109 Social justice poems

Guards demand we waltz the teeming hedge soldiers spread but can’t quell what wells worthwhile’s a made shape wafting about in the night so green all bright ornament and creamy delay I take off my hat I get off and walk O skin be strong expand rewardable range build steady wealth of shared play don’t end at lending nouns to property consult the ear consult the air claim common right to lick up excess as a lock’s for frisking a gale’s gaping gate they say the submarine which waves no flag is a violator vessel how soft its coax how smooth its thick white head adorned and anointed the bodies of my loves the fear grins of great apes

Let me make the songs for the people, Songs for the old and young; Songs to stir like a battle-cry Wherever they are sung. Not for the clashing of sabres, For carnage nor for strife; But songs to thrill the hearts of men With more abundant life. Let me make the songs for the weary, Amid life’s fever and fret, Till hearts shall relax their tension, And careworn brows forget. Let me sing for little children, Before their footsteps stray, Sweet anthems of love and duty, To float o’er life’s highway. I would sing for the poor and aged, When shadows dim their sight; Of the bright and restful mansions, Where there shall be no night. Our world, so worn and weary, Needs music, pure and strong, To hush the jangle and discords Of sorrow, pain, and wrong. Music to soothe all its sorrow, Till war and crime shall cease; And the hearts of men grown tender Girdle the world with peace.

Out of this roar of innumerable demons hot cinema tarzan sweat rolling moth ball eyes yellow teeth cries of claws slashes clanks a faint high pallor dust oceans rolling over the dry sand of the savanna your houses homes warm still with the buffalo milk bladder of elephant . tusk of his stripped tree sing soft clinks but the barracks the dark dark barks of the shark boys the cool juice of soweto . . . out of this dust they are coming our eyes listen out of rhinoceros thunder darkness of lion the whale roar stomping in heaven that black bellied night of hell and helleluia when all the lights of anger flicker flicker flicker flicker and we know somewhere there there is real fire basuto mokhethi namibia azania shaka the zulu kenyatta the shatt erer the maasai wandering into the everlasting shadow of jah daughters lost daughters bellowing against bullhorn and kleghorn bellowing against bargwart and the searchlights of dogs bellowing against crick and the kick in the stomach the acrid wretch against the teeth bellowing against malan malan malam malan and boer and boerwreck and boertrek and truckloads of metal helmet and fusil and the hand grenade and acid rhodes and the diamonds of oppenheimer the opulence of voortresshers the grass streiders . . . suddenly like that fire the crows in johannesburg you were there torn. in tears. tatters but the eyes glittered and the fist clenching around that scream of your mother bled into a black head of hammers and the night fell howl on soweto the night fell howl on soweto and we who had failed to listen all. those. foot. steps who had given you up like a torn paper package your heroes       burning in your houses rising from your dust bowls flaring from the sky listen now as the news items lengthen gathering like hawks looking upward like the leopard plunging into the turmoil like the constrictor and that crouch/shot shout out against that beast and pistol the police who shot patrice who castrated kimathi and clattering clattering clattering clattering the veldts gun metals wings rise from their last supper their hunger of bones bomba and the daniels sing ukufa akuqheleki kodwa ke kuthiwa akuhlanga lungehlanga lalani ngenxeba nikhuzeka

The edge of our bed was a wide grid where your fifteen-year-old daughter was hanging gut-sprung on police wheels a cablegram nailed to the wood next to a map of the Western Reserve I could not return with you to bury the body reconstruct your nightly cardboards against the seeping Transvaal cold I could not plant the other limpet mine against a wall at the railroad station nor carry either of your souls back from the river in a calabash upon my head so I bought you a ticket to Durban on my American Express and we lay together in the first light of a new season. Now clearing roughage from my autumn garden cow sorrel    overgrown rocket gone to seed I reach for the taste of today the New York Times finally mentions your country a half-page story of the first white south african killed in the “unrest” Not of Black children massacred at Sebokeng six-year-olds imprisoned for threatening the state not of Thabo Sibeko, first grader, in his own blood on his grandmother’s parlor floor Joyce, nine, trying to crawl to him shitting through her navel not of a three-week-old infant, nameless lost under the burned beds of Tembisa my hand comes down like a brown vise over the marigolds reckless through despair we were two Black women touching our flame and we left our dead behind us I hovered    you rose    the last ritual of healing “It is spring,” you whispered “I sold the ticket for guns and sulfa I leave for home tomorrow” and wherever I touch you I lick cold from my fingers taste rage like salt from the lips of a woman who has killed too often to forget and carries each death in her eyes your mouth a parting orchid “Someday you will come to my country and we will fight side by side?” Keys jingle in the door ajar    threatening whatever is coming belongs here I reach for your sweetness but silence explodes like a pregnant belly into my face a vomit of nevers. Mmanthatisi turns away from the cloth her daughters-in-law are dyeing the baby drools milk from her breast she hands him half-asleep to his sister dresses again for war knowing the men will follow. In the intricate Maseru twilights quick    sad    vital she maps the next day’s battle dreams of Durban    sometimes visions the deep wry song of beach pebbles running after the sea.

