blinded by your brightness, are able to see you, who cannot see us. I know why we are still here. Godspeed. The niggers are calculating, from day to day, life everlasting, and wish you well: but decline to imitate the Son of the Morning, and rule in Hell.

I imagine each enunciation, each syllable pronounced—Mississippi—makes a noose cinch somewhere, rope reduced to arousal, tightening. The pull, the hard-learned feel of vertebrae supple within a neck's column, and marrow's juice sucked clean until what remains are flutes of bone, a wind section of rubble. Whenever I meet Mississippi in a dream, it is always a landfill of labored breaths or a grand mammal crippled in morass. What did you ever want of us? I ask. It beams, The same you want for me—the subtle heft of razors beneath the magnolia tongue's lash.

State of Alabama v. Robert E. Chambliss, 1977 When they come filling the yard with their overheard, broke-glass catastrophes of voice, overcrowded party line, he lets the screen door clap to see them plume the settle back to the fence, aftershocks of crowd and wail. When they come he says again he was home at breakfast radio preacher doing love thy neighbor and then the bomb, just ask the wife. The silence in the TV's cathode glow slowly fills with questions as starlings shutter light then weigh the lines, voices tangled in their claws. • They had him buying dynamite, a case he says he passed along, then the other's car behind the church, four men dome-lit in early dark. Now all they have is years of brag and noise and alibi, a quiet in which the trail's confused. At times it seemed he wasn't real, that he was no one, a story everyone had heard, just not the end, that he was different men, one arm with a bomb, another making calls miles outside of town, a fog, an exhalation, scattering when seen.

White people leave the express at 96th Street, collectively, like pigeons from a live wire or hope from the hearts of Harlem. And I’m one of them, although my lover sleeps two stops north between Malcolm X and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevards, wishing my ass were cupped inside her knees and belly, wishing this in a dream thick with inequalities. I live on Riverside Drive. My face helped get me here. I was ruddy with anticipation the day I interviewed for the rooms near the park with its snow-covered maples. I was full of undisguised hope as I strolled along the river, believing I belonged there, that my people inherited this wonderland unequivocally, as if they deserved it. My lover buys twinkies from the Arabs, bootleg tapes on ‘25 th , and carries a blade in her back pocket although her hands are the gentlest I’ve known. She ignores the piss smells on the corner, the sirens at 4 A.M., the men whose brains have dissolved in rum. And tries to trust a white woman who sleeps near the trees of Riverside. When we go out together, we avoid expensive cafés on Columbus Avenue, jaunts to the Upper East Side. Harlem eyes us suspiciously or with contempt beneath half-closed lids. We have friends there, hidden in the ruins like gold, who accept us. When it snows, we walk boldly anywhere, as if the snow were a protection, or a death.

For Kelly Morgan ever do is die Her brother was thrown out the window by Black men he was drinking with His cousin was stabbed near the store She got shot Nobody knows where he ended up She hasn’t heard from her brother in 17 years He killed himself when his wife left Her son was hit by a car of drunk whites Her uncle went off a cliff in the dark Her grandmother died in the hospital because they gave her the wrong medicine Her baby was born addicted & died My brother died as a baby Her mother died of an overdose She doesn’t know how her mother died but no one has seen her for a long time She was put in foster care because her parents died in a car wreck I close my eyes & keep praying sometimes there’s nothing to do but brush back the tears & keep on folding the laundry

May 4, 1959 for Mack Charles Parker, lynched near Poplarville, Mississippi, April 24, 1959, recovered from the Pearl River, May 4, 1959

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations Sometimes I think Sometimes I think In a 2001 interview, Elizabeth Alexander noted, “As for the ‘banner headline’, ‘Race’, I always loved the way that my grandfather, and to a lesser extent my parents, used the word race to talk about ‘the race’ — meaning, of course, black people — as a thing that they could imagine, a body of people that we could imagine, that you could almost get your arms around, that the race was something tangible and palpable.” about Great-Uncle Paul who left Tuskegee, Alabama