Myth vs. Reality...

Scoreboard

© 23 July 2012, the Griot Poet

Tyrants overthrown: 0
Co-workers, students, spouses, store clerks’ * et al: near ∞

And we cower
Kowtowed by lobbyists’ power
NRA clout and dollars
Make our representatives “want to holler”
They “throw up both their hands” GLADLY – with open bank bags
Raking in dollars
Dialing for dollars
As far as their main occupation,
Legislation: Oh! “Our main objective is to make Barack Obama a one-term president.”
Holding up the vote for raising the debt ceiling
Has the world economy reeling from the stench
Of Tea Parties
And downgrading precedents
In harbors
Harboring
Reflections back to times that never existed
Reagan raised taxes eleven times
Yet, they apotheosize him as a deficit hawk
And freedom – for the one-percent he served…

Gabby Giffords had to quit
A “blue dog” democrat
From Arizona
Because a disturbed Jared Lee Loughner
Thought she’d help initiate 2nd amendment Ragnarok

Major Nidal Hasan lost it in the heat of a Texas summer
On Fort Hood
The largest military base in the US
Should not be a place for “that kind of” combat stress
For military members
And innocent dependents
Victims of his ideology birthed by
Rants from a cleric
He’d met over the Internet…

Now, we have Colorado
Colored by blood in a theater
Once more: a disturbed member of humanity
Orders 6,000 rounds of ammo
Two semiautomatic handguns
One shotgun
An AR-15
And Kevlar armament
Saying to anybody paying attention
(Before he went from brunette to orange)
James Holmes was preparing
For war
As his own anarchist “Joker”
Though, [I] not being an expert at poker
Nor a neuroscientist or psychologist
Can see someone associating orange
With Batman’s nemesis
Is NOT playing with a full deck!

No less than
Mayor Mike Bloomberg
And former presidential candidate John McCain
Call for sane gun control
Beyond the political roll refrain
Of protecting the 2nd amendment rights
For law-abiding citizens

Seung-Hui Cho WAS a law-abiding citizen
Before causing a wreck at Virginia Tech!

How many more
Than twelve plus fifty plus
Would have died
If the NRA
Had their dream no longer deferred
Of arming ALL citizens
When a wallet
Birthed nineteen shots landing
Out of forty-one
From NY cops
For Amadou Diallo?

Or Sean Bell
Was sent to the gates
Of Heaven (not Hell)
When his only sin
Was attending his own
Bachelor party?

Were the Founding Fathers
Thinking of semiautomatic
Weapons
When they penned
The 2nd amendment
Or, were they
Thinking of the Minute Men
Defending their homes
From Red Coat British muskets?
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana
My corollary:
“Those who do not learn from (or learn) history, are doomed to be sheep!”

* Inspired by political cartoon

They Called It Football...

R.I.P. Andy Griffith...

Ablution of Rodney King...

Photo Credit: Law Enforcement Today

© 19 June 2012, Juneteenth collaboration: Robert Gibbons, the Griot Poet (response)


Someone said
They cleaned the pool

After Dorothy Dandridge
They changed the rule

So he could get in office

They found Emmett Till
With his face down
Chained to the bottom
Of the river

Found four little girls
After the bombs drop
After the hymns stop

How many ancestors’ cross
The river in this
Ultimate “stop-and-frisk”

Beat-down-beat
In Watts
In New Lots Avenue
On H Street
In the meat packing district
Of Columbia
In Liberty City
In Philly

Beat me down
Bust up
Beat down beat

On the mean street
On the Peachtree
In Biloxi
In Nashville

Beat up
Bust up
Shut up

A riot in the ghetto
Fire in Soweto

Bleed
Baby bleed
Baby bleed

King
Was beaten
Read all about it
Read all about it

Brutality
Brutality
Solidarity
With the KINGs

Clean out the pool
Halls and schoolyard

It’s a bleed
It’s a bleed

It’s OJ
And pimp
It’s a Simpson

Its violation
Its probation
It’s a traffic fine
It’s a life line
It’s a bleed baby:
Bleed!

*****

Brother King
Had made peace
With the Riot Within [Him]

Writing a record
Of the legacy
He wanted to be remembered for

The memory of him he
Wanted us to keep
That he was the voice
Of reason
As LA riot fires
Rose to highest pyres:

“Please…please: can we just all get along?”

We still ask that question
When the only black man elected has his
Citizenship questioned
Chimpanzee emails, watermelon patches, Al Jolson Step-n-Fetch cartoons
A faux bullet-ridden
“Outhouse”-as-bigoted-presidential-library
With faux birth certificates stamped “fake”

From birth (errs) who won’t give the myth a rest
(And fail the test questioning IF Hawaii is truly our 50th state)

With the
Equally faux graffiti:
For a good time, call Michelle; Hilary; Pelosi.

NOI did a study
That the yellow corporate journalist puppets avoid:
This president disrespected at a record pace
That probably makes “W” say: whew!

Pontius Pilate washes before the crucifixion
And I am in conundrum
Of the faces that look like mine
That would vote for a candidate
Whose religion ascribed the “Curse of Ham” to an entire ethnicity?
For a faux neutral stance in preexistence imagined

I can imagine as the android candidate
Obfuscates reality at light speed
Like his etch-a-sketch,
Secret "money is free speech"
Citizen's United-Funded campaign management
Might be hitting an eternal “reset”
Thus what he says (not what he said-said-said): is now TRUE!

Re: BLUE SKIES, BIG SCIENCE, POETIC TECHNOLOGIES

© 7 June 2012, Thom the World Poet, © 9 June 2012, the Griot Poet (response)

I have a friend who is paid by IBM
Just to sit around and solve conundrums
He is a poet-as several other IBM ex-poets
Whose lateral emotional bases allowed flexibility?
Yet whose individuality clashed with corporate groupthink
(You cannot make soup out of ice cream-
Ideas often threaten power structures focused upon control)
Investment post September 11 is in military, police, surveillance mega-industry
All of which constitute inertial economic drags upon productive creative processes
As schools now focus more on learning to the test
Movies and music become retro /recycled clichés eating off past visions
Toffler was right/De Bono was right-to sell thought processing to Corporations
Every cliché is true. Dick Tracy wristwatches exist/as do jetpacks
They have yet to be commercially marketed. Space travel exists (privatized)
Patents for new inventions compound Jetsons/2001/Star Trek previews of the possible
Venture capital supported enterprises seek solutions/even when most investment is military
Eccentric individualism has been replaced by robotic anime-
Programmed drones kill civilians with no responsibility
Technology has no morality. Science is value free.
Economics only one factor when it comes to innovative technology
What philosophy Armageddon? Sarin, anthrax attacks? Deliberate assassinations…
STUXNET cyber-warfare, universal surveillance, secrecy and censorship-
All limit both individual freedom and initiative. New ideas required
But first we need to replace those robots and drones
With poets, artists, philosophers-free thinkers all!

*****

We forget the lesson of "Ender's Game,"
As Mazer Rackham, of bugger-kill fame
And the faux military-industrial-complex declares fair game
A sentient race we make "other" with epithet
No science used to program
- A Google translator
- Or Star Trek "universal communicator"
To see what a hive-complex species thinks,
To know how an entire entity of beings
Lived in harmony,
Before Ender advertently: made them extinct!

Seeking only to live
Beyond its planetary borders

We were attacked in the story: what for?
Because: "they hated our freedoms"?

Orson Scott Card does not explore
The myriad possible reasons Earth was assaulted
In his treatise...as a species, we’ve got a history of pissing people off!

