Trafficking...

"Nobody Move," digital art by Barry Kite on pixels

© September 16, 2022, the Griot Poet

 

In the 1960s,

The white citizens’ councils of the south,

Sent black Civil Rights workers to the north and the west,

Before the term “own the libs” was invented in jest,

They lied to a lot of people wanting better jobs and lives,

It was called “reverse freedom rides,”

Politically, this is the grandparent of the initiatives followed by:

 

Greg Abbott,

Shipped migrants to Vice President Kamala Harris’s Washington DC address,

 

Ronald Deon DeSantis,

Shipped migrants from Texas of all places,

Using a woman named “Perla,”

To fly them on a plane,

To Martha’s Vineyard,

 

Questions:

Who paid for the bus rides and plane tickets?

What were Texas and Florida property taxes before you did this?

 

These people were lied to, told

Jobs and housing awaited them,

The Bard said, “what’s past is prologue,”

Ecclesiastes said, “no new things under the sun,”

The Griot Poet says what’s old is new again,

 

Each of the heinous procedures,

Unlawfully moved men, women, and children,

 

“Human trafficking, also known as trafficking in persons (TIP), is a modern-day form of slavery. It is a crime under federal and international law; it is also a crime in every state in the United States.”

 

News flash:

 

Greg and Ron didn’t do that.

However, someone lied to each of the immigrants,

Coercing them to get on planes and buses,

Lying that they were going to Boston,

Texas asylum seekers were moved using Florida’s tax base,

Promising them something each time they weren’t going to deliver,

Someone flew from Texas to take the video,

Arranging for the “scoop” at Fox Propaganda:

 

That’s straight-up kidnapping!

 

18 U.S. Code 1201: “provides the legal definition of the federal crime of kidnapping: Whoever unlawfully seizes, confines, inveigles, decoys, kidnaps, abducts, or carries away and holds for ransom or reward or otherwise . . . when — the person is willfully transported in interstate or foreign commerce . . . shall be punished by imprisonment for any term of years or [for] life.”

 

What depravity do you have to sink to,

To think of this cruel stunt to play on,

Are desperate migrants fleeing their countries in the aftermath of U.S. policies?

 

Are they not EXPECTING another lawsuit with Fox Propaganda in court with Dominion Systems?

 

Except, your “troll the libs” exercise backfired.

Instead of horror, each municipality, including Martha’s Vineyard,

Welcomed them with help and open arms,

 

For I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty, and you gave me drink, I was a stranger, and you welcomed me (Matthew 25:35)

 

No one in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, or Mexico,

Just spontaneously runs with their families towards the border,

Unless what they’re running FROM is terrifying,

In the aftermath of NAFTA and TPP policies,

 

Bring charges to Abbott and DeSantis,

Let’s see how good they are at lawyering,

 

While we’re at it,

 

The apotheosized Founding Fathers were child sex traffickers.

 

Yeah. You heard that. Checklist:

 

Did the Founding Fathers own children as property?

Did the Founding Fathers sell children away from their parents?

Were the children the Founding Fathers sold often abused sexually?

 

Neither Pocahontas nor Sally Hemming,

Had consensual relations

With Miles Standish or Thomas Jefferson,

These were babies, young women,

Who was sexually predated by grown-ass pedophiles,

Forced to have their multicultural offspring,

While we’re force-fed gaslighting fantasies,

About “romances” in Disney movies,

Told it’s too “woke” to teach [actual] facts and history,

 

Why am I picking at our towering national myths?

