109 Social justice poems

The workers went on strike and people said you can't do this and they did it anyway turns out you can do most things when enough people do them together

the 14-year-old girl was treated like: (a) a grown woman. (b) a grown man. the bikini-clad girl was handled by the cop like: (a) a prostitute. (b) a prostitute by her pimp. the girl was slung to the ground like: (a) a sack of garbage into a dumpster. (b) somebody had something to prove. the girl’s braids flew around her head like: (a) helicopter blades. (b) she’d been slapped. the black girl was pinned to the ground like: (a) an amateur wrestler in a professional fight. (b) swimming in a private pool is a threat to national security. the girl’s cries sounded like: (a) the shrieks of children on a playground. (b) the shrieks of children being torn from their mothers. the protesting girl was shackled like: (a) a criminal. (b) a runaway slave. liken it or not —mckinney, texas, june 2015

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted who disappeared into those shadows. I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here, our country moving closer to its own truth and dread, its own ways of making people disappear. I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods meeting the unmarked strip of light— ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise: I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear. And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these to have you listen at all, it's necessary to talk about trees.

I am unjust, but I can strive for justice. My life’s unkind, but I can vote for kindness. I, the unloving, say life should be lovely. I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness. Man is a curious brute—he pets his fancies— Fighting mankind, to win sweet luxury. So he will be, though law be clear as crystal, Tho’ all men plan to live in harmony. Come, let us vote against our human nature, Crying to God in all the polling places To heal our everlasting sinfulness And make us sages with transfigured faces.

Thy country, Wilberforce, with just disdain, Hears thee, by cruel men and impious, call'd Fanatic, for thy zeal to loose th' enthrall'd From exile, public sale, and slav'ry's chain. Friend of the poor, the wrong'd, the fetter-gall'd, Fear not lest labour such as thine be vain! Thou hast achiev'd a part; hast gain'd the ear Of Britain's senate to thy glorious cause; Hope smiles, joy springs, and tho' cold caution pause And weave delay, the better hour is near, That shall remunerate thy toils severe By peace for Afric, fenc'd with British laws. Enjoy what thou hast won, esteem and love From all the just on earth, and all the blest above!

who by the time it arrived had made its plan heretofore stonewall   it had not a penny thats not true it had several pennies can you make a sovereign nation a national park how condescending instead just tell them to honor the treaty what can poetry do it cant not not do nothing it must undulate w/ the 2:30 pm dance music the sole patrons at stonewall there was a shooting in ohio today the music made me feel a little anxious it was hard thumping dance music a notch upwards of 100 bpm notoriously the beat of life the optimum tempo for cpr I consider downloading a metronome real quick to test it to tap it out but I don’t want to be ‘anywhere near’ my phone meaning it’s in my bag on the stool 2 feet from me there is an amy winehouse video on no sound at least I think it is amy winehouse she is at a funeral black and white there is a stuffed bird slightly obscuring my view of the tv it looks like a kind of tall pigeon w/ mottled brown and russet with a white ringlet necklace and black dots is it a carrier pigeon I wonder I sent a text to jocelyn at standing rock several texts are you still on the road ariana and i r gonna go out there in december sending love to you tried calling bt yr mailbox is full send a sign when u can xoxo howdy.  thinking of u w love. hope all is well.  send smoke signal telegram carrier pigeon send love to my twospirits at the winyan camp. last night we prayed for her and for zephyr and l. frank & the twospirits especially at standing rock there’s no sign of that struggle here but they are selling tshirts commemorating the other and the six days of riots led by transwomen of color they later tried to whitewash in that terrible movie like it was all these hot angry upright downright forthright white gays so ready for the revolution and now people are treating standing rock like burning man a drink called goslings videos by the pigeon misaligned with the music the smell of booze in the air made both of us recoil slightly I saw or felt it I’m here to make a poem I was already paid for when I had less than $2 in my bank account (and I joked I would go right to the bar and buy every- body drinks ) not even enough for a subway ride and I used the 58 cents I’d gotten for busking for the first time alone in the long hallway between the library at bryant park and the orange line trains by the ovid quote ‘gutta cavat lapidem’ water (or a drop of water really) hollows out a stone.   lapidum a stone or rock ariana once described cd wright’s style as ‘lapidary’ I loved this as a description of writing like the hieroglyphics are literally lapidary and I told my grandmother about it as we were driving from mescalero to albuquerque she knew all about the plants and the names for all the rockforms mesas or buttes or ziggurats and I said how do you know all these she said by long observation and I used to study geology in college I wanted to major in it but they wouldn’t allow women to major in the hard sciences then so she began to study religion tho she already had medicine ricky martin on the beach or is it someone younger sexier the grand canyon splitting apart is it an ad is it a video even the sands at the beach are bouncing with the beat the tempo has stayed very similar this whole time a tick up I suspect from 100bpm

We, the Research Assistants and Teaching Assistants of the University of California, wish to register our protest against the new loyalty oath for the following reasons. 1) The testing of a University faculty by oath is a stupid and insulting procedure. If this oath is to have the effect of eliminating Communists from the faculty, we might as logically eliminate murderers from the faculty by forcing every faculty member to sign an oath saying that he has never committed murder. 2) That such an oath is more dangerous to the liberties of the community than any number of active Communists should be obvious to any student of history. Liberty and democracy are more often overthrown by fear than by stealth. Only countries such as Russia or Spain have institutions so weak and unhealthy that they must be protected by terror. 3) Oaths and other forms of blackmail are destructive to the free working of man's intellect. Since the early Middle Ages universities have zealously guarded their intellectual freedom and have made use of its power to help create the world we know today. The oath that Galileo was forced by the Inquisition to swear is but a distant cousin to the oath we are asked to swear today, but both represent the struggle of the blind and powerful against the minds of free men. We, who will inherit the branches of learning that one thousand years of free universities have helped to generate, are not Communists and dislike the oath for the same reason we dislike Communism. Both breed stupidity and indignity; both threaten our personal and intellectual freedom. [ c. 1949 ]

