Seeds...

Amy (“Mother Dear”) and Horace Dickerson Sr. (“Paw-Paw”)

© June 6, 2024, the Griot Poet

History kissed me on the forehead,

And told me to call him “Paw-Paw,”

After I reflexively called him Reverend.

“You married my granddaughter. You’re my kid now!”

His wife, Amy, said, “Hello, darling. I’m your grandmother, Mother Dear.”

 

Both moved me because I had no experience with having living grandparents.

Both of mine were deceased before my birth.

 

The history of this reunion started with a story,

Repeated with many African American families,

The patriarch almost lost his life for the audacity of voting.

Assaulted by Klansmen,

Three years before the lynching of Emmitt Till in Mississippi.

The inspiration for the March on Washington, eight years later.

 

The cowardly Klansmen’s ancestors dressed in sheets,

Pretending to be malevolent spirits,

Attempting to frighten newly freed citizens from voting,

Helped by Poll Taxes, Constitutional Quizzes, and guessing the number of soap bubbles.

(They now use repealing parts of the Voting Rights Act, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and voter purging.)

Paw-Paw was assaulted,

Eleven years before the assassination of a fellow Traveling Man, Medgar Evers.

 

Both men understood their assignment from Heaven:

“Very truly, I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” John 12:24

 

Left for dead by two ravenous wolves,

Saved by two other men, angels sent from Heaven,

 

The Worshipful Master understood his assignment.

Despite the protestations of his wife, Amy,

He went out of his threshold the year after his assault to vote again.

 

Because some things are [just] worth dying for.

Freedom is one of them.

Ask the Buffalo Soldiers.

Ask the Tuskegee Airmen.

Ask the young men who, 80 years ago, stormed the beaches of Normandy, France.

Ask Crispus Attucks!

 

Paw-Paw did not die, thankfully. It was not his time yet.

He entered the pantheon of unsung Civil Rights heroes.

Living long enough to be the history that kissed me on the forehead.

 

And I can today; I can tell his spirit,

I have taken the honorific “Paw-Paw” in his memory.

I’m sure Mother Dear is very happy.

 

“Honoring our heritage,

“Preserving our present,

“While building our future.”

 

We are their seeds.

Honor them accordingly.

Enigma...

 

Image Source: Twitter/Mark HarrisNYC

© December 30, 2022, the Griot Poet

 

Is George Santos’s real name even George Santos?

I’m not sure HE’S even sure!

 

We’ve been gaslit since 2015,

It was inevitable that we’d get a spate of copycat con men and women,

Who wanted to take the mantle from Jack Napier,

AKA the original name for The Joker,

And rule a world that has become Arkham Asylum.

 

He’s not Jewish: he’s “Jew-ish.”

Violating the creative copyright for the sitcom “Black-ish.”

So, let’s push the envelope (a bit):

 

He divorced a woman in 2019 before coming out: “gay-ish.”

Marjorie Taylor, “Secret Jewish Space Lasers,” supports him,

Meaning he probably gets a seat in Congress,

Because Kevin McCarthy is more of a totem than the Speaker’s gavel he hopes to grasp,

Like his clown car party,

George Santos is “Republican-ish.”

Leaving open the possibility of switching to being Independent,

A tactic now called “pulling a Kyrsten Sinema,”

 

Umair Haque opines that we’re in “the golden age of con artists,”

Desperate times call for desperate measures,

Which gives rise to snake oil salespeople,

Charlatans and hucksters who prey on the fearful,

You find them in businesspeople, social media influencers, politicians, religious figures,

Not as often in artists, comics, poets, and scientists,

One group preys on your Pollyannish frailty,

Promising Brexit is better, or to “Make America great again,”

Neither Nigel nor Boris hadn’t a clue about Brexit’s consequences,

Or Trump how to deal with the Coronavirus,

 

Artists, comics, poets, and scientists,

“Tells it like it is” so that you can deal with what’s coming,

 

Reality:

In November of 2022, we crossed the Rubicon of eight billion people on the planet,

The Earth is reaching its breaking point in sustainability,

Its spherical volume doesn’t matter, just the number of its inhabitants,

We have no superluminal warp drives in progress,

We need fewer boorish billionaires and more sharing of resources,

 

So, expect the rise of con artists,

Like Sam Bankman-Fried, Boris Johnson, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump,

Who promise you the Moon (or Mars), as part of their grift,

But don’t have a clue how to do it,

 

Through the slow-motion train wreck of Twitter,

We’re getting a clearer picture of how Martian colonies would fair if Elon managed to talk a few of us into doing it,

Bernie Madoff made the mistake of conning the obscenely rich,

These new snakes are different.

