These Little Ones...

What Threat Are Children?

It's Time To Call It What It Is...

My previous posting on "Cognitive Dissonance" was rather wonkish to say the least; clever if I do say so myself, but this is raw hatred bred deeply in our classmates, coworkers, church members, bowling partners, fantasy league members and in general cousins in the human species bones. It's beyond class warfare or a war on women's rights. It's deeper; darker: uglier and more dangerous.

Never mind that human life originated in Africa; that the oldest known footprints of Homo Erectus happens to have been found in Kenya. It makes us all African, this expressed malady over class, place and pigmentation a form of melanin-envy and self-loathing.

Never mind that hate is not an election-winning strategy and that Karl Rove waisted a lot of billionaire's money trying to throw the election from "We the People" to the oligarchs.

We worship money. The free market is god (small g), and like the law of gravity and the ten commandments cannot be altered in anyway that might be beneficial to the rest of us. We apotheosized it in prosperity gospel ministry, which is expressed in the Bible, but wrongly applied by certain operatives, thereby leaving the faith community impotent to critique greed and avarice when they see it: since many of the wrong applicants practice it.

We're supposedly divided between "makers and takers" and the self-labled makers seem to have no problem taking another tax cut. Their recipe for job creation has so far equaled Marie Antoinette's famously attributed comment (actually by Maria Theresa 100 years before in Spain): "let them eat cake." There is no room at the oligarch's Inns, mansions or dinner tables.

We're headed for the so-called (and poorly named by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke) fiscal cliff with the same recalcitrant players in the House of Representative that really represent the 1% aforementioned that wasted their investment on "Turd Blossom's" political acumen and math skills.

Joel Osteen believed Mitt Romney to be a Christian despite decades of demonization from evangelical groups that suddenly out of political expediency decided they were not.

THIS IS A MENTAL DISORDER: on the day Jared Lee Loughner was sentenced to 7 consecutive life sentences plus 140 years (geez), we'd be mindful that this information age may be overloading weaker minds. Thus, birth certificates in short or long form; Harvard transcripts and passports demanded by bloviating reality-show hosts that could spend $50 on a good toupee versus 5 million on an empty stunt are irrelevant when you've already a made-up mind that what facts don't agree with your skewed worldview will be judged false.

I'm not saying the shootings in Arizona were racially motivated, but the so-called "End of Days" comes once again 21 December 2012 -- which is correctly the winter solstice. I for one, am not going to be in public places nor am I going to Times Square in NYC to ring in 2013.

And don't worry: once this one dawns, sunsets and 22 December happens: they'll find another thing to fear and dread. Which only makes me fear and dread their reactions to an ever-changing demographic.

Cognitive Dissonance...

Cognitive Dissonance

From Hey to Rant!...

This is the most partisan posting I've done on this blog. However, this is far too important, for the country possibly being led by an extreme fringe that put on a show Wednesday trying to go "relentlessly to center" to paraphrase Nixon. It started with a lackluster solicitation email I received Thursday morning titled: "Hey."

Dear Mr. President,

I was at work Wednesday night, but I have heard the coverage regarding the debates. They said Governor Romney won. It was like getting punched in the gut.

No mention of the 47%. Or the fact that he was 47^th in job creation while governor. Someone with your rhetorical skills should have made poetry with those two items; mincemeat out of Mr. Romney.

Wednesday was you and First Lady Michelle's anniversary. Do me a favor: FIRE the lawyers that deliberated and put the first debate on what should have been YOUR and the First Lady's private day.

Also sir: Mr. Romney obviously suffers from Pseudologia Fantasticia, AKA pathological lying. His running mate is a "chip-off-the-old-block" with admiring Ayn Rand in one video-taped breath, then repudiating her as if he never knew the author of "Atlas Shrugged" was a militant atheist (her words: I know some atheists, and they're quite pleasant).

What's at stake: we're in the "Twilight Zone" with a dominionist-dominated Republican Party hijacking privately-practiced religion for one public end: power. Former GOP operative Mike Lofgren says it's become "an apocalyptic cult." You won only on facts, not style, and the crowd that's adamant about voting for Willard ain't thinking about the "facts": they once labeled his faith as a cult until left with no other alternative. In the words of a political operative to Run Suskind, they "create their own realities."

It's a shame we're discussing the "controversy" about evolution, question whether the earth is over four billion years old or six thousand years old. Meanwhile, "back at the ranch" of global competition, countries we helped build up with the Marshall Plan post WWII have no such delusional machinations. They march forward in STEM careers, creating more scientists and engineers than our own universities as we put our heads in ostrich sands; our minds in reverse back to God-knows-where, but I bet where we land won't have a middle class or America as fabled "shining city on a hill." I'm a year younger than you, and I can recall getting more on evolution and sex education during the late seventies than my twenty and thirty year old sons. Science is no threat to religious faith, and any reality created, virtual or imagined, cannot govern.