A riot is the language of the unheard. —martin luther king John Cabot, out of Wilma, once a Wycliffe, all whitebluerose below his golden hair, wrapped richly in right linen and right wool, almost forgot his Jaguar and Lake Bluff; almost forgot Grandtully (which is The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Scotch); almost forgot the sculpture at the Richard Gray and Distelheim; the kidney pie at Maxim’s, the Grenadine de Boeuf at Maison Henri. Because the Negroes were coming down the street. Because the Poor were sweaty and unpretty (not like Two Dainty Negroes in Winnetka) and they were coming toward him in rough ranks. In seas. In windsweep. They were black and loud. And not detainable. And not discreet. Gross. Gross. “Que tu es grossier!” John Cabot itched instantly beneath the nourished white that told his story of glory to the World. “Don’t let It touch me! the blackness! Lord!” he whispered to any handy angel in the sky. But, in a thrilling announcement, on It drove and breathed on him: and touched him. In that breath the fume of pig foot, chitterling and cheap chili, malign, mocked John. And, in terrific touch, old averted doubt jerked forward decently, cried, “Cabot! John! You are a desperate man, and the desperate die expensively today.” John Cabot went down in the smoke and fire and broken glass and blood, and he cried “Lord! Forgive these nigguhs that know not what they do.”

Who has the moral high ground? Fifteen blocks from the whitehouse on small corners in northwest, d.c. boys disguised as me rip each other’s hearts out with weapons made in china. they fight for territory. across the planet in a land where civilization was born the boys of d.c. know nothing about their distant relatives in Rwanda. they have never heard of the hutu or tutsi people. their eyes draw blanks at the mention of kigali, byumba or butare. all they know are the streets of d.c., and do not cry at funerals anymore. numbers and frequency have a way of making murder commonplace and not news unless it spreads outside of our house, block, territory. modern massacres are intraethnic. bosnia, sri lanka, burundi, nagorno-karabakh, iraq, laos, angola, liberia, and rwanda are small foreign names on a map made in europe. when bodies by the tens of thousands float down a river turning the water the color of blood, as a quarter of a million people flee barefoot into tanzania and zaire, somehow we notice. we do not smile, we have no more tears. we hold our thoughts. In deeply muted silence looking south and thinking that today nelson mandela seems much larger than he is.

—for Troy Davis 1. There was a light rain on the night of your execution. Wet little pricks exploding on the skin. The gears on my bike jammed so I pedaled crazy-legged, pumping three times harder, making time. I glide past a charter bus emptying in front of the Supreme Court, I double over at the mostly white choir: I am Troy Davis / We are Troy Davis. 2. I am Troy Davis / We Are Troy Davis. My mother calls hours later, crying until her eyes swell into beets. Why are our mothers always crying? Why am I not crying? It’s become so familiar. In my boyhood . . . Rodney King; Billy Clubs; Loose Nooses; L.A. Riots; Abner Louima and his attackers: the police officers shoving a plunger up his rectum; Amadou Diallo: 41 gun shot wounds; Echoes of Emmitt Till: Black mothers unable to recognize their creations. Men strung on trees left for the crows to suck. The way Billie Holiday’s voice wrinkles from horror. The gallant South, the snickering wind. 3. The gallant South, the snickering wind. You were lethally injected: poison entered your veins, stopped your heart, then your breathing. I wake up in a cold sweat hearing you tell the family it wasn’t you. You, Black Socrates. Galileo, Prisoner to this skin. I imagine your transition to the other side with the ancestors. Afro Blue. I imagine this life different— not opposed to life, black life. Not hateful. I imagine this poem—a proper elegy. Can you hear that? America singing. Its trees mock us. Its wind curses us. No praying. God’s ears are filled with cotton. 4. God’s ears are filled with cotton. Death is my pulse. I pray daily that I will live to be old, healthy, but sometimes I despair. I think about my mother almost being thrown on a subway track carrying me in her belly. Hearing the metal train car moving in. Feeling my heart beat. Wanting to save this black boy from an early death. Just one, Lord, spare me one. I want to teach my daughter that black doesn’t equal death; and to love her people, all of them, even the white great-grandmother who got sick from giving birth to half-white, all black babies. And yet, I get quiet each time we walk by Union Station that increasingly resembles Monticello. The homeless: who missed Emancipation those Negro hymns no longer move me. Everything is a countdown to Swing low sweet chariot coming for to carry me home to be a black mass, riding this skin, a bomb ticking, soon to expire. 5. A bomb ticking, soon to expire. What if we didn’t have to die? What would it mean to live? What would it mean to give milk to our own babies? What would it mean to swim to the bottom of the ocean, recovering our bones? What would it mean to visit the African burial that is Wall Street? What does it mean to tell your daughter We were the first blue chip stock? That we do not own our children, their lives. That any motherfucker can point and say kill that nigger. And it happens. Like that. Like that. What does it mean to be free when we’ve been property longer than we’ve been free in this great nation? What does it mean to say Troy Davis, my dear brother, I’m Sorry. A part of me died tonight. I prayed for the mother ship to come take me somewhere else. Do aliens kill each other? Dear black Socrates, Galileo: the planets are spinning.