At the throat of Soweto a devil language falls slashing claw syllables to shred and leave raw the tongue of the young girl learning to sing her own name Where she would say water They would teach her to cry blood Where she would save grass They would teach her to crave crawling into the grave

Men of England, wherefore plough For the lords who lay ye low? Wherefore weave with toil and care The rich robes your tyrants wear? Wherefore feed and clothe and save From the cradle to the grave Those ungrateful drones who would Drain your sweat—nay, drink your blood? Wherefore, Bees of England, forge Many a weapon, chain, and scourge, That these stingless drones may spoil The forced produce of your toil? Have ye leisure, comfort, calm, Shelter, food, love’s gentle balm? Or what is it ye buy so dear With your pain and with your fear? The seed ye sow, another reaps; The wealth ye find, another keeps; The robes ye weave, another wears; The arms ye forge, another bears. Sow seed—but let no tyrant reap: Find wealth—let no imposter heap: Weave robes—let not the idle wear: Forge arms—in your defence to bear. Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells— In hall ye deck another dwells. Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see The steel ye tempered glance on ye. With plough and spade and hoe and loom Trace your grave and build your tomb And weave your winding-sheet—till fair England be your Sepulchre.

In my country our shamans were women and our gods multiple until white people brought an ecstasy of rosaries and our cities today glow with crosses like graveyards. As a child in Sunday school I was told I’d go to hell if I didn’t believe in God. Our teacher was a woman whose daughters wanted to be nuns and I asked What about babies and what about Buddha, and she said They’re in hell too and so I memorized prayers and recited them in front of women I did not believe in.Deliver us from evil. O sweet Virgin Mary, amen

“The fact that we are black is our ultimate reality.” —Ron Karenga And several strengths from drowsiness campaigned but spoke in Single Sermon on the warpland. And went about the warpland saying No. “My people, black and black, revile the River. Say that the River turns, and turn the River. Say that our Something in doublepod contains seeds for the coming hell and health together. Prepare to meet (sisters, brothers) the brash and terrible weather; the pains; the bruising; the collapse of bestials, idols. But then oh then!—the stuffing of the hulls! the seasoning of the perilously sweet! the health! The heralding of the clear obscure! Build now your Church, my brothers, sisters. Build never with brick or Corten nor with granite. Build with lithe love. With love like lion-eyes. with love like morningrise. with love like black, our black— luminously indiscreet; complete; continuous.”

A political art, let it be tenderness, low strings the fingers touch, or the width of autumn climbing wider avenues, among the virtue and dignity of knowing what city you’re in, who to talk to, what clothes —even what buttons—to wear. I address / the society the image, of common utopia. / The perversity of separation, isolation, after so many years of trying to enter their kingdoms, now they suffer in tears, these others, saxophones whining through the wooden doors of their less than gracious homes. The poor have become our creators. The black. The thoroughly ignorant. Let the combination of morality and inhumanity begin. 2. Is power, the enemy? (Destroyer of dawns, cool flesh of valentines, among the radios, pauses, drunks of the 19th century. I see it, as any man's single history. All the possible heroes dead from heat exhaustion at the beach or hiding for years from cameras only to die cheaply in the pages of our daily lie. One hero has pretensions toward literature one toward the cultivation of errors, arrogance, and constantly changing disguises, as trucker, boxer, valet, barkeep, in the aging taverns of memory. Making love to those speedy heroines of masturbation or kicking literal evil continually down filmy public stairs. A compromise would be silence. To shut up, even such risk as the proper placement of verbs and nouns. To freeze the spit in mid-air, as it aims itself at some valiant intellectual's face. There would be someone

after Tafisha Edwards To disappear Black girls at a low volume of sustained public panic is to insinuate the inconstancy of Black girls. The disposability of Black girls who are prone to disappearance. A body bag somewhere waits with little hoopla about its lot. Absence becomes the lot of Black girls. _________ will eventually accept as fact that absence becomes a lot of Black girls. In what becomes the normal day-to-day, Black girls are harder to find, _________ would think first, not that there are few attempts to find them. The question isn’t whether Black girls often go missing. If no one else, Black girls miss each other. _________  would be remiss to not recognize how everything is made less in the absence of Black girls, if _________ could miss what _________ have never been required to recognize, such as: Unlike missing Black girls, taking Black girls is a Western custom. It seems likely that such a statement will soon appear inaccurate: the white space in new textbook editions will have nothing to say about it, if the white spaces behind those textbooks have anything to say about it. That Black girls are quintessential American palimpsests is not a question but an anxiety. _________ would rather forget that Black girls were made receptacles for what the authors of Liberty and Independence would not speak. That Liberty and Independence were imaginable only in the absent-presence of taken Black girls, enslaved Black girls, Black girls on whom a foundational economic system so depended that white men would kill each other and take taken Black girls. The constancy of Black girls is someone’s anxiety. The soil is thick with hidden Black girls, the myth that only quiet Black girls are worthwhile Black girls. The soil turns as _________  turn away from loud Black girls and their cacophonic insistence on Black girls. _________ have not insisted enough upon the fact of Black girls, are often loudly shocked to find Black girls disappeared. Loud, unsustainable shock has a way of disappearing Black girls. Outrage, too, has a way of being disappeared.