Let me end with Kevin Costner and Sean Connery in The Untouchables: "Don't bring a knife to a gun fight," and by the way: you're FROM Chicago!

Related link: William Rivers Pitt - A Nationally-Televised Presidential Fail

Morning Joe...

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Mindful Of Matters...

This would have been my mother's 87^th birthday. I am thinking of her, mindful of matters near and far, great and small.

The current conflagration in the Near East at the US Embassies in Egypt and Libya that have spread to even more countries, my curiousity led me to this entry on PBS.org:

Muslims believe that God had previously revealed Himself to the earlier prophets of the Jews and Christians, such as Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Muslims therefore accept the teachings of both the Jewish Torah and the Christian Gospels. They believe that Islam is the perfection of the religion revealed first to Abraham (who is considered the first Muslim) and later to other prophets. Muslims believe that Jews and Christians have strayed from God's true faith but hold them in higher esteem than pagans and unbelievers. They call Jews and Christians the "People of the Book" and allow them to practice their own religions. Muslims believe that Muhammad is the "seal of the prophecy," by which they mean that he is the last in the series of prophets God sent to mankind.

Poughkeepsie Journal: “Any way you dissect it, from a moral or religious standpoint, those protesters broke our commandments,” said Umar Ahmad, a longtime member of the Mid-Hudson Islamic Association located in the Town of Wappinger. “What happened in Libya is unforgivable.”

I am not a Muslim. I do have Muslim members of my family, as well as agnostic, Jehovah's Witness, nondenominational, etc. We respect one another. Proselytizing one another has never occurred in any conversations I've had with them. What counts most is the relationship; the familial bond.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow...one of the most famous soliloquies written by Shakespeare, spoken from the mouth of Macbeth, a fictional ruler grieving the loss of his wife, musing aloud the futility's of life, the emphasis on unimportant things with respect to the brevity of existence.

We have selective amnesia regarding John Donne's admonition and cautionary warning.

We are all involved in mankind by virtue of being a part of it. The oceans no longer separate us; our worldviews aren't dictated by our limited experiences where we immediately are.

I reject the notion any culture's sacred text - Buddhist, Christian, Hebrew, Hindu, Mormon, Muslim et al - is somehow in some bigoted comparison, worthy of desecration. I reject the notion of demonizing Agnostics or Atheists. I reject - as does the US Constitution - the idea of religious tests as a qualifier for elected office (though news pundits seem to count how many times the president uses the word "God" - and he does quite often - as if this is relevant). I reject the notion that an amateurish video of moribund, racist stereotypes falls under "free speech" and "our American values," unless those values now typify the classroom bully; the boot of empire stamped on the neck of the world. Freedom of speech does not give one the right to yell fire in a building not ablaze!

I am as diminished by the loss of diplomats abroad as I am military service members deployed, as I am the senseless loss of life in inner cities across the United States.

I quote President Reagan, post the failed rescue attempt 1979 in Iran, Desert 1:

"This is the time for us as a nation and a people to stand united and to pray."

Simple, elegant, sober, reflective and quite presidential.

It is in times of triumph and tragedy our leaders are called upon to quell our fears; raise our hopes. Personal vendettas and assaults are the mark of petty minds, I am particularly diminished by candidates that would take death so lightly as to score political points.

Isaiah 11:6 ends: ...and a little child shall lead them. I end with this photo from Facebook, the future meek that will "inherit the earth." I wish mom could see it. I think it would make her smile, and speaks more volumes than the cleverest self-serving sound bite:

Facebook

Happy birthday, mom.

Janus Speaks Utopia with Forked Tongue

© 2 September 2012, the Griot Poet

"We want our country back!"
The question is: back to when; to what?

Gil Scott-Heron rests in peace

Yet, his piece "B-Movie" might as well be prophesy,

Predicting a looking forward two-faced like the Roman Deity Janus: facing forward while looking back at least to last week (or, our own anus),

To a majority utopia existent only in your Amygdala fear-driven reptilian minds...

Descendants of migrants from Europe to Plymouth Rock and Ellis Island

Dependent on newer ones from Africa or Central America as servants until the PIE: performance, image and exposure, has to eventually be upturned in 2042 when you are no longer a numerical majority.

The White House, so named in 1901 because it was easier than “Executive Mansion”

Became a symbol of what you’d refer to as American Exceptionalism

And like fascism, cloaked it in a flag, and carrying a cross.

