The Politics of Hyperspace...

© June 23, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

Star Wars and Star Trek:

The latter preceded the former,

Both involved world governments,

And Galaxy-spanning empires,

Superluminal speeds enabling them,

And Deux Ex Machina plot twists,

 

May 25, 1977,

George Lucas gave us

Star Wars,

The original script,

“A New Hope”

Stole the nation’s imagination,

Like “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,”

There were costumes and imitation,

Matinee prices at $2.00,

Gasoline at $0.30 per gallon,

As fans watched it over and over again,

Memorizing each line and lyrics,

The plot started in the fourth chapter,

In the aftermath of a fallen republic,

Star systems, and planets,

Under the boot heel of a malevolent fascist,

Once known as Senator Palpatine,

Now god-emperor,

Elected after his disfigurement,

In a battle with Mace Windu,

Causing the fall of Anakin Skywalker,

And the rise of Darth Vader,

 

Puppeteer of a factional, fake rebellion,

Pumping fear into the Galactic Senate,

Promising “I alone can fix it,”

Orchestrated “order 66,”

Turning clones against the guardians of the republic,

Ending his Jedi opposition,

As a viable option to contest him,

 

In dark, mechanical armor,

The man who was once known as Anakin Skywalker

Existed,

Labored breathing after battling his friend,

Obi-Wan Kenobi,

On the volcanic planet Mustafar,

[Literally], half the man he was,

Succumbing to the siren lies from the dark side of the Force,

 

Scarred beyond recognition,

Or love,

He made the best of losing Padme,

And his twins Luke, and Leia, hidden from him,

Nazi helmet, and lightsaber,

He would destroy the order he once was a member,

“The chosen one” turned against them,

By Palpatine’s lies and deception,

He would replace his self-loathing and regrets with strutting,

His cape billowing and flowing:

He will be feared if he cannot be loved.

 

September 8, 1966,

The debut of a diverse cast,

Skewing the vision piped in,

By “Lost in Space,” “The Invaders”

That the exploration of space would only be white,

Inspiration to Dr. Ronald E. McNair,

First black astronaut from an HBCU,

From North Carolina A&T,

And MIT for his Ph.D. in Laser Physics,

Aggie Pride took flight,

On the Space Shuttle Challenger,

I would meet him after his maiden flight,

Sadly on its second voyage, his and his crew’s demise,

 

Star Trek,

[Was] pitched by Gene Roddenberry,

As “wagon train to the stars,”

Following “cowboy diplomacy,”

Hints that the Federation,

Was keen on colonization,

A selling point for Viacom executives,

Real estate became whole planets,

Territories measured by parsecs,

 

But:

They were more like hippies with starships,

They put on plays, poetry readings, and concerts,

They were STEAM before STEM came in existence,

Their weapons defensive,

Their goals exploration, and understanding,

Surviving a Third World War,

Colonel Green eugenics post-apocalypse,

Xindi bloodshed,

It puts things collectively in perspective for a species:

They shed the prejudices that separated them,

And made near self-annihilation possible,

 

The Emmy winning,

“Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,”

Fifteenth of twenty-four in the third and last season of the Original Series,

Lokai, a political refugee from the planet Cheron,

Half black on one side, and white on the other,

Pursued by a constable from the dominant caste, Bele,

One the mirror image of the other,

Finding each of their people slaughtered one another,

They beamed down to finish the extermination,

 

Forlorn, Lt. Uhura asks if their hate is all they ever had. Kirk ruefully says no...but it is all they have left.

 

The episode premiered nine months after the assassination,

Of its number one fan: Dr. Martin Luther King,

Apropos as that one year later,

1969 was the hippie anthem “Dawning of the Age of Aquarius,”

By the Fifth Dimension,

 

Star Wars and Star [Trek] were both visions and warning:

Superluminal speeds are unlikely,

Nor are Deux Ex Machina Vulcans,

Nor benevolent wielders of “Force lightning,”

Descending to save us,

From runaway greenhouse gases,

From plastics decaying twenty-to-five-hundred years consumed by tortoise and dolphins,

From billionaires offshoring assets and gaslighting,

From social media making all of us the product,

From “mutually assured destruction” nuclear madness,

Utopia is hard, but its opposite only requires time, apathy, and Entropy,

Let’s not be like planet Cheron:

Let’s save [US]!

Weaponizing the Eucharist...