OBL of 9/11 fame made it quite plain: it was for the children
WE bombed in Iraq between false wars
And his twisted devotion
To eye-for-eye killings of more innocents
as if that would implore
Blood to flow that had once been poured,
Sinews and skin to assemble
Upon dry bones

"La vengeance se mange très-bien froide,"

Or,

"Revenge is very good eaten cold," (Novel: Matilde, 1841)
As I compose verse to the coming sun,

I bear witness:
IT [revenge] makes a poor spark,
Or kick start
To a resurrection!

Muse @ 4 AM

© 18 May 2012, the Griot Poet
for LaDonna Adrian Gaines (Donna Summer) December 31, 1948 – May 17, 2012

Donna Summer

I AM
In love with black woman
Because s√he
Was Original Eve given as bone-of-his-bone
Flesh-of-his-flesh
Created from the best
Part of himself,
Square root of a rib,
Rounded rear and breasts
Making her his
Side-by-side companion…

I AM
In love with black woman
Because s√he
Can make coffee beans, do rags and strawberries sexy
(Check out D. Brown’s series)

Often faux imitated,
$30,000 bombs lobbed at:
- Boob jobs;
- Butt jobs;
- Lipo suction;
- Lip injections of silicon;
- Hours spent under cancerous ultraviolet tanning beds…
- Corn rows renamed “the Bo Derek”!

Yet: her grace and beauty to her face unappreciated as s√he was anointed
With Ankh natural beauty
Alighted from Sirius,
Melanin rainbow prism by the warmth of African suns
In Eden

I AM
In love with black woman
Because s√he
Like Donna Summer
Can croon “I…love to love you baby,”
Or an operetta a cappella…and mean it!

And
Before any man with gonads
Calls her outside her name,
Or, raise his fist against her bringing upon him (self) shame…

Realize:

S√he
Is the square root of your “he”
Chocolate, caramel, high-yellow lovely
From ocean’s passages over Diaspora seas,
And like Josephine*
Deserves our respect
And reverence…as QUEENS!

* From: “For Josephine and Other Queens”

Donna: Italian origin, “lady” or “lady of the home,” a title of respect, equivalent to “Don” for men.

Don't Kiss My Baby!

© 5 May 2012, Collaboration between Thom the World Poet and the Griot Poet

Art and politics. The Art Of Politics
Campaigns as more important than election results
Miami & the siege of Chicago. Pigasus.
Stephen King has a band (of writer musicians)
Bridget Shea loves poetry and music
Machiavelli vs. Julian Assange
Hipster-ism as Romantic Self-deception
Outsider politics as defeatism
Monster Raving Looney Parties.
Rave culture's Temporary Autonomous Zones
Laws against Travelers /Gypsies
Curfews. Vagrancy. Criminalizing homelessness/poverty
NO DOGS OR IRISH! /Hedgerow schools
Horizontal vs. Trickle Down Economies
Direct vs. Representative "democracy"
OCCUPY+Wikileaks
Gaza. Palestine. Jews for Jesus.

**********

REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM
"Creating our own realities" ala Karl Rove,
"Bush's brain": itself an oxymoron...
Wikipedia/Wikileaks - open-sourced and WAY too liberal: soo... create Conservapedia.com
And obfuscate reality found unseemly to support moribund from-the-gut philosophies

And:
- Attack global warming/climate change science (for the Koch-to-pus hydra dynasty)
- Attack science, technology, engineering and math
(even when it puts our nation dead LAST)
- Attack poetry and any knowledge
that would cause you to pause like Rodin's "Thinker" (can't have THAT)

Evolution = mental pollution to Neanderthals that haven't themselves
Evolved
- Attack...Einstein's Relativity? (as unproven? Check your GPS!)

Dr. Lawrence Krauss - "Physics of Star Trek" fame, stated:
"Bad Theology - it is a disservice to all people of faith to imply
that it is better for our children to remain ignorant of the world
than to risk the possibility that knowledge may undermine their faith."

We have yet to fight a Third World War,
But Albert's prophecy I end to implore reason
before our destruction as E Pluribus Unum is assured:

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought,
but World War IV
will be fought with sticks... and stones!”

Notes on Jazz

© 14 September 2003, Reginald L. Goodwin
(Inspired by a Kirk Whalum Jazz Concert and mom)


“Little colored boys in berets
“oop pop-a-da
“Horse a fantasy of days
“ool-ya-koo
“and dig all plays.”

“Flatted Fifths,” Langston Hughes, “Selected Poems.”

The night IS a woman…
Calling me into her bosom,

The rhythm beats into
My NAPHESH*,
Sinusoidal waves penetrate
My flesh
Resonating
In the marrow
Of my bones…

Heartbeat
Tones
Droning
My eardrums
Intoning
Ear-gasms
Creating
Spasms
In my spirit.

As I
Hear it,
I bop
My head
And tap
My feet
To an auditory
Treat,
Closing
My eyes to
Sight
Meditating
In the darkness
Of night

As…

The night
IS a woman…

Calling me
Into her bosom.

The prism of light
In the dark night
The entrance
That allowed
The planting of
My seed…
The exit
Episiotomy
From a woman’s
Anatomy
I emerged

To shout
My first
Notes in
UNKNOWN tongues
Before clearing
My throat
To form
Spoken words,
My lungs breath
BLOW
Trumpets
To Heaven,
My JUBAL
Hands stroke
Guitars, violins,
Keyboards,
Synthesizers,
Drums, bongos
And writing pens.

WHAT IS THIS?

It is a
Return to the
Original
Be-bop
Mop, skeetle-wop,
Do-wop
Of life,
Before life
And the affairs
Of this life
Drowned out
Time for
Self-communion
And union
With the
Universe,

When we
Be-bopped
And hip-hopped
In the
Kerr
Spinning
Black hole
Singularity
Throne
Of the
Birth of
Our souls..

Occasionally
Invaded by
Full-color
4-D
Ultrasound
Representations
Of reality,
When we needed
No language
To distinguish
Rhythmic heartbeats
Surrounding

OUR NAPHESH*,
Sinusoidal
Waves penetrating
OUR FLESH,
Resonating in the
Marrow of
OUR developing
Bones,
The tones
Of her
Heart
Distinguishing
OUR universe

--- her womb ---

From a tomb.

Because

JAZZ
….omniscience…

IS a woman

Calling us
Into her
Bosom

Calling us
Into direct
Communion
With her dark,
Infinite essence.

*NAPHESH - Etymology, Hebrew: soul: mind, will, imagination, emotions, intellect. Self-Awareness. "And man became a living soul (NAPHESH), Genesis 2:7

For Mildred D. Goodwin
A Birthday Poem
September 15, 1925 - May 7, 2009.

Chuck D Speaking TRUTH!...

This is an interview and essay by Chuck D of Public Enemy. Hip Hop is now "Hip POP," and lost its original meaning. The OGs of hip hop are into Spoken Word or [authentic] Christian Rap Music. The garbage we're supposed to digest...

The Decline of Empires: Chamlers Johnson...

Slavery By Another Name...

Old Tapes...

The inspiration for the pieces “BWB” and “Self-Portrait”


“Old tapes”: that’s an anachronistic phrase in the era of I-pods, You Tube and downloads. CDs are almost going the way of the 8-track or cassette tape (ask your parents).

I was fourteen, growing up in Winston-Salem, NC. I pulled out a pick to comb my afro (had one then). It was one of those folding-handle jobs: one side red, the other green, Black Nationalist colors. I was too young to know that or how it mattered. What I was doing was fixing my “do,” getting my ‘fro right, looking at model cars and toys in King’s Department store as my mother shopped for clothes; reminiscing when this was my whole focus in the world.

He was big: bald receding hairline, hair on the sides like Larry of “Moe, Larry and Curly” but greasy and laid flat with flakes of dandruff. He had a pot belly lapping over his large belt buckle. I was a little over five feet tall and 110 lbs. He was over six feet and outweighed me by about 200 lbs.

