Pyrrhic Victory...

 

Image source: Christian Small Attorneys

© November 25, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

I breathed a sigh of relief with the verdict:

All were found guilty of felony murder and aggravated assault.

All will spend the rest of their lives in prison.

I should feel celebratory, but I don’t.

Their feckless defense will appeal the decision.

I would [rather] never have heard his name,

Rendered to a hashtag,

I would rather he be nameless, eating Thanksgiving dinner with his family and friends.

Yet another in a long line of ghoulish behavior,

Yet another innocent African American slaughtered,

Yet another sacrifice on a hellish altar,

In a nation that prides itself on being “exceptional.”

 

African Americans

Have to give their children “The Talk.”

How to survive a racist cop,

How to try to look non-threatening on an escalator, in an elevator, in any room, while shopping, barbecuing in the park, bird watching in the park, selling loose cigarettes on New York streets, selling lemonade or water with a permit, while walking, carrying Skittles, sleeping in your bed, sitting in your apartment, and while jogging!

The list is expansive and never-ending,

Fear from a cisgender culture finding itself no longer central,

Numbers plunged for the first time since 1790 by an early end to the Census,

Walking outside of our homes,

[Has] always placed us in a war zone,

Since 1619,

We never get over the last shell shock,

We’re perpetually suffering PTSD,

In this land of “opportunity.”

 

The defense demonized Ahmaud Arbrey,

The murderers’ Billy Bob, Cooter, and Skeeter

Found their crack legal team on a box appropriately named “Cracker Jack,”

At the bottom of the trash bin at Cracker Barrel,

From the esteemed law offices of

Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn, and Nazi Barbie,

 

If black lives didn’t matter to them,

Neither did black preachers,

Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson

Called out by name,

Saying there were too many of them,

Saying there were too many blacks on the jury,

Think of this:

11:1 advantage whites to one African American,

Was TOO many,

Racist tropes about Kentucky Fried Chicken,

Comments about Ahmaud jogging without socks, dirty toes,

This argument wasn’t a defense: it was the sordid rites at a Klan meeting!

 

Since Kenosha,

I was bracing for another defeat.

The fact Rittenhouse crossed state lines,

Driven by his mom,

Owned no property in Illinois or Wisconsin,

He was given a gun someone straw man purchased for him,

Handed it to a seventeen-year-old kid,

Store-bought plastic gloves,

Pretending to be a trained EMT medic,

The police gave him water and a pat on the back,

The first man he killed was a licensed concealed carry gun owner triggered by his unchallenged presence,

The second man he killed attacked him with a skateboard,

The third man survived.

Ironically, Kyle managed to blow off the bicep of an actual EMT medic.

Despite these facts,

The North Carolina wheelchair fascist,

Representative Madison Cawthorn,

Cheered the bloodlust and carnage,

He wants his constituents “armed and dangerous,”

For a future fake election loss, they can’t steal

Without the United Nations coming to the grim realization

Actively considering the so-called United States is sliding into a rogue nation,

Where democracy and the rule of law are quaint, antiquated notions,

The former fascist in chief took a perverse “thumbs up” picture with him,

Matt Gaetz and other like-minded psychopaths want to hire him as an intern,

He’s likely going to be a troll guest at the next State of the Union,

A speaker at the next Republican National Convention,

Who knew a murderer had a future in politics?

A party that has openly abandoned democracy HAS no bottom!

 

Ahmaud Arbery’s murderers are guilty.

But where does the mentality come from where you THINK you can shoot a black man, FILM it, and get away with it?

 

An answer in the comments section on Facebook from a friend of poets and authors, editor Mindy Reed,

 

“It comes from a system that has tolerated such behavior for centuries.”

 

What other country on the PLANET has a sorority and fraternity of parents who have lost sons and daughters to racial violence?

 

It’s not a stretch, nor do I have it twisted,

“American exceptionalism” is exceptionally sadistic.

 

Rest In Peace and Power, Ahmaud Arbery; you deserve it,

But other than the verdict: we’d rather have HIM with us!

Day of Infamy...

 

© November 19, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

Twenty four hours before,

A death sentence was commuted for Julius Jones in Oklahoma,

To life, without the possibility of parole,

For crime evidence says acquits him,

For a crime, he adamantly says he didn’t commit,

 

I sat in Sanford, North Carolina,

On a highway named for Confederate insurrectionist president Jefferson Davis,

With the LARGEST “stars and bars.”

Flag of sedition

That I’ve ever seen,

As the infamy came:

Kyle Rittenhouse became George Zimmerman redux,

Acquitted on all five counts,

John Adams’s words are bullshit!

