109 Social justice poems

Once upon a today and yesterday and nevermore there were 7 men and women all locked / up in prison cells. Now these 7 men and women were innocent of any crimes; they were in prison because their skins were black. Day after day, the prisoners paced their cells, pining for their freedom. And the non-black jailers would laugh at the prisoners and beat them with sticks and throw their food on the floor. Finally, prisoner #1 said, “I will educate myself and emulate the non-colored people. That is the way to freedom—c’mon, you guys, and follow me.” “Hell, no,” said prisoner #2. “The only way to get free is to pray to my god and he will deliver you like he delivered Daniel from the lion’s den, so unite and follow me.” “Bullshit,” said prisoner #3. “The only way / out is thru this tunnel i’ve been quietly digging, so c’mon, and follow me.” “Uh-uh,” said prisoner #4, “that’s too risky. The only right / way is to follow all the rules and don’t make the non-colored people angry, so c’mon brothers and sisters and unite behind me.”   “Fuck you!” said prisoner #5, “The only way / out is to shoot our way out, if all of you get / together behind me.” “No,” said prisoner #6, “all of you are incorrect; you have not analyzed the political situation by my scientific method and historical meemeejeebee. All we have to do is wait long enough and the bars will bend from their own inner rot. That is the only way.” “Are all of you crazy,” cried prisoner #7. “I’ll get out by myself, by ratting on the rest of you to the non-colored people. That is the way, that is the only way!” “No-no,” they / all cried, “come and follow me. I have the / way, the only way to freedom.” And so they argued, and to this day they are still arguing; and to this day they are still in their prison cells, their stomachs / trembling with fear.

He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark, And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey, Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn, Voices of play and pleasure after day, Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him. *        *        *        *        * About this time Town used to swing so gay When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees, And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,— In the old times, before he threw away his knees. Now he will never feel again how slim Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands, All of them touch him like some queer disease. *        *        *        *        * There was an artist silly for his face, For it was younger than his youth, last year. Now, he is old; his back will never brace; He's lost his colour very far from here, Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry, And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race And leap of purple spurted from his thigh. *        *        *        *        * One time he liked a blood-smear down his leg, After the matches carried shoulder-high. It was after football, when he'd drunk a peg, He thought he'd better join. He wonders why. Someone had said he'd look a god in kilts. That's why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg, Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts, He asked to join. He didn't have to beg; Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years. Germans he scarcely thought of, all their guilt, And Austria's, did not move him. And no fears Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes; And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears; Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits. And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers. *        *        *        *        * Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal. Only a solemn man who brought him fruits Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul. *        *        *        *        * Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes, And do what things the rules consider wise, And take whatever pity they may dole. Tonight he noticed how the women's eyes Passed from him to the strong men that were whole. How cold and late it is! Why don't they come And put him into bed? Why don't they come?

Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes    ...    Yo no sé! — César Vallejo They sniffed us out of the holes with the animals they had programmed and there are blows in life so powerful we just don’t know and there were trenches and there was water and it poured in through our mouths and out of our ears and there were things we saw in the sand at that moment of sinking: mountains and daisies and tulips and rivers and the bodies of the people we had been and the bodies of the people we had loved and we felt hooks coming through the trenches and we felt hooks coming through the sand and I saw hooks coming through my child’s clothes and I wanted him to know that they would never be able to scoop us out of the sand but of course it wasn’t true they had scooped us out of the sand and our mouths were so full of dirt it is what they do when you’re dead and they made us spit and they beat us until our mouths were empty and they paid us for constructing the mountain and it was me and L and we looked for S and we looked for J and J and we looked for O and we looked for R and we looked for J and S in the holes in which the bodies of those we loved were hiding or dying or sinking or stealing some shelter some little worm’s worth of cover to keep their bodies from dissolving into the maniac murmurs of this impossible carcass economy