“What you doing, boy?”

I was startled, and turned around. I was as respectable as my parents had taught me to be in situations like this: “Nothing,” I said, and turned away.

“What’s in your pocket?”

“My pick!” and frankly, that’s all that was in my pocket. This man, who hadn’t announced who he was or why I was getting the 4-1-1, was beyond annoying me.

“Up against the wall!” he barked.

The wall was again, a shelf of model cars and toys only kids would like. “This isn’t much of a wall,” I quipped.

I was grabbed by the throat and left arm, shoved hard into the toy shelves. An avalanche fell on my ‘fro denting my styling. At this point, I was in shock.

“Who are you, man!?”

“Store detective…” He flipped me like an omelet. I was being bodily frisked…against my will.

“I didn’t steal anything,” I said, “the only thing in my pockets is a pick you prick!”

“SHUT UP, boy: I knows nigras steal!”

Bad English and an epithet! Outweighed and outmanned, I went “Michael Evans (Good Times)” on him, trying to engage him in “the dozens”: “’Knows’ isn’t the proper verb tense, and it’s ‘Negro’ in 1976!”

“Boy, don’t you sass me!” A fat finger wagged in my nose as he jerked me to meet his eyes.

Turning me back around, to continue this unauthorized search, I spied four white kids in the shoe department donning four pairs of Keds and robbing Colombo/Col-DUMBO blind!

“Err, you’re missing something…”

“Boy, I ain’t missing nothing!”

“I’ve had it with boy, I’ve had it with insults, and I’ve had it with YOU!” Luckily, my mom showed up, because I didn’t necessarily have a plan, I was just fed up.

“What’s going on?”

“I was frisking him.”

“For what,” my mother asked.

“I think he stole something.”

“YOU THINK?" To me: "Did you steal anything?”

“No ma’am. I was picking my hair, and he grabbed me and pushed me into this wall for nothing!” Her arrival made my words leap out staccato; the emotions made my voice crack. It also made her crack.

“YOU,” she pushed her finger into his fat navel and made this man-mountain wince in pain, “GET me the store manager NOW!!!”

Fat boy had some speed. He ran and got the manager, who knew my mother, and knew me since I was born. I’d never seen her so upset, and I to this day never heard my mother SWEAR so beautifully, if there’s such a thing. By the time Mildred Dean was finished dressing them up one side and down the other, they were both sweating mightily; the fat mall detective’s matted hair dripped water and oil on his cheap store-brand polyester shirt.

“I…I…I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”

“Better be. By the way: am I paying for this?” My mother held up a dress.

“No. No! Please take it as compliments of the store,” the nervous manger replied. My first example of leveraging a situation…

*****

King Department store closed soon after that, something about losing too much revenue in items stolen from the store (not by me). Security cameras have replaced rude, blind-as-a-bat racist mall cops but technology hasn’t changed the human heart.

In post soul America, there’s no black/white music charts, American Bandstand and Soul Train. You can see teens sharing music through their two-terminal ear buds; no discussion as at my prom whether and how much Top 40 music or black music would be played. They’ve thankfully, blended into their own culture, and if any are of the Neanderthal attitudes of the past, it was taught to them by parents afraid of a global, uncertain future; romanticizing a secure white picket fenced past that except for a 1% privileged few never really for most existed.

My tapes, however were not imagined, they were as real as my sister going out to Civil Rights marches and rallies and my four-year-old body racked with terror that each time she walked out bravely to be spat on, kicked, punched, hosed, dog-bit and jailed would be the last time I’d see her.

It’s supposed to be a post-racial America after the election of the nation’s first black president, yet the Southern Poverty Law Center states the number of hate groups in 2011 reached 1,018, and their rhetoric is reinforced by talk radio hosts that can tweet/sound bite the familiar southern dog whistles and hide behind the worn excuse: “I’m just an entertainer.” Targets on web sites can get Gabrielle Gifford almost killed and disabled for life; and a teenager can die for a hoodie, an iced tea and a bag of skittles because of a “stand your ground” law in 31 states that puts a target on every teenager’s back, specifically African American male teenagers because they “look dangerous” wearing their hoodies in the rain, or picking their hair.

My Valkyrie left me peacefully in 2009, joining my father ten years after his death. I miss them both.

I am Trayvon Martin.

Self-Portrait (repost)

(Homage to Langston Hughes and his poem, “I, Too”) © 31 January 2002, The Griot Poet

Langston Hughes said: “I, too sing America.
I am the darker brother.”

I am the one
Burning under the hot sun
You derisively nicknamed
“Buffalo soldier”
Because of my Afro?

I am also the Cherokee:
Befriending the runaway,
Giving my daughter to him in marriage,
Joining him to my tribe,
Creating the Seminole.

I am the Irish overseer:
Bursting into the slave quarters,
Raping my own great-great grandmother,
Siring Julius Goodwin and a host more mulatto children.

I am the offspring of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemming:
Some of us destined for the last class,
Others hair so straight; skin so bright to crossover as white

So, when you call me “n----r”
You obviously
Can’t see
You vituperate
A pureed pedigree
As everyone has had
Their piece of African me!

As would be the case
Someone related to Egyptian race
Would decipher the hieroglyph
“America”
Into three distinct words:
“I am race?”

Check your attitude!

For pride in
My negritude
Allows me to enlighten your case

As you point your
Jeering finger
At me through space,
You will inevitably
Pimp-slap your own damn face!

Without me, though you wouldn’t hear it
Would you have the hairstyle “The Bo Derek?”
Would dreadlocks, locks and fades have left the east side venturing to the west side?
And hip hop become hip POP?

Forced here in chains and cargo crates,
It was you who gave me great chase
Bring me to this place
That by GOD’S
Grace
The cane came together
Where Ezekiel’s dry bones
Dotted the landscape:
“Son of man: can these bones live? O Lord GOD, thou knowest! *”

I am the darker brother:

I am the Mende; the Ashanti; the Yoruba; the Igbo.
I am the Seminole; the Cherokee; the Choktaw; the Sioux;
I am the Irish; the Italian; the German; the Arab; the Jew.

I am the melting pot: I am all of you!

As Langston Hughes said,

I say again to you:

“I, too sing America.
I too am America.”

I, too!

For Trayvon Martin. Photoshop art by Cynthia Manor, Austin, TX

* Ezekiel 37:3

BWB...

© 19 March 2012, the Griot Poet

Driving While Black…no, he was
Walking While Black…
Being While Black…

Trayvon Martin’s crime was
Iced tea and a bag of skittles, the riddle of walking
In a hoodie in the rain during an intermission of the NCAA All-Star Game.
His English teacher said his major was “cheerfulness.”

Other than his hoodie that most teenagers wear,
George Zimmerman became Klansman and executioner,
The 2012 version of Emmett Till’s asthmatic whistle that got him tragically killed.
Mamie Till allowed an open casket view
To look at the ugliness that they’d visited on her son.
That brave act steeled backbone in the Civil Rights Movement;
A personal tragedy in a pre-racial reality.

Now, in the post-racial reality of having a
Black president, Trayvon’s spirit cries out for justice,
And the DOJ has a black attorney general, the force of law being:

“Hate Crime” – defined as “a traditional offense like
Murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias.”
For the purposes of collecting statistics,
Congress has defined a hate crime as a "criminal offense
Against a person or property motivated in whole or in
Part by an offender's bias against a race, religion,
Disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation." (FBI.gov)

Every black and brown parent hugs their kids closer tonight;
Every black and brown child hides their Obama t-shirts and posters,
Else flirt with disaster.

These were the fights they’d see only in February/September-October

– once-a-year – in Black and Hispanic History (Month), or You Tube reels.