We’re not a “nation of laws and not of men,”

As some laws have loopholes [for] some of them,

 

It’s now legal for vigilantes,

To use the Second Amendment to suppress the first,

The Black Lives Matter supporters

Were white,

Unarmed,

Unless you count skateboards,

 

Confederate soldiers would have called them

“Collaborators,”

“Race traitors,”

Carrying a long rifle is only illegal

In Kenosha, Wisconsin, for gang members,

Translation: black men,

I guess lying that you’re an EMT is acceptable,

As is riding from Illinois to Kenosha, Wisconsin,

Where if you had stayed your seventeen-year-old ass at HOME in your state,

You wouldn’t have SHOT anyone!

Like Trever Noah, I call bullshit!

You never got excited about any small business or the rights of a big chain outlet,

Your MISSION was to put yourself in the conditions,

Where shooting ANYONE was possible.

The defense for George Zimmerman said Trayvon Martin’s “lethal weapon?”

Was the sidewalk,

 

Kenosha, Wisconsin

Just put a bullseye,

On the backs of every social justice activist,

With the “get out of jail free” card

Of

Crocodile tears in court,

And pleading “self-defense.”

 

I was holding my breath,

On the superfluous bullshit,

To justify the hunting and slaughter,

Of Ahmaud Aubrey,

For the criminal act of jogging,

 (His murderers thankfully found guilty, the trigger man on all counts)

Do you want a history lesson?

The Nazis got their inspiration,

From southern segregationists,

But some of the black codes were TOO deep for THEM to replicate!

 

I’m too numb to be afraid, angry, terrified: my emotional well is spent.

 

Stop calling it “American exceptionalism,”

This so-called verdict is what sadism looks like!

Change Kyle’s hue to brown,

And see how “justice” would be meted out,

 

If Matt Gaetz gets his way,

He’ll probably make Kyle a congregational aide,

And bring him to the next State of the Union address,

Because: if the laws only apply to certain men,

He’ll escape accountability for underage sex trafficking,

An eight-hour blathering howler monkey in a suit will be Speaker of the House,

And the State of the Union is leaning fascist!

Justice, or Just Us?

Image source: Twitter

© November 5, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

Bill Cosby,

Was the “respectable Negro,”

Had a self-named comedy show in the 1960s,

Did a stint as a secret agent on "I Spy" with Robert Culp,

Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids in the 70s and 80s,

Another Cosby sitcom in the 80s and 90s,

A standup comic [known] for his G-rated decency,

 

Wrote a book on Fatherhood,

Said a speech called “Pound Cake.”

Berating black youth culture,

(So you know, Sean Insanity LOVED him),

 

Whether you agree with it,

Bill Cosby was convicted of rape,

The crime technically is “drug-facilitated sexual assault,”

He was convicted and sentenced at 81,

A technicality overturned it and sent him home,

 

Yet, Carolyn Bryant walks free.

Who is she, you ask?

She’s the woman who accused Emmett Till,

Of flirting and whistling at her,

He came to the south from Chicago,

One of the sights the Great Migration,

Taken by his ancestors,

From the racism, violence, cross burnings, and lynchings of the “Christian south,”

Only to meet the violence his mothers and fathers ran from the south to the north,

 

Emmett was kidnapped,

From his great-uncle’s home at gunpoint,

By Carolyn’s husband at the time,

(She’s married and divorced thrice)

And two other white men,

Some say Emmett had asthma:

He may not have been whistling at her but gasping to catch his breath.

 

Say his name!

Emmett Louis Till,

Was 14 years old,

When he was taken,

Beaten,

Mutilated,

Shot in the head,

They tied an anvil around his neck,

To sink his body in the Tallahatchie River.

He was discovered three days later,

An all-white jury acquitted them.

 

Fast-forward to the trials of the vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse and the murderers of Ahmaud Aubrey in Georgia,

Miles apart, there’s precisely ONE African American on each jury!

CRT would call that systemic,

Each could decide if it’s open season,

On people protesting for social justice,

Or [just] being in the bodies of black people or Black Lives Matter supporters!

 

“Critical race theory (CRT) is a body of legal scholarship and an academic movement of civil-rights scholars and activists who seek to examine the intersection of race and law in the United States and to challenge mainstream American liberal approaches to racial justice.

 

“CRT examines social, cultural, and legal issues primarily as they relate to race and racism in the U.S.

 

“A tenet of CRT is that racism and disparate racial outcomes are the results of complex, changing, and often subtle social and institutional dynamics, rather than explicit and intentional prejudices of individuals.”

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory

 

In 2017,

Carolyn Bryant admitted that she lied.

Emmett Till died.

