Essence...

 

November 2: The New Colossus

On this date in 1883, Emma Lazarus wrote the sonnet, “The New Colossus.” Its lines appear on a bronze plaque on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1912. The sonnet was solicited by William Maxwell Evarts as a donation to an auction, conducted by the “Art Loan Fund Exhibition in Aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund for the Statue of Liberty” to raise funds to build the pedestal. Listen to her poem on Lit2Go.

© 23 October 2020, the Griot Poet

The US is the same nation:

That ripped children from Native American parents,

And sold them to reservations,

For indoctrination,

And subordination of their culture, customs, and native languages,

 

The US is the same nation:

That ripped children from African diaspora parents,

Selling them into slavery on other plantations,

For rape, torture, and indoctrination,

And subordination of their culture, customs, and languages,

 

The US is the same nation:

That ripped children from Central American parents,

Giving them to Betsy DeVos “adoption agencies,”

For rape, torture, and indoctrination,

Into the nether world of child sex slavery,

And subordination of their culture, customs, and languages,

 

What really is the difference?

 

1776, 1787:

11 years between a document,

And the constitutional convention,

Ratifying the confederation to a nation,

Based on Democratic Republicanism,

And a southern compromise,

Making the part of humanity, I am part three-fifths human,

 

233, 244

Years between a document,

And the current moment,

Where a regurgitated phrase plagiarized from Ronald Reagan:

“Make America great again,”

Who said “our best days are behind us,”

Ripped Social Security benefits,

To line the pockets of oligarch sociopaths,

 

We have “kiddie concentration camps” at the border,

 

What really is the difference?

 

We suffer a new 9-11 every three to four days,

The virus doesn’t care particularly about political parties as it rages,

 

If Orange Satan steals four more years,

It says more about us than him,

 

WE are arrogant, bullying, callous, devious, envious, felonious, gluttonous, hateful, ignorant, jealous, killers, lying, nefarious, obfuscating, perilous, quarreling, racist, sadistic, terrorists, underhanded, violent, wanton, xenophobic, yakamilk, zealous,

 

I can think of more superlative adjectives,

If we get four more years of this,

Forget misinterpretations of Emma Lazarus,

Our “New Colossus” poem isn’t what we thought it meant,

Lady Liberty is rusted and spent,

 

Then, this is not American exceptionalism:

If we don’t on November third^, repudiate this,

The last four years, for all eternity, is genuinely our essence.

Birthers...

 The Atlantic: What Really Bugs the Birthers? Edward Tenner

© 23 October 2020, the Griot Poet

So-called skeptics,

Made apoplectic,

By the ascendancy,

Of a descendant of Akebulan,

To the US presidency,

Hanging visages of him in burning effigy,

Bone-through-the-nose affordable care act witch doctors,

Or, short-mustached Adolph Hitlers,

Because “skeptic” is a little easier to absorb,

Than abject racists,

 

Orly Tate was the first,

Lawrence O’Donnell thought she was the worst,

On “The Last Word,”

Needing a vacay for his sanity,

But the crazy is like Bebe’s kids,

Robin Harris said:

“They don’t die; they multiply,”

And put on MAGA klan red hats,

 

Obama was symbolic of what they hate: Hope and Change, and democracy

Evangelicals became numerical minorities in 2017,

Millennials and Generation Z,

Have reached equivalency,

With Baby Boomers who will be,

Leaving the scene in decades coming,

 

It vacillated between Sarah “mama grizzly” Palin,

One hit wonder pedophile Ted Nugent,

A bombastic racist college dropout and OxyContin moron, Rush Limbaugh,

Rage Queen Alex Jones,

The Astroturf Tea Party,

Finally settling on a six bankruptcy,

Five-deferment draft dodger,

Who fancies himself, Al Capone,

 

Or, The Godfather’s Michael Corleone,

When he’s more like Fredo,

Insisting that “he’s smart, he’s smart.”