The young would roll their eyes and say:
“that’s old; it don’t happen anymore.”

Well…

Trayvon’s blood was spilled on a police department’s
Floor as his father called his cell for THREE days
And NO ONE answered until they got their “story” straight.
They’d protect Invader Zimm through Florida’s
“Stand Your Ground” law, because if they
Prosecute Zimmerman, they risk [for themselves] lawsuit!

Trayvon’s blood calls out to God as Abel’s
Did for Cain’s slaughter of him.
And just to remind you – Trayvon’s “sin” so to not long ponder this riddle:

Driving While Black…NO, he was
Walking While Black…
Being While Black…

...with the deadly weapons of a hoodie, an iced tea and a bag of skittles!

Bootleg, II

Prohibition

© 9 March 2012, Bootleg, part 1 here

Chinua Achebe would say “Things Fall Apart” (still):
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell
Speaking his intentions to make the young president
And his beautiful family “one-term residents”
In the Presidential Mansion affectionately to its
Previous supremacist management known as: the “White” House.

“I want my country back”; “I want Obama to fail”:
The incessant wails of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh,
Two right-wing talk show hosts that as standard bearers
Of “conservative family values” are two jokes: Beck – 2nd marriage,
Limbaugh – 4th, with Elton John making a million-dollar payday
At the reception with his lifelong beau in tow…
Both men had issues with drug and alcohol abuse as
They railed at others’ abyss; both dropped out of college,
(Beck has a boondoggle online for a fee),

Rush couldn’t even pass ballroom dancing,
Yet these Neanderthals dictate to a gullible electorate
What THEY should say, act, think or be! Glenn Beck
Actually got too crazy for FOXNEWS – imagine that?

And Rush seems to have it in for pretty white females
That obviously eclipse his intelligence! Sandra Fluke
Executed her constitutional right to address congress and
This Troglodyte called her a “slut, prostitute”
And more, eventually forced to apologize as his
Sponsors dropped from his once burgeoning list like migrating fireflies.

Sarah Palin was still game-changing when she placed
Targets on her web site and announced: “don’t retreat: RELOAD!”
Resulting in an unstable member of our human family almost
Ending the life of Gabriele Gifford and Christina-Taylor Green (9)
Born on September 11, 2001, the full-circle of a short life of tragedy.
Yet, she offered no apology, only reinforcing the narrative that as a
VEEP barely vetted; she wasn’t ready for prime time or the office of president.

Big government bureaucrats became Tea-bagging impediments,
Killing legislation that in elation they once sponsored: “hell no!”
Exclaimed the-then House minority leader John Boehner
(which, if you haven’t added him, one of Words’ alternatives is “bonehead”),
Moments after the phrase “President-Elect”
Began sinking in to the sinking reality their
Former standard-bearer left them.

An economy crumbling – a byproduct of libertarian
Laissez faire myths of “trickle-down” that even David Stockton
Disavows, the once-mighty “rubber-stamp”
Congress defeated in 2006 midterms – “impeachment is off the table”
The only negative appraisal I have of former
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. 562 laws versus “bonehead’s” 12:
Girlfriend got it done!

And we will be undone if the current four horsemen of a
Red apocalypse bootleg the same stale stance, should one
Perchance win the nomination and whitewash the
White House again – with inane theories and ignoring
Science as the world globally warms, wars and rumors of – and spins.

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© 11 February 2012, the Griot Poet

She gave us a reason to love ourselves,
Emerging in the 80s post-Civil Rights, post-loss of
Medgar, Malcolm and Martin, if Michael was the “King of Pop”…
She was definitely “Our Queen.”
What 1980 male college freshman
Didn’t calculate that we were just
One year older than the voice that
Belted from her lithe frame, fantasize
“What we’d do” with 5 minutes of our
Best Mack if we had a chance
(Past her Bodyguard) to step to her,
As if she was “saving all her love for []”…
Her faux feud with Maria Cary set the
Diva pattern for Rihanna, Beyoncé, Jennifer, Latifah and Eve…
Yet, didn’t we laugh (instead of pray)
When she married Bobby, and starred in a
So-called “reality” show, showcasing her
Private demons for public display?
Post-Bobby, with the baby (Bobby-Christina),
She could never hit “the notes” she used to,
Her interviews shaken versions of
Her star’s former hue.
The human voice has depth and range
That cannot be enhanced or explained
In a digital software mix program or
Corporate studio...
Some things of exquisite beauty are
Born in choir robes, Sunday solos and
Christmas shows,
Before the Clive Davis’ discover angels,
Among us,
When NAPHESH kicked first breath
In Eden
And Deity pronounced self-awareness
To a creation with mind, will, imagination,
Emotion and intellect – defining the
Earthiness that we would call…soul…
The best of Adam’s rib performs now…celestial shows.
Whitney Houston, 1963 – 2012

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Ouroboros

© 21 November 2011, the Griot Poet

Elizabeth Warren is the thorn in collective political,
right-side assets, scourge of the 1%, they lobbied her
out of her job for Consumer Protection Advocate;
professor and author, compared to Scott Brown:
intelligence versus centerfold Cro-Magnon, yet...

Not a single hedge fund manager has been charged for
crimes against humanity:
tanking the global economy and sending 10 million souls
here and overseas into poverty.

Yet, they spray kids at UC Davis cavalierly with weapons grade pepper spray.

Sprayed hoses, batons and dogs were used a generation
ago on young people following a dreamer’s dream:
from Selma to Birmingham to the first genuine March on Washington DC.

These are the grandchildren that sit down now at the
“table of brotherhood”;
Arab Springs/American Winters are sparked by the
democratizing force of technology. The irony:
the hub-spoke model of military communication was replaced
by the Internet spider’s web such that destroys one node,
another takes over, like cockroaches or vultures.

“Get a bath; get a job” works in alternate universe dimensions,
like impeaching presidents for stained blue dresses while
simultaneously diddling the next missus on your list while
married to the second, and calling it “patriotism” when
your salute was Viagra-inspired!
Now, this book-pimping squire is a front-runner in the GOP.

The Venn diagram of Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party
only intersects at dissolution and disappointment at
government leadership (an Oxymoron): they diverge that
one was local; the other global.

We have a two party fundraising system that only thinks
of the next election, it costs a billion dollars
to run for president. It cost one-hundred thousand dollars
just to set up an office to start running for the
senate or congress.

47% of our representatives are members of the 1%,
that don’t have any “dogs in the hunt” of the rigged
game being fair for the rest of us.

Yet they spray kids at US Davis cavalierly with weapons grad pepper spray.

We were downgraded not because of our economy; the drag
on it is from a do-nothing-but-argue-for-the-sake-of-argument
congress that’s only more popular than Fidel Castro,
and less than the notion of the nation going communist!

And a few in Congress are held unconstitutionally by a pledge
to not raise taxes by Grover Norquist,

Further stressing the system that’s on the brink to where class distinctions between 1 and 99 percent will soon be quite irrelevant.

Ragnarok: “the Norse version of Armageddon, the death of the gods
and a great battle foretelling the occurrence of various natural disasters,
and the subsequent submersion of the world in water.
Afterward, the world resurfaces anew and fertile, to be repopulated by two human survivors.” Ouroboros eats its tail...

For our sakes: I hope to only see Stan Lee’s 2012 Avengers movie exploiting the same theme!

Civil Rights and #OWS

I am reading Why We Can't Wait, by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., spurred largely by the familiar tone struck on the budget debacle, and trying to pass laws to create jobs.

I was struck by the similarity of the police clashes, the blood on faces: all they are missing is the 21^st Century version of "Bull Conner," biting police dogs and fire hoses.