 

Howard Dean, self-described “from the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party,”

Took no big money from Wall Street like Third Way Democrats

Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin,

He raised millions in two to five-dollar increments over the Internet:

That became the framework of the grift,

 

What started on the Left as declared independence,

The Right stole and perverted,

George Santos went from being bankrupt,

To pay his campaign $700,000,

 

We are in the age of con artistry,

Phishing emails,

Vishing phone calls,

Multilevel Marketing,

Cryptocurrency,

Billion Dollar lotteries,

And “reality TV,”

 

Because the monied elites have broken society,

Racism, sexism, homophobia, and misogyny,

Are tactics by the 1%,

The actual thieves clearing the shelves of the Earth’s bounty,

And WHY you don’t have the rent,

Student loans are the only ones you can’t declare bankruptcy on,

Because Bank of America and Goldman Sacks require it!

 

They are suffering from Hoarding Disorder:

 

Selfish desires are burning like fires.

Among those who hoard the gold

As they continue to keep the people asleep

And the truth from being told

Racism and greed keep people in need

From getting what’s rightfully theirs

Cheating, stealing, and double-dealing

As they exploit the people’s fears

 

Now, Dow Jones owns the people’s homes

And all the surrounding land

Buying and selling their humble dwelling

In the name of the Master Plan.

The Last Poets, E Pluribus Unum

 

Hulu has FINALLY streamed Season 1 of Octavia Butler’s “Kindred,”

A metaphor for our time,

As Dana, a reluctant time traveler, attempts to save Rufus Weylin,

Destined to rape her great-grandmother,

Making Rufus also her kindred,

And important to her existence,

Anthropology and biology say that we’re all 8 billion distant cousins,

Who has allowed some of the group to elevate their self-importance,

Species survivability is going to mandate SHARING resources,

We’re too immature for warp drive: we’d be spreading empire and war over parsecs.

 

The hoarders call themselves:

Billionaires, chiefs, Popes, priests, kings, queens, “wolves of Wall Street,” plantation owners, Sheiks, and oligarchs,

And they hire,

Willing squires,

To carry out their orders in the halls of World governments,

Don’t expect them to give a wit about democratic republics,

 

Is George Santos’s real name even George Santos?

I’m not sure HE’S even sure!

He’s either a pathological liar or a [really] good kidder,

I am sure that whatever he HAD of a soul, he’s already sold to the highest bidder!

Slap Boxing...

Chris Rock and Will Smith [onstage] during the show at the 94th Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood on Sunday, March 27, 2022.

Myung Chun / Los Angeles Times via GI

Image Source: Billboard.com

© March 30, 2022, the Griot Poet

 

Slap boxing,

Open hand smacking,

Not knuckling like men

Marquis of Queensberry rules lacking,

To our shock and chagrin,

The “slap heard round the world” wasn’t an act,

 

First question:

Would you have stepped up

Had the comedian been Jimmy Kimmel?

Comedians roast celebrities: that’s their shtick.

You just put a target on any comedian who makes a joke.

You were laughing until you saw Jada rolling her eyes, then you thought about it.

No one is going to practice the art wearing a Kevlar flack jacket,

 

I’m not saying NOT to defend your wife,

We didn’t have that luxury during slavery,

Or the Middle Passage,

But you’re (at the moment) A-Listed status,

A multimillionaire former rapper,

Turned formidable actor,

 

You could have taken him to the side after the ceremony

With your lawyer, and demanded a public apology,

You could have challenged him

On the most important night of your existence,

To a celebrity boxing match after accepting your Oscar.

You had the eyes of the world on YOU,

And who didn’t want to see you FINALLY win?