 

Because George Floyd can’t get a posthumous pardon,

For a four-year prison sentence, he was railroaded,

In Houston, Texas, by a crooked cop,

Two years after his death by Derek Chavin,

Neither will Trayvon Benjamin Martin,

Mike Brown, Jordan Davis, Amandou Dialo,

Because America can’t resurrect the reputation of a black man, it’s lynched,

 

Building statues to pedophiles, traitors, and miscreants,

Leads to a Manchurian Candidate becoming president,

It leads to lockdowns, masks, and a yearning for “normal,”

But that’s the point: “normal” was a myth,

 

Because we never addressed the genocide of Native Americans,

Because we never paid reparations for slavery to African descendants,

Because the Founding Fathers we child sex traffickers,

 

When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God (Leviticus 19: 33-34)

 

You can’t call yourselves a “Christian nation” without practicing the basic tenants of the faith: charity and repentance.

American Exceptionalism II...

Image Source: New York Post, Jesse O'Neill

© September 8, 2022 (Star Trek Day), the Griot Poet

American exceptionalism “is the idea that the United States and its people hold a special place in the world by offering opportunity and hope for humanity, derived from a unique balance of public and private interests governed by constitutional ideals focused on personal and economic freedom.”

Boil water orders in Jackson, Mississippi,

The seat of their state government and conservative policy,

84% of the city consists of African Americans,

Coach Deion Sanders putting his players in hotels to access showers,

Take showers at home, but keep your mouths closed,

Especially when approaching the state house to discuss it,

Not exercising your First Amendment rights addressing grievances to your government,

 

Mississippi has the highest death rates

From:

Covid,

Gun deaths,

Opioid crisis,

Infant mortality,

Lowest life expectancy at 71.9 years in the nation,

Brett Farve stole 1.1 million dollars meant for the needy,

What other "millionaires" had their hands in the welfare kitty?

Colin Kaepernick's career was tanked for kneeling,

You’d think Brett could rip off a check from all those Copper Tone gigs he’s been getting,

 

You can’t drink water in Flint, Michigan,

Water sources diverted by a political decision,

My favorite president, Barack Obama, pretended to drink it,

FEMA was not called in to resolve it,

Michael Moore said this might have had more effect in 2016 than Russian interference,

Lead in pipes and water ignited by matches,

It makes for viral YouTube dispatches,

 

ERCOT took itself off the national power grid,

Climate change and a snap freeze froze to death citizens,

Cancun Cruz left his poodle, Snowflake, to freeze to death in Houston,

Then cowardly blamed his daughters for the decision,

A metaphor for the contempt he feels for his actual constituents,

Mind you; this sociopath still wants to be president,

Twenty-three members of the ERCOT board of directors, after the big freeze, quit,

Too bad none of them lived in Texas,

Concern about the isolated grid and Texas droughts arose in the summer heat,

Before they started finding dinosaur riverbed footprints,

 

What’s the Venn diagram blueprint?

Mississippi, Michigan, and Texas suffer “Republican governance,”

Reagan’s inaugural throwaway line: “government isn’t the solution: government is the problem,”

Became the framework for forty years of this grift,

It’s why Ronald Reagan, Pappy Bush, Dubya, and Orange Satan,

Come into government and took a sledgehammer to it,

It’s why the country, after each of their administrations, is in smoldering ruin,

And Clinton, Obama, and Biden have to ride herd in to FIX it!

 

Nunes the Cow, Hannity the Chin, McCarthy the Squid,

Crooked lawyers and hangers-on after seized phones and 40 subpoenas,

Meeting with the “Slob Father” on his golf course, no one is golfing!

Or not talking on electronics, since many of their phones are with the Department of Justice!

 

Moscow Mitch:

It would help if you had let Merrick Garland ascend,

  

[This] is not a typo: “Slavery abolition will be on the ballot in five states in the midterm elections: Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont.”

 

No one is free in Jackson, Mississippi.

No one is free on First Nation reservations.

No one is free in Flint, Michigan.