 

President Joe Biden holds his first formal news conference at the White House on March 25 in Washington. (CNS/Leah Millis, Reuters) Source: National Catholic Reporter

© June 23, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

Catholic bishops,

And the Vatican,

During WWII,

Gave cover,

In a Zeig Heil salute,

To Adolf Hitler,

(Google it),

 

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops,

Aren’t the least bit interested,

In removing,

Pedophiles and rapists from their ranks,

Instead,

They would rather,

Shuffle them between dioceses,

Hide their crimes, and silence their critics,

They’re spending their valuable, “spiritual” time,

Weaponizing the Eucharist,

 

Denying it,

To a decent man,

And by extension, his entire family,

And other Catholics worldwide like him,

Because he supports the rights of women,

To choose what’s done to their bodies,

Especially after the forced error of rape,

Instead of being in the words of George Carlin, “broodmare for the state,”

 

Not that they’ve ever cared about,

The bodily autonomy,

Of assaulted altar boys,

And the strange sound of crickets,

Over aborted fetuses,

Found under shell game dioceses,

Impregnated nuns dismissed for impropriety,

And temptresses of heterosexual bishops,

 

After Emperor Constantine,

Had a battlefield conniption,

Adding a symbol of state torture,

The Cross: a Latin noose,

To Roman shields,

 

The Vatican potentates had a private meeting with him,

Establishing the never-before precedent,

Of never taxing the churches,

 

“The Way”

Convoluted from its focus on the poor,

And “least of these,”

To lining the pockets,

Of a monied aristocracy,

 

Thus began an unholy marriage,

Between church and state,

Bewildered masses, and potentates,

Spiritual freedom now narcotic,

Karl Marx’s

“Opiate of the people,”

Prophetic,

Unabated,

By Magna Carta,

Political evolution,

Or US Constitution,

Controlled by those who,

Are the gatekeepers of information,

Owning technology,

From quill pen,

To Internet,

 

The boondoggle,

Extended,

After the Protestant Reformation,

To every “religious” entity,

With a 501(c)3,

Corporations have been people,

Since the passage of the 14th Amendment,

And robber barons and their lawyers finagled it,

 

Billionaires consider their businesses cathedrals,

Besides their stolen wealth, it’s the only thing they believe in,

Amazon and Southern Baptists are tax-exempt,

One supported slavery, apologizing LAST century finally for it,

The other anti-union, scuttling efforts in Alabama at worker organization,

Subjecting them to harsh, unsafe work conditions,

Workers [literally] needing a pot to piss in,

Drivers relieving themselves in bottles and buckets,

 

As he rides a spaceship on a narcissist’s joy ride,

Self-publishing his escapade in the Washington Post,

Shell gaming his wealth in overseas tax havens,

 

As

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops,

Weaponize the Eucharist,

Against those who believe in [the] bodily autonomy,

Of women and altar boys that grow up to shattered men,

With all this political action,

Don’t you think it’s high time we started taxing the churches,

And by logical extension, its corporate equivalent?

 

Besides,

One square meter of the Vatican ceiling can end world poverty,

Jesus rode into town on a donkey, not Leer Jets, Mercedes, or Lamborghini’s,

And I think Bezos with spaceships, half-billion-dollar yachts, and a SPARE for the helicopter can fix a few potholes on Earth and aptly pay for it!

Convenient Amnesia...

 © June 18, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

On the Eve of Juneteenth,

Celebrated as an official federal holiday,

The first new one since declaring

Martin Luther King Day

In 1983,

My classmates and I skipped class,

At North Carolina A&T,

And I’m sure at other black colleges,

We didn’t need an official declaration,

We were in the aftermath of the Civil Rights struggle,

1980: the only class with more black men in college than in prison,

And, we all knew who we had to thank,

 

Arizona held off recognition,

Losing a Super Bowl,

White supremacy takes an economic toll,

They finally relented

In the year 2000,

It is now on rotation with so many other holiday sales.

 

Thomas Paine and the Tulsa Massacre:

Metaphors for history gaslit out of existence,

 

Tulsa was the home of Black Wall Street,

Booker T. Washington named it,

The residents and Marcus Garvey called it “Little Africa,”

A testament to the efforts of people determined,

To make the best of racist laws against them,

Burned to ashes in a fortnight of terror,

Just like the Red Summer in 1919,

All mislabeled “race riots,”

All systematically not taught,

Immediately buried and unmentioned,

Because that’s how criminals prefer it,

 

Thomas Paine wrote:

“Common Sense,” “The American Crisis,” “Rights of Man,” and “The Age of Reason,”

Best selling author of 500,000 pamphlets,

With the highest-tech being a quill pen, printing press,

And NO telegraph, or Internet,

 

He wrote these words, which stirred the souls of the colonists

Wanting freedom from British rule:

 

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands by it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. When we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price on its goods, and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

 

