109 Social justice poems

There is a wall of which the stones Are lies and bribes and dead men's bones. And wrongfully this evil wall Denies what all men made for all, And shamelessly this wall surrounds Our homesteads and our native grounds. But I will gather and I will ride, And I will summon a countryside, And many a man shall hear my halloa Who never had thought the horn to follow; And many a man shall ride with me Who never had thought on earth to see High Justice in her armoury. When we find them where they stand, A mile of men on either hand, I mean to charge from right away And force the flanks of their array, And press them inward from the plains, And drive them clamouring down the lanes, And gallop and harry and have them down, And carry the gates and hold the town. Then shall I rest me from my ride With my great anger satisfied. Only, before I eat and drink, When I have killed them all, I think That I will batter their carven names, And slit the pictures in their frames, And burn for scent their cedar door, And melt the gold their women wore, And hack their horses at the knees, And hew to death their timber trees, And plough their gardens deep and through— And all these things I mean to do For fear perhaps my little son Should break his hands, as I have done.

I. We hang clothes on the line. His wide trousers and shirt, wind-beat, roar small thunder from one prairie cloud. The same rapple of flag on its pole. Half in fear, half in jest, we laugh. He calls us crow women. Our black hair shines in the sun and in the light from school windows. He drives his car to town, upsets the dust on buckboard hills. We sit on the fence when he is gone. Does he know we speak of thunder in his shirts? We cannot do well in his school. He reads from west to east, The sun we follow moves the other way. Crowbar. Our eyes come loose from words on the page in narrow rooms of the reservation school. He perceives and deciphers at once. For us written letters will not stay on the page, but fall like crows from the sky and hit against the glass windows of the school. Our day is night when we sit in rows of the classroom. Leaves in a whirlwind from sumac groves. Flock of crows are black starts on a white night. II. On the porch of the reservation school the blackbirds walk around our feet, fly into our head. They call our secret name. Dark corridors linger in our mind We whisper the plains to one another. We do not talk of what we cannot understand. Black and white fleckered dresses. Our face like our fathers. The sun is no enemy to the eye looking west. The brush thin as hair of old ones. It blinds the eye, makes fire on fields, flashes against windows like silver ribbons on burial robes. Hot late into the fall, windy, ready for cold to sweep in. The heat seems solid, but totters on the brink of winter. We laugh to ourselves when he returns to the reservation school for girls. Take his clothes from the line. Set the table with salt and pepper, spoon, knives. Cattails and milk-pods in a jar. We get lard from the basement, rub a place in the dusty window like a moon in the ancient sky. III. One hill larger than the others: an old buffalo with heavy head and whiskers nods at the ground, grazes in my dreams, one blade at a time. We stay in our stiff white-sheeted beds in the dormitory room. Buffalo wander in our dreams. White night-dresses. Black pods suspended in sumac groves like crows. In the sweat lodge of sleep we make our vision quest, black as pitch in crevice between crow feathers. We hang his thunder clothes in sleep, arms reach above our beds like willows blowing slowly by the creek. Quietly we choke, hold our wounded arms like papooses. Clothes beat on lines. Sumac groves and whirl of leaves: a shadow of our fathers at council fires. Red leaves, waxy as hay on fields. We dream of schoolrooms. Written letters on the wind. He reads crow-marks on the page but does not know crow.

Spooky summer on the horizon I’m gazing at from my window into the streets That’s where it’s going to be where everyone is walking around, looking around out in the open suspecting each other’s heart to open fire all over the streets like streets you read about every day who are the network we travel through on the way to the center which is energy filling life and bursting with joy all over the screen I can’t sit still any longer! I want to go where I’m not feeling so bad Get off this little island before the bridges break (my heart is a sore thing too) No I want to sit in the middle watching movies then go to bed in my head Someone is banging on it with a heavy stick like the enemy who is he going to be turns into a face you can’t recognize then vanishes behind a window behind a gun Like the lonely hero stalking the main street cries out Where are you? I just want to know all the angles of death possible under the American sky! I can hardly see for all the buildings polluting the sky until it changes into a barrage of bottles then clears up for a second while you breathe and you realize you’e still as alive as ever and want to be but would like to be somewhere else perhaps Africa Start all over again as the race gets darker and darker and the world goes on the way I always thought it would For the winner is someone we recognize out of our collective past which is turning over again in the grave It is so important when one dies you replace her and never waste a minute

I would not have gotten in this boat with you. I would not except where else was there at the dock’s end to go? The water was cold. I would not have let you row the boat. I could see what kind of man you were. I would not but who was there to choose between you and me? I would not have let you throw away the oars. I knew what would happen next, except what else was there to do, struggle in a boat with a leak over cold water?

A Poem in Three Parts A riot is the language of the unheard.

We were given a curfew on the second day. Clouds filling windows were replaced by soot and ash from the burned out market on the corner. We lost the smell of buttered beetroot, Wissotzky tea and kishke; a tendril of root infiltrated a crack in the floorboards. We kept our distance and let it grow in disbelief. Someone said we should kill it before it gets too strong. Hours, maybe even days, went by as we hid waiting for attacks and looting to end. At times, when the door opened, a waft of wind made its way to those unfolding leaves waving like the curtains out of blown out windows.

Any half-decent rapper Can conjure the dead, Can reach into graves And accuse God Of Indian-giving. The trick is ancestral, No more magic than memory’s Hidden strings & chains. Trust me, We haven’t forgotten a name. Say them. Raise your hands. Holler at me!

