GriotPoet

Friday, January 25, 2008

"You know d@&^ well what you are capable of doing..." Michelle Obama TIME article

Some political thoughts in this election cycle -- TGP

Read the article: Link in the title above.

Is it me, or do I detect a "crab mentality" in our senior saints?

The Clinton's did a lot for us in the eight years he was in office. We had a balanced budget WITH a surplus. We all had money in our pockets. Unemployment was 3.1%, so if you couldn't get a job, something was wrong with you.

I admit: I didn't think this contest would get so vitriolic between DEMOCRATS. My strategy was to vote for Barack in the Texas primary. He'd probably come in second and get the nod for Vice President. I did the same for John Edwards back in 2004.

When Toni Morrison spoke of brother Bill as being our first "black president," I'm sure she meant it metaphorically and not necessarily literally (then, there is that nose and the swagger...).

Couple of things to remember:

1. George HW Bush brought up NAFTA and Ross Perot lampooned him (and it) as the "large sucking sound" on the American taxpayer.

2. Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into law and the "chickens have come home to roost" in the loss of manufacturing jobs and the middle class to cheaper jobs overseas, like China and Mexico. My job was affected: was yours?

3. Under Clinton/Gore draconian laws that incarcerated first-time drug offenders INCREASED the population of African Americans behind bars -- the so-called "war on drugs" is a "war on US!" Read the Thirteenth Amendment:

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

4. Hillary voted for the Iraq war and appropriations bills to fund this international debacle.

5. Barack is inexperienced (so's W after 8 years of practice: he was a C student after all), and did buy property and accept contributions from a Chicago "slum lord." One of Hillary's contributors is indicted for fraud.

6. It's impossible, I think, to be a "closet Muslim": http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp. That Internet myth has been debunked.

7. We haven't had this chance since Colin (Colon) Powell PUNKED out, backed out of the '96 race, settled for/let himself get screwed into a cabinet position and positioned his legacy to be the one who lied knowingly to the UN before the Iraq war: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1302834,00.html.

Don't get me wrong: we were living large in comparison to now. "When the country [financially] has a cold, black people have pneumonia."

However, I find it creepy that two families from the same university -- Yale -- control the White House for, if Hillary gets elected and re-elected, 24 - 28 total years!

Barack is around our age. He saw the things we've seen and to some extent we all experienced hip hop in its infancy -- The Fatback Band and the Sugar Hill Gang -- to it's current state in bearing no resemblance to the original intent. Since Powell, hell since 1776 this is our best shot.

Before Doug Williams, every expert from "Jimmy the Greek" and others explained WHY we couldn't quarterback an NFL team. Now, we've graduated to Michael Vick doing something STUPID with illegal dog fighting and it not smearing us as a people. (I don't feel smeared. He could have bought a racetrack for Greyhounds if he liked dogs so much, but I digress...)

No, he didn't grow up in "the 'hood." Michelle did. She describes herself as a working-class wife whose parents, though never going to college themselves got both of their children to Princeton.

I teach teens in our church ministry and they feel they somehow have to "explain" a black president to their friends. Excuse me: anybody "explaining" W to their conservative friends? Fiscally a disaster; socially inept, "erring on the side of life" (and committing many others), got a photo op for the Terry Schiavo bill, blocked stem cell research (that might HELP him someday), with a conservative 5/4 Supreme Court that hasn't stopped a single, lucrative abortion (makes more money than birthing) but shot their middle fingers at Enron employees and investors trying to recover their 401 (k). "Kenny Boy" got off light in comparison: dead men have no debts. His victims have the rest of their financially uncertain lives.

Yes, they'd have to explain a black president. Beyond NFL or NBA ambitions with odds of 1:50,000 of making it, the White House would suddenly be... a possibility. Obama, like Williams need not be the only one.

I feel our senior saints are reaching to what's comfortable and familiar. I don't argue with them. I listen and I've made up my mind on how I'm voting.

Those are my two cents. Hit me back if you have any thoughts. I'd like a dialogue, even if you don't agree.

I might, repeat MIGHT put it on my blog. I'll contact you before I do and post it "anonymous" per your request. TGP

Friday, January 18, 2008

Re: Microsoft seeks patent for office 'spy' software

Thursday, January 10, 2008

This Butterfly

Dueling poetry between myself, Jason Crowson and Thom the World Poet. © 10 January 2008, TGP

Dueling Banjos - an instrumental song made famous in the movie "Deliverance" (circa 1972), see http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Dueling_Banjos..... Dueling Poetry - a free verse conversation between two or more poets; the extension of social and/or political thoughts or ideas; a collaborative, creative work between two or more poets..... Definition by TGP

First: a comment from a poet in Australia (friend of Thom)

truly wonderous
needs to be spread - truth everywhere in cyberspace
splashed red on every highway billboard
shouted loud in every sacred boardroom
recited holy chant at bell-ring stock exchange
rapped in cafes on street
prayed from pulpits of churches
instructed solemnly before every high school student
emailed in font 24 flaming gold to every politician
learnt by heart so we may remember
not to forget

pamela mimi ..............rock on

* * * * *

Now, Thom:

this butterfly is 1000 years old
it weighs 40 tons

it will never fly again
like 400 F18A fighter bombers

never scrambled on September 11,2001
a la orders Dick Cheney

it is the new gold standard
(it will never fly again)

it is Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich
excluded from Presidential debates

it is Dien Bien Phu and Gulf of Tonkin
Straits of Hormutz resurrecting

it is saber-rattling,gunboat diplomacy
brinkmanship and Manifest Destiny

it is a New World Odor
spiraling out of control

like an Amero
or 100 dollar oil

like eagle as threatened species
it is weighed down with pasts

it will never fly
a gain.
BROKEN WING PROMISES Jan 10,2008

Next up, Jason:

it is the myth
that american tensions with iran
started in 1979

and not in the 1950s
when we overthrew a democratically elected government
for a british oil company

it is the delusion
that the weapons and training
we are providing to iraq

will not be used
to kill americans

it is the dementia
to not recall

that the man in pakistan
who spread nuclear technology
across the globe
is a free man

(sure maybe he was under house arrest so please forgive my exaggeration; he did get a slap on the wrist)

it is the insanity to believe
that perpetual war
will result in peace

and what to say
about the weapons

imagine if every disgruntled american teenager
had a AK-47

imagine if every pissed off twenty-something
had a surface to air missile

imagine that
and you can understand what it's like
to live in Sierra Leone

imagine that
and you can imagine Thom’s
one-thousand-year-old butterfly
weighing forty tons

it's wings beating down on us
like the memory of Ronald Reagan

January 10, 2007, reply to Thom

Lastly, moi:

Every butterfly starts as a chrysalis
Suspended animation over the river, Styx.
Skull-faced potentates, blood cousins running "against" each other in elections fixed
By Bilderberg conferences from Oosterbeck:

Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower
John F. Kennedy
LBJ
Richard M. Nixon
Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
Ronald Reagan
George H. W. Bush
Bill Clinton
George W. Bush
Hillary Clinton
John Kerry
John Edwards
Barack Obama
The Senate...
The Congress...
CEOs...
Ad Nauseam...

All graduates!

This "gentlemen's club" began
When the rights of man were waived due to over-pigmentation of melanin
And African/Arab/Asian/Persian origins
So, moving 700,000 Arabs off Palestine in '48 to form Israel was of no chagrin...
Pimping the Vietnam war on the Gulf on Tonkin lie - no big!
Overthrowing a DEMOCRATICALLY elected government in Iran the beginning of:

Mullah rulers in Iran,
The Taliban
Osama Bin Laden
Al-Quaeda
9-11

To keep us divided: they hold "elections"
When since 2000 the veil has been lifted to arcane selection
Processes so occult that they coded it in 1 and 0 hieroglyphs
Arguing the "lesser of evils" between Republicans and Democrats
When they are the left and right wings of Moloch

Owl-faced, wings wide to let the innocent
Fall through
As sacrifice: a "Cremation of Care..."

Over the flames consuming the chrysalis
Of our youth's future ...
Birthing instead of a New World Order
A dark, smoldering cinder
That passing starships will find... and no longer remember!

Monday, December 17, 2007

B Movie

From: http://www.gilscottheron.com/lybmovie.html

Humbly - The Griot Poet

Well, the first thing I want to say is…”Mandate my ass!”
Because it seems as though we’ve been convinced that 26% of the registered voters, not even 26% of the American people, but 26% of the registered voters form a mandate – or a landslide. 21% voted for Skippy and 3, 4% voted for somebody else who might have been running.

But, oh yeah, I remember. In this year that we have now declared the year from Shogun to Reagan, I remember what I said about Reagan…meant it. Acted like an actor…Hollyweird. Acted like a liberal. Acted like General Franco when he acted like governor of California, then he acted like a republican. Then he acted like somebody was going to vote for him for president. And now we act like 26% of the registered voters is actually a mandate. We’re all actors in this I suppose.

What has happened is that in the last 20 years, America has changed from a producer to a consumer. And all consumers know that when the producer names the tune…the consumer has got to dance. That’s the way it is. We used to be a producer – very inflexible at that, and now we are consumers and, finding it difficult to understand. Natural resources and minerals will change your world. The Arabs used to be in the 3rd World. They have bought the 2nd World and put a firm down payment on the 1st one. Controlling your resources will control your world. This country has been surprised by the way the world looks now. They don’t know if they want to be Matt Dillon or Bob Dylan. They don’t know if they want to be diplomats or continue the same policy - of nuclear nightmare diplomacy. John Foster Dulles ain’t nothing but the name of an airport now.