No one is free in Texas when an 18-year-old sociopath can purchase an AR15-style weapon easier than a beer, rum, and Coke,

And gun down babies before summer break,

 

For women, the Republic of Texas is the Republic of Gilead,

 

The evisceration of Roe vs. Wade was supposed to put the decision back to the states,

As soon as they get back the House and the Senate, Republicans plan on writing a federal mandate,

The childless Ms. Lindsey Graham wants this,

Who’s never been in a woman’s bedroom in his closeted life,

 

Ms. Graham might as well recite this derivative from Guy Fawkes:

 

“Remember, remember the eighth of ROE-VEMBER,”

Voter registrations are exponentially higher for women,

Democrats, Republicans, and Independents,

The anticipated “red wave” looks like a trickle,

Kevin McCarthy’s Speaker dream in a pickle,

 

Red states pay no state taxes,

Putting the burden of supporting the federal government on blue states,

Causing an exodus from states like California bearing the national burden of the actual slackers, Cancun Cruz,

Ironically winding up in one of the states that caused their distress,

 

Both Nixon and Reagan governed California,

Reagan and the NRA restricted the Black Panthers’ right to bear arms,

Just like the right gets excited about Black Lives Matter,

Not realizing that if you have to chant the obvious, it doesn’t,

We’re not “offering opportunities to a part of humanity,”

Whose ancestors have been here since 1619,

 

In the 80s, no one measured the life expectancy effects of the crack cocaine epidemic,

Incarnations made them irrelevant,

In 2011, average life expectancy dipped due to the opioid epidemic,

Not a single person went to a for-profit prison,

In 2019, the average national life expectancy was 79 years,

In 2022, that dropped off a cliff to 76,

Due to the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic,

It’s not the flu:

The flu is responsible for at most 20,000 deaths per year,

Coronavirus slaughtered one million Americans,

Zoom zipped math and reading test scores,

Causing them to recede 20 years backward,

No other comparable developed nation saw this,

Marines stationed at Camp Lejeune between the 1950s to the go-go 80s,

They had to join fellow vets in a lawsuit over burn pits for due compensation,

Vietnam soldiers affected by Agent Orange joined them,

The republicans didn’t want to pay for the lung effects of 9/11,

 

So, tell me a fairytale story,

Tell me about Winthrop’s “city on a hill,”

Tell me how it’s differentiated from a golden sprayed dung heap,

Tell me about “American exceptionalism.”

 

I channel James Baldwin as I end this piece:

 

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

 

ROE-VEMBER 8, 2022: women, save America: VOTE!

American Exceptionalism I...

Image Source: Amazon

© November 30, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

Today,

A fifteen-year-old child killed four of his classmates,

Injured eight: one of the injured, a teacher,

Three of the shooter’s victims are in surgery,

 

We’re a nation of sadists.

No other nation on the PLANET has so much violence that it’s become “routine.”

 

None.

 

Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut,

Remembering the sadness of Sandy Hook,

Twenty babies and six teachers,

Pictures too gruesome to publish,

The human puss sack, Alex Jones, lied about it, saying it was a hoax,

Only to admit it was an act under oath,

Losing millions in the civil lawsuit,

Senator Murphy,

Got in the well of the Senate,

Blasting his colleagues who waxed poetic

About the possible desolation of

Roe vs. Wade,

And the “sanctity of life,”

Forty-eight years of legal precedent

Ignoring Stare decisis,

Autonomy for women whose future could be limited,

By a forced rape resulting in an unwanted pregnancy,

Forced impregnation by a lover or close relative,

The rapist has the right to visitation,

Once this precedent falls: all others are irrelevant!

 

“Don’t lecture me about your love of life,”

That only extends to the unborn,

Post-birth: children are worthless to the corrupt and pious,

 

The North Carolina wheelchair fascist,

Representative Madison Cawthorne,

He wants his constituents “armed and dangerous,”

He wants mothers to “raise monsters,”

Jennifer and James Crumbly said, “mission accomplished!”

Jennifer penned an open letter to Orange Satan,

Thanking him for protecting her 2nd Amendment rights

That was NEVER under threat!