I embed a resource, and the third chapter of "Why We Can't Wait": Letter From Birmingham Jail:

Baal Out (Gangster Oligarchy)

© 26 October 2011, the Griot Poet

Children sacrificed
In “cremations of care” through
Moloch’s outstretched arms.

One percent increase
Two-hundred seventy-five,
Ninety-niners flat-line…

Jobs created go
To the children of Baal, or
Global slave labor…

Democracy to
Thrive beyond Thermopylae
Youth does it favor!

Inspired by Glenn Greenwald: WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR SOME: How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful

Dr. Cornel West

The god of this world

Two Golden Calves

(For the occupiers: stay strong! OccupyWallSt.org)
© 30 September 2011, the Griot Poet

Daniel 3: 10 – 11 "You, O king, have made a decree that everyone who hears the sound of the horn, flute, harp, lyre, [and] psaltery, in symphony with all kinds of music, shall fall down and worship the gold image; and whoever does not fall down and worship shall be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.” ....................Matthew 4: 8 – 9: Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, "All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me."

“Satan runs Wall Street!”

“One day, the poor will have nothing left to eat BUT the rich!”

Signage rants scream out silently
of a protest impolitely not covered/ignored by the
limp-prick-no-help-from-Viagra media:

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED,
after this year’s demise of Gil Scott(Prophet)-Heron,
selectively missing smashed heads, broken ribs and cameras;
mace and pepper spraying demonstrating innocents
(save for You Tube witness),

as the same actors who sent our country over a ditch
BEGGED US for BAILOUT,
and like GM, instead of graciously building in the US,
after research into greener cars and better batteries:

their next manufacturing plants (and jobs) will be…in China!
(Our real benefactors’ address...)

If this was a “Christian Nation”:
it would not be based on oblation
and worship of the Sino-Phoenician god Mammon.

“One Market Under God,”
opined by Thomas Frank that
the market “had become deity,” and
the wealthy high priests of its altar.

One lawmaker on MSNBC without blink,
falter or apology stated:
“I can’t feed my family on just $400,000/year”
(after expenses for his business!),

and God bless, Bill O’Rielly may QUIT TV if he
has to pay one penny above the rate before the
1^st Bush tax cuts in 2001 at
Clinton-era levels…when we HAD a surplus!

Warren Buffet is their reluctant saving grace,
and public enemy #1, as he threatens their fun
by pulling down the veil between the outer court
and the “unholy of un-holies”:

- pin-striped Lear jets,

- five mansions and million dollar
New York Penthouse apartments,

- hedge fund managers’ daily cocaine habits

- and visits to the “Emperor’s (prostitution) Club”
expensed as “market research!”

Like modern-day Marie Antoinette’s,
they berate the frustrated, “tired and poor”
hordes, camped out “huddled masses yearning to breathe free”
(and be employed) with “let them eat cake!”

Like Arab springs, they light the candles for an
American fall and soldier winter that their best
Creel Commission public relations firms could not handle!

In my dénouement, I restate (with chagrin from the 99%):

“Satan runs Wall Street!”

“One day, the poor will have nothing left to eat BUT the rich!”

Honey Bee * Prophecies

© 10 September 2011, The Griot Poet

We neglect the prophecies of fur coated wild men
eating honey, crickets and bees, voices calling
in the wilderness, modern day seers created by
Theodore Geisel₁ east of Who-ville

called “The Lorax,” whose command of scientific
environmental facts did not once impress Once-ler
oligarchs bent on harvesting Truffula trees and
other commodities,

Enriching his Grinch-looking family members who
could not remember a sunrise without “smog-shine,”

I am inclined to believe that Frank Drake’s equation₂
looking for SETI was statistical prophecy when so-called
civilizations become dumbed down by their own technology –
their ability to change their environment and enrich their
pockets with other people’s money leaving their economies
wrecked while their planets tear themselves apart with

-hurricanes,
-tornados,
-earthquakes
and tsunamis?

Is anybody out there?

Maybe flying saucers only exist as Frisbees in parks for
overweight kids using diabetic syringes to keep them alive
after a rousing day of video gaming addiction instead of
playing...oh! I forgot: smog-shine alert!

Stay in all day.
Don’t go out to play.
Text mommy cause you’re bored.
Be afraid!

Pedophiles, underground sex market slavers may steal your
child...does anyone remember when we had a Star Trek/Jetson
HOPE for the future?
Does anyone remember when you went outside to play...ALL day...
in smog free sunshine and played in water from lead free fire
hydrants? Our memories have been supplanted by million player
online realities, avatars and virtual lives we’re caught up in:

Deux ex machina, god out of the machine...

warned about by Quintus Horatius Flaccus (A.K.A. Horace, Roman Poet)
in Ars Poetica, programmed in the 21st Century by Horus
of the “all seeing eye” $1 bill at the 1% apex of the pyramid
oligarchy owning ninety-nine percent of the wealth, and he can’t
stand it when you’re either too poor to pay for your “fix” or actually

pick up a real BOOK, READ it and UNDERSTAND it!

And, if you happen to be a Harvard Law school graduate, in the south
you might be considered “uppity.”

Because the Ministry of Truth of cable news can’t have you using that
fatty, grey tissue between your ears: you may want rights, life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Hell, they gave you flat telescreens above your wall mantles and
charging cell phone cellblocks on your laptop sockets:

“where’s the beef?”

If we had warp drive,
we’d arrive at distant worlds to find husks and dust bowls like
Mars with remnants of seas.

The small number of smart “Little Green Men” bypass our oasis of greed.

Maybe the cloud the Lorax lifted himself through was a wormhole that
tunneled an Einstein-Rosen Bifrost bridge to some other parallel reality

where
love,
sacrifice
and sanity

were the only prevalent currencies!


1. Theodore Geisel = Dr. Seuss.
2. Drake Equation: R^* f_p n_e f_l f_i f_e L

a. N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible;
b. R* = the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy
c. f_p = the fraction of those stars that have planets
d. n_e = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
e. f_ℓ = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
f. f_i = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
g. f_e = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
h. L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

Elite by the Numbers (in 3 parts)

Elite 1 a : singular or plural in construction : the choice part : CREAM b : singular or plural in construction : the best of a class c : singular or plural in construction : the socially superior part of society d : a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise much power or influence e : a member of such an elite —usually used in plural (http://www.m-w.com/)

There are 435 members of the (now) infamous House of Representatives and 100 Senators (both numbers fixed by law). There are nine members of the Supreme Court and regardless of political party: one president and one vice president.

According to the CIA World Fact book, the US estimate of population in 2009 was 307,212,123.

Looking at this mathematically (in a deck-of-cards analogy), the odds of getting to be:

President/Vice President: 3.2550798784721135500241961480146e-7 ~ 3.3 x 10^-7%
307,212,123: 1

Supreme Court: 2.9295718906249021950217765332132e-6 ~ 3.0 x 10^-6%
34,134,680: 1

Senator: 3.2550798784721135500241961480146e-5 ~ 3.3 x 10^-5%
3,072,121: 1

House of Representatives: 1.4159597471353693942605253243864e-4 ~ 1.4 x 10^-4%
706,235: 1

NBA Athlete: 0.03%
3546: 1

Other than white male president: 2.2727272727272727272727272727273~2.3%
44:1

My last category I specifically made “other than white male president,” because prior to the 2008 presidential contest, the odds of a white male in the Oval Office was 100% regardless of political party.

The presidency of Barack Obama has opened up the category “other than” so that Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin, Herman Cain despite their political views in anathema of his have the same odds – albeit slim – to win the presidency. Prior to his, it was a big, fat goose egg! Secretary Hilary Clinton, had she become the nominee and president, would have accomplished the same feat.