The idea concerns the fact that this country wants nostalgia. They want to go back as far as they can – even if it’s only as far as last week. Not to face now or tomorrow, but to face backwards. And yesterday was the day of our cinema heroes riding to the rescue at the last possible moment. The day of the man in the white hat or the man on the white horse - or the man who always came to save America at the last moment – someone always came to save America at the last moment – especially in “B” movies. And when America found itself having a hard time facing the future, they looked for people like John Wayne. But since John Wayne was no longer available, they settled for Ronald Reagan – and it has placed us in a situation that we can only look at – like a “B” movie.

Come with us back to those inglorious days when heroes weren’t zeros. Before fair was square. When the cavalry came straight away and all-American men were like Hemingway to the days of the wondrous “B” movie. The producer underwritten by all the millionaires necessary will be Casper “The Defensive” Weinberger – no more animated choice is available. The director will be Attila the Haig, running around frantically declaring himself in control and in charge. The ultimate realization of the inmates taking over at the asylum. The screenplay will be adapted from the book called “Voodoo Economics” by George “Papa Doc” Bush. Music by the “Village People” the very military "Macho Man."

“Company!!!”
“Macho, macho man!”
“ Two-three-four.”
“ He likes to be – well, you get the point.”
“Huuut! Your left! Your left! Your left…right, left, right, left, right…!”

A theme song for saber-rallying and selling wars door-to-door. Remember, we’re looking for the closest thing we can find to John Wayne. Clichés abound like kangaroos – courtesy of some spaced out Marlin Perkins, a Reagan contemporary. Clichés like, “itchy trigger finger” and “tall in the saddle” and “riding off or on into the sunset.” Clichés like, “Get off of my planet by sundown!” More so than clichés like, “he died with his boots on.” Marine tough the man is. Bogart tough the man is. Cagney tough the man is. Hollywood tough the man is. Cheap steak tough. And Bonzo’s substantial. The ultimate in synthetic selling: A Madison Avenue masterpiece – a miracle – a cotton-candy politician…Presto! Macho!

“Macho, macho man!”

Put your orders in America. And quick as Kodak your leaders duplicate with the accent being on the dupe - cause all of a sudden we have fallen prey to selective amnesia - remembering what we want to remember and forgetting what we choose to forget. All of a sudden, the man who called for a blood bath on our college campuses is supposed to be Dudley “God-damn” Do-Right?

“You go give them liberals hell Ronnie.” That was the mandate. To the new “Captain Bly” on the new ship of fools. It was doubtlessly based on his chameleon performance of the past - as a liberal democrat – as the head of the Studio Actor’s Guild. When other celluloid saviors were cringing in terror from McCarthy – Ron stood tall. It goes all the way back from Hollywood to hillbilly. From liberal to libelous, from “Bonzo” to Birch idol…born again. Civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights…it’s all wrong. Call in the cavalry to disrupt this perception of freedom gone wild. God damn it…first one wants freedom, then the whole damn world wants freedom.

Nostalgia, that’s what we want…the good ol’ days…when we gave’em hell. When the buck stopped somewhere and you could still buy something with it. To a time when movies were in black and white – and so was everything else. Even if we go back to the campaign trail, before six-gun Ron shot off his face and developed hoof-in-mouth. Before the free press went down before full-court press. And were reluctant to review the menu because they knew the only thing available was – Crow.

Lon Chaney, our man of a thousand faces - no match for Ron. Doug Henning does the make-up - special effects from Grecian Formula 16 and Crazy Glue. Transportation furnished by the David Rockefeller of Remote Control Company. Their slogan is, “Why wait for 1984? You can panic now...and avoid the rush.”

So much for the good news…

As Wall Street goes, so goes the nation. And here’s a look at the closing numbers – racism’s up, human rights are down, peace is shaky, war items are hot - the House claims all ties. Jobs are down, money is scarce – and common sense is at an all-time low with heavy trading. Movies were looking better than ever and now no one is looking because, we’re starring in a “B” movie. And we would rather have John Wayne…we would rather have John Wayne.

"You don’t need to be in no hurry.
You ain’t never really got to worry.
And you don’t need to check on how you feel.
Just keep repeating that none of this is real.
And if you’re sensing, that something’s wrong,
Well just remember, that it won’t be too long
Before the director cuts the scene…yea."

“This ain’t really your life,
Ain’t really your life,
Ain’t really ain’t nothing but a movie.”

[Refrain repeated about 25 times or more in an apocalyptic crescendo with a military cadence.]

“This ain’t really your life,
Ain’t really your life,
Ain’t really ain’t nothing but a movie.”

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Message To The Messengers

We all struggle with inner demons, and Gil Scott-Heron is no different.

Before we called it "spoken word poetry," Langston Hughes toured the south and Historically Black Colleges and Universities with a jazz band in tow. He influenced Gil Scott-Heron, the Last Poets and the Watts Prophets... and they influenced me.

Thus, this gives homage to a great voice: witty, funny, political, angry, intellectual and poignant. May we all wax this brilliant when we write.

The Griot Poet

* * * * * * * *

Gil Scott-Heron
From: http://sbacari.tripod.com/poetry/msgtomsgrs.htm

"...Be sure you know the real deal about past situations,
and ain't just repeatin' what you heard on the local t.v. stations.
Sometimes they tell lies and put 'em in a truthful disguise.
But the truth is, that's why we said it wouldn't be televised.
They don't know what to say to our young folk, but they know that you do.
And if they really knew the truth, why would they tell you???!!!
The first sign is "Peace." Tell all them gun-totin' young brothers
that the 'man' is glad to see us out there killin' one another!!!
We raised too much hell, when they was shootin' us down,
So they...started poisoning our mind and tried to jerk us all around.
And then they tell us they gotta come in and control our situation.
They want half of us on dope and the other half in incarceration.
If the ones they want dead ain't killed by what they've instigated,
They can...put some dope on the brother's body and claim it was...
"drug-related."
Tell 'em "drug-related" means there don't need to be no investigation,
Or at least that's the way they gone play it...on the local t.v. station.
All you 9mm brothers, give 'em somethin' to think about...
Tell 'em you heard that this is the "New Word,"
They gotta work that stuff out!!!
But somehow they feelin' the wrong way with a gun in they hands.
They feelin' real independent but they just pullin' contracts for 'the man.'
They will tell you it's hopeless out there on the avenue,
But if they really knew the truth, why would they tell you???
And if they look at you like you insane,
And they...start calling you "Scarecrow" and say you ain't got no brain
Or start...tellin' folks that you've suddenly gone lame,
Or that...white folks have finally co-opted your game,
Or worst yet, implyin' that you really don't know,
That's the same thang they said 'bout us...a long time ago.
Young rappers, one more suggestion, before I get outta your way.
I appreciate the respect you give to me and what you've got to say.
I'm sayin' "Protect your community and spread that respect around."
Tell brothers and sisters they gotta calm that bullshit down,
Cuz we terrorizin' our old folks, and we've brought fear into our homes,
And they ain't gotta hang out with the senior citizens,
Just tell 'em, "Dammit, leave the old folks alone!!!"
And we know who rippin' off the neighborhoods.
Tell 'em that B.S. has gotsta stop.
Tell 'em you sorry that they can't handle it out there, but they gotta
take the crime off the block!!!
And if they look at you like they think you insane,
Or start calling you "Scarecrow," thinkin' you ain't got no brain,
Or...start tellin' folks that you've suddenly gone lame,
Or that...white folks have suddenly co-opted your game,
Or worst yet, sayin' that you really don't know,
That's the same thang they said 'bout me a long time ago.
And if they tell folks that you've finally lost your nerve
That's the same thang they said 'bout us, when we said, "Johannesburg!!!"

But I think you young folks need to know that...things don't go both ways.
You can't talk respect on every other song or just every other day.
What I'm speakin' on now is the raps about the women folks:
On one song, she's your African Queen and on the next one, she a joke.
And you ain't said no words that I haven't heard, but that ain't no
complement.
It only insults 8 people out of 10 and questions your intelligence.
Four letter words or fours syllable words won't make you a poet,
It will only magnify how shallow you are and let ev'rybody know it.
And if they look at you like they think you're insane,
Or they call you "Scarecrow," thinkin' you ain't got no brain,
Or...start tellin' folks that you've suddenly gone lame,
Or that the white folks have finally co-opted your game,
Or you really don't know. They said that 'bout me a long time ago.
If they finally start tellin people that you've lost your nerve
That's what they said 'bout Johannesburg!!!
You ain't insane...you have got a brain...you haven't gone lame...you
have got your game!!!
Remember: KEEP THE NERVE, KEEP THE NERVE, KEEP THE NERVE, KEEP THE
NERVE...WE'RE TALKIN' 'BOUT P.E.A.C.E.!!!"

Essay Addressing Ignorance

This is an essay in response to the comments seen on an AOL posting of the same story in the link above. It just seems convenient (to me) that an investigation of Mr. Sharpton comes at a time of a focus on Jena, Louisiana and the lack of prosecution of cases by the Justice Department of this administration. It is also convenient that it happens, just as Mr. Sharpton observes, at the beginning of the '08 election cycle. Such an investigation could inevitably find something or nothing well after January of 2009, post the election cycle and past any efficacy or civil activism Mr. Sharpton could affect.

© 13 December 2007, The Griot Poet

* * * * * * *

With gem and witty comments like these:

“If stupid black people could reelectede that dem idiot...”

“What does this man do for a living....besides making money keeping racial prejudice alive and in the news????”

“IT'S ABOUT TIME HE GET HIS DUE!!!!!”

It speaks volumes to the superiority of the American educational system. Commenting on the comments:

(I assume he meant “reelect” and either “them” or “democrat.”)