Ethan Crumbley,

Will be tried as an adult,

Spend the rest of his life in prison,

 

He’s not going to be attending his senior prom,

Outweighed by the scrawniest inmate,

Any mental health issues he has,

The prison will exacerbate,

His internal demons,

His parents ignored that,

Who found out his teacher saw him,

Searching for ammo on his phone,

Drawing bloody fantasy ideation,

That would give Paul Gosar a hard-on,

 

His “responsible gun owner parents.”

Are on the lamb from the feds,

What responsible parents leave their children in prison?

The same “mom” on finding Ethan was looking for bullets on the Internet at school,

Texted him, “LOL, don’t get caught next time.”

For four students, there won’t be a “next time.”

 

We labor under the weight of three legal fictions: borders, corporations, and racial categories.

 

You are NOT in our borders: Mecca, ‘Murica, “the promised land,” the European Union, Wakanda forever. We are “us,” and you are “them”: you do not count. You are un-persons.

 

No, Mitt Romney, “corporations are not people.” The robber barons used a boondoggle of the 14th Amendment to confer unlimited power to themselves and their progeny. People have lifespans: corporations are practically immortal psychopaths.

 

Until we find evidence of intelligent Martians, the only race is the human race. Taxonomy leading to eugenics is a failure of the enlightenment.

 

E Pluribus Unum: out of many, one.

Is the first Latin anyone ever sees,

It’s part of our self-deluded fantasy,

“Manifest destiny,”

Global kidnappings,

Colonizing inhabited territories,

Subsuming religions, languages, cultures,

Yet skillfully separating everyone into camps of “others,”

This gaslighting was the violence before the high-tech weapons,

Like the handgun Ethan used in Michigan,

 

Middle finger to King Richard,

Dumping his tea in Boston’s harbor,

For the only god, they worship the almighty dollar.

The Founding Fathers were thus the country’s first tax dodgers!

 

Perhaps another language that’s alive,

With a more profound meaning:

 

Ubuntu (Zulu): meaning “humanity,”

Or, more explicitly:

“[Extend] Humanity towards others,

“I am because we are;

“I am because you are.”

 

It will not be benevolent aliens, a United Federation of Planets, superluminal space drives, or Heisenberg-defying matter re-sequencers that will spur the elimination of class struggle (and money, apparently).

It will be global cooperation heretofore unseen.

 

Such a world revolves around Ubuntu.

We sadly seem bereft of its precepts.

 

Since it begins with “u,” it must be associated with utopia: “nowhere place.”

 

This nation is steeped in violence,

The soil of four hundred years soaked in the blood of innocents,

No nation refusing to face its past can approach repentance.

 

Constitutions can be updated and amended,

E Pluribus Unum should evolve to Ubuntu,

For any future of this nation to approach exceptionalism.

Mermaids and Manatees...

Image source: Reddit

© September 14, 2022, the Griot Poet

 

The Noomo from the Dogon tribe recorded Mermen,

Who told them of a dark companion orbiting the star, Sirius B,

Remembered them in their oral traditions as Po Tolo and Emma Ya,

Their names before the names Hubble and Webb launched astronomical instruments,

 

Halley Bailey is the live-action “Little Mermaid,”

Descended from a Danish myth,

Ariel was initially animated as a white female, half fish,

Glossing over the origins of the myth,

 

“The West African legend Mami Wata has existed for six centuries.”

Mami Wata was a mermaid or water spirit and said to have “flowing hair.”

 

On top of this, Shango was the god of Thunder,

Before the Norse envisioned a red-haired Thor,

 

Shango: Thunder, Lightning, Fire, Justice, Dance, Virility, the weapon of choice: a battle axe.

 

Thor: In Norse mythology, a hammer-wielding god associated with lightning, thunder, storms, sacred groves and trees, strength, the protection of humanity, hallowing, and fertility.