Or, a “stable genius,”

He’s a criminal monster and malignant narcissist,

 

The host of “The Apprentice,”

He leaped at when his luck was spent,

With legitimate bank businesses,

That refused to lend to a risk,

So, at the death of his dad Fred,

He sought “friends with benefits,”

From Russian oligarchs,

That flattered the narcissist,

Giving “golden showers” with prostitutes,

And dangling billionaire-promise carrots,

 

It’s not hard to sell your soul when you don’t have one,

And, you hate your predecessor because he’s smarter,

More beloved by his one wife than he will ever be by his former two, or current third,

 

Melania refused to hold his hand after the third debate,

Counting down to her and Baron’s passport,

Out of the country after this clown,

Who’s obviously going down, and she,

Will cash in on her renegotiated prenup agreement,

 

She was a birtherism truther, as well as he,

Plagiarist of Michelle Obama’s speeches,

As well as programs vaguely sounding like hers,

Because originality would be too much work,

 

Despite his steady diet of junk food and trans fat,

Twitter Gollum hasn’t croaked yet,

So her second best,

Is taking his settlement,

And booking flights for her family,

Back to Slovenia,

Before his arraignment,

 

Karma keeps receipts on this strife:

Birtherism, like “Southern Strategy,” racism has a shelf life.

Minority Rule...

 

Images source: 'Apartheid and Jim Crow are really no different': Why George Floyd's death reverberated in Africa, Morgan Winsor, ABCNEWS

© 18 October 2020, the Griot Poet

They are rushing Amy Coney Barrett,

On the Supreme Court bench,

To fill a lifetime appointment,

As McConnell has 128 federal judges,

He prevented President Obama from filling,

 

The American Bar Association gives most low marks as unqualified,

That is not the evil turtle or his criminal enterprise masquerading as a political party's motivation,

 

It is the same aim when:

They reduce drop off options to single boxes,

In every Texas county,

When they cut the cable on voting machines in Virginia,

When they post fake boxes to harvest ballots during a global pandemic - a federal violation,

When they close voting precincts on college campuses or in counties predominantly BIPOC,

Voter purges, voter suppression to the point of armed aggression,

 

They know they can't legitimately win a plurality of the voters in any election,

The judges - all in stolen seats - from the country's only black president,

Are insuring numerical minority rule.

 

Nelson Mandela,

And other black South Africans,

Were seventy-five percent of the population,

During the height of Apartheid,

Think of it:

 

Antonin Scalia was an “originalist,”

Which "sounds" reasonable.

What was the founding fathers' original intent when The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution were written?

 

I'm glad you asked!

 

Looking back on it cynically,

Through the lens of history,

Only rich, white male property owners,

The same who defined my ancestors as three-fifths human,

Were to be into perpetuity,

The only citizens who would exercise the franchise of voting,

 

Like their psychotic ancestors,

Their descendants STILL don't want to pay taxes,

Not to drooling tyrants like King George in "Hamilton,"

But roads, schools, healthcare, and potholes,

 

"We the people" wasn't originally meant to be ecumenical,

Inclusive of black men, women, black women in 1965,

The rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender to just BE: exist

And be left alone without violence,

 

Mobilizing during a pandemic,

To fill a seat stolen first from Merrick Garland,

And his nominating president,

Read our founding documents,

 

The nation was initially a confederation,

Until debates ironed out the kinks,

Whether my people were humanity,

Was tabled,

We were labeled

Perpetually inferior to make it all fit,

 

This 6-3 is one judge from 7-2,

That decided Dred Scott:

 

Ruling The Missouri Compromise

Unconstitutional,

That prohibited expansion of slavery,

In western territories,

 

Chief Justice Roger Taney (1857),

Born to the southern aristocracy,

Wrote the majority opinion that:

 

"[African Americans] had for more than a century before been regarded 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; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it."

 

Regarded as the worst Supreme Court opinion,

Is an "originalist" view in the tradition,

Of Antonin Scalia, and his protege Amy Coney Barrett,

Who not only has problems with a woman's bodily autonomy,

But is miffed the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments,

Didn't include the opinions of the treasonous southern states in them,

 

The "gang of Putin" is WAY past pretending,

They want an honest debate about the issues and opinions,

They are pushing the country back to a future of tyranny,

A new southern aristocracy

Of minority rule.

Zoom Bombing...

Source: Cyber Hoot 

© 17 October 2020, the Griot Poet

Zoom bombers are terrorists,

Not the kind Osama recruited,

But Y’all Qaeda, racist bullies,

Proof positive for the zombie apocalypse,

 

From high school classrooms,

Congressional representatives,

To houses of worship,

You follow the same shtick:

 

Post two men, two women, or a couple “doing it,”

A banner saying “black lives don’t matter,”

And a relentless loop of the word: nigger.