(The answer to keeping racial prejudice out of the news is real American education on real American history.)

(No comment. Just absolutely none I can think of.)

I’m neither a supporter nor an enemy of Mr. Sharpton. But it is patronizing and condescending for some to think of them selves as intelligent enough outside of a group to pick its leaders. Did your parents have the right to pick Gandhi for the Indians?

Exactly what makes you the “experts” on the leaders Black Americans pick for themselves? Conservatives will pick Justice Clarence Thomas or Mr. Shelby Steele to represent their views, the other ninety percent will probably pick Mr. Sharpton or Mr. Jackson.

What defines the experiences of African Americans in this country is a matter of perspective, and I’m afraid yours is blinded by a culture that looks at others through rose-colored glasses, nurtured and pandered by myopic talk show hosts that don’t utilize the rules of investigative journalism because at their own admission, they are not journalists. They are mouthpieces that parrot talking points given to shock and boost ratings pandering to the worst motivations in an audience. You are deserving of the title “ditto heads,” because repetition of the nonsensical is the talent of tropical avian and ventriloquist mannequins, not critically thinking, and rational adults.

Instead of pandering to the xenophobic racist right, try to MAKE AMERICA BETTER and as good as its promise in the Constitution for ALL people(courtesy of Mr. Tavis Smiley, phi nu pi).

Then you will see Mr. Sharpton and Mr. Jackson retire because there will be no more incidents like Jasper, Texas (James Byrd dragging death); Amadou Diallo (41 shots); Sean Bell (23, killed after a bachelor’s party the night before his wedding); Khiel Coppin (NY police fired a hail of 20 bullets, hitting Mr. Coppin 8 times); Jena, Louisiana and nooses in trees to fight!

Friday, December 07, 2007

Instant Writing #39

A piece created between myself and my publisher...

© 7 December 2007, The Griot Poet

Dueling Banjos - an instrumental song made famous in the movie "Deliverance" (circa 1972), see http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Dueling_Banjos..... Dueling Poetry - a free verse conversation between two or more poets; the extension of social and/or political thoughts or ideas; a collaborative, creative work between two or more poets..... Definition by TGP

No keyboard before me on which to type
my words get punched into the night
by the vibration of sound and
I recite verse free from
the incarceration of time,
meter, measure, rhyme,
my message is louder
than Strunk's hold
on grammar ... so you hear it,
no matter what I say ... and
my speech gets spoken
even though it's unwritten,
I need neither writers
nor politicians to compose
thoughts for me ... my
vocabulary merges with meaning
until deserving sentences write
themselves ... and no editor
dare omit a word ...
least they be found guilty of
treason against
the law of poetry.

The court is now in session,
formality makes indiscretion
obsolete ... as we ...
kneel, bow, and pray
to congressional hymns
that have sown their way
into our traditions ...

"Oh say does that star spangled banner
yet waive ...?"

Chinese slaves built America's railroads
and many of them are buried today
beneath the tracks
over which our passenger trains run [past]
like clockwork ...

our prison is made by a system of bars
called minutes ... and these are forged of neither steel,
nor mortar, but confining still---each believer
behind bars of their own private cell
called: freewill ...

it's an open campus penitentiary
where slaves study the subject of servitude
and every student makes the grade ...
or gets forced to repeat the lesson
until they can recite the lie
verbatim
in unison
with the masses ...

we are new and improved slaves
and our chains are made of
zero's and one's ...
classism is the new bondage
and I am ...

prisoner number 310-02-6624
reporting for mass ...

holy father ... forgive my trespasses
and make all my gas receipts
tax deductible ... least my enterprise
show a profit and I be made liable
to pay for my freedom ...

see ...

a 13% tax caused the Boston Tea Party,
yet, we pay 38% today
and are more than willing to keep our mouths shut
just to keep from being
audited by the IRS ...
which is about as federal
as Federal Express,
by the way,
the IMF has funded
BOTH sides of every
WORLD WAR
and these are the same people
from which we borrow the funds
to buy our homes ...

and I don't want to know anything more ...
and neither do you ...

because it's hard to hear that Prescott Bush
funded Adolf Hitler ... and it's difficult to swallow
the concept of multi-national obfuscation ...

but let us look on the bright side ...

at least most people don't know
obfuscation means.

* * * * *

The words you type ring clear,
Yet, truth is not what we want to hear...
"Truthiness" is the metaphor
Coined by those who obfuscate/confuse by
Their own forked tongues "creating their own realities"
And openly despise the "reality-based community"
That don't cooperate on their tripped-out fantasies
Of PNAC/Pax Americana world domination conspiracy theories...
I use the forward slash to define/educate
those that don't know the meaning...

No pole left or right
Will vote to cut Campaign Finance
from the true masters of the dance
we call "elections"...
The elite in each country throughout time, given reflection
Loath democracy
And give us the hypocrisy
Of rigged elections, writer's strikes,
Prima Dona divas like
Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Ritchie and Brittani Spears
To entertain our eyes/misdirect our ears/snowball us
As the US
With the stroke of a pen
Becomes the North American Union
(from the former US, Canada and Mexico)
And the numbing, dumbing drone
Of the obvious oxymoron’s:
So-called "Reality TV" and "fair and balanced news..."

Not that I advocate this,
But famous suicides are rampant:
Cho-Seung Hui, Megan Meier, and Robert A. Hawkins
Of the Virginia Tech Massacre, Myspace teen suicide and Omaha mall shootings respectively

While some of us in the "reality-based community" write
Fighting with pens and electrons in cyberspace
Those without expression or voice choose to check out of this place
And in their quiet or violent passage
Point to the hypocrisy, lies and disasters
Building empires from former democracies make!

ILLEGAL POETRY

© 7 December 2007, The Griot Poet

Sparked from an e-mail from Thom the World Poet...

Commentary:

Her poetry is a little rough, but no more nihilistic than any metal-head-rocker-cum-now-Republican-family-values-proponent.

The slippery slope gets slicker: the definitions of illegal poetry will get lower and lower. I won't have to illustrate a violent act - just opposition to a government policy, or a You Tube video someone doesn't like may get us all "renditioned."

Haiku:

to my distress, I
confess: I am guilty of
thoughtcrime - freedom dreams!

coming soon: Dept of Homeland Security, Poetry Abatement Division (Gene Elders, original e-mail comment)

Thursday, December 06, 2007

"I'll be famous"

In "Question Mark" and "Ishmael’s Axe" I accounted for the sordid tale of Cho-Seung Hui and the Virginia Tech shooting. It is poetry most writers would not like to record.

Megan Meier thought that "Josh" loved her. The figment of a neighboring mother's imagination broke up with her and resulted in a sweet girl’s suicide.

Now we have Robert A. Hawkins in what is now the Omaha Mall shooting at the Westroads Mall: nine dead, including Robert and five injured at last count.

I'm old enough to remember when CNN debuted in 1980. Prior to that, HBO had limited showings and television shut down (the "snow" screen in the scene of the movie "Poltergeist") around 11 PM. If you were an insomniac, you REALLY had to work at it.

Not to say there weren't shootings: the UT tower incident in the '60s comes to mind. However, with 24-hour news and the Internet on which you read this commentary, becoming "famous" can happen in nanoseconds at near light speed with the voracious need for copy by the media.

Ironically, "Robert" means "bright and shining fame." I wonder if he knew this when he wrote "I'll be famous" in his suicide note?

In 2004, Nebraska ranked 41 out of 50 states in the rate of suicides recorded: 166 deaths reported in the state at a rate of 9.5. I'm getting this from www.suicidolgy.org.

From the CNN article linked above, his landlord paraphrased: "He basically said how sorry he was for everything," Maruca Kovac said of the note. "He didn't want to be a burden to people and that he was a piece of s--- all of his life and that now he'd be famous."

Mental health in this country is a phobia, a cousin in the attic no one wants to discuss. We've all got our issues, and they can be exacerbated by the economy, social situations and most importantly, lack of treatment.

It would seem silly if someone broke an arm or the femur in their legs and tried to "play it off" as if nothing hurts. Mind you, I've had my share of hairline fractures as a martial artist that I did the same thing with, but as I get older I'm a little more cautious and check out everything, EVERYTHING with my doctor.

When will we have this attitude about mental health?

Could crime rates be the result of desperate people finding themselves in desperate situations where nefarious criminal activity makes "sense" in warped minds?

Would their be a decrease in wars if we had clear-minded leaders that steered their countries towards peace and alternate energy sources so we're not beholding to despots and dictators to drive our SUVs, pay $3 in gas and turn on a light bulb?

If you were expecting poetry, I've already done it in "Question Mark" and "Ishmael’s Axe."

Sometimes I don't want to be brilliant in tragedy. I want tragedy to spur ACTION that will change or prevent such events becoming more frequent. I write because "I am involved [with] mankind," and I am concerned.

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Those lines are John Donne’s From "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions."

My prayers to all Ishmaels before their cry for help makes them "famous."

The Griot Poet

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Letter to Riley Ann Sawyers (Baby Grace)

© 29 November 2007, The Griot Poet

“Twinkle, twinkle little star…”

Song of Mozart from ages afar

You who were so innocent and true

Stolen from us by one whom

Your mother met

On the Internet

That with its freedoms makes us all act a bit like we’re two…

When we didn’t know a name for your beautiful face

We for a time called you “Baby Grace”

And every parent clutched their kids tighter

And determined to make their lives brighter

To count to ten

Before dispensing discipline

And be bread unleavened

When we receive our own packages from Heaven

Which is where we know now you are – “Twinkle, twinkle little star!”