1 Who does me this I whistle off brazen as the green of the Palestinian flag Strange wishful little books clot my fur I do not labor except to season my domain Through seven holes all things twitter I reject the disjecta of allegory A sluttery roller skate grips my shoe 2 Is there enough chaos in you to make a world? The feather on the egg is the horse under the bed The New England winter is still raw and long The summer is intense and abandoned

Dear Angry Mob, Oak Wood Trail is closed to you. We feel it unnecessary to defend our position, for we have always thought of ourselves (and rightly, I venture) as a haven for those seeking a quiet and solitary contemplation. We are truly sorry for the inconvenience. Signed, Ranger Lil PS            Ofttimes as the day ends on a wet bed of yellow leaves or the sky densens gray and dark I am brought to imagine the growing disquiet in the hearts of my countrymen

When you’re cold—November, the streets icy and everyone you pass homeless, Goodwill coats and Hefty bags torn up to make ponchos— someone is always at the pay phone, hunched over the receiver spewing winter’s germs, swollen lipped, face chapped, making the last tired connection of the day. You keep walking to keep the cold at bay, too cold to wait for the bus, too depressing the thought of entering that blue light, the chilled eyes watching you decide which seat to take: the man with one leg, his crutches bumping the smudged window glass, the woman with her purse clutched to her breasts like a dead child, the boy, pimpled, morose, his head shorn, a swastika carved into the stubble, staring you down. So you walk into the cold you know: the wind, indifferent blade, familiar, the gold leaves heaped along the gutters. You have a home, a house with gas heat, a toilet that flushes. You have a credit card, cash. You could take a taxi if one would show up. You can feel it now: why people become Republicans:Get that dog off the street. Remove that spit and graffiti. Arrest those people huddled on the steps of the church.

After Ed Sanders We’d been squatting     near the worms in the White House lawn, protesting the Keystone Pipeline =$=$=$=$=$=$=>>; i could sense      the dear worms through    the grillwork fence, twists & coils   of flexi-script, remaking the soil    by resisting it    ... After the ride in the police van telling jokes, our ziplocked handcuffs pretty tight, when the presiding officer asked: —Do you have any tattoos? — Yes, officer, i have two. —What are they? — Well, i have a black heart on my inner thigh & an alchemical sign on my ankle. —Please spell that? — Alchemical. A-L-C-H-E-M-I-C-A-L. —What is that? — It’s basically a moon, a lily, a star & a flame. He started printing in the little square MOON, LILY, STAR Young white guy, seemed scared. One blurry tattoo on his inner wrist    ...     i should have asked about his, but couldn’t cross that chasm.     Outside,   Ash Wednesday in our nation’s capital.     Dead grass, spring trees about to burst, two officers beside the newish van. Inside, alchemical notes for the next time —

