"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!