 

Like Mami Wata, part of the Orisha,

Spirits who played a pivotal role in the Yoruba religion,

Myths that naturally took other forms as man migrated from the continent of Africa to other regions,

This character is an obvious descendant of the Dogon Merman myth,

 

Ahem: mermaids are not real. Get over it.

 

Mermaids are the fevered dreams of horny sailors too LONG from shore leave,

Fantasized about the mythical creatures lusting after manatees,

 

Manatee (n): are large, fully aquatic, mostly herbivorous marine mammals sometimes known as sea cows.

 

Manatees are herbivores and eat over 60 different freshwater and saltwater plants. Manatees inhabit the shallow, marshy coastal areas and rivers of the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, the Amazon basin, and West Africa.

 

Manatees’ main causes of death are human-related issues, such as habitat destruction and human objects. Their slow-moving, curious nature has led to violent collisions with propeller-driven boats and ships. Some manatees have over 50 scars on them from propeller blades. Natural causes of death include adverse temperatures, predation by crocodiles on young,[3] and disease.

 

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

 

Let’s get the hashtag “not my Ariel” trending,

And forgot about the manatee,

 

Let’s use “woke” instead of the n-word to deny your racist deeds un-plausibly,

In an ode to “stable geniuses,”

“Let’s go, Brandon” backfired spectacularly,

 

Dark Brandon in ray bands should trend:

The hashtag “get shit done.”

With impossibly tight margins in the House and the Senate,

Despite republican opposition,

And blue dogs Manchin and Sinema,

Paid under the table by American oligarchs who consider them their servants,

 

The only plausible reason,

Ms. Bailey’s detractors are into bestiality,

They seem to be interested in having sex with white complexion, wig-wearing manatees,

 

Little girls like my granddaughter,

For some of the rarest times since the Danish myth,

Get to see themselves in a fairytale story,

The other video that went viral,

Involves the smiles of Melanin girls and their parents,

 

You’ve never seen my little bit’s smile light up a room,

(She’s told me she’s too big for me to call her that)

Having heard her laughter,

Or her demand for you to sit down,

As she conducts “princess classes,”

She’s already an expert on the subject,

 

No.

You’re committed to the “own the libs” shtick,

You’d rather drive over a cliff,

And allow a poet to point out that,

 

The only plausible reason,

For the hashtag “not my Ariel,”

Ms. Bailey’s detractors are into bestiality,

 

They seem to be interested in having sex with white complexion, wig-wearing manatees,

 

Instead of saving the gentle creatures from human propellers and objects,

Snowflakes are too insecure about looking at any stories

That doesn’t center on them specifically,

George Carlin pointed out that if you don’t like the station or the channel,

You can, you know: CHANGE it,

Or, when it hits the theaters, opt out of seeing it,

Or, if drag queens reading fairytales at libraries offends you, well, don’t ATTEND them!

And for GOD’S sake,

Don’t show up with long rifles like your deploying to a hot LZ!

 

Just a few thoughts,

 

I’m sorry that, like your nautical ancestors, you’re sexually into manatees.

 

“Thoughts and prayers!”

 

For my “little bit,” [and] she would HATE that I called her that!

Make It Make Sense...

 

Image source: NPR

© August 24, 2022, the Griot Poet

 

Jeff Tiedrich tweeted:

“Donald Trump angrily demanding the return of top-secret documents he claims the FBI planted is peak moron.”

 

Make it make sense!

 

The National Archives are the nation’s record-keeping body,

In every state and municipality,

It is our national history,

But the truth is under attack by fascists,

Libraries that are getting death threats,

The Illinois Obama Presidential Archives is stepping up police surveillance,

 

Make it make sense!

 

He’s had classified documents for 18 months,

Refusing to cooperate with the Justice Department,

Reality Winner,

Revealed classified information about Russian interference in the 2016 election,

She spent four years in prison,

While a failed reality show huckster,

Is teeing off on his golf courses,

 

Make it make sense!

