Ase'...

 

Image Source: Pinterest

© October 31, 2022, the Griot Poet

 

Vote!

That’s the point of this piece and its last note.

If you’ve voted already, you’re an actual patriot.

If you haven’t, or won’t, you don’t have anything to complain about,

And, no social media “zinger” posted after our rights are gone will change it.

 

You either live in a municipality or Cul de Sac, so wealthy,

So de facto segregated, it doesn’t matter who’s running the republic,

Just as long as you get yours in tax cuts.

 

I grew up in a ghetto,

Not because my parents didn’t want more,

Segregation, when I was born, was de jure: legally mandated.

I got hand-me-down spelling books ten years out of date,

And light-skinned teachers who could “pass” on the west side of Winston-Salem, NC, to purchase the latest math and science books: we studied stencil graphed copies.

My big sister came home from the civil rights marches with black eyes and a bloodied forehead.

 

I’m trying to remember how that was so “great” that you’d want it back again!

That some fragile snowflakes want to replicate it,

The one thing that my past taught me,

Is this longing for a bygone era

That never existed is psychotic.

 

In 1898, a fusion government of 50/50 white and black republicans were elected to the Wilmington, NC legislature,

Dixiecrats and the KKK ransacked the state house,

Driving out the elected officers,

Burned down the black newspapers,

Staging a successful coup on U.S. soil without punishment,

One-hundred and twenty-three years before January 6, 2021.

 

In 2007, a gangly young Democratic Senator announced his candidacy for president,

He self-depreciatively made fun of his big ears, and funny name:

Barack Hussein Obama.

He ran on a platform of “hope and change.”

Simultaneously becoming the first to receive Secret Service protection while a candidate.

 

In 2018, Cesar Sayoc,

As democrats battled to take back the House,

He took it upon himself to mail bombs to:

Billionaire George Soros,

President Bill and Secretary Hillary Clinton,

President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama,

Vice President Joe and Second Lady Jill Biden,

Senator Kamala Harris and Douglas Emhoff,

Senator Cory Booker,

Actor Robert De Niro,

And Reporter Keith Olbermann,

Over a dozen bombs were sent,

 

Arguably during a time when republicans were in charge of the Presidency, the House, and the Senate,

 

Don’t tell me your pop philosophy about “both sides ism,” like political a la cart,

Don’t placate me that if you ignore them, they will “go away,” like an unpleasant fart,

Don’t tell me their party is “tough on crime” when they’re clearly not!

 

One side is violent; the other isn’t.

One side holds its members accountable; the other doesn’t.

 

John Edwards, Anthony Weiner, Al Frankin, and Andrew Cuomo,

 

Once rising stars in elected government,

They were held accountable for their actions by their party’s members.

 

Oliver North lied under oath, protecting Ronald Reagan from impeachment for Iran-Contra.

 

George W. Bush won re-election after allowing the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor, 9-11, and attacked the wrong countries - Afghanistan and Iraq, instead of Saudi Arabia - for it.

 

You elected:

A man credibly accused of rape by E. Jean Carroll and twenty-six other women,

A philanderer with the sexual mores of a polar bear:

Cheated on Ivana with Marla Maples,

Cheated on Marla with Melania,

Cheated on a pregnant Melania with Playboy model Ronan McDougal and adult film star Stormy Daniels,

Ran a dubious business that was probably a front for Russian money laundering,

(Why he won’t say anything bad about Vladimir Putin)

He used Michael Cohen to pay off the aforementioned adult sex workers because someone told him that’s “probably not a good look.”

(Michael went to prison for him)

Bragged about sexual assault on the Access Hollywood tape,

He AIMED a mob at the U.S. Capitol,

Intent on murdering his Vice President, and the Speaker of the House,

STILL petitioning the NOT Supreme Court to block access to his taxes,

(Occam’s razor says he’s broke as a joke)

The only time he’s not committing crimes are the few hours he’s somnambulant.

 

He’s the embodiment of Patrick Bateman in “American Psycho,” and Damien Thorn in “The Omen”:

 

Quote:

American Psycho ends with Patrick staring into the camera, with his voiceover confessing, “There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis; my punishment continues to elude me, and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.”

 

And somehow,

The wires were crossed

Between Evilgelicals, Y’all Qaeda, and QAnon,

EIGHTY-ONE percent voted for him!

To use a European colloquialism:

Do you want this crazy bloke to have the nuclear codes again?

 

I’m not supposed to be a poet or a Ph.D. in Nanoengineering.

 

I grew up in a ghetto.

Where gas is STILL expensive, and food is cheap.

So we’ll be encouraged to stay on “our side of town,” self-segregating.

Life was exquisitely engineered for my defeat.

But I was supported by the spirits of my ancestors, who survived worse than this.

 

“Nanos gigantium humeris insidentes”

First recorded by John of Salisbury in the twelfth century,

Also attributed to Bernard of Chartres,

Also by the founder of Physics, Sir Isaac Newton:

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

 

Like my sister: Ase’ (Ah-Shay),

 

It has three meanings:

A word of affirmation, like “right on” or “amen.”

A word for life force, energy; Prana in Sanskrit, or Qi in Asia.

A word meaning having the power to create that which one speaks!

 

Every election is the election of our lifetimes.

Every election decides the impact of climate change.

Every election, we’re fighting against fascism,

Who don’t require goose steps or swastikas: just willing participants!

 

Every election either gives power to those who see problems and have plans to fix them,

Or, those who don’t and gain power by ignoring or exacerbating them,

 

Senator Raphael Warnock said that a vote is “like a prayer for the future” you envision,

 

Affirm your future and those of your children,

Affirm the future for the children you may never have or live with,

Be the Prana, Qi: life force for Gaia,

Save the world beneath you that’s dying,

Create a world that you want at the ballot box,

Armed men with small penises aren’t a threat,

Those idiots are terrified of the power YOU possess!

 

Take a deep breath and know you stand solidly on the shoulders of giants.

 

Ase’ (Ah-Shay)!

VOTE!