Friday, October 12, 2007

Some fun on Amazon.com

Posting:

Travis Miller says:
While I appreciate your eloquent viewpoint and applaud you for overcoming adversity in your life, I have to ask, did you read this book? If not, I'm not sure why you chose the forum of a "book review" to express your opinions. Oh, and why is it that no one seems to mind the obvious playing of the "race card" by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as they seek to line their own pockets at the expense of the black community at large?

-------- ------- says:
Hello Mr.Travis Miller,

I don't buy their books either. I prefer to read widely from a variety of sources and form my own opinions.

My point was simply Dr. Hill is in his past. If he is truly not guilty of the harassment he was accused of (I recall his confirmation, and was initially in his corner), then his memoir should stand on its own merits without resorting to personal attacks. At most, she should be a footnote if any mention at all. Such a tactic is sophomoric, and in my opinion, beneath the dignity of the office of a Supreme Court Justice.

Black Americans don't need "leadership" or the media-ordained leaders like Reverends Jackson and Sharpton on the left or Justice Thomas on the right.

Since the assassination of Dr. King, some in the media have tried to replace him and others have exploited his (quite human) life to their own ends.

Dr. King, with all his accomplishments and personal flaws was not the movement: young people like the Greensboro Four from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University that galvanized the tactic of sit-ins across the nation; young people that are immortalized in documented images of fire hoses, dogs, police beatings, marches and mass arrests; young people like my older sister, my wife's aunt and their friends, they were the movement. Dr. King was the focal point and came under critic from the far left and extreme right almost simultaneously, especially after his stance against the Vietnam War. Malcolm X spoke of him derisively until near the end of his life and mission.

We, like all Americans need to accept responsibility for our futures. A Constitutional Democracy is a participatory exercise. Demagoguery only gets in the way.

I thank you for your candor and your gracious reply as far as my background.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

PARADIGM SHIFT

© 16 August 2007, Thom the World Poet; © 5 September 2007, The Griot Poet

Dueling Banjos - an instrumental song made famous in the movie "Deliverance" (circa 1972), see http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Dueling_Banjos..... Dueling Poetry - a free verse conversation between two or more poets; the extension of social and/or political thoughts or ideas; a collaborative, creative work between two or more poets…. Definition by TGP

As soon as you change-everything else does
The idea of democracy as rough as ostracon
Pentagon military values override civilian infrastructure budget
Where you put your energies is where you get results
Voting machines programmed result elections
Candidates who represent only their monied interests
Daddy President Paterfamilias of fractious families
Corporate Plunderers buying expensive lawyers
Economic playground riches only for the rich
Millionaires buy from billionaires
Invisible poor in privitized prisons
Embourgoisement executive highrise condominia
Military SUV truck Humvees mercenaries
25 million illegals voting via Western Union
Border Patrol bribed for cocaine gangs
Invasive strikes casualty listings
Role reversal Manifest Destiny Gunboat Diplomacy
Wars to endless Wars.Budget deficit
who speaks of the obvious?Withdraw now!
One World Government for Iraq,Palestine,Afghanistan
Puppets dance for dollars .Yen for yuan.Chinese water torture.
Tibet.Mongolia.Taiwan.Olympic Gamers
Tiemannen Celebrity Squares.Protesters freed
to change the dominant hegemony-first you have to....
WORKATWHATYOUWANT! August 16,2007

* * * * * * *

We become the nightmare of
Eric Blair
We become death - "the shatterer of worlds"
We become the prophesy of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Bhagavad-Gita
Our military, according to Harper's Magazine, a politicized mouthpiece
Of a predominant, militant party
Of born-again militarist
Who would crucify Christ afresh given the chance
For His stance against the first Caesarian Empire...

Nukes flown over our heads for three hours by B52 air transports -- for what...?
Don't worry; it's not to harm us -- then, who?

We've allowed a mafia family to subordinate the Constitution
The resolution - Impeachment, mentioned 6 times not pursued
The resolve of elected officials: don't screw up before retirement!
Conspiring for $130,000.00 guaranteed pensions
Even Lewis Craig can pursue.

When you allow a crime family into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Strange days, myriad ways of wonder-working Sith Lord control
over every means of lazy information: corporate-controlled news
For Laissez-faire politicos and misinformation "Swift Boat" crews...

It's no wonder they wish to bar access to the Internet
Information is power: and we have it in our keyboards
But don't just sit on your political ASSets
Go to poetry venues,
Forward THIS
And DO (VOTE).

Saturday, August 18, 2007

The Problem with POWER

Dueling Banjos - an instrumental song made famous in the movie "Deliverance" (circa 1972), see http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Dueling_Banjos..... Dueling Poetry - a free verse conversation between two or more poets; the extension of social and/or political thoughts or ideas; a collaborative, creative work between two or more poets…. Definition by TGP

© August 16, 2007, Thom the World Poet

The problem with power
Is that no one in their right mind
Wants nor needs power over others.
O we do not want them to violate our rights
Steal our property or diminish our lives
And we especially do not want bullies to attack
That is why we hire our own bullies-police/military
In a pre-emptive war upon violence
The problem is that our allies attack us
The conundrum is that they confuse themselves with law
They think THEY hold the power!
Have you ever been interrogated by an arrogant functionary?
Control over others' lives is not self-control
It is an invasion/an occupation
Like when the CIA/NSA spy satellites are used
Against our own citizens
And civil liberties are shredded in the name of "Terrorism"
And fear rules, and all rules are broken
By this simple mistake-
Confusing functionaries and agents
As the source of power… You are
And always will be in charge of your life
You are individually responsible for your actions
Every tenet of law and democracy is predicated upon this premise
Which has been violated almost to perdition
Power abuse has led to corporate and political and economic corruption
Just like Rome. Just like Athens. Our ancestors
Had to defend the same values we espouse
Via wars of liberation… Tyrants assume no one will oppose them
Which leads us back to the same question-
If we do not claim our own powers
Someone else will always steal them...
FIX IT! August 16,2007

© 18 August 2007, The Griot Poet

ENRON...
WORLDCOMM...
TYCO...
Afghanistan -- the Taliban OFFERED Osama!
Iraq -- with no WMD found under Bush's desk...
Guantanamo...
The so-called equal branch "formally-known-as" Congress...
The US (In) Justice Department...

And now, in our own back yard
Michael Dell
Faces an S-E-C hell
Of how 17 business quarters of sales... did not exist!

Erikah Badue would say: Oh, sh--! “You better call Tyrone…”

Power players are like actors and prostitutes
Imbued with political nymphomania
Empowered by an apathetic electorate
More sympathetic and involved
If their own American Idol dolls

Paris, Nicole, Brittany and Lindsay
Do a little deserved jail time for acting a FOOL in public!

Feeding on the paparazzi of flash bulbs and notice...

No one in their right mind wants power over others
Because managing one's own life is responsibility enough
Most of those in office would FLUNK the DSM-IV test for mental health,
Like most multinational corporations that have way too much influence on our elections... do.

That doesn’t note the video quote on CNN of two lionesses hunting calves versus an entire herd of water buffalo:

There IS strength in numbers!
(Any wonder why we fail?)

We are the numbers
That can make a difference:

WRITE your Senator, Congressman or Woman: even if you didn't VOTE for them!
Show up at public events, poetry readings
Because if you don't
K-Street lobbyists and green money is the only thing your representatives see.

Don't follow the sick twisted examples of Eddie Murphy and Brian McKnight: VOTE!

Rosa Parks and Dr. King gave their lives
So these FOOLS could make a million dollars
Pimping you on CDs, Broadway and the national box offices
And, any man that jumps from being married to a supermodel to divorcing same, a controversy with a transvestite
To an out-of-wedlock baby by "Scary Spice"
Meanwhile getting engaged to the ex-wife of Baby Face...
Is NOT playing with a full deck!

YOU are that herd of water buffalo to stop a train wreck
Led by the lionesses Bushwhack and Dick that their own parties just don't get
Yet
Cowardice and the spice of political office
That pays FULL retirement pensions
To convicted felons

Is the only thing
Keeping them from doing ANYTHING
To your benefit…

Stop looking
For Avatars
From Krypton
With big red S's on their chests...
YOU are that herd of water buffalo to stop a train wreck
Of democracy fleeing the shores of its modern birth
To become the formerly-known-as United States

Descended into the oxy moronic
Charging headlong, powered by apathy
At hypersonic speeds...

To a FASCIST state!

A tepid response...

Dear ------- :

Thank you for taking the time to write me with your support for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. As your elected representative to the U.S. Congress, I appreciate you for giving me the opportunity to comment on this issue.

As you may know, the impeachment process originates in the House of Representatives. This process is used to ensure the legal and ethical behavior of members of the Executive and Judicial branches of the federal government. At this time, I do not believe impeachment proceedings of President Bush and Vice President Cheney are warranted. I support our President and the administration in their actions to defend and support our nation. Should this matter come before the House of Representatives, I will pay attention to the proceedings and move forward with the best interest of our nation in mind.

Again, I thank you for contacting me on these important issues. Please contact me again if I can be of further assistance.

Sincerely,

John Carter
Member of Congress

For more information on what I am doing in Congress, please visit my website at http://www.house.gov/carter. If you would like a weekly update, you may also sign up to receive my newsletter while youre there.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

28301-016

© 10 July 2007, The Griot Poet

“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number [is] Six hundred threescore [and] six.” Rev 13: 18

* “Scooter Libby, AKA Federal Inmate No. 28301-016, walks free” …

And so does scoot our civil liberties out the door, out the window and the belief in a society where “no man (or woman) is above the law”…

The country guffawed when a black man named OJ Simpson – no matter which side of the debate you fall – found his color no liability since his ability to pay 10 million to my Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity brother, Johnny Cochran to set him free…

And Paris Hilton had no drinking problem – despite driving on a suspended license due to DUI

Had no drug problem – despite her face and verbal admittance to smoking pot plastered on thesmokinggun.com…

She HAS no street creds, whining and crying through 23 thousand dollar days of expensive, sequestered silence, despite all those self-defense and karate lessons daddy had to pay for, cringed from testing her skill accreditation when the thought of being amongst the “common” women’s prison population…

In ONE breath blaming it all on claustrophobia and ADD! Oh, please!