 

Ms. Lindsey Graham,

The most uptight closeted man with Dissociative Disorder in human history,

Said if Trump is indicted,

For the crimes HE committed,

There would be “riots in the streets,”

In support of the twice impeached “useful idiot,”

 

Make it make sense!

 

Top Secret SCI documents,

Sources and Methods,

He asked Dan Coates, DNI, for a list of agents,

The CIA, eight months after January 6,

Warned that field agents were being arrested, tortured, and murdered,

We will NEVER know their names!

Stars on a Langley anonymous Wall of Fame,

Russian State TV said they’ve already SEEN the list of agents,

You can’t be a party known for “law and order,”

Supporting the same pathological liar,

That caused the deaths of over a million Americans during a pandemic,

Along with intelligence informants and field agents,

 

Make it make sense!

 

Why is forgiving 1.9 trillion in student debt a “handout.”

But a 1.9 trillion-dollar tax cut to pompous oligarchs was a “stimulus?”

Are you now against the Christian religion, whose WHOLE premise is canceled debt?

 

Make it make sense!

 

The same crowd against the Black Lives Matter chant, “defund the police,”

Is the same who attacked Capitol Police on January 6,

And NOW want to defund (wait for it): the Department of Justice!

 

Make it make sense!

 

Rick Scott oversaw the biggest fraud in Medicare history,

Columbia/HCA had to pay “840 million dollars in criminal fines, civil damages, and penalties.”

And you put THIS guy in charge of your senatorial campaigns?

 

Make it make sense!

 

Jackson, Mississippi, is a microcosm of climate change and inequality,

“We hold these truths to be self-evident that ALL men are created equal.”

“All deliberate speed” integration,

Caused white flight to white suburbs,

Utilities that have not been upgraded since the 1950s,

Flooding overrunning sewage systems,

In predominantly black municipalities,

Boil water orders for failing conservative policies,

Magical thinking won’t upgrade utilities,

Or replace lead pipes,

That contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire,

Lead decreases birth weights and intelligence,

Children who are already underserved,

Having to go back to Zoom classrooms,

**If** they’ve got Wi-Fi or Internet,

 

Make it make sense!

 

The number one concern that American voters have in this midterm election isn’t:

Gas prices,

Groceries,

Or student loans,

The threat to our democracy is!

Orange Satan kicked off Twitter,

On an electronic, Orwellian pacifier, “Truth Social,”

Ran by Devin Nunes,

Who had a Twitter spat on the government dole with a COW,

That owes its Internet host 1.6 million dollars,

As if you didn’t see the man doesn’t pay his bills?

Investors are pulling out,

Because a platform of QANON trolls isn’t making any profits,

Guaranteeing this will be his next failed business,

 

He’s posting Q-drops, racist Telegram, and 4CHAN conspiracy theories,

The Proud Boys, the KKK, and Neo Nazis,

We’re in a constitutional crisis,

When one side is Democratic by its NAME,

And the other

Has decided any election that they lose is illegitimate,

And willing to resort to murderous violence to, in their twisted minds, “resolve it,”

 

Equality to oppressors feels like oppression,

Racism is pointing out their racism,

Black History equals CRT,

Nix to Asian-Pacific, LGBT, Hispanic-Latino, Women’s History,

They want to say homophobic, racist, and sexist epithets without pushback or regret,

These psychopaths would be miserable in the gates of Heaven,

 

Make it make sense!

 

Maybe your orange fascist dude lost the 2020 election because after 30,000+ recorded lies, COVFEFE tweets, and COVID lockdowns, we were utterly exhausted!

Why was the 2020 election stolen, but the same party could do NOTHING for Virginia’s Terry McAuliffe?

 

Explain it to me like I’m a three-year-old,

Including rainbows and unicorns,

Land it somewhere between Neverland, Shangri-La, Atlantis, Big Foot’s secret lair, and Kansas,

Make it make sense because you KNOW it doesn’t!