He would have been our first “hashtag” had there been such a thing,

As cell phones,

His body flown home,

His mother, Mamie Till, made the principled decision,

To have an open casket funeral,

Let America see the wages

Of its hatred,

Made the cover of Ebony and Jet Magazines,

And national media,

Galvanized the Civil Rights movement,

 

It’s not “Critical Race Theory,”

It’s the actual teaching of accurate history,

They’re protesting,

 

Yes,

What Bill Cosby did was heinous,

There’s a difference between consensual sex,

And sex by apothecary,

Whether you went to his hotel room,

To sleep with him,

Your autonomy was taken,

When you couldn’t remember the act,

Your choice was taken,

Whether you were thinking of his wife, Camille, or not,

 

Carolyn Bryant prayed “tender mercies.”

On the memories of

Emmett, and his mother, Mamie,

They’re dead,

Carolyn is still alive,

Still free,

Still not held in accountability,

 

“Let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream,” Amos 5:24

 

The words of the prophet Amos,

Bellowed by Dr. Martin Luther King,

 

This utterance applied to “Pound Cake,”

Why not Carolyn Bryant?

 

This little old lady is an accessory to murder,

 

Lady Justice’s blindfold,

Hides the genteel “wink and nod” of white supremacy,

 

It’s why you can convict America’s “acceptable Negro” TV father,

But not Carolyn Bryant, a murder accomplice! 

187 Minutes...

 

Image source: Chicago-Sun Times

© November 1, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

187 is the California penal code for murder.

It’s ironic,

As a fascist, he’s not intelligent, but he can count.

 

187 minutes passed,

A malignant narcissist sat on his ass,

Watching the stochastic terrorist pyre, he lit,

Like a pyromaniac getting his hit,

On the psychopathic destruction he inspired January 6th:

 

He did nothing for over three hours.

 

Fascism is the ultimate con game,

The Übermensch by Nietzsche,

Appropriated by the Nazis,

 

“Beyond-Man,” “Superman,” “Overman,” “Uberman,” or “Superhuman,”

 

In his fictional work Thus Spoke, Zarathustra

 

The superhuman: a goal for man to set for himself,

 

That description does not describe the mop head nincompoop we just experienced,

 

Evolution gives advantage only to assets that ensure survival,

Superior intelligence need not be one of them,

See the prescient comedy, “Idiocracy,”

 

Their definition of who counts as “human” is a chief concern,

 

The basis of this dark evolution,

Is pseudoscientific eugenics,

Breeding the Übermensch at the sacrifice of everything else,

Charity, empathy, humanity,

Banning books on actual history,

“Alternative facts” instead of reality,

Treating other human beings like pestilence,

Followed by extermination,

When fascists can’t win elections,

Their devolution to violence follows a script:

 

Demonize the “others,” usually weaker politically,

Attack the media as lying, or call it “fake,”

Replace it with an arm of propaganda to serve the coming totalitarian state,

Separate children from their parents in concentration camps,

(Just like we did in slavery)

Make it difficult for citizens to express their descent,

Threaten the First Amendment with the Second,

Don’t let certain people cast a vote,

Since they’re not likely to vote for you,

Hold elections as symbolic pro forma public rituals after the coup,

WWPD: what would Putin do?

 

Homo Erectus, to Homo Stultus,

“Sapiens” was never a metaphor for us,

What wild beasts hoard supplies from the rest of their kind in a remote part of the forest?

Amazon, the business, has more “personhood” than the natural Amazon forest!

The lungs of our planet are on fire,

From deforestation, greed, and mismanagement,

Mail-order-on-steroids is

Putting out of business mom and pop enterprises,

And builds castles, moats, penis rockets, and exclusive Cul de Sacs for sociopaths!

 

Do you see any pack of wolves doing this?

Did the Buffalo spoil their [own] lands and commit suicide in the process?

The dinosaurs can’t be faulted for the Chicxulub crater: they didn’t have scientists!

We seem determined to club ourselves with self-inflicted meteors,

To see the most dangerous predator on Earth: find a mirror!

We are in a soulless condition,

Spelling doom for the climate and the planet,

 

187 is the California penal code for murder.

This classism, fascism, homophobia, racism, sexism are all connected to our pitiful response to the pandemic,

The G20 was whiter than the Oscars,

Because Southern Hemisphere (browner) nations haven’t received any life-changing mRNA vaccines to ARGUE about,

Because of the continuing taxonomy of “us” versus “them,”

Vaccinating the species takes a backseat to corporate profits,

We can’t keep doing this,

And arrogantly expect to continue to exist,

On a 187’ed planet!

 

I’m tired of writing missives like this,

We don’t need to go to a dead Red planet to save humanity: we can do it right here!

 

The essence of Gene Roddenberry’s message in Star Trek is this: it won’t be warp drives and replicators that save us, but cooperation.