He gave the underpinnings to the Revolution,

He opposed slavery, favoring abolition,

Called for a progressive income tax,

Universal education for both men AND women,

Women’s equal rights before the 19th amendment,

Retirement pensions for all citizens,

A welfare system for relief to the poor,

Friend of humanity,

Foe to tyrants,

 

Yet no statues of him at our nation’s Capitol,

Like that of Nathan Bedford Forrest,

Confederate general and founder of the Ku Klux Klan,

As well as others prominently displayed at the Capitol,

The Gadsden flag and Robert E. Lee’s battle ensign on January Sixth was in good company,

Military bases bear the names of insurrectionists,

No counter-narrative about Thomas Paine,

No assignments K-12 to study about him,

 

Like the Tulsa Massacre,

It’s essential to the self-anointed owners of society,

To bury him,

History must only be flattering to their progenitors,

 

Because like most criminals,

They bury the evidence,

Make it criminal to discuss it,

Juneteenth becomes a joyful picnic,

Without context,

 

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported:

“For Opal Lee, Juneteenth is more than a license plate,”

It was the scene of a crime,

In 1939, when she was twelve,

They got to integrate a predominantly white neighborhood,

For four days,

Before their Juneteenth Celebration,

Referred to as Emancipation Day,

Was raided,

By an estimated 500 angry residents,

The cops told her dad,

If he “busted a cap.”

In self-defense: they would let the mob have him!

They fled.

Opal Lee was head of the Fort Worth African American Historical Society,

Organizing Juneteenth celebrations,

It went statewide in Texas in 1979,

The same year as the Greensboro Massacre,

 

She marched until it became a National Holiday,

Signed into law by President Biden,

 

It’s time we stopped gaslighting history,

Teaching fantasy has only led

To more bloodshed,

Death, and violence,

History and sociology,

Shouldn’t be a prolonged hostage crisis,

Sadly boring students trained like Pavlov’s dogs,

To pick the correct answers

On high stakes standardized tests,

Truth

Leads inevitably to E Pluribus Unum,

 

“The secret to freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret to tyranny is keeping them ignorant.” Maximilian Robespierre

Race Norming...

 

Image source: Time.com

© June 7, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

James Marion Sims

 

He had a statue in Central Park,

A double-lark,

As the “park” was once a settlement,

Called Seneca Village,

Founded in 1825,

By African American landowners,

In the 1840s,

The cities elite planned Central Park

In midtown Manhattan,

Not giving a tinkers damn about its inhabitants,

City planning underpaid landowners,

One got only $700 when he should have received $3,500,

Buildings condemned, and then blocks razed,

The model later for the Tulsa massacre,

 

A statue dedicated to,

James Marion Sims

In 1845,

On stolen property,

An idol to a psychopath

That performed surgery,

 

On black women,

His first victim’s name was Lucy,

An enslaved African from Alabama,

On her hands and knees

For more than an hour,

As Sims attempted repair

On a hole between her bladder and vagina,

Without anesthesia

Lucy developed blood poisoning

Sims fashioned a catheter from a piece of sponge,

His log referred to the procedure as “dumb,”

Lucy miraculously survived.

 

Setting the precedent

In the medical profession,

There was something different,

About the pain threshold

Of black women,

And by extension,

The entire culture,

 

She, and about six other enslaved women,

Endured four years of experimental surgeries,

Until he perfected a procedure to address

Vesico-vaginal fistula

The hole between bladder and vagina,

Uncontrollable urine leakage,

Possible after childbirth,

It just took the inhumane,

Un-Hippocratic,

Savage experiments on fellow humans he treated like lab rats,

 

James Marion Sims

Is the father of gynecology,

Gynecology: “the branch of physiology and medicine dealing with the functions and diseases specific to women and girls, especially those affecting the reproductive system.”

Because of this current emerging enlightenment,

His statue removed,

But the damage is done

To the medical profession,

As the prejudice passed down generations,

To the NFL’s practice of “race-norming,”

In 2021, affecting about 20,000 current and former players,

It’s been in the medical profession,

To reduce to equations what treatments we get for illness,

Changing how treatments administered when we’re in duress,

Changing medical outcomes that aren’t for our interests the best,

Increasing infant and mother mortality,

Masking it in the magical “morality” that Melanin preponderance

Makes us:

Pain-enduring,

Unintelligent,

Beast of burden,

But for the NFL, a means of saying,

Black athletes weren’t as intelligent,

So claims of injuries from getting repeatedly hit by Mack trucks on the field,

Early-stage dementia and Parkinson’s “just a myth,”

To deny billions of dollars needed for traumatic brain injury treatment,

It only makes illogical sense,

To bean-counter accountants,

Saving money for Jerry Jones and his ilk,

To hide it in tax dodges like boondoggle stadiums built at taxpayer expense,

While the money he could be paying in the US,

For universal healthcare,

Education,

Paid maternity and paternity leave,

Pothole repairs,

Like the rest of the civilized planet,

He hides his stolen loot in the Cayman Islands,

In offshore accounts,

Always threatening exodus,

If they don’t get what they want.