OJ, Paris, Scooter Libby…

G-R-E-E-N is the only color the blind goddess of justice sees…

So we have the Jena six, who after nooses hung in the “white tree,” retaliatory beat downs because the clowns in the school administration did NOTHING to diffuse the situation – racist taunts and threats by the DA to “sign away their lives with the stroke of a pen” face “attempted murder charges, and assault by…. ‘Tennis shoe’” and multiple, consecutive, immoral sentences…

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070307B.shtml

Mychal Bell faces a hell of 22 years in prison,

Five of his friends await similar charges on second-degree attempted murder and conspiracy charges.

On a case that most likely, since blacks are less than 20 percent of the population of Jena, Louisiana will get argued before… The Supreme Court!

Like the saviors these kids need are Alito, Roberts, Kennedy, Scalia and Uncle Clarence Thomas!

And I retort:

* “Scooter Libby, AKA Federal Inmate No. 28301-016, walks free” …

And so does scoot our civil liberties out the door, out the window and the belief in a society where “no man (or woman) is above the law”…

I’ll believe Paris’ change from party girl to charity when I see Scooter spill the beans on the neocon primates Bush and Cheney with an intact 5th Amendment in his back pocket, while they run out the appeals’ clock to January 20, 2009!

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Essay - Impeachment: NOW!

I must insist that impeachment CANNOT be off the table!

What happened 7/2/2007 with Mr. Libby's commuted sentence is example of a White House and Executive Branch that thinks itself above the US constitution and the law. We have a Vice President that is conveniently a part of his OWN branch of government -- the US of Cheney -- when giving over documents to the National Archives is "inconvenient" to him.

In TheHill.com 7/2/2007, "Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) told Vice President Dick Cheney to 'resign or face impeachment' Thursday night as three more House Democrats lent their support to a plan to impeach the vice president."

Ms. Valerie Plame Wilson was responsible for interdicting Weapons of Mass Destruction [I believe we have a 'Global War on Terror,' so it might be important]. Her cover and the networks set up by Brewster Jennings cannot be recovered and information we could now KNOW about Iran cannot be gathered. If that is not a "high crime and misdemeanor" I don't know what is.

Greater than 3,500 American lives, men and women, mothers, fathers, daughters and sons have been wasted for a lie based on Weapons of Mass Destruction that NEVER existed, that only exist now in the President's, Vice President's and Ann Coulter's deluded minds!

This pardon makes me wonder if we will remain a democratic republic, or slide the propagandized, slick road to a fascist dictatorship.

In Free Speech (for NOW),

The Griot Poet, © 3 July 2007

Monday, June 25, 2007

WHO ARE THE INSURGENTS?

Dueling Banjos - an instrumental song made famous in the movie "Deliverance" (circa 1972), see http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Dueling_Banjos..... Dueling Poetry - a free verse conversation between two or more poets; the extension of social and/or political thoughts or ideas; a collaborative, creative work between two or more poets…. Definition by TGP

© 25 June 2007, The Griot Poet

From an e-mail exchange between myself and Thom the World Poet:

THE USE AND ABUSE
of words,civilians,prisoners,concepts-
"friendly fire",plausible deniability","free fire zone"
"collateral damage"-we forget Somalia,Vietnam,Lebanon
were withdrawals and defeats
where values military met resistance effective
when the popular will -with a "surge" of WONT!
rose up against occupiers and invaders
much as we rose up against unfair taxes
to seek to create a better state
their wish for Islam need be honored...
Fundamentalist Taliban (now called TERRORISTS)
were once our allies in Afghanistan against secular Russians
Military dictators in Pakistan our allies against Islam
Church and State once so separate-now called the Church of England
Prayer Meetings in the White House
Bornagains vetted via interviews-to distill ideological purity
We are what our forefathers fought against!
Torture,bombings,assassinations-these are terrorist tools
We are the NUMBER ONE arms dealer in the world
All we need to do is realize-that finger pointing at others
is a mirror of our true intentions...
QUESTION EVERYTHING! June 25,2007

To Vice President "Dick" Cheney.

Dear Troglodyte:

"On June 21, 2007, it was reported that Vice President Dick Cheney has asserted that the Office of the Vice President is not an exclusive part of the executive branch of the US government (he is also the President of the U.S. Senate), and thus is not bound by presidential orders governing the protection of classified information. The White House has confirmed that Executive Orders governing the protection of classified information exclude both the President and Vice President."

According to the Twelfth Amendment, the Electoral College you gerry-rigged in 2000 selected you as President (the other dumb-looking one too).

Albeit with suspicious slight-of-political-hand: caging lists for innocent African Americans that
Obviously weren't going to cast their votes for YOU...

You canned your Texas residency to run along side of Dubya
As his "Dark Lord of Vice" candidate,

Changing to your original state of Wyoming -- who both conveniently enjoy the LOWEST gas prices at the pump in the country!

Now you have Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) conveniently calling for the latest "new-new" direction,
Along with other Sith (=Shit?) Lords from the Dark Side of the political force,
A deflection from their president's and "Dark Lord of Vice's" ineptitude at geopolitics!

The true terrorists reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
A rogue state we've become after an electoral coup,
Our standard of living down, jobs outsourced and deficits up
As Paris Hilton and her billionaire neighbors get richer from the reverse of David Stockton's REAL formula that should be called:

Trickle up!

Putting up puppet third-party candidates to drain votes from the lesser of two evils

(Perot = Nader = Bloomberg),

When the job should go to the most qualified to lead us through
The gray areas of diverse cultures; the danger of sadistic vultures
That despite party, gender or race of our leaders
Want us to bow down to their deities and Sharia laws
That call for our obedience... or non-existence.

But bombing them back to the stone age is NOT the answer, O'Reilly!
Blowback is the only guarantee of testosterone-driven diplomacy.
Gore Vidal would say "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace"
In an updated Orwellian prophecy
Yet, this is not VHS, blue disk or DVD
Which we can pause and go to the loo to relieve our bladders...

DEMOCRACY MATTERS!!!
This is the reality
That only impeachment can remedy

Starting with the "Dark-Vice-Lord-Troglodyte"

I let this piece end with a lascivious, humorous clue:

Dick Cheney,
Before he [continues] to Dick YOU!

"And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs [come] out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet (A.K.A. Dick Cheney)" Rev 16:13

Monday, April 30, 2007

A Morning After Shadows

© 30 April 2007, The Griot Poet

We have shadow warriors for shadow governments:
124-billion dollar appropriation bills sent to the hill that will surely get vetoed by our Skull and Bones pirate president…
Doesn’t count beyond the 145,000 active-duty forces the 126,000-contract mercenaries beyond our laws and given impunity…

Bechtel…
Blackwater…
Halliburton…
Kellogg, Brown and Root…

Beyond a famous SEAL, Scott Helvenston, that made his previous public appeal in exercise videos,
Finding his fiery end on a bridge over the Tigris and Euphrates,
Unlike Phoenix, at least for now, he will not rise again from the ashes…
How many have we NOT accounted for in the deplorable body count reported weekly?

Only
770 contractors killed and 7700 injured sounds like books cooked!

We voted Democrats into power on a unified anti-war stance and losses on both sides by their constituents and Republican opponents (because in graveyards, no one cares how you voted)…

Each side ciphers a bloody calculus of power looking forward to the future of 2008, and if either were to win, the midterms in 2010…

Sacrificed on the altar of democracy is the will of the governed expressed in our displeasure vetoed by a modern-day fascism Mussolini aptly described as “corporatism.”

I’m not here to advise we support third-party candidates, because they are expertly designed by the same corporate kings to drain votes: Reform/Libertarian drains Republicans, and Green Democrats

Which is just enough to keep the status-quo playing games of quid pro quo and selective amnesia regarding what the people sent them to the hill for!

I will advocate
What we the people of late has started listing ourselves as at a rate of 38 percent of the electorate:

Independent.

And I won’t be satisfied until that number is 90 percent with each majority party suddenly staggering at the notion – as I borrow from Maya Angelo – “on the pulse of some future morning” that they are in the minority!

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Question Mark

© 22 April 2007, The Griot Poet

Cho-Seung Hui at 23 had enough of reserved occidental polity.

“You can’t hear me” rang loud and clear from his murderous spree on the anniversary of Holocaust survivors, preceding Adolph Hitler’s birth by four days.

A door blocked by Professor Liviu Librescu heroically to ensure his students could flee through a second floor window avoiding another needless tragedy.

At 23, he walked under the same spell as the demoniac, dwelling among the dead, breaking fetters, possessed by Legion, the same cast ages ago at another time into a herd of swine.

If
“The joy of the LORD is our strength,”
Then
This man was void.

Since a boy,
Weakened by
Masculine expectations
Of pride, honor and strength in violent machinations:

Rambo,
Commando,
The Specialist,
The Terminator…

Manhood in America

Celebrates

“Strong and silent,”
“Big boys don’t cry,”

Congratulates

Players,
(Name-the-sport) winners

Denigrates

The emotionally expressive male

The (name-the-art) creative

As gay…

On the day he decided was his last

The die he cast in arcane numerology

Matching numerically in bodies (excluding his own)

The age of Christ at His crucifixion: 33.

