Sunday, August 30, 2020

TACTICS & STRATEGIES...

 A collaboration between Thom the World Poet and the Griot Poet

WE WILL NEED TO IMPROVISE
We have forgotten flu epidemics, second waves, World Wars
Only a little fire wars and warring fires
Only violent police and gentle imprisoned
Who owns the law? Those with guns(we pay for them)
We only have arms for hugging each other
Time for laughter, sharing, company, goodwill
Time for conversations to unfold their Sacred Maps
and Reveal to us Inner Point, Design, and Purpose.
We are always going somewhere
in Movement and Motion, we take that chance
When the world seems static and stationary
We can always move in Harmony
We can always Dance.

SUNDAY AUGUST 30, from 7-10pm-SPOKEN N HEARD on SKYPE

“Strategy is the craft of the warrior,”
Miyamoto Musashi,
Kensei - sword saint, slew the first of 61 with a boat oar,
Wrote Go Rin No Sho when he thought himself invincible,
Ben Bu Ichi: pen and sword in one accord,
Balance in the universe expressed by
Gichin Funakoshi
Founder of Shotokan,
Training with Master Itosu
After midnight
Because unarmed enlightenment 
Was outlawed by Samurai Shogun authorities,
Led the transition
From Jitsu (method) to Do (way),
The balance between hard and soft,
Light and darkness,
Tao Te Ching
Harmony of the myriad creatures
Attaining clarity
After meditation,
The battle now internal,
Beneath the billowing leaves of
The Bodhisattva pass
Leads eventually
From mayhem to peace.

Saturday, August 29, 2020

For Chadwick Boseman...

(c) 29 August 2020, the Griot Poet

Chadwick Boseman, November 29, 1976 - August 28, 2020, Rest in Power


65-year anniversary

Of the March on Washington, 1963,

Eight years after the death of Emmitt Till,

Socially-distanced angst of blood still at the root and in the streets,

Whether Jacob Blake, Ahmaud Aubrey, Breonna Taylor, or George Floyd were "angels,"

They are still U.S. citizens and human beings.


Chadwick Boseman

Was a real-life superhero,

Publicly weeping over the eventual loss

Of young fans, Ian and Taylor, succumbing to 

Their St. Jude struggle with cancer before his debut as their hero,

Not revealing his own challenges,


Fighting stage III colon cancer,

Eventually progressing to stage IV,

Making his skill at acting significant enough

For an Oscar awarded posthumously,


On the anniversary of "42,"

We are swooning at the news of Chadwick Boseman's loss at 43.

Counting the cost and pain of his numerous cancer therapies,

Of his character portrayals

Of our actual significant figures


Within the black community:

Jackie Robinson,

James Brown,

Thurgood Marshall,


T'Challa in "Black Panther,"

Was a fictional king

Of Utopian Wakanda,

Created in 1966 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby,

Post Blue Marvel, an African superhero

We all looked up to,


Wakanda is a utopia, a nowhere state

That had its own eccentricities,

Brian Coogler's interpretation

Made us sympathetic to Erik Kilmonger and his critique,

Because Wakanda was free and haughtily receded,

From middle passage and civil rights interceeding,


I waited 50 years to see it from page to on-screen,

I still have my "Straight out of Wakanda" tee,

The pride that like me,

The actor graduated from a historically black university:

Howard University Bison Pride is

As thick as Aggie Pride at A&T,

Friends from Nigeria and Ghana

Spoke of public celebrations on the mother continent.


T'Challa has two meanings:

"Brave king," and

"He who puts the knife where it belonged,"

According to Marvel canon,

He never took roles beneath him,

Stereotypical, or culturally demeaning.


We cannot fathom beyond disbelief.

What our next stage will be,

As we go through the pain of this grief,

We lost him on a significant date

As we get ready to defend our democracy,


The March on Washington, 1963,

Led to:

The Civil Rights Act, 1964,

The Voting Rights Act, 1965,

The Fair Housing Act, 1968,


1968: the year, Nixon and Lee Atwater

Coined the phrase "law and order"

The first backlash,

To all those acts,

And klan hood/choir robe to the "Southern Strategy,"


We will put this knife where it belongs,

Straighten our backs and stand strong,

Cast our votes to dethrone this dark thing,

For our country in your memory, noble king.





