Greenwood

Greenwood
Was a cemetery for the colored,
A place where the pale-colored bones
Of black folk
Would not through ages rot
Near the pale-colored bones
Of white folk.

And the spirits of the dead
Linger and lament:
Wealth begets more wealth.
Want begets more want.

These days Greenwood
Is a haunt:
Weeds and ivy choke
The graves among the oak.

And the spirits of the dead
Linger and lament:
Wealth begets more wealth.
Want begets more want.

The white man’s marker taunts,
From its shining grave upon a hill,
That declaration of segregation
That was Greenwood,
Now fallen mute and still.

And the spirits of the dead
Linger and lament:
Wealth begets more wealth.
Want begets more want.

Why care for the plots of the dead
When we can scarcely tend the living?

To right the ancient wrongs
Among the living poor today
Would not undo the lynching.
In the well-kept tombs
Of the martyred dead
Is the silence of forgiving.

Lebensraum

I gave a homeless man
a calorie bar.

The stars above the seas have wandered far
from days and nights
when men would leave their lands
of burning sands
and fight
for food and home.

Now alone and thin as bone,
the homeless man sits
with cardboard sign,
his face an invisible sign
that we have not come far
from our savage days of need.

The single thing man will not fight
is greed.

Akai

The light of the stars above the city
first sparked over a Scandinavian village
in the long forgotten past.

Now, the light has reached
the dilapidated old building,
set aside for the impoverished,
the long forgotten, and the rats.

There, in the darkness of a stairwell,
a shot rang out.
The monstrous Grendel tumbled, dead.
No doubt some mythic greatness
would await the heroic officer.

Only it was an accident without a monster.
And the officer was a villager,
like so many of us, so many of us.

In the days that followed, the elevator
would see repair
so the stairwell could be avoided
until the lights, too, could be replaced.

Thanksgiving Day

The history of injustices,

The endless reign of terror

That is the march of wealth

Sought by every Nation,

Is a cause for celebration. 

Let us thank the Lord our God

For the blood that we have shed,

For the tears the vanquished shed,

For the breaking of the bread

From our newfound fruited plains. 

Remember always the great pains

Our ancestors surely suffered,

By their swords our lives they buffered

From the savage, godless stain. 

The unbelievers that remain

Are a shadow of their evil empire.

Now as their own our God they claim,

Their heathen errors cleansed in fire.

And thus the traitors we brand as liars,

They who brand us a nation of thieves.

The hunger of Indians is not so dire -

We send rice that piles like autumn leaves.

 

Love American Style

First we have to negotiate the sexism.
Then we have to negotiate the racism,
Then the homophobia.

We negotiate God
And the places of worship,
Selecting a God for the children.
And then we buy the matching outfits.

We forget about politics.
Maybe we remember
After the drinks, theater, dinner,
airline tickets, and the rest.

We forget about death, too.
But there's no time to remember
After the condoms, abuse, lawsuit,
Abortion, and the rest.

I remember you standing,
Before all the negotiations,
In the bookstore smiling,
And felt those queer sensations
When we said we'd write a new chapter
In the travel book you were holding.

Location

Silly black man!
Did you think
That you could smoke that blunt,
Bluntly blowing your pain away,
On a corner of that stricken,
Despair-ridden ghetto?

Hell, no!
Calamitous location
Is your situation.

Look here, black man.
Take your smoking on down
To the university town.
Will that professor's frown
Force the smokers
(Young and white) to lay low?

Hell, no!
Your situation
Is a pox on your location.

Listen here, black man.
That smoking is just fine
In places where the sun don't shine.
Deep inside the gated homes
(Old and white) smoke roams
From room to room;
And no police anytime soon.

Our location is Us.
Your location is Them.
Look for those white gates
And watch the rates
Of arrest disappear -
But never the fear
Of them;
No, never the fear
Of them.

Haiti

Haiti is an accident;
I prefer not to look at it.
Mangled parts abound;
Nothing astounds.

You see, the sun is too bright;
The skin and bones too tight.

Though Wilson sent Marines
To instill a sense of order –
The milat, moun andeyo,
And all that negritude –
Too much, too much,
They bust the motor.

And all through the years
The parts have tumbled
Down deforested hills:
Estime, Vincent, Magloire,
Lescot, and Duvalier.

And who will care?

Where have you gone, Daniel Fignole?
The nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Mesdames et messieurs,
Gens de couleur:
Start your engines.

But they have nowhere to go,
Surrounded by the wide, wide sea,
Where the sun sets too bright
And the skin, bones, too tight.

Martin and Hope

“Everything that is done in the world
is done by hope,” said Martin Luther
King, Jr.

Boy, I tell you,
This girl Hope, she is one busy gal.

Matter of fact,
Just the other day,
A fine morning,
I was walking to work.

And there was Hope!
All passed out, poor thing,
On that bench,
In a state of exquisite,
Senses-shattering,
World-saving,
Stinky exhaustion.

Come to find out,
That very night,
Sure as I breathed,
I was walking home.

And Hope was gone!
Sure enough moved on,
Her work is never done.
Poor thing, still pushing
That cart with everything,
And no time to settle down.

I wish she’d
Just one time slow down
To tell her about her friend Martin –
How he praised all around
Before he got shot.