By the way:

My gay friends would like you to know: you’re full of shit.

 

Pornography is exploitive,

Whether or not heterosexual,

Objectifying humanity,

No one benefits from it,

The fact that you said our lives don’t matter,

Is a tacit admission that “all lives matter,”

Was superfluous bullshit,

 

You drooled your way through high school,

If you ever got THAT far,

You were likely special needs, but that didn’t make you less a part of humanity,

Then, you got a social media account, a following, and arrived on “woke island,”

 

You see beyond the third eye,

In the back of your head,

Absorbing and contributing to QANON and other conspiracies,

Doubting your software expertise,

 

You probably got the program,

From the GRU on Reddit,

Don’t know what that is?

Read a book, you nitwit!

 

The fact that the same attack is repeatedly sent tells me:

 

You copied it, not knowing what viruses you’ve infected your laptop with,

You know your orange orangutan god is about to get sent to prison,

The country has had ENOUGH of your fear and division,

If you’d like to positively improve your white birth rate, whacking off in mommy’s basement isn’t hitting it,

 

Do you think you scared us, you piece of shit?

 

The REST of us are voting: what are you going to do about it?

The Sunken Place...

Source: Indy Wire 

© 16 October 2020, the Griot Poet

Jordan Peele introduced us to “the sunken place,”

In the tongue-in-cheek parody of a horror movie,

Called “Get Out,”

 

It was a warp in time and space,

Of never-ending darkness,

Genesis by ignorance,

Essentially, a brainwashing technique,

Peele said:

“The Sunken Place means we're marginalized. No matter how hard we scream, the system silences us.” 

After a series of microaggressions,

Leaving one exhausted from logical reflection,

Sambo from Harriet Beecher Stowe is conjured, as well as those who follow,

Uncle Ruckus - no relation - from Aaron McGruder’s “The Boondocks,”

 

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,”

Join pursuit of Harriet Tubman,

Against those fleeing from captors,

Lobotomized by Stockholm syndrome,

Always the contrarian,

 

Vernon Jones is bodysurfing COVID at Georgia klan rallies,

Though high and lifted atop a sea of MAGA lunacy,

Brother Jones is officially in “the sunken place” contingency,

 

Kanye went from “George Bush don’t like black people,”

After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina,

To wearing the MAGA “mark of the beast,” hugging evil incarnate,

 

Et Tu, Ice Cube, of NWA, "Straight Outta Compton" fame?

From “Fuck the police”; “Arrest the president.”

To fuck the people and get the Benjamin’s?

 

A realm beyond time and space,

After sociopaths lobotomized the oppressed,

Thinking themselves shielded from the blood of the innocent,

Stolen from the mother continent,

 

Genesis by ignorance,

Essentially, a brainwashing technique,

Excusing your selfish greed,

 

I paraphrase Oliver Cromwell:

 

“You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately. ... Depart, I say; let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

“Get Out!”

Aftermath...

Image Source: Good Reads

© 11 October 2020, the Griot Poet

Another doctor’s note, ambiguous

On whether science medically cleared him,

For his Evita photo op, staging people of color

At yet another super spreader event.

 

Let’s game this out:

The Constitution authorizes militias

The resolution to the new nation,

Avoiding longstanding armies,

Modern legislation found loopholes,

 

To form the military-industrial-congressional-complex,

As Ike tried to warn in his farewell address,

In 242 years of existence,

We’ve had 16 years of peace,

 

A militia not authorized by the government,

Is an armed gang of domestic terrorists,

Like the thirteen Michigan thugs sent by code to kidnap and kill Governor Gretchen Whitmer,

 

Sent by code to illegally “watch the polls,”

Sent to harass the “will of the governed,”

During an epic pandemic,

Trying to eliminate the Affordable Care Act and the healthcare of millions,

 

Because, when you’re sinking in the polls with every word salad sentence,

Satan would rather “rule in hell than serve in heaven,”

In the psychoanalysis by John Million,

 

Forget G20, G7,

Our bread of racist, unwanted leaven,

Will make it G-everyone-else-but-us, or Putin,

 

The dollar as the basis of global currency,

Is merely a line of code

Changed in a few clicks if America

Proves itself too risky an investment,

No countries do business with municipalities devolved to civil unrest,

No migrants matriculate to form Apple, Google, YouTube, hot dogs, hamburgers, ketchup, the rock bands KISS, and Van Halen.