LEARNING...

 A collaboration between Thom Woodruff, the World Poet, and the Griot Poet

YOU CAN ONLY DO ONE ZOOM @A TIME

But, with more phones/computers this is no longer true (Black Swan Theory)
And with time zones, it is possible to perform in many virtual arenas
We are parts of a jigsaw puzzle-we need all the pieces to get the full picture
Everybody holds an image in their mind-but we are in a movie
Your family a multiplex. Ancestors nostalgic formats. Friends multi-media.
Your great -grandfather scratched steel pins upon black shellac
Your grandfather a record player playing singles, EPs and LPs made of vinyl
Your relatives' cassettes  and 8 tracks (with Dolby sound)
You are up on the download, hip to the format. Time is a mixtape.
The music you hear no longer belongs to you - like Leonard Cohen at the RNC
Kenosha.Kansas. Media bulges with separation clauses. Equality. Human Rights. Respect.
The sounds you are hearing are no longer military marches-they are Freedom Songs
Streets are alive with the possibility of Progress. Put down yr weapons and embrace.

SATURDAY AUGUST 29 -ZOOM
POETRY ALOUD 11am-1pm Meeting ID 

Zoom has reduced commutes to mere minutes,
Between bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and webcam,
We are atomized by technology and pandemic,
Giving rise to sociopaths with Twitter handles,
George Moore enabled shrink of MOSFET logic,
Transistorizing electronics, propaganda and
The demagogic,

This emperor has no clothes,
His fearful attacks at the USPS,
Article 1, Section 8, Clause 7 of the First Amendment,
Sending his own "jackbooted thugs" into the streets,
Because the toilet paper he uses between tweets,
The Constitution,
He didn't bother reading or its First Amendment:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
Or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,
Or abridging the freedom of speech,
Or of the press;
Or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

No one authorized the smashed windows,
From Boogaloo Bois, or Russian agents fluent in English,
Wearing hoodies and
Carrying black umbrellas,
Nor did We The People authorize,
The smash-and-grab theft of our democracy,

ANTIFA literally means "ANTI-fascists,"
The fact that the "gang of Putin" object to their (mostly online) existence as their grievance,
Means they are self-explanatory of their true intentions,

What's a Constitution when you have like most weak/strongmen toppled truth:
Emoluments Clauses,
Hatch Acts,
At Pennsylvania Avenue, your hotels and Jerusalem?
Fireworks worthy of George Orwell's "1984" or Zymyatin's "We,"

From Jeb Bush's prophecy,
"Chaos (Manchurian) candidate" to chaos president,
The mythically-invoked Winthrop "shining city on a hill"
Is a pile of smoldering feces, and
Far from a city of justice
Or, a city of peace.

Thursday, August 27, 2020

Black...

Image Source: Black Girls Nerds

© 27 August 2020, the Griot Poet 


Jacob Blake was shot in his back,

Guilty of no criminal act,

A throwaway knife found conveniently,

In the driver’s side of his SUV,

 

Tried to quell a domestic disturbance

Between two women before he got hurt,

The officers who tased, then shot him grabbed his shirt, as if

They had never heard of handcuffs.

 

Shot in the back seven times

Point blank range, as if

His name was Luke Cage,

With preternatural strength and bulletproof skin,

Mutagenic properties that don’t exist.

 

WE ARE TIRED OF THIS!