We had to sleep in the streets. Not on the sidewalks, in the streets. Cause the sidewalks was full of urine and body waste, dead bodies. And we had to sleep out there, in the hell of waste and the dead bodies. I walked from water up to my neck to get to the Convention Center. There was dead dogs, dead rodents, you had to push all that kind of mess out of the way, hoping that it didn’t touch you. I was pushing them out the way, so many dead bodies coming from the Ninth Ward up our way and they had people that was drowned up my way. Now this Convention Center wasn’t nothing nice, I kid you not. People still crying and begging to go home. There’s nothing there. You have no running water. You have no lights. The place stinks. It’s contaminated. I’ve been there twice. I died there, I died. Me, my ten-year-old daughter, my sister and her thirty-two-year-old son, we lived out there seven days. Five days we had no food. No water. Every night and every day the military people was throwing down on us like we was a bunch of wild animals. They was on a hunt to kill. They killed one guy right there in front of us, run over him with a police car and then they shot the man and left him there. They didn’t cover him up or nothing and the next day, it was so hot out there, when they did come to pick him up, his body was stuck to the ground. So I can understand you want to keep control of the people, but why have those people draw guns on children? Women with babies in their stomachs. Every time you look around we breaking and running, trying to get into the Convention Center and they’re drawing guns on people like that. I mean, it don’t make no kinda sense. They wouldn’t let you leave. You had to stay there. Cause we smelled like — I’m serious — because everybody was smelling the same way — smelling like sewer, like shit, piss. That was the scariest time of my life. And we had to have that on us because we ain’t had no water, we ain’t had no sewer. There wasn’t no limit on it because you had to scrub yourself just to get the scent out of your skin Because, like I said, they knew they have a lot of poor people like myself don’t have no transportation, don’t have no money. Well I have a car but it got under the water. Me, my ten-year-old daughter, my sister and her thirty-two year-old son, we lived out there seven days. We looked for her for an hour and thirty minutes in the Convention Center. Five days we had no food. No water. I seen children die, I seen old people die, I seen murders, I seen rapes. I seen people murder people then cut their heads off. We already knew that the killer people were putting them in the icebox, killing little children and raping little children. The men, the looters, the people that was staying in there. I am telling you, that was the most horriblest experience I have ever seen in my life. I seen the troops shoot people. They ride around with guns almost like we was in a prison camp. No, the place wasn’t on fire. It was some children upstairs playing with the fire extinguisher. Like hell. And like I said, I never in my life grew up in a house with millions of people. You know, I’ve always had my own room, my own, you know, my own, I was always — just — In the Convention Center, the buses came in. Every night. Every day they was telling us “The buses is coming, the buses is coming.” The buses passed right there in front of us and kept going! The people was there to see the buses so everybody run, rushing the buses to get on the damn buses and get out of there. Every day they was moving us around, go here, go there, the buses is gonna meet you here, meet you there. They was lying. There was never no buses, they was lying. They was just making us tired. They had us in there to kill us. We used to look up at the bridge and see all the buses going that way to the Superdome, or to the hospital, or to the people in those condos, getting them all out of there and going back. Buses going back again, buses leaving out New Orleans again. That’s how it was. It was nopd police but it wasn’t our regular district police. These were special nopd policemen. We was running from place to place telling them, “Oh, this person dead, that person dead.” They said, “Well we can’t do nothing about no dead bodies. Y’all just don’t worry. Y’all just try to get the fuck out of here.” They say, “Y’all go to the bridge. The bus’s going to pick you up on the bridge.” I think it was they job to send the National Guards and the armored people in there to make sure everybody was evacuated. They left us out there for five, six, seven days. We stayed on the bridge nine hours. They didn’t care about us. The first thing they dropped into us was boxes of cigarettes. Not food. Not water. Boxes of cigarettes. Two hours later they drop us water. And half of it burst open cause they was so high up when they dropped it. Two hours after that they drop us some army food in a box we got to pour water in to heat up. We was hungry, we had no other choice. The news got us out. Not the National Guard, not the Mayor, not Blanco, the news people is the only ones who got us out. Channel 26 got me out. Channel 26. The rest of them was there to kill us. I got tired of Convention Centers. I wanted to come the hell up out of that damn Convention Center.