You took “King Richard” from Venus and Serena Williams,

You took “Summer of Soul” from Quest Love,

Will Packer, after “Oscars So White,” was head manager,

You trained for “Ali,” and you’re a good athlete.

You could have even charged Pay-Per-View,

Made a mint,

And donate the money to the other’s favorite charity.

That could have satisfied your chivalry,

All Chris would have done is get big-eyed on stage and say, “Oh, shit!”

 

We’ll never know.

It would suck if the Academy took your Oscar back.

Harvey Weinstein still has his after “me too” in prison,

The Academy of Motion Pictures is shuffling,

They’re hoping the public is attention deficit,

Their discipline appears selective.

Yeah, there was a classier way to handle disrespect to your wife.

Last night wasn’t it.

 

Second question,

Would you have made a GI Jane joke reference

Had the couple in the audience been

Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds?

You’ve attained multimillionaire status,

You’re off a season of “Boardwalk Empire,”

You were Pookie in “New Jack City,”

Comedy takes intelligence,

Meanness takes psychopathy,

 

Alopecia is a disease that

Removes a woman’s “crowning glory,”

Jada Pickett-Smith,

And Representative Ayanna Pressley bravely decided to own it,

I’ll give Chris this pass: he didn’t know about it.

 

Each strand falling to the floor is a “little death” of their self-esteem,

The five stages of grief are still:

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression: acceptance,

By Elisabeth Kübler-Ross,

And not exactly in that order,

 

Both of you have mothers, grandmothers, aunties, sisters,

If you’re living, you have a woman to thank for being on the planet!

The beauty shop is the center of their universe,

Losing their hair is not a giggle,

Losing the audience is not a winner,

Jada’s not inviting you to the next Thanksgiving dinner,

Your Boston show sold out,

Ticket sales were through the roof,

The pimp slap is proving profitable,

You’re going to have the crowd pressure of escalating

The situation,

Or you’re going to have to be brave enough to squash it,

 

Enslavers pitted us

Against each other so that we wouldn’t have the strength,

Or the cunning to organize against them,

It was a human-sized cock fighting for debasement

And entertainment,

We didn’t start moving forward until we squashed the kinds of beef between us,

Building towns, colleges, Rosewood and Black Wall Street,

It was racist envy that destroyed the latter, not infighting!

We used to be running in the same direction on the Underground Railroad,

Following Harriet Tubman to freedom,

 

Don’t get “too big for your britches,”

Lawyers are salivating to strip both of you,

Of your wealth and riches,

So the only option you’ll have left,

Is moving back to your tenements in New York and Philly,

The “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” from Peacock to a peon,

“Boardwalk Empire” back to Pookie, the crackhead,

 

Slap box somebody on those streets,

We’re just recovering from the disappointment of Bill Cosby,

Now you’re both giving us 21st Century Step-n-Fetch,

If you can’t tell, I’ve lost all respect for the slap boxer and the slapped,

Admit it, Chris: this isn’t the first time towards Jada that you’ve talked smack,

Do you have a problem with the joke Will,

Or your wife’s open relationship with her lover, August Alsina? (He doesn’t look slapped)

Do you remember talking about squashing kinds of beef after Biggie and Tupac at the Grammys?

Some young people look up to both of you; whether [or not] you like it.

 

Bottom line:

Crass jokes aren’t for smart comedians,

Slap boxing isn’t for grown-ass men,

You both went from A-listers in my mind to minstrels.

Be careful with your public personas, or both of you will quickly be forgotten.

The Power of Their Poverty....

© August 13, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

“You will never defeat our poverty,”

 

A Bedouin tribal chieftain said,

To Alexander the Great,

The first western power

Attempting to control the area near

The Hindu-Kush mountains,

 

He led the [greatest] fighting force in existence,

Wept when he thought,

There were no more worlds to conquer,

He could not resist the challenge,

Put down by a Bedouin,

Alexander had battering rams and catapults;

The chieftain knew the mountainous terrain,

His warriors had courage and heart,

Spears, arrows, and slingshots,

 

Guess who won?