 

Supply chains of food and drug therapy will be affected,

We devolve to episodes of “The Walking Dead,”

Starving citizens looking for food, toilet paper, and potable water to drink,

Homes raided by armed bandits, too dystopian to think,

 

The landscape becomes warlords and factions,

Not unlike Afghanistan and Iraq,

The “essential nation” becomes badlands,

Byword and proverb,

For a failed state,

“Make America great again,”

This Nero tweets as new Rome burns,

Engraved on our former nation’s tombstone,

By future historians,

 

How does this end?

Karly Whitaker on Twitter gives our prophetic:

 

He’s exposed as a fraud and penniless.

He’s exposed as a failure, a criminal: a traitor.

The “gang of Putin” is a smoldering ruin.

Children on the Texas border freed from cages,

Reunited with parents and given therapy,

For the separation anxiety,

Caused by this criminal enterprise

masquerading as a political party,

 

We the people rebuild,

We the people heal,

We the people are not afraid of racist knaves!

That’s how this ends: watch!

Super Spreader...

 

Image Source: Red Bubble Greeting Card

© 7 October 2020, the Griot Poet

The White House is down on its luck,

A Coronavirus hot spot,

The Trump Virus cluster fuck,

The Pentagon is on lockdown,

We couldn’t fly a paper airplane around,

Moscow, Ukraine, or Kosovo,

Typhoid Donald walks the hallowed halls like an evil clown,

Shedding virus spores as he spits and spins around,

 

He’s a speculative

Movie pitch: “If Chuckie Became a Septuagenarian,

Got addicted to Adderall,

Had a cult following of Typhoid Mary-o-nets,

And owned a Twitter account!"

 

A cameraman had to stand,

Directly in front of the man, filming,

A 'roid rage in-progress,

Spitting spores in the process,

Endangering that person’s family,

Tweeting another lie for his cultists,

 

He’s on a cocktail of drugs that don’t exist,

For any American who can’t easily spend,

$100,000 dollars for the concoction,

That has probably exacerbated his present delusions and darkness,

 

Wheezing past portraits and galleys,

Of presidents, he will never measure up to,

He insists on holding rallies,

Because Baby Huey is upset, sadly

His last debate was seen as

Bat-shit crazy,

 

He’s bluffing because the next virtual debate,

Puts the moderator in complete control, to navigate

A mute button that will leave him for the PLANET,

Looking like a frothing, lunatic ingrate,

 

Orchestrating a coup,

Would take planning he has no talent to do,

His fascist enablers, and hanger-on leeches,

Are capable of such treachery,

 

He is the apogee of,

Reagan’s “empty wagon” analogy,

Made famous by Grover Norquist,

Who only wanted a chief executive with functional digits,

To sign any legislation,

But NEVER, ever think!

 

He blamed the military, police, the Gold Star families,

For his Coronavirus diagnosis malady,

Not his super spreader, 2-minute hate rallies,

He’s literally, real-time looking for an excuse,

When he eventually loses.

 

The FIRST question any moderator should ask is this:

If you REFUSE to accept the peaceful transfer of power, are you staging a coup? If so, what does America LOOK like after this?

 

Typhoid Donald walks the hallowed halls like an evil clown,

Shedding virus spores as he spits and spins around,

Shedding virus spores like dandruff, or lint,

Knowing his re-election chances are falling to shit,

 

Taking the entire Republican Party with him,

The “Art of the Deal” plagiarist,

Won’t find anyone who wants to do business with him,

The Manhattan DA, SDNY, and State of New York DA Letitia James,

Will fight to ship him,

To Rikers, or Sing-Sing,

He’ll spend the remainder of his life,

Broke and penniless,

Decaying and rotten,

And a fate for him far worse than death: forgotten.

Uncivil War...