[Race] is a social construct,

Made up whole cloth by powerful interests,

To justify the continued enslavement of Lucy, her kindred, and descendants,

The human race of ONE BLOOD exists on this planet,

Shades of Melanin and carotin are irrelevant,

What Jerry and the dwarfs want is for the grift to go on forever, unchallenged.

Pleasant Center...

© June 2, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet,”

Thus said the Bard,

William Shakespeare,

In the tragic love affair “Romeo and Juliet,”

 

At the time of his existence,

There were festivals,

Jousts,

Jugglers, mimes, and jesters,

Archery competitions,

Fencing for high sport,

Duels to settle deadly scores,

Not behemoth entities,

Through radio, television, and the internet,

That beam in billions of eyeballs,

To gawk,

And armchair-judge your talents,

Reality shows condition citizens,

Every opinion is relevant,

Without a comparative experience,

Or expertise,

On which to make judgments,

Just instinct, kismet, the “gut,”

Inexperienced nincompoops,

And empty-headed peacocks strut,

 

Naomi, etymology, Hebrew, meaning “pleasant,”

Osaka, the commercial and cultural city center in Japan,

 

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter et al,

Empower sociopaths,

That has a problem with her youth,

That has a problem with her biracial status,

Typically racists,

Some of them elected house members and senators,

Many of them,

Charter members of the TTPC:

Teeny, tiny, penis committee,

Armed to the teeth with weaponry,

Sending their best missives to cyberspace

In soiled and semen-stained underwear,

Sitting like Gollum in mother’s basement,

 

She was a teenager

Thrust into this caustic cauldron,

There’s been no guidebook ever written,

Muhammad Ali on ABC News’ Wild World of Sports winged it,

He was an exceptional athlete,

Won Gold at the Olympics

Before becoming a professional athlete,

Spoke out against the Vietnam War,

And the irony of making

People of color

Fight people of color

On foreign shores,

He was a natural loudmouth, overconfident,

His [own] best PR agent,

Gadfly philanderer, and narcissist,

He was the greatest,

But this doesn’t mean,

Every athlete has this particular talent,

 

Naomi Osaka,

[Grew] up in the shadow,

Of Ora Mae Washington,

Althea Gibson,

Arthur Ashe,

Zina Garrison

Venus, and Serena Williams,

Each enduring hellish attacks, and double standards,

Discussing their bodies,

Their abilities,

Like they’re commodities,

Or thoroughbred stallions,

Climbing up a tennis ladder,

Rife with boobytraps

To taint or take their well-earned crowns,

And minimize their status,

 

On these shoulders

Naomi saw inspiration and support,

She’s human,

Like a lot of us,

Vulnerable to isolation in this pandemic,

Vulnerable to the unsympathetic among us,

That feel empowered that their screeds

Can reach their targets with light speed,

Revel in the pain they generate,

Oblivious to the destruction they create,

The FIRST to cry for help when THEY need it,

 

The French Open

Acting like plantation oligarchs,

Like Naomi Osaka is THEIR property,

That she doesn’t have agency,

Or a say in her mental health,

Just because her name means “pleasant,”

Doesn’t mean she lacks inner strength,

Or foresight on her condition,

$15,000 is a small pittance,

For wholeness,

An obligatory press conference,

It is analogous to an auction block,

Slaves nor horses had much choice,

Stand for inspection,

Answer questions on-cue,

Like Trigger,

The Sports Industrial Complex (SIC) is about profits!

 

Who controls a sport: the businesses that organized the competition or the athletes who play it?

 

Leagues turn press access to an athlete as an additional source of profits,

 

Think “show, and tell” with dollars.

 

Since the descendants of plantation oligarchs,

Pull strings in SIC boardrooms, and sign the checks,

They feel empowered to call the shots,

Of every aspect of athletes’ lives,

Laura Ingrate: “shut up and dribble!”

Ask how that worked for Michael Fred Phelps II,

After 28 Olympic Games Medals in swimming,

Setting a record,

The most decorated of all time,

Is now a spokesman for Talk Space,

 

At the beginning of every athlete’s journey,

Before they reach the apogee,

Of 0.03% in their respective fields,

They were children with noble dreams,

Their participation based on sheer joy,

[Which] is why they should be treated as individuals with agency,

The activity for which they’re paid handsomely focused them and kept them calm and centered.

 

That dedication to their craft should be honored and respected!