He was an instant hit. The sordid deed documented in multimedia flit from web sites to print to pod cast.

This will repeat and last

Until we

Treat the mentally ill

(Not as a “question mark”), but

With the same regard

As physical maladies!

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Ishmael’s Axe

© 19 April 2007, The Griot Poet

Notes:

James Fenimore Cooper's The Prairie: Character Ishmael Bush had an axe. "And the axe, which created and transformed through destruction, clears the figurative way for the deflowering of the New World."

The axe is apparently both literal and symbolic, and references are made about the character's having moved from the east to the west, creating change through the destruction (using the axe), and the like. Just a possibility: especially for someone who was an English major? (Google search)

Amazon.com review: Set in the immense landscape of the Great Plains, The Prairie (1827) addresses many questions raised by the penetration of the American west: the displacement of the Indians, the destruction of nature, and the creation of a just society both ordered and free. Natty Bumppo, a man now in the autumn of his days, is the spokesman for the conservation of the natural environment. But as his physical prowess wanes he is ultimately unable to thwart the despoilers. In this, the last in the series of five Leatherstocking Tales, Cooper resolves the issues of The Pioneers and The Last of the Mohicans, but at the same time eloquently suggests that humility, self-control, reverence for God, and respect for nature are tragically lost on the prairie.

Poem:

In his twisted mind… he was Ishmael. As an English major that savored the macabre, he crafted a tale in blood.

An odd, occidental male, quiet and quite weird that lived more in fantasy than reality with an imaginary girlfriend named Jelly.

The fire in his belly was from a hellish psychosis that blamed everybody else for his maladies.

The carnage of 32 bodies plus his own and 22 wounded does not atone for the lack of progress in this civilized society and country on treating mental illness and pathological difficulties.

The axe in James Cooper’s The Prairie described as both “literal and symbolic.” And Cho-Seung-Hui chose a similar path, east to west using his personal axe to grind for offenses only existing in his mind and like Ishmael Bush change his landscape by carving a path of destruction.

I had to stop reading his play Richard McBeef, because his logic had no sense, dénouement or relief.

Two stalking charges and diagnosis as a “danger to himself and others” he left “bread crumbs,” clues to his personal seclusion that now gun advocates would love to use to ensure every college age student and professor is packing heat!

In this 24-hour news cycle, how many other Ishmael’s walk our streets

The seed of destruction planted firmly in the firma of their minds, how many have their own axes to grind?

Our current gun laws allowed him to purchase not one but two guns and pass a criminal background check

That currently does not vet the emotionally unstable, the mentally disturbed.

April is a month for showers that birth May’s flowers,

Orbiting the anniversary of Hitler’s birth we now have:

Columbine,
Waco,
Ruby Ridge
Oklahoma City

Spring gets kind of gritty when lives are snuffed out without impunity or regard to the great human beings these young people were becoming, or the professors that gave their lives protecting them… already were.

We answer pathologies with the ideology that violence begets peace… note its effectiveness in the so-called Middle East.

The carnage of 32 bodies plus his own and 22 wounded does not atone for the lack of progress in this civilized society and country on treating mental illness and pathological difficulties… to ignore such a responsibility goes beyond the pale.

Was 9/11 our destiny, were we fated for the belly of the beast when another pathological beast named Osama traces his own patronage to Ishmael?

Imus Mourning

© 11 April 2007, The Griot Poet

What duck-billed platypus had the temerity and demented sense to pass down the twisted, christened name of Don Imus?

Because I must admit he is literally the “pot calling the kettle black” as his own mane looks most mornings whacked, like beavers in heat used his mop for bedding, flip-flopped and tossed, tingled with static like he’d stuck his tongue in a light socket!

Yet,
I cringe at the chagrin of our two-faced outrage: 50 cent has spit worse epithets than “nappy-headed ho” or “jiggaboo,” and we get mad at Oprah because she challenges LUDACRIS to up his game and won’t allow that kind of trash on her stage or show!

We need to turn a page on this long-needed discussion on gender and race in the public square.

Thank the noble women from Rutgers University that were achieving athletically and academically for pulling the sheets off this bed of public hypocrisy (and forgiving their repentant tormenter).

Let’s not forget:

Rush Limbaugh calling Barack Obama a “Halfrican”;
Newt Gingrich: “Spanish is the language of the ghetto” (news to me);
Bill Bennett on CNN: “Aborting black babies would lower the crime rate”;
Michael Richards N-word rant

And Howard Stern, Savage, O’reilly, Scarborough and other “schlock jocks of slant TV and radio”

Dancing between their own “views” and real “news” like lying Pinocchio

Puppeteered by their corporate master Jepetto

The same CEO that controls the rap music industry with the driving beats

Hypnotizing urban and suburban kids with a love for the streets

Glamorizing a “diamond in the back, a sunroof top, digging the scene with a gangster lean”

Until living clean is perverted and obscene, and smoking blunts, performing illicit sex stunts and shooting guns at images of your own reflection a path to glory and a quest for Nirvana!

I must thank Don Imus before ending this story, his professional mishap (chronicled over the years) revealing this work so well:

If WE want to stop the hate-filled words, WE must stop using them ourselves!

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Stripper

© 5 March 2007, The Griot Poet

Dedicated to Pamela East Alexander (circa 1961 – 1977), Vicky Lynn Marshall (1967 – 2007) and kindred spirits that struggle through domestic violence, rape and the depravity to women known as pornography.

Under the stupor of liquor and throbbing neon disco lights I fight for my right next to the stage, throne of your stripper pole.

I am in a bestial rage to see flesh.

I don’t care to hear that you might be a wounded spirit, or that someone might once have held you dear.

For I fear that will make me lose my self-infatuation with fantasy gratification, and make me place the dollar behind my ear soberly back in my pocket.

Like, I don’t care:
That your own mother ripped an electric cord out of the wall to beat you bloody and senseless because you told her that her latest boyfriend stole your innocence (‘cause eleven-year-old girls have to be lying!).

I don’t care:
That you spent your nights crying yourself to sleep for peace and recompense and that the same lowlife creep offered you MONEY for the precious gift of your husband’s honey he’d already taken…

I don’t care:
That the one time in your history you met a nice boy who loved YOU, the “beast that walked like a man” * splayed buckshot into his torso and through his love struck heart, or that a stray bullet hit your baby sister (a favor: she had just turned eleven!).

I don’t care:
That the two loves in your life are safely in Heaven,

That you left home five years past eleven,

That you went to L.A. for a “model agency” and met a Hugh-Hefner-want-to-be clone that spread you prone on the casting couch of sorrow…

That your tomorrows are measured by hits:

Hits from a blunt,
Hits from hard liquor,
Hits from a needle,
Hits from ecstasy to dull the hits from fists that planted his seed in you that you now have to raise his child as a single mother: he tried to put a murder contract on you to cover his tracks (‘cause married cops aren’t supposed to act like that!).

Your two great loves safely in Heaven,

Your life a swollen bread of leaven,

Your natural affection turned out to women,

You play your role on a stage with an Asherah stripper’s pole,

Throne room of hell’s fires below

Surrounded by lusting demons with dollars behind their ears, “beast that walk like men,” * like me.

Marvin said, “Makes me wanna holla” and run Joseph’s sprint from Pontifer’s palace

Away from this place of sorcery and malice

And pray for your and my souls

Before we are both consumed by the very thing we think we can control!

* Maya Angelo, CD: Black Pearls – The Poetry of Maya Angelo, © 1969 & 1998, "No, No, No, No."

Friday, January 12, 2007

Through Gritted Teeth

© 12 January 2007, The Griot Poet

I stole a photo cutout of her in nurse’s white: her graduation as an LVN.

She was so beautiful then, but the most beautiful I’ve ever seen her is in a nursing home bed smiling at me in her right mind recognizing that I am her son…

So, imagine my rage when the report comes that someone at 5 AM on 5 January of this New Year… some young PUNK tried to break in to my childhood home…

Leaning on the back window from the oil tank, he was outflanked by the ADT alarm.

Though my mother wasn’t there to be harmed… thank God! What if she’d been?

I felt like catching a red-eye special, steeling my warrior vessel supplying myself with one hundred and twenty five of Ninjitsu’s deadliest weapons.

Dressed in black I’d bivouac beside that same window hidden in the shadows… and wait! Kill or be killed, mate!

Though I cannot relate to the demons that cast sorcerers’ spells in crack pipe smells over his very soul…

Like him,
I’m from “the ‘hood.”
If you’ve seen “The Wire,” that’s outside my living room.

“BOYZ ‘n the ‘Hood”: my life’s story. Though I’m sorry the brother’s fallen on bad times… this is MY mother!

Though for my father I had reverent fear: a promised 38 to my forehead stating no drugs will be done here, it was the love of my mother that steered me clear of things that led him to… this.

Though I cannot in my wildest dreams relate to the doublethink demons casting sorcerers' spells in crack pipe smells over the life of this young bro’…

Through gritted teeth I reach within for spiritual strength I’ve only believed to be from Job…

And I pray for this young addict’s soul!

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Surge

© 9 January 2007, The Griot Poet

Forgive me.
I am usually not so salacious,
I mean to be efficacious.

I feel time is short
and we have graciously been given
tick-tocks on a winding-down clock...
time is of the essence!

*****

The only surge he understands is the warm feeling he gets and self-initiates behind the Oval Office desk with the “five fingers of funk!”

He and his VEEP were both too PUNK to go serve when it was their turn as young men in another needless war – Vietnam – started by another Texas President!