So, while you’re still culturally “the boss”

You're willing to put out obfuscations and outright lies,

Whacked-out conspiracy theories on falsified birth certificates, death panels, “he’s going to take away our guns,” “secret-Muslim-in-the-church-house-Resurrection-Sunday,” etcetera’s,
Voter ID cum Diebold voter purge cum 21st century poll taxes...

**********
In a February appearance on The Daily Show, Bruce Bartlett (former Reagan Economic Policy Advisor), said "Frankly one of our political parties is insane, and we all know which one it is.'

"They have descended from the realm of reasonableness that was the mark of conservatism…"

"They dream of anarchy, of ending government.''

Bartlett argues a new radical right in the Republican Party will oppose anything - even good conservative policy - if Democrats agree to it.

**********
Tell me: since when did obliterating the 8th commandment constitute a "family value?"

Or, running from your own policies because your opposite tries to reach consensus constitute reason and governance? Sounds like tyranny…

You rail against gays and lesbians, yet have them prominently in your Grand Old Party, for one (no, two): George W’s reelection campaign manager and Dick (Darth Vader) Cheney’s daughter and her companion.

Hell, Rush Limp-bah had Elton John perform at his fourth “traditional marriage” from-the-previous-train-wrecks wedding ceremony with notably his beau from the UK in tow.

(And Rush: we THANK YOU for practicing good birth control/safe sex and not procreating!)

Let’s not forget: Newt-the-scoot’s blood sister,
You blithely dog whistle at the tin edges of racial insurrection, yet think yourself a big tent because you have Condi Rice and Allen West? Keep ‘EM!

And when disturbed minds take your wit as holy writ resulting in a congresswoman’s recovery from a murderous attempt, or your pundit’s caustic rhetoric causes an abortion doctor’s assassination in a house of worship, you’re quick to quip: NOT ME!

If you have an argument, voter ID cum Diebold voter purge cum 21st century poll taxes is completely unnecessary.

The electorate in a representative democracy votes rationally, not like text-in adherents to American Idol.

No wonder you ride the train of “limited government,” by which you mean:
- Education
- Police protection
- EMS and Fire Departments

Or, the very bedrock of representative government
Because your avarice Mammon billionaire gods can afford that,
(And wonders why the rest of us can’t)

Kissing butt on Scrooge McDuck is the height of idolatry (and hypocrisy)
And idiocy to the “trickle-down” fantasy
You listen to lobbyists outnumbering you five-to-one senator or congress member

And you can’t remember
Any promise you made beyond the grace of their campaign donations
To “protect and defend The Constitution from all enemies both foreign and domestic”
And have the “Audacity of Dopes”
To not see
That enemy
Is in your own

Reflection!

Trolling the NYT Editorial Pages...

Working on a piece that kind of starts like this:

"We want our country back!"
Gil-Scott Heron rests in peace,
Yet, his piece "B-Movie" might as well be prophesy,
Predicting your look forward is two-faced like the Roman Deity Janus: facing forward while looking back to last week,
To a utopia existent only in your Agmydala driven reptilian minds...

So, you're willing to put out obfuscations and outright lies,
Whacked conspiracy theories on falsified birth certificates, death panels, etceteras,
Voter ID cum Diebold voter purge cum 21st century poll taxes...

Tell me: since when did obliterating the 8th commandment constitute a "family value?"

Get back to you on that. Here are the articles that made me think and the last one laugh out loud!

Checkpoint: Facts Take a Beating in Acceptance Speeches, by Michael Cooper


New York Times Opinion Pages
Editorial: Mr. Romney Reinvents History
Op-ed columnist: The Medicare Killers, by Paul Krugman
Op-ed columnist: Party of Strivers, by David Brooks
Op-ed columnist: The Real Romney, by David Brooks (this is the one I fell out over)

"Don't Drink No Water"...

The quote from this scene and the book bothered me enough to look it up officially:

Drinking plenty of cold, clear water is essential for your health and, in fact, for your very survival. You can live much longer without food than you can without water. Water is an important part of all body functions and processes, including digestion and elimination. When you’re on a diet, water also acts as a weight-loss aid because it can help you eat less.

See: Everyday Health link.

Ray Charles in an interview said: "he just didn't like water." Maybe it stems from this. It would explain our propensity for weight gain, high blood pressure, diabetes and other related health ailments. It would explain our gravitation towards fatback, salt pork and junk foods, especially in the south. Dieticians advise increasing our water intake, as we may not be as hungry more than we are thirsty.

It would explain a lot mostly blamed on biology/genetics (either not to be confused with the pseudo-science of Eugenics), when it just could have simply been the way society was structured, and how our bodies silently endured it for a very long time.

The Dred Scott decision: According to Chief Justice Taney “the authors of the Constitution had viewed all blacks as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

See also Langston Hughes on Poets.org: Black Like Me

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.

More Whitney Videos...

Tribute

© 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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