******

To be a black man in America is to be under [mentally] a constant state of “siege.” On the one hand, you have the peer pressure in your urban neighborhood regardless of the era of being “cool.” Cool then was Super Fly, impossibly high platform shoes, leopard skin coats, smoking reefer, selling it, graduating to cocaine like [crack cocaine] Ricky Ross; making a million dollars to “ride off in the sunset” (the end of Super Fly), and the obsession of a few friends that tried and failed: one executed; one waiting on death row. Cool now seems to be similar, updated music with the addition of sagging britches and You Tube reinforcement.

When you have an interest outside of sports, a talent for science, math, writing, thinking, literature, you know who “Jacque Cousteau” is, and up on his weekly undersea show, you might get labeled: weird or “white boy.” Cute girls ignore you, your solace being books, tools a microscope, a telescope and a junior chemistry set.

Making some academic attainment, you end up in areas where you are “the one” or “the first” to arrive. That’s not entirely true, just that a concentration of members in the National Society of Black Physicists or National Society of Black Engineers typically happens at conventions; not companies. Getting on elevators illicit purses shifting; catching cabs proves difficult despite lacking any criminal record.

Siege is a bubble you exist in: jowls clenched tight after swallowing hard at work at off-color humor – the psychological reason I wear a night guard; rants about “reverse discrimination” took less than a decade to legitimize when introduced in the lexicon, pointing out obvious unrighteousness marks you as “playing the race card,” successfully trumped by this Joker.

The other things you hear in the siege bubble are phrases like “meritocracy,” “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps,” “stop living in the past,” “post-racial” and my favorite: “a colorblind society.” Mouthed by most conservative talk show hosts, it’s a phrasing meant to sound agreeable allowing real conditions to be disagreeable, and essentially unchanged. Our society is a pyramid where equality and monetary wealth is enjoyed by the 1% oligarchs at the Eye of Horus: the 99% are left to divide ourselves into political parties.

A quick Google search yields this answer to the question: “how many blacks have run for president in the United States?”

Shirley Chisholm (Democrat) 1972
Jesse Jackson (Democrat) 1984
Dr. Lenora Fulani (Independent) 1988
Alan Keyes (Republican) 2000
Carol Moseley Braun (Democrat) 2004
Al Sharpton (Democrat) 2004
Barack Obama (Democrat) 2008

Forgive me when I make this admission: on seeing him on stage, after six predecessors, I just wondered “how long would this one last?” My confidence after six was somewhat jaded; not enough African Americans voted for the six previous black candidates, though they may have silently admired each one’s chutzpah. Senator Obama distinguished himself as being the first presidential candidate needing Secret Service protection while still a candidate in the primaries. It was not a forgone conclusion that he would win the Democratic primaries or ultimately the Oval Office.

The attacks became visceral and vitriolic: charges of “palling around with terrorist,” “terrorist fist bumps,” “socialist,” “racist” (against white people – despite the affection for his mother and his grandparents), death threats, vocal threats at rallies of “off with his head” and “kill him.”

Then, and now: I see a man in the “siege bubble,” having to be conciliatory to unreasonable forces that have sworn his defeat before his administration got beyond “President-Elect.” Questioning the qualifications of a Magna Cum Laude Columbia graduate and first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review; snubbing his intelligence as “too professorial”; labeling him “elitist” while ignoring every public official is. Bumper Stickers appeared saying: “Impeach Obama” before his January 20th inauguration. He has to grit his teeth, see his hair turn gray, his skin wrinkle, bear its weight else he be labeled “radical,” as was his former pastor when the majority world suddenly realized an inequitable system might produce a different archetype from majority evangelical churches that never experienced slavery, Civil Rights, church bombings or Jim Crow.

*****

Why I will support the reelection of President Barack Hussein Obama.

Rick Perry has thrown his hat in the ring of the GOP contest for the presidency, and he’s catapulted to the front of the pack. He’s aligned himself with the New Apostolic Reformation Movement. He’s essentially the male version of Michelle Bachmann/Sarah Palin and Dominion [ism], a hyper-spiritual form of Christian Nationalism that dominates the Republican Party. They take their mandate from the book of Genesis, where God says “[have] dominion over the earth,” and for these groups that means everything, inclusive of government, arts, science, technology…domination.

The Way Things Used to Be:

1954: Brown versus Board of Education, a 9 – 0 vote in the Supreme Court (when they were actually non-partisan) that mandated schools be desegregated “with all deliberate speed.” That swiftness didn’t occur for me in North Carolina until 1971.

What was introduced on our currency in 1955 was the phrase “In God We Trust” along with the flag of the rebel south in state flags like South Carolina, Georgia and Arkansas, hearkening to the war between the “Godless North” and the “Christian South.” Desegregation caused two phenomena: white flight to the suburbs and “Christian Private Schools,” an audacious attempt to exempt their children from integration with the benefit of tax exempt status.

Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann in her youth surprisingly worked on the campaign of President Jimmy Carter – a Democrat – for the notion of electing “one of their own,” making Carter our country’s first evangelical president, former nuclear engineer and peanut farmer. When he eliminated the tax exempt status of the Christian Schools to foster integration, they turned on him in 1980 electing Ronald Reagan.

Being the ever cognizant actor of B movies, it was easy for him and his speechwriters to sprinkle his wordsmith with calls to an America that Republicans and Reagan Democrats remembered: before 1954.

The Right co-opted religious rhetoric after the 1988 campaign of Bush I and Dukakis: noting the substantial mailing list of Republican Presidential hopeful and [still] 700 Club head of Pat Robertson: millions of “snail mail” addresses, pre-Internet, they peppered their speeches with what white evangelicals longed to hear: a return to the country they “knew” before 1954.

Fast forward to the present: it is no accident that Michelle Bachmann has appealed to not just Tea Party and evangelicals – the new word entering the lexicon is “Teavangelicals.”

It is no accident that Rick Perry staged a day of prayer in Houston, Texas to secure his bona fides with the most divisive group in Christendom that calls for execution of gays in Africa, that calls the Catholic Church “the whore of Babylon” and want every government program to help the poor turned over to: the churches.

I am not voting for Barack Hussein Obama because I am a socialist; I am not voting for him because I am a capitalist; I am not voting for him because I think he’s done a fantastic job in office; I am not voting for him because he’s a black man. And, I am not voting for him as “the lesser of two evils.”

I am voting for him because of Democracy itself that is under current clear and present danger of extinction, and something he said (quoting FDR): “make me do it.”

I think we miss out on “We the People.” We instead look for the avatar in every election cycle and forget we have a considerable amount of leverage to bear up our man in office.

Make him do it: the rallies that the world saw from the Tea Party during the healthcare debates were not matched by rallies from the energized left that opposed almost everything Bush proposed, every expansion of the security state, every death in Iraq and Afghanistan. All that energy disappeared. So…you don’t have a public option; you don’t have single payer: because you didn’t “make him do it.”

The “Community Organizer-In-Chief” needed our backs, and we turned our backs to the 5:1 ratio of corporate lobbyists to senators and congress members that have their and his ears. Corporations have organized AstroTurf rallies to look like grass roots, when we actually were not done working November 4, 2008. That was just the beginning.

Politics in the era after 2009 and the current Supreme Court’s oxymoronically named “Citizen’s United” ruling, giving corporate America not just clarified “personhood” under the 14th Amendment – ironically designed to give personhood to former chattel slaves – it gave them unprecedented power in our lives, the ability to flood money to any candidate of their choosing anonymously as “free speech,” elections can no longer be bench sport/armchair athletics: if democracy matters.

They are awash with money, making few loans to homebuyers or small business owners, and have no interest in creating jobs in the US since they have free rein to ship them to cheaper countries; they pay little or zero taxes; they do not invest in education here because they have no interest in paying salaries, benefits, and 401(k) plans to a continuous supply of replacement workers that they would eventually have to pay for their retirement.

“We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity; do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.”

With a President Obama and an active citizenry post-election, I think we can “make him do it.”

Or…we can go backwards beyond 1954…not as a third world nation, but worse: a new Northern-Strategy/Southern-Strategy class cultural divide in the 21st century, and make the title: “UNITED STATES” of America… an oxymoron.

“Because the finance man's gonna be at your house on Saturday, right? That's exactly what the company wants - to keep you on their line. They'll do anything to keep you on their line. They pit the lifers against the new boys, the old against the young; the black against the white - ANYTHING to keep us in our place,” Yaphet Kotto, as Smokey James in the movie “Blue Collar.”

Addendum Analysis:
1. Since the sample size is rather large, occupying the Executive Branch, Congress or the Supreme Court takes a considerable amount of chutzpah and some healthy narcissism to think one’s ideas could satisfy every person in the 307,212,123 sample size, which is getting far more diverse and bigger than anyone ever imagined. Because it’s such a small group, the system probably encourages the same types from the same colleges to run for the same political parties. Families therefore are encouraged by the system to establish dynasties in a democratic electoral system. By definition: rising to occupy any government position in such a system is elite.

2. Since meeting the needs of almost 1/3 of a billion is kind of daunting, lobbyist with lots (and lots) of m-o-n-e-y are probably easier to digest and manage. Since “Corporations are people, my friend,” (Governor Romney) I assume you kind of punt and hope for the best, or muddy the waters – say what you think people want to hear – and hang on for the long haul.

3. It is statistically easier to become the first African American president than an NBA athlete (see 4 for the corollary). A pun on sample sizes: President Obama is number 44; “of the almost 156,000 male, high school senior basketball players only 44 will be drafted to play in the NBA after college.” See link above.

4. Conversely, there is a 97.7% probability of “other-than-other,” i.e. a white male of either party occupying the Oval Office either in 2013 or 2017.

5. Because the odds were once zero, and so small even now, the odds of “other than” repeating itself (after 2012 or 2016) are rather remote.

I sometimes wonder: if the people holding up signs at Camellia sinensis caucuses actually “crunch the numbers” before the inevitable painted signs titled “IMPEACH TEH MUSLOM?”

3 Charts to Email Your Right Wing B-I-L...

An Open Letter to Rep. Doug Lamborn on the subject "Tar Baby"

tar baby
 
noun
a situation, problem, or the like, that is almost impossible to solve or to break away from.
Also, tar•ba•by.

Origin:
after the tar doll used to trap Brer Rabbit in an Uncle Remus story (1881) of Joel Chandler Harris
Ref: www.dictionary.com

*****

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or, fester like a sore,
and then run?
Does it stink like rotted meat,
or crust and sugar-over
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load...
...or does it explode?

*****

This is Langston Hughes' "Dream Deferred." I don't expect the congressman from Colorado has read it.

After hearing the 'tar baby' comment on the Michael Baisden Show in New York, I felt the heavy load. I'm old enough to recall a time at three when my mother and I got on a bus to go home in NC, dutifully moving from the comfortable front to the back. I recall the great civics lesson I received in my living room as my older sister and her friends marched to remove that Jim Crow law, for voting rights, Civil Rights. Her generation made it possible for President Obama to be elected. I've heard the situation he found himself elected to in 2008 aptly compared to someone running up the restaurant bill and sticking the next guest with the check! This egregious comment after Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords last night made her triumphant return to Congress: "Not a dry eye in the place," the cliché I heard from commentators over again. You denigrate that moment of unity after the most deplorable, divisive politics on a non-issue -- raising the debt ceiling -- with this comment.

I was irritated as I shopped; passing the same people I'd passed since moving to New York. I was internally defensive, almost ready for a verbal or physical altercation. I did not "explode," but I felt the heavy load of preparing myself academically; ascending from my humble background; presenting myself professionally; using the diction and syntax that a manager of technical personnel should use.

Then, I recall the dear friends I have of all cultures: Asian, European, Indian, Native American; races and political persuasions. I am friends with African Americans that probably voted the same way you did in the last election. We are fast friends. It is shameful that adults outside the beltway can behave maturely, and those with the responsibility of managing the country...behaving like over-stimulated juveniles.

Rep. Doug Lamborn: in one term, you've denigrated Alan West (FL), Timothy Scott (SC), and every conservative person of color in your district that voted for you.

You painted a broad brush over an entire culture that did not ask to migrate to this country in the first place, focusing on one man, who happens to be the fairly elected President of the United States. Whether or not you respect the man, respect the office he holds. You yourself may hold it one day: karma...sowing and reaping...reciprocity. The respect (or, lack thereof) you met out may come back multiplied. You have apologized, and that is warranted. It IS possible in your insular world; you had professional ignorance to its "other meaning." Consider yourself now, sir...educated.

Yes, you could get away with the strict definition of the phrase. However, you must represent all Coloradans and all Americans: those that voted for you, and those that did not; those that are republicans and those who are not; those that agree with you and those who do not; those who are part of your culture, and those who are not.

We are the United States of America, congressman. E Pluribus Unum: out of many...one.

The New Jim Crow...

Bourne Amnesia

© 18 July 2011, the Griot Poet

Did I miss the memo?

When we were brought to Plymouth Rock,
it wasn’t a voluntary vacation…down
in the bowels of overstocked ships,
sleeping in bile, human feces and piss,
separated through Goree Island gates
from our continent, languages and tribes
fulfilling Deuteronomy prophesies of
slavery in “a nation of fierce countenance,
which does not respect the elderly nor
show favor to the young.” 1

Did I miss the memo?

"Your sons and your daughters [shall be]
given to another people, and your eyes shall
look and fail [with longing] for them
all day long; and [there shall be] no strength
in your hand.” 2 Brought to a foreign land,
scarred by whips physically; eyes cast downward
mentally; “Willie Lynch” myth beaten us down spiritually…

Did I miss the memo?

When Harriet Tubman conducted the
Underground Railroad – at gunpoint – to those
that would decide to first blow their joint,
then change their minds and side with their
previous “Simon Legree” plantation masters,
the equivalent of going back across
seas of reeds to Egypt, bondage and slavery?

Did I miss the memo?

A Civil War was fought not for state’s
rights, but the right of
“life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”
by original humanity deftly defined
constitutionally as three-fifths like
livestock to increase the stocks of landowners
and founding fathers fathering
Sally Hemming’s mulatto children.

Did I miss the memo?

“Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never did and it never will.”

“Where justice is denied, where poverty
is enforced, where ignorance prevails,
and where any one class is made to feel
that society is an organized conspiracy
to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither
persons nor property will be safe,”
wise quotes by Frederick Douglass,
playing out over decades in mind-programming
entertainment minstrelsy shows.

Did I miss the memo?

Medgar Evers murdered by Byron de La Beckwith:
one lone nut theory I can get with,
but Malcolm X and Martin Luther King
were not too long after their 1st
and only face-to-face meeting
(after public animosity) assassinated by
actors that should not have had access to them.

Did I miss the memo?

When we were lampooned in minstrel shows,
burnt cork face, step-n-fetch blows to
our woman and manhood, birth of Jim Crow
by Thomas D. Rice to Edgar Rice Burroughs’
not-so-subtle statement that
English Lord Greystoke-Tarzan is needed
to tame the African jungle.

The modern context is
Bankrupt Entertainment Television, birthed
when Rick James couldn’t play his videos
on MTV, now VIACOM owns the whole shebang;
we’re mentally/spiritually being programmed
to desire those things we once fought
against as labels of our libel.

“My people perish for a lack of knowledge.” 3

Did I miss the memo?