 

Doc Rivers shed tears for this country,

Who’s shone no love for our faithfulness,

In every war and skirmish,

Since the Revolution and Crispus Attucks,

 

The Milwaukee Bucks embodies this,

Boycotting the NBA playoff games,

WNBA, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer and the National Hockey League did the same,

Because they know the agency of their own bodies,

“40 Million Dollar Slaves” * throwing off the shackles of oligarch minstrelsy,

Addressing social inequities,

Despite - Jared Kushner - their salaries,

Showing 1968 Olympics Tommie Smith and John Carlos solidarity

(That by the way: need their Olympic Medals restored, expeditiously),

 

Before 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse prowled

With a long rifle in the streets,

Kenosha has a history,

Invested in the misery,

Of keeping its 11.2% African American descendants,

Of the Great Migration Exodus,

In their caste system assigned places,

Rittenhouse passed police spaces

Unchallenged in any fashion before capture.

 

The needle has swung rapidly

From OJ Simpson, Michael Jordan back to Muhammad Ali,

Who saw through the Vietnam War’s depravity,

We are not superheroes, supervillains, or

Other fantastical beings,

 

But fathers, sons, brothers, nephews, cousins

Mothers, daughters, cousins, nieces,

In Breonna Taylor’s case, the possibility of procreation shattered to pieces

In middle-of-the-night lead torrent birthed by

No-knock warrant,

Her Kentucky AG had more time

To speak at the RNC,

Than arrest the officers involved in this focused killing spree,

 

We are headed for a Christchurch, New Zealand fiasco,

Worse than Synagogue assassinations and El Paso Walmart machinations,

 

“Right-wing extremists were responsible for 2/3 terrorist attacks in 2019,

“And 90% in 2020,”

 

August 26, 2020

The fourth anniversary of Colin Kaepernick kneeling,

Before Ahmaud Aubrey’s execution for jogging,

Breonna Taylor’s execution for sleeping,

George Floyd’s asphyxiation-by-cop on his neck kneeling,

 

Two days before the 57th anniversary of the March on Washington,

 

Vladimir Putin has the American experiment reeling,

Pushing at fissures in the body politic to train wreck,

That’s long existed,

 

Reparations paid to former slave owners,

Their descendants owning professional plantation teams,

Playing in funded-by-taxpayers boondoggle schemes,

 

The descendants of slaves had to eat Jim Crow,

Segregation with hand-me-down books and missing pages,

Neighborhoods redlined into

Concentration camps

Also-known-as ghetto cages,

 

Where criminal activity is concentrated,

And summary executions could be committed

With impunity by state Gestapo before video evidence,

 

We’ve had that since Rodney King!

Before that, the newsreels of diverse young people

Hosed down, dog-bit and Billy-clubbed,

Hasn’t educated the ruling class of the United States to think anything less than sadistic actions

By their “police union,” un-qualified immunity factions

Wouldn’t be efficacious,

 

Four more years of this madness will not “make us great.”

“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” Lincoln said,

 

Nor bring back white picket fence Levittown’s,

And their “suburban housewives” barefoot and pregnant, or

Ward and June Cleaver

Raising Wally and “Leave it to Beaver,”

 

While border agents use microwave “death rays.”

On migrants, fleeing conditions generated

By moribund U.S. policies,

 

“Black” and “white” is a projection,

Of judged depravity, and mythologized perfection,

Like shit hole countries and niggers,

James Baldwin figured

You needed us to be this,

Your bullshit is officially dismissed,

The dark hole smoldering coals for what remains of your souls,

Count on the powerless,

 

The 1% figure

A caste system needs pariahs,

Fear must be cast on brown bodies of Melanin,

Hispanics/Latinos, Migrants, Muslims, added in the mix,

Masking the smash-and-grab crime-in-progress

By the aforementioned 1%,

 

“Trickledown” is bullshit,

David Stockton admitted it,

Just like “law and order” since 1968,

That doesn’t even benefit

Those who share the 1%’s hue, or tint,

 

These are fears they use to manipulate,

The rural proletariat,

“Hate of the other,” is a false aphrodisiac,

That makes no one richer, or moves one up in class,

That Putin gives as perfumed, rancid farts

While Orange Satan sniffs his putrid ass,

 

E Pluribus Unum,

 

Far from “greatness,”

Martin Luther King said:

“We will either live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

 

THINK!

 

*40 Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete,” William C. Rhoden