Rumi, the experimental poet, and Sufi master, actually,

Conquered Afghanistan with words of harmony,

Overcame ignorance without firing a shot,

 

Part of a succession,

Of western powers,

That saw defeat,

Their kryptonite being

Abject stupidity and arrogance,

The British Empire tried three times before us,

 

The USA,

Is addicted to “winning,”

Starting with the Revolutionary War,

Robert E. Lee surrendered,

To Ulysses S. Grant,

At Appomattox,

We got through the War of 1812,

The other time

Adversaries stormed the Capitol,

The War to End All Wars,

Resulting in the League of Nations,

Preceded the United Nations,

And World War II,

After Fat Man and Big Boy,

Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

A sailor and a damsel’s kiss,

In Times Square,

Immortalized on Life Magazine,

We were invincible!

 

Then came South Korea,

Technically, in armistice since the 1950s,

So, you can’t say we “lost” a war,

That technically,

[Hasn’t] really ended,

 

On the heels of this,

Indochina,

Known popularly as Vietnam,

Images of helicopters,

Evacuating,

Ho Chi Min City,

Replication,

Thirty-six years later,

Near the grave of a smiling Bedouin,

 

Osama bin Laden took ideological guidance from Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, and Sayyid Qutb.

 

He subscribed to the Athari (literalist) school of Islamic theology.

 

We have American y’all Qaeda zealot analogies,

 

Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski,

Post our obvious defeat in Vietnam,

Suggested to President Carter,

To let the Soviet Union have a taste,

They slogged it out nine years,

Until their economy collapsed,

 

No western power has ever defeated their poverty,

The Taliban existed,

Before we entered to get Osama Bin Laden,

After 9/11,

Whom THEY offered,

Along with terms of THEIR surrender,

Meaning: we didn’t have to go get him,

We lost talent, lives, and treasure,

How many flag-draped coffins could we have avoided?

Fighting an unnecessary war,

Trillions of dollars spent,

Potholes and bridges still needing repair,

Free college, and universal healthcare,

Instead, this dysfunctional dystopia of despair,

Guantanamo would not exist,

Except for sadism and arrogance,

 

The Pentagon budget,

Which never gets cut,

Is greater than,

The combined equivalent,

Of twelve other western nations,

 

Rome fell,

When the empire,

Overextended,

Itself,

It’s why we study about it in museums,

Shakespeare penned “Julius Caesar,”

It is arrogant to believe,

We don’t have a time limit,

 

Homo sapiens is supposed to mean “wise men,”

“American exceptionalism” is a façade for bullshit,

We behave more like Homo Stultus, “stupid men,”

 

We “will never defeat their poverty,”

It sounds like a law of physics,

As inexorable as,

The Second Law of Thermodynamics,

 

Order without maintenance,

Eventually goes into chaos,

Overextended empires eventually collapse,

 

Sadly, we don’t recall George Santayana’s wisdom,

Or heed it:

“Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”

Con Job...

 

Image Source (satire has a kernel of truth): Deadline

© March 11, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

“The Confederacy was a con job on whites, and still is,” by Frank Hyman, News, and Observer, http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/community/chapel-hill-news/chn-opinion/article135987178.html

 

A con job

By definition, it is:

“an act or instance of duping or swindling. an act or instance of lying or talking glibly to convince others or get one’s way.”

 

Okay.

 

The Confederacy

Is a con job on poor whites,

Who only sees America as a pie slice,

Of which, they only have a thin part,

The majority of the largesse defying gravity, “trickling up,”

To the bank accounts of American oligarchs,

Whose plantation ancestors gave this lie its start,

 

Any gains in education mean blacks were being “too smart” in their quest for upward mobility,

The made-up word for this: “uppity,”

In its native tongue of Euro-hillbilly,

Denying themselves any opportunities,

 

Healthcare can’t be universal,

That would mean awarding it to the Melanin “them,”

Denying it to brown, black, and Native Americans,

Not realizing to their chagrin,

They shoot their feet and reject the bandages or splints,

 

It doesn’t take a Nobel Prize Economist,

Forcing one-third of a workforce into uncompensated servitude,

Will drive DOWN the wages of the impoverished, white rest,

The south was more prosperous at that time than most nations,

Except ironically, England,

The coverup of civility recently pulled off by Harry and Meghan,

Southern oligarchs would call their kids Mullato children,

 

You fly “Don’t Tread on Me” Gadsden flags, and

Robert E. Lee’s North Virginia battle regiment,

Ensign as your flag of rebellion,

Taking it to your insurrection,

January 6,

You say, your ancestors fought under it,

 

Do you know who didn’t?