1. Deuteronomy 28:50
2. Ibid, 28:32
3. Hosea 4:6

Faux News...

Ayn Rand

"Ayn Rand encapsulates in a very powerful way this drift [away from Christian values], especially with the rise of the tea party which is in many ways very un-Christian," AVN Executive Director Eric Sapp told Raw Story in an exclusive interview. "There's a lot of political pressure to combine the Christian right with that new, powerful tea party movement on the right. Ayn Rand kind of puts the point why Christians need to be very, very wary of those who are trying to do so."



I posted this link: [Badly] Needed to be Sad (Again) regarding previous VPOTUS Richard Cheney, regarding his telling Senator Patrick Leahy to go "f--- himself." I used the phrase: The party that "Co-opted God."

I've said, over and over, Republican politicians are pimping the evangelicals like Democratic politicians pimped latino and black voters. They say what everyone needs to hear to get their vote, then diligently and deliberately forget their promises and go to work for their real benefactors on Wall Street.

Ask yourself: is THIS what Jesus would do? Is this what a so-called "Christian nation" would do? Whether you believe or not, if they laud Ayn Rand, they are either fulfilling another agenda covertly and using religion as the "Opiate of the People" to manipulate crowds to their bidding, or they are idiots?

Poetry at the Whitehouse...

Freudian Slips...Slips...Slips...

You’re watching Obama / Osama Compilation. See the Web's top videos on AOL Video

Mother's day...

Image Credit: IndieRockCafe.com

History of Mother's Day

"The first official Mother's Day celebrations in the United States took place in West Virginia in 1908, at the urging of Anna Jarvis. Anna's mother (also named Anna), who was active in her community, frequently organized women's groups to promote friendship and health. It had been her dream to reunite families divided by the Civil War with a day dedicated to mothers. When she passed away on May 12, 1907, Anna held a memorial service at her late mother's church in her honor. Her mother's idea of Mother's Day quickly caught on, and within five years of her death, virtually every state was observing the day on the anniversary of her death. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared the second Sunday of May as the official Mother's Day.


"Although Jarvis had promoted wearing a white carnation as a tribute to one's mother, the custom developed of wearing a red or pink carnation to represent a living mother or a white carnation for a mother who was deceased. Over time, the day was expanded to include others, such as grandmothers and aunts, who played mothering roles. However, what had originally been primarily a day of honor became associated with the sending of cards and the giving of gifts and in protest against its commercialization, Jarvis spent the last years of her life trying to abolish the holiday that she had helped establish.


"Mother's Day is celebrated around the world, either on this date, or at other times of the year. In 17th century England, those who had moved away were allowed to visit their home parishes and their mothers on Laetare Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Lent. This became "Mothering Sunday," now celebrated earlier in the year in England. Some countries have also continued to observe ancient festivals; for example, Durga-puja, honoring the goddess Durga, remains an important festival in India."

"You can do anything you want to do, if you set your MIND to it. You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you." Mildred D. Goodwin, sunrise 15 September 1925, sunset 7 May 2009, laid to rest 12 May 2009

Despite my challenging background, she said often and believed the quote I marquee above, and more importantly: she believed in me.

Mildred: Her name means "gentle strength." She was that.

Please honor your mother (while she lives), who assists you in fulfilling your dreams: http://www.e-cards.com/area/mothers-day/ (also source of "history of Mother's Day" above)

Madea's Wisdom

© 2 May 2011, The Griot Poet

Mildred Dean Goodwin: sunrise 15 September 1925, sunset 7 May 2009


My mother hung
a sign on my
bedroom wall
which read:
"It isn't smart
to argue with a fool:
listeners can't tell
which is which."


I wish Lawrence O'Donnell read
this
before expecting maturity
and lucidity
from the mother
of birthers: Orly Tate.

Who avoided any
notion of apology
by berating the president
on supposedly falsifying
not only
his short and long form
birth certificates,
but his social security number
and selective service papers.

Hate
has no logic,
but it has many fathers.

Who don't bother
with facts or data;
fairness or balance:

because Hermann Goering's chancellor
said

“Make the lie big,
make it simple,
keep saying it,
and eventually
they will believe it”

(and Goering said: "Education is dangerous - Every educated person is a future enemy.")


So,
I wasn't miffed
or defensive when
a hair's breadth
after the news
a man named Obama
ordered the kill of
a man named Osama
(ironic and poetic)

that the same
fringe element
demanding long form
birth certificates
(now in the public sphere)

strove mightily
to credit
exclusively
the previous
president

(or, the statement
this one wasn't
"enthusiastic enough"
about the announcement
or the grim duty
of putting special
forces soldiers
in harms way)!

I smiled,
remembering
my mother's
wisdom;

Tom Joyner
& Jay Anthony
Brown's

humorous
rejoinders,

knowing truth,
and the knowledge
that sometimes
doing a good job
is ITS own reward,

God only
promotes
and restores.

I smiled:
in full strength
of my mother's
wisdom...

stood tall,
straightened my back,

and

walked...

away!

Sundress, part 2

© 2 May 2011, The Griot Poet

Over 200 + photos
and my index finger counts
the costs going numb clicking “like”…

You floss a million dollar smile…
And the spring breeze lifts
your hair like you’re on a yacht somewhere,
And it gently lifts your…sundress.

I digress to Phat Cat Players lyrics,
Doing a Google search and You Tube
to see and hear it (again) to recall its essence:
I, Cyrano, write prose to you…

The Sword Saint, Myamoto Musashi
wrote “Go Rin No Sho”: a Book of Five Rings
On strategies he used to slay 60 men
in combat from the age of 13
(the first sword versus his boat oar),

My sword is not martial,
but Chaka Zulu’s IXWA: my pen.
As I begin, I implore the spirit
of muse to ensure that I explore
the method of his strategy in
this Sundress piece to you.

Ground

Yours is an elegance deficit
of younger generations,
you lie there confident,
regal and appealing.

Capable of dancing “The Wobble”
and stopping traffic with
your queenly entrance to any room,
I swoon over the luck of mother earth
to touch your frame and tickle your skin
with blades of Texas Augustine:
royal, pious; scene serene as you
serenade the photo artist
from your throne of silence.

Water

It has a singular mission:
To travel several thousand miles
from the stratosphere, to become
one with the fabric of your sundress.
Yet the drip-drop of its cousins
causes you no distress,
wet fabric cools skin unmarred
by middle passages past,
like incubi fairies,
di-hydrogen monoxide rides
the membranes of your pours to
explore the sanctuary of
your fair membrane’s nucleus,
an intimate masseuse
mere mortals on Nefertiti’s skin
can only imagine.

Fire

The dress clings to the orifice of your skin.
You come in and light the fire,
kicking off those sandals, red, gorgeous toes
fully painted and exposed.
Fire aspires by radiation to touch you
as he does – steam pours from both of you
and you embrace Christian as a red/yellow blaze
embraces you: a spiritual Ménage à trois
of humans and element: the dress and his clothes
canopies the floor like a patchwork quilt un-sewn
(wine glasses thrown across the floor)
as you pull him close to kiss and pretzel
with you forming and entering Aphrodite’s and
Shakespeare’s altar;

Fire crackles, live writing sonnets on
entwined legs and logs, radiation heating sweaty,
luminous African skin,
clinging, touching, breathing to climax:
your pyro Cyrano.

Void

“In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God
and the Word was God.”

And following John 1:1,
the Word spoken was “light, be”
and a universe was born,
gases, accretion disks,
coalescing to planets,
forming firmaments and continents;
earth, water, fire – the spirit of void
represented by wind,
the same that lifted…your sundress.

In the beginning, the Word painted
the portrait of you in a sundress:
but first He had to create
a universe for you to reign in it.

Don't Believe the (Trump) Hype...