The little creep as the current White House resident (the 2000 election BOGUS) protected the Houston skies and Go-Go bars from the Viet Cong in the rich-boy-hide-my-baby-from-the-war “Champaign Unit.”

The little Troglodyte behind the scenes, Mr. Cheney had “other priorities” logging five deferments rather than answering the “call of duty” to his country.

And neither man would DARE commit their own daughters on the front line at this or any time: whether you call it a Civil War or not, no sane person consciously puts their children in a meat grinder!

655,000 plus Iraqis dead… 3,000 plus soldiers dead… deploying 21,000 more…

THIS is supposed to even the score, despite the imminent judgment of Dr. Hans Blix that Iraq’s capability could not be, nor their hidden weapons a reality?

We went from “weapons of mass destruction” to “Saddam and al-Qaeda” collusions to “democratizing Iraq” at gunpoint.

The “cheer-leader-in-chief’s” cheerleading squad consisting of:

Billy “Boom-Boom” Krystal;
Mike “Gangsta-lean” Leeden;
Charles “The Grinch” Krauthammer;
Peggy “won’t-reveal-the-source-of-the-Valerie-Plame-leak” Noonan

Of the
PNAC,
American Enterprise Institute,
Washington Post
And the New York Times respectively

Helped build this president’s neo conservative legacy

Now IN RETREAT
Repudiating
Their previous hawkish stances rapidly!

We ran herd to hang Saddam for 148 because we could not tolerate being associated with the deaths of 180,000 PLUS Kurds for which we sold Saddam chemical supplies in the “me-centered” 1980s!

This IS a crime against humanity for which WE are guilty!

The only surge he understands is the warm feeling he gets and self-initiates behind the Oval Office desk with the “five fingers of funk!”

Whether called: “surge,” “plus-up,” “SWELLIFY” or “VIAGRIFICATION,”

His speech is a neo conservative oblation uninhibited by reality, hanging on the faith-based megalomaniac fantasies…

…Of a dry drunk!

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Godfather

Dueling Banjos - an instrumental song made famous in the movie "Deliverance" (circa 1972), see http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Dueling_Banjos..... Dueling Poetry - a free verse conversation between two or more poets; the extension of social and/or political thoughts or ideas; a collaborative, creative work between two or more poets…. Definition by TGP

The first poem is from my friend, Thom the World Poet sent to me via e-mail today. My response follows his poetry.

At the age of 73
still doing the splits and performing regularly
with a history of domestic abuse
and public entertainments-
"the hardest working man in show business"
smart enough for HIT records
dumb enough to hit his women
That chasm divided all of us
who paid to see him sing
and knew he carried violence within
Perhaps his age was gone long before ours-
when men were patriachs
and women audience
Perhaps soul music encourages
a masochism and misogyny
that fascinates and appalls
enough to jail him
and to release us
from daemons who needed to sing and dance
"get up offa that thing-and dance!"
His mantras remain-but no one
can ever be James Brown again
We have all moved on-he has become
rock hard his story-leaving wife and children
locked out of the marital home
while he goes offf(for the very last time)
to the Apollo
DEC 28 REMEMBERS Thom

(c) 28 December 2006, The Griot Poet

He was probably
more important to us
than Martin, Malcolm or Gandhi
with the same foibles, faux pas as each of us
(magnified to the nth degree because of his celebrity):
drug usage, jail time, striking his white wives...
his music, however reached us
deep within our "minds, wills, imaginations, emotions and intellects"
for a definition I suspect
atheists and theists can agree to be: soul.

He was bold enough
to use his talent
to ruffle the feathers of the establishment:
"say it loud - I'm black and I'm proud"
did more to establish identity
-- for a movement in which Malcolm and Martin
were polar opposites --
displayed by Afros, bell bottoms and dashikis.

at a time when our country fought
an unpopular war
(started by another Texas president)
that one mantra birthed the pursuit of knowledge
about ourselves
almost Occult -- so hidden on sociology shelves
and cobweb periodicals in Mezzanine stacks.

He did not slack
in his civic duty
to visit and perform for presidents
38 to 43: Richard Nixon to George W
and used his celebrity to quiet riots
after King's assassination when he could
have fanned fires with his celebrity.

Now, we have "step-n-fetch"
21st Century minstrel shows with
pants below the waist,
no knowledge or appreciation
that displaying one's male booty
is the preferred state
of one sexually submissive
to cellblock rapists!

He is the originator
of "shake your money maker,"
before LUDACRIS
Yet, self-help advocates forget
"I don't want nobody to give me NOTHING.
"Open up the door -- I'll get it myself!"

Self-help and politics
are to be avoided
in lyrics
that only focus
on sex, violence and ignorance
for a corporate, plantation paycheck!

Hip-hop, like protest music and "Dixie Chicks" is neutered.

That pride has been locked away
on a dank, dusty shelf
not by systemic,
endemic,
xenophobic
racists:
but by
James Brown's
spiritual children
themselves!

Monday, December 18, 2006

R.E.I.T.

© 18 December 2006, Reginald L. Goodwin (The Griot Poet)

The ‘hood IS a government project!
What you don’t get is how the money flows:
First, you need hopelessness…
Started in master-slave Jazz procreation
From Po’ Charlie slicking and pimping
To the modern Step-n-fetch hip hop great grandchildren’s generation
Minstrel shows have to become “status quo”
And relegated to “Bankrupt Entertainment Television” and “U People’s Network”
You can’t have a major show like “Friends,” “Sex in the City” and “Seinfeld” (all praise to Michael Richards’ rant unveiling the hypocrisy!).

They wrote Alfre Woodward crazy on “Desperate Housewives” with a murderous 'normal' son and a crazy one in the basement!

Glorify the Pimp/Hustler/Drug Dealer as the urban entrepreneur one step from Sean Jean and FUBU.
Relegate Rhythm And Poetry – RAP – from revolutionary knowledge to the safe subjects (quoting Cornel West) of “highly sexed, violent, and ignorant.”

Voila: you have a self-hypnotized generation reciting the mantra of their destruction
Sisters “dropping-it-like-its-hot” and brothers jumping in as a “thug-for-life,” “keeping-it-real” with much drama and strife

Repeating the same lie I heard as a child that studying for my future was “acting white.”

This is a better operation than CONINTELPRO or the “Manchurian Candidate!”

Making prison male sexual subjugation – pants below the waist for easy penetration by the dominant, deviant cellblock rapist – a FASHION statement!

Repeal all the laws that put their kind on that side of the railroad track,
Let them attack suburbia and become in debt up to their eyeballs in net worth lack,
In an idolized Cliff and Claire lifestyle

Meanwhile: give your friend the cushy positions for which like “Brownie” they don’t have a horse’s assets qualifications!
But can afford those exclusive neighborhoods the sons and daughters of former slaves are salivating
So they can have the elation of a neighborhood entrance and dues sucking “lawn Gestapo” association

Make laws that subjugate them under the 13th amendment happily:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, EXCEPT as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,

“Shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction…”

And, if their kids get addicted, THEY get therapy!
You need some sorcery to enslave them.
When they beat one – Angel Dust, create another – Crack Cocaine.
Systematically, meticulously so that individually you can’t be blamed for racism!

Exit tests that with single parents barely past 14 can’t get you or themselves ready for
Set you up for a certificate of completion versus a diploma.
So, the only positive thing you can do (besides HIV) is being cannon fodder for the military.

You are standing on “Acres of ‘Blood Diamonds’”.
Cause the industry is NAFTA/CAFTA/outsourced overseas!
The top 1% is cutting you off at your economic knees.
East Winston-Salem, East Austin, South Central and New Orleans, you are allowing modern DeBeers and Trump Tower Developers to steal the one true measure of wealth development!

For my suburban sisters and brothers:
As you live out “Huxtable fantasies,” you leave
An aged population more concerned about ‘the next life’ than owning property
It is a historic loss to our own duress.
What we call “gentrification,” they call “real estate investments!”

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Open Letter to Kramer

© 27 November 2006, The Griot Poet

“Cosmo Kramer” has left the building!

As Michael Richards launches a chilling tirade

Of the shade I'd overheard and seen at a Cross lit Klan meeting

During a JROTC overnight in NC we cadets happened upon amongst the trees…

You used the n-word a symbolic SEVEN times,

Added injury to insult describing a violent, sodomy crime,

“Stick a fork up” my rear

50 times for 50 years ago when WE were the de facto slave labor of the “land of the free; home of the brave”: building houses; picking fruit and cotton; working for pennies on the dollar (without health benefits)!

Our prophet, Marvin said:

“Makes me WANNA holler, throw up both my hands!”

As real soldiers like Rosa Parks, Corretta Scott and Martin Luther King Junior, Medger Evers, Malcolm X and others fought & DIED for us to “rock the vote” and get up

From the back of the bus for our

“Inalienable right” to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”: our brothers PAID for this abuse!

Your behavior has no reasonable excuse.

Your “penis envy” of Jerry Seinfeld evident, every star used the president of the hit show to boost their creds… not you!

I’ll be honest with you: I watched maybe three episodes of your hit show the whole TEN YEARS of “Much Ado About Nothing” to quote Shakespeare,

Since it is hard for me to digest “whites only” characters and NO black regulars on a show based in New York City (include “Friends” and “Sex & the City” in this offense!).

You looked as if you'd hit new heights after smoking a large CRACK pipe before you hit the stage!

I am enraged for my brothers that you made cushy public apologies to David Letterman, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson: for one,

We haven't watched much late night since they canned Arsenio Hall!

And, your little, well-acted pouting to the presidents of the National Action Network & Rainbow PUSH do you NO good at all!

You want redemption? You want a career?