 

The one-percent plantation oligarchs,

Didn’t lift a finger, or leave their porch,

Sipping their cups of mint tea julep,

Draft dodging before we had one,

Yet, you’re the first on a mention of reparations for slave descendants to have a hissy fit,

 

Do you know who got them?

 

The aforementioned, one-percent plantation oligarchs,

Your ancestors got body bags, bullet wounds, missing limbs, and shell shock!

 

Your compensation prizes:

Gadsden and Rebel flags,

Faux “supremacy” due to lack of Melanin,

Your wages since the Civil War STILL not living, or keeping up with inflation,

 

Plantation oligarchs,

Financed

An analog version of gaslighting,

Pamphlets, novels, and magazines,

Extolling the virtues of slavery,

That its benefits would eventually

“Trickle-down” to the south’s poor white, duped constituency,

 

“Tick Tock!”

 

Why wouldn’t they teach this to their progeny?

They’ve managed to maintain this con job 400-years,

Arrogantly ignoring a plethora of “trails of tears,”

 

Upgrading the con,

To Internet modems and websites,

“Think tanks” like

The Cato Institute,

Reason Magazine,

Rush Limbaugh,

Talk Radio,

Breitbart,

Storm Front,

QAN,

And Fox Propaganda,

 

Racist slogans regurgitated

From Adolf Hitler,

And Ronald Reagan:

Make America/Germany Great Again,

This sloganeering is gaslighting with a Twitter foghorn,

 

President Lyndon Baines Johnson said:

 

“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best-colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

 

It’s way past time to flush this,

Down the toilet for oligarchs’ bullshit,

“Us,” versus “them” has had 400 years,

It’s time to put it to an end,

Instead of being puppets, start living,

 

Place this psychopathic bullshit,

On the rightful shelf of insignificance,

We can’t fight each other, and climate change,

 

Or, save our only planet,

Or, address income inequality,

Or, correct an injustice system,

Or, close all for-profit prisons,

Or, ensure free and fair elections,

 

If we’re still the Pinocchio puppets of Pinochet/Putin fascists,

 

We have to focus on putting this manipulative hate in the past,

 

We can finally eliminate designer stress,

Work together to perfect our union,

And live up to the spirit of E Pluribus Unum.

Millennial Auschwitz...

© 20 June 2020, the Griot Poet

Bolden’s post impeachment revelations
Not bold, but craven and cowardly,
Paint him as no patriot*,
But a grifter of simple sophistication
For a simpleton too wounded and weak
To seek wise counsel from experts,
Shedding them like foreskins
Surrounded by grifters and “yes men”
Knowing flattery is his Kryptonite
To get close enough to take copious notes
Riding his naïveté to 7-figure paydays.

He is court jester for a dying breed
Of inbred oligarchs and sociopaths,
Rigging the system for their own assets,
Reparations not paid to former slaves,
But plantation owners and European nations
Like Haiti to France
Morphed into new world orders
And sports team owners.

Telling Xi concentration camps for ethnic minorities is a good idea,
Replicating it here, showing a dark path to “the highest form of flattery,”

He eschews expertise and science
Evolved from hunter-gatherers
On African Savannahs
With the ease of a seasoned pickpocket
Or, a man with third-grade competencies,
His incompetence has us here in lockdown

This clown couldn’t count the fake registrants
By hacktivists gleefully
Gaslighting him from laptops
As he stares at empty seats
He will lie up numbers,
Or blame protesters
For failing “tremendously.”

Gloved, masked and goggled are we
Who follow the science,
Meanwhile, he
Covers his embarrassment
With faux culture wars
Over the efficacy of masks
Instead of flattening curves
So many travelers flatter a narcissist
To lackluster super-spreader events,
Fitting for a white supremacist,
Feeling the fitting of his orange jumpsuit
At the department of corrections: on Rikers.

*Paraphrase of a quote from Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA).