"Good Trouble"...

Source: Smithsonian Magazine

© 18 July 2020, the Griot Poet
“Get in good trouble; necessary trouble.” John Lewis, 1940 - 2020, Rest in Power

We lost John Lewis today,
Before him,
Corey Tindell (“C.T.”) Vivian
Both rightful recipients of the presidential medal of freedom,
Both civil rights movement icons,
John Lewis endured police batons on a bridge
In Selma, Alabama named for Klansman Edmund Pettus

Marching then for the Voting Rights Act, with a caveat
Of needing renewal: on a tightrope by fiat
That could be eliminated in the House of Representatives,

Now, pre-clearance gutted 5-4 by the Supremacy Court,
Making my home state’s republican representatives’ laser-focused
On withholding the franchise from people of color

“DO what The Constitution says you are!”
I hear John Lewis thunder, now from afar,
Who began his thesis preaching in chicken coops.

Unarmed, peaceful protesters marching,
His beating by Bull Conner’s Klansman troops,

Juxtaposed with camouflaged storm troopers
In unmarked vans in 2020,
100 years from the rise of the modern Klan in 1920, from then to this:
STILL not designated domestic terrorists!

U.S./S.S. using flash bombs, pepper spray and rubber bullets pummeling internal organs
On peaceful George Floyd protesters
In Portland, Oregon,

A young man
Hit in the face by “non-lethal” weaponry
Waited through hours of reconstructive surgery
Supplied with a catheter to drain
The remaining blood that would pool
In his brain;

This is fascism!

“Make America great again.”
Is a retrograde vision,

Brute forcing us back:
Before black rights,
Before women’s rights,
Before LGBTQ rights,
Before poetry,
Before art,
Before science,
Before philosophy;
Before protests during global pandemics,

To a caste system hierarchy,
With the 1% at its apex,
Knees on the necks
Of BIPOC
And the poor in Appalachia,

These sociopaths are NOT your friends!
Or, anything you should admire, or aspire to,

There is no distinction
In their minds
Of needed pariahs,
All bones crush equally
Into the calcium foundation
Of this tragicomic fantasy
Of “American Democracy.”


“DO what The Constitution says you are!”
I hear John Lewis thunder, now from afar,

We are on the precipice
Of a fascist dictatorship
That would dwarf Margaret Atwood’s
“The Handmaid’s Tale,”

Our elder brother states:

“Rattlesnakes don’t commit suicide” and
“Baseball teams don’t strike themselves out”;

NOTHING less than
An electoral rout
Will get us out
Of this mess:
Democracy as a ship of state
Was obviously held together
By spit, Elmer’s Glue and duct tape,

Along with reforming the police state
And tearing down monuments to confederate traitors:
We need a reformation
In this nation,

As our elder brother preaches to us from afar:
“DO what The Constitution says you are!”

“Get in good trouble; necessary trouble.”

VOTE!

Eugenics...

Source: Adoption History Project: Eugenics

© 18 July 2020, the Griot Poet

Eugenics is a pseudoscientific theory
Of racial inferiority

Quote:
“the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population,

especially by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics).”
Dictionary.com

It doesn’t take much imagination to glean
Who is deemed?
Desirable or undesirable;
From a crazed idiot who sees himself
A “stable genius.”
Possessing “good genes.”

And the dark forces represented
By Banner, Gorka, and Miller
That might whisper
In the dismissive ears
Of a Soviet sock puppet
Wearing a dead Propecia Ferret
On his orange melon
To say in a near-empty Tulsa stadium
The quiet part out loud:

“Slow the testing down, please!”

The end results nefariously
Rendered by income disparities
Existent before a pandemic;

Black, brown, indigenous, Appalachian poor
Working rural employment,
Service jobs, or meat packing plants,
Cannot “Zoom out” of their predicament,

They are all cannon fodder
Bringing to the bloody reality
Dr. David Pierce’s macabre vision
In “The Turner Diaries,”
Advocates like Timothy McVeigh
And Dylann Roof, who
Tried to make it actionable,

They are the faction
Of the former Republican Party
Cognizant of the damages
Forty years of Reaganomics, who also said
“Make America great again.”
And “our best days are behind us.”
Has wrought:
They cannot win elections
Without deception, purges; voter suppression,

Physically evidenced
By departing from the House, Bill Hurd,
And singular, astray S.C. Senator, Tim Scott,
Walking a tightrope,
Who’s been stopped by police
In the U.S. capital and Palmetto State
Still cannot relate
To the evidence before him
In his Stockholm Syndrome statement:
“America is not racist.”

Bill Hurd got a clue
Obtained, no doubt
From his Central Intelligence training:
Once they are done
Reducing the herd of BIPOC
To more palpable numbers
Than the one's demographers project for 2042,
Once evil is done

They will be
Running the bus down to tire rims over
Obedient, expendable ones like him!

A Soviet sock puppet
Wearing a dead Propecia Ferret
On his orange melon
Said in a near-empty Tulsa stadium
The quiet part out loud:

“Slow the testing down, please!”

Created Realities...

Source: ‘Complete Idiot’ Donald Trump and ‘Dope’ Karl Rove Now Working Together, by Jonathan Chait, NY Mag

© 12 July 2020, the Griot Poet

“It’s just two people from China; then it will be 15, then 15 will magically go to zero.”
“Anyone who wants a test can get a test.”
“We’ll have a vaccine in a few months.”
“This will all disappear by April with the heat...by July...by October?”

Reality is a moving target,
For a reality tv actor
Playing a billionaire on The Apprentice,

NBC had to rent furniture
Because the decor in New York City’s
Leaning Tower of Pisa

Was itself a health hazard!
Noel Casler, stand up comedian
Worked as showrunner for the series

And goes at him full force
On the source of his influence: Twitter,
To which, the Russian asset replies in utter silence,

“Tell ‘em what happened when you had to read the word ‘Arbitrage’ off of a cue-card on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ Donnie...ok, I will. Trump flew into a rage that we were ‘setting him up’ and soiled his Depends in front of the crew then stormed offset to snort Adderall.

“This story is true btw, and a big part of why Burnett won’t let you ever see ‘Apprentice’ tapes. Trump’s tongue would do that weird sticking out thing a lot too, often ruining takes. He was a mess and still is. @realDonaldTrump.”

Donald J Trump is a created public fiction,
More “created reality” than Karl Rove’s
Flirtations with the Project for a New American Century,

Instead of Pax Americana, we’ve exported PTSD,
He should be tried for crimes against humanity,
And his enabling sycophants with him,

The GOP is a collection of
Racists, sexists, homophobes, xenophobes
Ghouls, and alt-wrong Nazis

A criminal enterprise
Masquerading as a political party,
Complicit in his stupidity

And him trying to gaslight a pandemic!
Finally, wearing a mask to Walter Reed’s clinic
As his re-election chances look spent

Perhaps his trolls will ape it and help flatten the curve?
But, we KNOW we’re one lousy headline
From a policy swerve

Back to the Russian dragon of divisiveness
He rode to power,
Mismanaging the planet in this hour into this colossal mess!

To avoid a self-imposed sixth extinction event,
Checking voter registration is time well spent
So we, the SANE, can gleefully FLUSH this turd and his mob of enablers November 3rd!

P.O.E.T.

(Prophets of Eternal Truths)
© 9 July 2020, the Griot Poet

The Russian asset
Has his assignment
On encrypted lines between D.C. and Moscow
With no official readout:

Kill as many Americans
As you can
Using a zoologically transmitted pathogen in a pandemic,
Fan flames of racial hatred
Allowing structural inequalities
To target the old, people of color; the poor
And some young
Eugenics born on these shores,
Eliminates those judged
Unfit and feeble;

Coronavirus mutates
Like a determined hoard of demons
Bent on possession of bodies
Like incubus and succubus fairies
Not for sex: but conquest.

Democracies are like dominoes:
Pushover the first, prominent one
And the rest will go
With the inevitable flow
Of potential-to-kinetic energy
Momentum.

It isn’t genetic engineering
That brings on this destruction:
Just designed negligence
By Putin’s puppet,
Performance artist
Acting like a billionaire
On The Apprentice;
Performing public
Political fellatio
On a tyrant
That is secretly the richest man
Since Mansa Musa and Solomon;
Ignoring $100,000
Bounties on U.S. service members
In Afghanistan,
That tyrant has promised said fellatio artist
Wealth beyond the dreams
Of avarice,

It’s simple
When you see the pattern,
“The Case Against Donald Trump”
And now his niece
Dr. Mary Trump warns us
He’s beyond a DSM-5
“Mere narcissist”:

Another colleague admits
On a “Last Word” Lawrence O’Donnell segment said
The only description
That fits him: evil.

What then, does that make
The evangelicals racists and xenophobic
Who follows him?

Every malevolent political figure
From Napoleon, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao;
And now recently, Reagan, Pappy, Clinton, W, and Obama
Have gotten the label: Antichrist.

We just forgot
In our prophetic mission
Such malevolence
Necessitates: anti-Christians!

Inconclusive...

Source: Stanford Blood Center FAQ on Coronavirus and Blood Donation

© 11 July 2020, the Griot Poet

It’s an awesome accounting trick
When you endure a jammed Q-tip
Up your nose determining if you’re COVID sick,

Karl Rove started this,
“Creating their reality.”
During the Bush/Cheney junta

It’s appropriate that Greg Abbott
And Dan “death cult” Patrick
Have some hand in this

Waiting twenty days,
Losing smell and scent
You are getting results that make you say: WTF?

Don’t press your luck
On any of this making sense:

“Inconclusive”
Isn’t usually sought by a party that values
Bronze Age, scriptural certainty,

“Inconclusive”
Is a classification of the pandemic
For the dishonest, or incompetent,

“Inconclusive”
Isn’t a category reported,
Or need be

Artificially driving down
Official infection counts, meaning
The actual reality is probably heinous,

Arizona, Florida, Oklahoma; Texas,
Red states prematurely opening up based on
Magical thinking

From the orange pied piper
Of fantasy scheming,

And unprecedented as Texas
Will eventually have to get
Refrigerator trucks

To pile bodies of the dead up
Increasing our feelings of dread,
Like Lincoln Log Lollipops on Long Island,
Overrunning funeral homes and crematoriums,
The cause of death noted with the missive

On toe tags in Texas, saying: “inconclusive.”

Lethal Weapon...

Image Source: NBC NEWS

© 3 July 2020, the Griot Poet

Violins are dangerous things
Sometimes called fiddles, the action fiddling
An instrument with four strings
Tuned to perfect fifths;
Langston immortalized “flatted fifths”*
Mention in 16th century Italy
Historically impacted folk music, country, bluegrass; jazz

Lethal weapons injecting mystic muse
In the form of tunes that croon
From initial animal gut
To tuned and spun polymer strings
Einstein, Stradivarius made them sing
For meditation and elation,

Elijah McClain,
A self-taught prodigy, massage therapist and vegan,
Jamming to his music quietly
Sipping iced tea, like Trayvon Martin,
Jammed-up with not a knee in his throat
In 2019,
But a carotid chokehold
Banned by Aurora police,
An introvert warning: “please respect the boundaries that I am speaking.”
Apologized for throwing up
When his esophagus decided it had enough,
Involuntary sedative ketamine resulted
In cardiac arrest
In a hospital bed
In custody at 23…

The police fired are those that mocked
His death: the ones that killed him
Still free,
Violinists in stringed protest in peaceful space
Met with
Pepper spray, flash bombs, clubs and mace

Because

Violins are dangerous things
Sometimes called fiddles, the action fiddling
An instrument with four strings
Tuned to perfect fifths;
Langston immortalized “flatted fifths”*

Of “little colored boys with fears,”*
That, in the ensuing years of racist hate
Are still applicable,
“re-bop be-bop mop and stop”*
Expression of 1st Amendment Rights
…in fascist states.

For Elijah McClain, Rest In Power

*” Flatted Fifths” by Langston Hughes

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/151030/flatted-fifths-

Go Home...

Source: Grand Forks Herald

© 4 July 2020, the Griot Poet

They were told to “go home”...
Which is ironic, you understand?
Mount Rushmore is stolen land
From the First Nation Lakota Sioux,

In the treaty of 1868,
Three years into Civil War reconstruction,
The U.S. government treacherously
Stole land promised to them in perpetuity

Because of the old
Reason for the colony: gold
Discovered as resource
Ignited one of the myriad gold rushes

Across the western expansion of wanton greed
Mythologized in the racist “Manifest Destiny,”
Coded language clouds the history
Of kleptomaniac shopping sprees

Resulting in the near annihilation
Of First Nation tribes
Scribing sculpture of slaveholders and grudging emancipator in sacred rock
Over their fathers Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse

Leading defense against the U.S. Calvary,
Following the defeat of George Armstrong Custer
At the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876
Led to vengeance seethed

For the Army’s defeat
At the nation’s centennial
Some of the lands recolonized and culturally appropriated
As Custer State Park,

The story arc by Dee Brown
“Buried My Heart at Wounded Knee,”
Hundreds of unarmed women, children, and men
All summarily executed by the U.S. Army.

A divisive carnival barker on July Third,
Risked Forest Fire lighting Roman candles, never heard of
Packing cult-like sardines for another
Spreader event DURING a pandemic!

He is “the Abomination of Desolation.”
On sacred Earth driving carnage, disorder, and division
New Caligula before the fall of a New Rome,
As his cult shouts hellishly to First Nation peoples: “go home.”

Copy & pasted (author unknown, from Facebook)...

All Lives Matter, but Muslims make you uneasy.

All Lives Matter, but all Muslims are terrorists.

All Lives Matter, but Mexicans are criminals.

All Lives Matter, but all Mexicans are illegals.

All Lives Matter, but there is no issue with locking kids up in cages.

All Lives Matter, but you do not care about the children that were “lost.”

All Lives Matter, but you do not feel safe when a black man is merely walking home.

All Lives Matter, but do not bring up slavery because “that was a long time ago.”

All Lives Matter, but you get offended when people say their lives matter.

All Lives Matter, but it is okay to say racist things now and then.

All Lives Matter, but you think we should get rid of the Chinese because they all have the virus.

All Lives Matter, but you hate all the gay people.

All Lives Matter, but you do not care about all the kids abused.

All Lives Matter, but when someone gets killed, “They should follow the law.”

All Lives Matter, but everyone should go back to their country.

All Lives Matter, but you will not listen to the people asking for change.

All Lives Matter, but you will not accept that there are significant issues that need fixing.

All Lives Matter, but you support a president who has shown the opposite.

All Lives Matter, but only when it is convenient for you.