Lean your ear to this advice and hold it dear:

It is not repentance
Until you humbly face those you've offended,
And offer DOUBLE restitution
Asked for in recompense.

Let me repeat it:

It is not repentance
Until you humbly face those you've offended,
And offer DOUBLE restitution
Asked for in recompense.

FACE the brothers you crudely fronted and be a MAN!

Until you do this,
You will not satisfy our
Sense of justice,
Else your career – such as it was – will be over, “past prologue”* and SPENT!

* “What is past is prologue.” William Shakespeare

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

50 Pesos a Day

© 20 October 2006, The Griot Poet

They are the sons and daughters of the Aztecs,

And they went from Vicente Fox-in-the-henhouse to another louse named Calderon

Like: going back-and-forth from John Gotti to Al Capone means anything?

They work for 50 pesos a day.

At the current exchange rate, that's less than 5 bucks, or a little less than $100 American dollars a month.

Which really sucks when the poor – our servants –hollered at the ballet box, outnumbering the elite more than 10-to-1 clamoring for change waiting in the hot Mexican sun.

They got more of the same: different person, same party and no change to their small change of 50 pesos a day.

Their compensation: $100 American bucks, which effectively doubles their meager wages as bellhops, waiters and pages for hustling after tips, which coincides with the going rate for UPSCALE lower class living arrangements!

The same game is played in the states, as the stakes are NAFTA, CAFTA & FREE TRADE for the Americas: the political elite only change horses midstream to make you and I think we have a choice in this horserace.

As our high-tech jobs fly overseas at breakneck pace, the fastest growing employment is in the service industries: Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, grocery and department stores, waiters, maids and butlers.

Things that make you go: "hm!"

The only recompense is political independence from a two-party system more skilled in playing our political heartstrings than solving real problems beyond the Washington beltway!

The only recompense is political independence before we have a country we all deplore:

Waking up to a "Brave New World" of Code Orange threats and getting by on

50 pesos a day!

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Blogging for Change

(c) 6 November 2006 (on the eve of the election)

"This election is too close to call...
"This election is too close NOT to call!"

We've stalled the constitution,
Habeas Corpus needs a reunion
With laws of governance
That at a glance
Were thrown out on a whim of chance!

Don't be a "football fan" electorate,
Whether you have a Casey Sheehan,
2,800 + of men and women died for us
(655,000 Iraqi cousins of the human family as well)
For pundits who during Vietnam had
"Other priorities" and protected Texas
Skies scoring in the LOWEST percentile
Of pilot candidates, and now advises us
As a previous member of the Texas
"Champaigne Unit"
With NO previous combat experience
"To stay the course!"

I am blogging for change,
On the eve of this election game
I have voted for the opposition
Two weeks before this rendition
Of the democratic experiment:
"A government of laws; not men."

I am NOT voting for the Democrats
As the panacea to this morass:
It was 1994 when this mafioso
Staged the "Contract ON America"
From the Democrat's previous sins.
I'm sure K street is ready to switch it's focus again!

And Tom Delay's mission
To re-RE-district
After the 2000 Census
To ensure a permanent, Republican
Majority in Texas
And the US.

I am blogging for change.

For people who got shot, hosed, beaten
For me NOT to vote,
Would be a sin...

"Fool me once, shame on... shame on... shame on...
"You can't get fooled again!"

Sunday, July 30, 2006

The Exception

© 30 July 2006, The Griot Poet

“Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

And that is section one of the 13th Amendment!

And: the zenith of your life’s achievement is to be “jumped in” to a gang of criminality, joining illegal fraternities’ labeled ostensibly:

- Crips,
- Bloods,
- Latin Kings,
- Asian Tongs,
- Black Gansta Disciples,
- MS13…

And: you THINK because PHAT Farm ®, FUBU ® and JC Penny ® made your fashion an American icon, you have position, power and importance?

Brother, PLEASE!

Never
Ignorant
Getting
Goals
Accomplished

Is a clever acrostic metaphor of a racial epithet popularized by TUPAC (whose heart by the way is still stopped).

Biggie followed him, both of them dying at the statistical life block of 25 after actuaries lower your insurance and you start accumulating wealth, position, political power and importance.

Dead presidents reach beyond the grave, but dead men can’t father boys that become thug knaves: perpetuating generational curses in myriad bloodlines mass-producing docile knaves:

- Crips,
- Bloods,
- Latin Kings,
- Asian Tongs,
- Black Gansta Disciples,
- MS13…

“Keeping it real”: with the new titles for corporate American Fascist slaves!

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Tribute to Dr. Ronald E. McNair (circa 1986)

Thanks to Dr. Sandin (Ron and my General Physics professor at North Carolina A & T State University), this was found among his many papers in semi-retirement. The letter and poem are 20.5 years old. I record this to not misplace it again...

*****

My Dear Friends,

Since my commission, I have traveled many miles, seen many places. I have laughed, loved, enjoying life as an alumnus. My casual wear-about-town has slowly developed into my Aggie class ring, any Aggie Shirt, and my Aggie cap. I also spend my Aggie time trying to explain to the average Texan that I am not from Texas A & M!

I wish that these times were not so sad. As you cried, I cried too. My sadness was magnified as I thought of you, all of you. When the tears no longer flowed, I realized this was not the way to remember our friend.

I’ll remember my first glimpse of Ron McNair as not in person. I was fourteen, reading an A & T alumni newspaper. Trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life. Reading the article inspired me. The fall of 1980 found me on the campus of my hero: quiet, bright, undisciplined. The path I had chosen was wrought with traps of failure. And I did fail, but I would not quit, because he would not.

I’ll remember the first time I met him. He was hailed our conquering hero, our knight in shining armor. I was involved in the festivities until days end. By this time, Ron had graduated from my idol to my friend.

I had hoped to see him again in Houston, Texas since I lived right next door in Austin. Now, that hope is gone but, I will not despair. He would not want us to.

I will remember him as a winner in the true sense of the word. His presence was dazzling, yet his attitude humble. He remembered the road many of us are still traveling.

If we can learn anything from this tragedy, let us learn from the example of his life. In all his travels, he knew of his obligation to help others. He knew his light must shine “from Dare to Cherokee” and the four corners of the earth. He never forgot about his second home, A & T, and never let any opportunity slip by to tell someone what a special place it was. This home is Ron McNair’s heart. If this is so, he will live forever.

My love to you all,

An Epitaph for my Hero
© 1986, Reginald L. Goodwin

He would come from humble beginnings,
A young brother with great dreams,
And a strong will determining
His own tomorrow; It seems

A&T has produced leaders, some
Giants in their fields,
With humble knowledge of whence they’d come,
Always befriending others in need,

McNair too on the ‘Aggie Struggle’
In pursuit of his degree,
Then onward to dare, challenge and trouble
MIT for his PhD

He was our hero, this Aggie gladiator
Yet: on this note we all must think,
Each person has a pre-scored
Date with destiny we must keep.

As phoenix met its fiery end,
So too will he rise again,
And on that day of happiness we will then
Meet and greet a long lost friend.

Think not of our great loss,
But of history’s gain.
Let us remember him by paying the costs
He did to rise to fame.

An Aggie is best remembered
Not just in the tears we shed,
But in emulation and earnest meditation
Of the inspiring life he led.

We can only pray our loss
Is to God’s saving grace,
And know that Ron still thinks of us
(As we him), out there… exploring space.

Monday, June 12, 2006

At What Cost?

© 12 June 2006, The Griot Poet

When we integrated: our high schools became middle schools; our middle schools elementary, our colleges secondary.

The teachers who cared for us as 2nd mothers and fathers systematically retired, placed on medical or disciplinary leave or fired!

Suburban districts of white flight could not find suitable teacher candidates of color to hire (therefore, fewer black principals in their municipality).

“Soccer moms”: soccer, a slang term from England for “football association.” Women preening like peacocks with children in parks, a hybrid between the regal bird, Jewish American Princesses and WASPs as their men in the height of nepotism gave themselves the top salaries, rapid promotions, spiffs, bonuses, accelerators and stock options while they kicked us and our collective assets to the curb!

The WASPs further stung us numb as we lapsed into the somnambulism of sitcom unrealism: Cliff and Claire Huxtable set us up to have under performing children indulged by the wealth of overextended lifestyles and paycheck-to-paycheck slavery.

Someone has to stay home with the babies before pharmaceutical companies addict them to reconstituted forms of cocaine, lowered life goals, self-esteem and expectations.

When we integrated: we set up idols of wood, stone and cul-de-sacs in “master”-planned communities,
- In “master”-planned communities,
- In “MASTER”-planned communities,

Achieving the right to get in debt, get on the high speed Internet and shop in the same malls, our creature comforts stalled our spiritual progress.

Our secular god, knowledge was replaced by “Pimp My Ride ©” and “bling - bling.” Asians and Anglos study hours to capture global industries versus the 1 in 16,000 chance of landing a spot as a pro athlete!

Our churches, synagogues and mosques became overpopulated with women holding out hope to find a leader-protector-lover: only to find the conversation after preaching no different than the previous night’s venture at the club/meat market.

So, our women began “shaking their assets” in gangster lean hip hop video fantasies, female capitalists passed around from bed-to-bed by masters of staccato poetry: just like their mothers had been previously in choir robes by revered pastors.

No roots to Public Enemy or KRS-1, the corporate formula for hip POP from Cornel West = highly sexed, violent and ignorant.

A successful CONINTELPRO operation: the black messiahs Medgar, Malcolm and Martin assassinated,

When we integrated: we went from strong aromatic roast to watered-down coffee, highly creamed, over-sugared to be the “acceptable taste.”

Form without substance; talent at a waste.

Not realizing in our buffoonery

We are weak!