"Pheu pheu, ti prosderkesthe m ommasin, tekna;" [[Alas, alas, why do you gaze at me with your eyes, my children.]]—Medea. Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years ? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, — And that cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows ; The young birds are chirping in the nest ; The young fawns are playing with the shadows ; The young flowers are blowing toward the west— But the young, young children, O my brothers, They are weeping bitterly ! They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free. Do you question the young children in the sorrow, Why their tears are falling so ? The old man may weep for his to-morrow Which is lost in Long Ago — The old tree is leafless in the forest — The old year is ending in the frost — The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest — The old hope is hardest to be lost : But the young, young children, O my brothers, Do you ask them why they stand Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers, In our happy Fatherland ? They look up with their pale and sunken faces, And their looks are sad to see, For the man's grief abhorrent, draws and presses Down the cheeks of infancy — "Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary;" "Our young feet," they say, "are very weak !" Few paces have we taken, yet are weary— Our grave-rest is very far to seek ! Ask the old why they weep, and not the children, For the outside earth is cold — And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering, And the graves are for the old !" "True," say the children, "it may happen That we die before our time ! Little Alice died last year her grave is shapen Like a snowball, in the rime. We looked into the pit prepared to take her — Was no room for any work in the close clay : From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her, Crying, 'Get up, little Alice ! it is day.' If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower, With your ear down, little Alice never cries ; Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her, For the smile has time for growing in her eyes ,— And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in The shroud, by the kirk-chime ! It is good when it happens," say the children, "That we die before our time !" Alas, the wretched children ! they are seeking Death in life, as best to have ! They are binding up their hearts away from breaking, With a cerement from the grave. Go out, children, from the mine and from the city — Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do — Pluck you handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through ! But they answer, " Are your cowslips of the meadows Like our weeds anear the mine ? Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows, From your pleasures fair and fine! "For oh," say the children, "we are weary, And we cannot run or leap — If we cared for any meadows, it were merely To drop down in them and sleep. Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping — We fall upon our faces, trying to go ; And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping, The reddest flower would look as pale as snow. For, all day, we drag our burden tiring, Through the coal-dark, underground — Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron In the factories, round and round. "For all day, the wheels are droning, turning, — Their wind comes in our faces, — Till our hearts turn, — our heads, with pulses burning, And the walls turn in their places Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling — Turns the long light that droppeth down the wall, — Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling — All are turning, all the day, and we with all ! — And all day, the iron wheels are droning ; And sometimes we could pray, 'O ye wheels,' (breaking out in a mad moaning) 'Stop ! be silent for to-day ! ' " Ay ! be silent ! Let them hear each other breathing For a moment, mouth to mouth — Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing Of their tender human youth ! Let them feel that this cold metallic motion Is not all the life God fashions or reveals — Let them prove their inward souls against the notion That they live in you, or under you, O wheels ! — Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward, As if Fate in each were stark ; And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward, Spin on blindly in the dark. Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers, To look up to Him and pray — So the blessed One, who blesseth all the others, Will bless them another day. They answer, " Who is God that He should hear us, While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred ? When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word ! And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding) Strangers speaking at the door : Is it likely God, with angels singing round Him, Hears our weeping any more ? " Two words, indeed, of praying we remember ; And at midnight's hour of harm, — 'Our Father,' looking upward in the chamber, We say softly for a charm. We know no other words, except 'Our Father,' And we think that, in some pause of angels' song, God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather, And hold both within His right hand which is strong. 'Our Father !' If He heard us, He would surely (For they call Him good and mild) Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely, 'Come and rest with me, my child.' "But, no !" say the children, weeping faster, " He is speechless as a stone ; And they tell us, of His image is the master Who commands us to work on. Go to ! " say the children,—"up in Heaven, Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find ! Do not mock us ; grief has made us unbelieving — We look up for God, but tears have made us blind." Do ye hear the children weeping and disproving, O my brothers, what ye preach ? For God's possible is taught by His world's loving — And the children doubt of each. And well may the children weep before you ; They are weary ere they run ; They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory Which is brighter than the sun : They know the grief of man, without its wisdom ; They sink in the despair, without its calm — Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom, — Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm, — Are worn, as if with age, yet unretrievingly No dear remembrance keep,— Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly : Let them weep ! let them weep ! They look up, with their pale and sunken faces, And their look is dread to see, For they think you see their angels in their places, With eyes meant for Deity ;— "How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation, Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart, — Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation, And tread onward to your throne amid the mart ? Our blood splashes upward, O our tyrants, And your purple shews your path ; But the child's sob curseth deeper in the silence Than the strong man in his wrath !"

First:       Brother, remove the tool marks on your scathed skin, brush your tattoos with nettles, smear bearberry juice in the gashes. Crack open the jail-seed. Second:   Tear away the bars which restrain your lean, spare life. Bend your curves in a knot. Brother, smudge your saw-tooth edges. Third:      Cut red seaweed to conceal your gray cadaver; start wetting your skin down; after scraping, drip your bowels of blood, change into wolf. Fourth:    The savannah sparrow flies north. In speech, smell fine-grained hawthorn. Collapse your voice into bark and howl.