 

Down With Tyranny on Blogger

© 3 October 2020, the Griot Poet

No internal war is ever civil,

Russia’s goal is upheaval,

Of Democratic Republicanism,

As “threat of a good example,”

 

White nationalists are our Y’all Qaeda jihadis,

“Stand back and stand by,”

Boogaloo Bois,

Proud Boys;

Aryan Nation, Klan, and Neo-Nazis,

Armed to the teeth because they fear,

The actual exercise of democracy,

As the nation’s demographics,

Shifts from primarily Anglo Saxon

To Melanin-dominate,

 

A time bomb, whose fuse was lit,

By their ancestors and government built on the efforts,

Of free slave labor, replaced,

By Chinese, then Mexican labor,

African diaspora re-enslaved with vagrancy laws, author Doug Blackmon said:

“Slavery by Another Name,”

 

We’re all,

Carbon-based, wind up dolls,

To a sadistic caste system,

That gives lip service,

To “E Pluribus Unum,”

 

We’re more like benign fascists,

Enlisting the aid of terrorists,

Be the police or militiamen,

Scare the shit out of the subservient,

 

November 3rd is our nation’s civic ability,

To decide between democracy and tyranny,

 

November 3rd is also the forty-first anniversary,

Of the Greensboro Massacre,

Where Klansmen and Neo-Nazis,

Murdered innocent protesters from the Communist Worker’s Party,

Murdered on film evidence,

Acquitted by an all-white male jury,

Forty-one years later, the Greensboro City Council is officially offering an apology,

 

The elements are still here,

We haven’t educated ourselves from these fears,

Racism is not innate, but taught,

From father to son, mother to daughter,

 

There will be no Union or Confederacy,

Except one of Dunces,

As Russia and China looking from afar,

Eat popcorn, as we do their jobs for them,

Tearing ourselves apart,

 

As Nikita Khrushchev predicted,

SLAMMING his shoe on a UN podium:

“We will BURY you without firing a shot!”

Tapes...

Image Source: A Nixon biographer explains how Trump compares, John A. Farrell, Vox

© 3 October 2020, the Griot Poet

Nixon was done in by his own admission,

On the Watergate tapes,

On his contrition,

In subverting The US Constitution,

Barry Goldwater came and told him,

You don’t have any votes avoiding,

Impeachment and removal,

 

This was before Ted Turner approved, and launched CNN as “infotainment,”

Neil Postman said:

“Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”

When the Internet was still a DARPA project,

 

Roger Ailes gave us polar opposites,

In 1996,

Of Fox and MSNBC,

To split the American electorate,

 

Orange Satan swore by Oath to protect and defend,

His first official lie: he didn’t mean it.

 

Now, Bob Woodward’s bombshell missives,

Record him in his admittance,

He knew that the dangers of this pandemic,

Was more than the flu,

In February,

 

Which means, he knew,

It affected citizens,

Of color, who mostly didn’t vote for him,

So, like California wildfires,

He gave us happy talk and magic,

His obfuscation has been tragic,

 

The relationship algebraic:

Equation y = 10x.

20,000+ lies, 200,000+ dead,

The only linear relationship in this exponential pandemic,

 

Democracy is the political equivalent,

Of the Scientific Method:

 

Null hypothesis,

Alternative hypothesis,

Design experiment,

Test experiment,

LOOK at the results, examine the evidence:

Does it support, or refute the null, or alternative hypothesis?

Yes? Repeat and verify.

No? Form another hypothesis.

 

That is why it is called the “democratic experiment,”

Republics have to be based on evidence,

 

Now, Melania is on record,

Saying “fuck” the children caged at the border and Christmas,

 

I have a question:

WHAT are evangelicals getting out of this?

81% of you supported the vagina-grabber,

Who in their right MIND would listen to you,

On any “advice” to stay “faithful and true”?

 

Your support is evaporating,

Amongst the young, who are needed,

To replenish your flock with tithes and offering,

Aging congregations and mortgages are your reality,

Get help with your plight,

Floating loans from Franklin Graham, Paula White,

Or, any of the “prosperity gospel” variety,

Fleecing their flocks of needed pennies,

Shepherds as wolves in sheep’s clothing,

Driving Bentleys and flying planes,

While people are starving,

 

I gift you a simple logic,

The Scientific Method:

 

Null hypothesis,

Alternative hypothesis,

Design experiment,

Test experiment,

LOOK at the results, examine the evidence:

Does it support, or refute the null, or alternative hypothesis?

 

Yes? Repeat and verify.

No? Form another hypothesis.