 

In the words of Umair Hague, we need a “new enlightenment,” one where we value one another’s existence, where the “wealth” is in how we cooperate.

 

Lastly, that we value each other so much:

 

That we value our total history, learning from our mistakes as Santayana said to not repeat them,

That every human age gracefully,

[That] health challenges don’t lead to financial ruin and poverty,

That everyone knows the dignity of work making living wages,

That the prison-industrial-complex moves from profits to rehabilitation,

That the homeless is a bitter memory of our previous moral bankruptcy,

And no one faces their final moments without being embraced by friends and family,

This poem is my spiritual and secular prayer for the survival of humanity.

On Stupidity...

 

© October 27, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice.

 

“One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by the use of force.

 

“Evil always carries within itself the germ of its [own] subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease.

 

“Against stupidity, we are defenseless.

 

“Neither protests nor the use of force accomplishes anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment [simply] need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental.

 

“In all this, the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.

 

“For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one.

 

“Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.”

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

Sixty percent of the anti-democrats think the 2020 election was fraudulent,

 

Even though 60 federal judges, many their Orange Satan appointed, rejected his frivolous lawsuits,

 

It’s gaslighting when the abuser uses “Big Lies” to destabilize you,

 

It’s a cult when you’re a willing participant,

 

The disappointment is that we thought enlightenment,

 

Would happen when they received information:

 

Carter G. Woodson founded The Journal of Negro History in 1916,

 

Negro History Week came in 1926,

African American History Month evolved from that,

 

“Imitation is the highest form of flattery,”

 

Women’s History Month,

Hispanic Heritage Month,

LGBTQ Month,

Indigenous Peoples Day, versus Columbus,

Who didn’t discover anything where people already were, anyway,

 

One-hundred and five years of information,

Refuted by the indoctrination,

Of a white male, cisgender supremacy,

 

The stupid and fascists ignore facts,

Slipping past any line of logical argument,

As quickly as the whiff of a sulphuric fart,

Tribalism keeps them in the grips of a demagogue,

“The Lost Cause” the first successful gaslighting,

Articles of succession,

Substituted with a “war of northern aggression,”

Because Abraham Lincoln was “mean to them.”

 

Before the war, he said:

“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.”

 

Words that were spoken by a true politician,

 

Jefferson Davis used to live in Manhattan,

A failed real estate developer playing a billionaire on The Apprentice,

 

Notice that no actual billionaire had time for it?

 

A malignant narcissist

Who can’t take responsibility,

Or, admit to failing,

It’s in failure where the learning is,

Bose, Edison, Einstein, Tesla, Hawking,

Didn’t “knock it out of the park” at first theory, or experiment,

The party he’s hijacked has given up,

On the National Academy of Science found,

DURING a Civil War in which,

Victory by the north wasn’t guaranteed,

 

The former Republican Party has given up,

On having an expansive platform to convince,

A sizable amount of the electorate,

To vote for them,

They would instead purge voter rolls,

Decry nonexistent voter fraud,

Close voting precincts in the inner city and on college campuses,

 

In the event of overwhelming democracy: break glass,

Rely on brown shirts,

Shouting at teachers, doctors, and school board members,

Terroristic death threats,

At volunteer election workers and Secretaries of State,

“Nights of broken glass,”

Is the logical outcome of unchallenged hate,

 

Vaccines and masks,

Are “medical tyranny and fascism.”

According to the crowd ingesting hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin,

More police died of COVID-19,

[Than] on the line of duty,

The police union opposes the facts,

That’s supposed to be looking out for the members’ best interests,

 

John Maynard Keynes said:

“When information changes, I change my mind. What, sir, do you do?”

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A German pastor,

Initially, a Nazi sympathizer,

Like Keynes,

Saw the error of his ways,

Acting on new information,

And became a blistering critic,

So, in “good Christian” fashion,

The Nazi regime killed him,

 

“We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity, [in fact], our movement is Christian.”

 

Said by its leader, Adolph Hitler,

When what he meant is the state and its leader becoming the national religion,

The current fascist can only quote Two Corinthians,

Jack-leg preachers have tried to legitimize him,

 

Publicly laying hands on a reprobate,

Violating separation of church and state,

Charlie Kirk rebuking a brown shirt his lies helped create,

Won’t forgive him, nor

Bill-Loofah-war-on-Christmas-Tiller-the-baby-killer-O’Reilly,

Rush-I’m-Just-An-Entertainer-Limbaugh,

Sean Insanity,

Laura Ingrate,

Or mini Nazi Barbie, Tucker Carlson

(Whose name tells me that he got teased a lot in school)

And the streaming pile of feces,

Alex Jones false flag propaganda,

He’s calling a “documentary,”

 

The conflagration and violence it sparks are only because of their abject hate and stupidity.