The cruel majority emerges! Hail to the cruel majority! They will punish the poor for being poor. They will punish the dead for having died. Nothing can make the dark turn into light for the cruel majority. Nothing can make them feel hunger or terror. If the cruel majority would only cup their ears the sea would wash over them. The sea would help them forget their wayward children. It would weave a lullaby for young & old. (See the cruel majority with hands cupped to their ears, one foot is in the water, one foot is on the clouds.) One man of them is large enough to hold a cloud between his thumb & middle finger, to squeeze a drop of sweat from it before he sleeps. He is a little god but not a poet. (See how his body heaves.) The cruel majority love crowds & picnics. The cruel majority fill up their parks with little flags. The cruel majority celebrate their birthday. Hail to the cruel majority again! The cruel majority weep for their unborn children, they weep for the children that they will never bear. The cruel majority are overwhelmed by sorrow. (Then why are the cruel majority always laughing? Is it because night has covered up the city's walls? Because the poor lie hidden in the darkness? The maimed no longer come to show their wounds?) Today the cruel majority vote to enlarge the darkness. They vote for shadows to take the place of ponds Whatever they vote for they can bring to pass. The mountains skip like lambs for the cruel majority. Hail to the cruel majority! Hail! hail! to the cruel majority! The mountains skip like lambs, the hills like rams. The cruel majority tear up the earth for the cruel majority. Then the cruel majority line up to be buried. Those who love death will love the cruel majority. Those who know themselves will know the fear the cruel majority feel when they look in the mirror. The cruel majority order the poor to stay poor. They order the sun to shine only on weekdays. The god of the cruel majority is hanging from a tree. Their god's voice is the tree screaming as it bends. The tree's voice is as quick as lightning as it streaks across the sky. (If the cruel majority go to sleep inside their shadows, they will wake to find their beds filled up with glass.) Hail to the god of the cruel majority! Hail to the eyes in the head of their screaming god! Hail to his face in the mirror! Hail to their faces as they float around him! Hail to their blood & to his! Hail to the blood of the poor they need to feed them! Hail to their world & their god! Hail & farewell! Hail & farewell! Hail & farewell!

At Robben Island the political prisoners studied. They coined the motto Each one Teach one. In Argentina the torturers demanded the prisoners Address them always as “Profesor.” Many of my friends are moved by guilt, but I Am a creature of shame, I am ashamed to say. Culture the lock, culture the key. Imagination That calls boiled sheep heads “Smileys.” The first year at Guantánamo, Abdul Rahim Dost Incised his Pashto poems into styrofoam cups. “The Sangomo says in our Zulu culture we do not Worship our ancestors:we consult them.” Becky is abandoned in 1902 and Rose dies giving Birth in 1924 and Sylvia falls in 1951. Still falling still dying still abandoned in 2005 Still nothing finished among the descendants. I support the War, says the comic, it’s just the Troops I’m against: can’t stand those Young People. Proud of the fallen, proud of her son the bomber. Ashamed of the government. Skeptical. After the Klansman was found Not Guilty one juror Said she just couldn’t vote to convict a pastor. Who do you write for? I write for dead people: For Emily Dickinson, for my grandfather. “T he Ancestors say the problem with your Knees Began in your Feet.It could move up your Back.” But later the Americans gave Dost not only paper And pen but books. Hemingway, Dickens. Old Aegyptius said Whoever has called this Assembly, For whatever reason—it is a good in itself. O thirsty shades who regard the offering, O stained earth. There are many fake Sangomos. This one is real. Coloured prisoners got different meals and could wear Long pants and underwear, Blacks got only shorts. No he says he cannot regret the three years in prison: Otherwise he would not have written those poems. I have a small-town mind. Like the Greeks and Trojans. Shame. Pride. Importance of looking bad or good. Did he see anything like the prisoner on a leash? Yes, In Afghanistan. In Guantánamo he was isolated. Our enemies “disassemble” says the President. Not that anyone at all couldn’t mis-speak. The profesores created nicknames for torture devices: The Airplane. The Frog. Burping the Baby. Not that those who behead the helpless in the name Of God or tradition don’t also write poetry. Guilts, metaphors, traditions. Hunger strikes. Culture the penalty. Culture the escape. What could your children boast about you? What Will your father say, down among the shades? The Sangomo told Marvin, “You are crushed by some Weight.Only your own Ancestors can help you.”

I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Dam and topples it. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after the floodwaters burst each successive dam downriver from the Grand Coulee. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after the floodwaters find their way to the mouth of the Columbia River as it enters the Pacific and causes all of it to rise. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after the first drop of floodwater is swallowed by that salmon waiting in the Pacific. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after that salmon swims upstream, through the mouth of the Columbia and then past the flooded cities, broken dams and abandoned reactors of Hanford. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after that salmon swims through the mouth of the Spokane River as it meets the Columbia, then upstream, until it arrives in the shallows of a secret bay on the reservation where I wait alone. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after that salmon leaps into the night air above the water, throws a lightning bolt at the brush near my feet, and starts the fire which will lead all of the lost Indians home. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after we Indians have gathered around the fire with that salmon who has three stories it must tell before sunrise: one story will teach us how to pray; another story will make us laugh for hours; the third story will give us reason to dance. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall when I am dancing with my tribe during the powwow at the end of the world.