-for the Denver Students who have taken to the streets with their beliefs
"people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them"
-james baldwin
ferguson, is all of us, because all of us, if you must,
is the sum of the corrosive constellations
of interstate mistrust, perennial,
mistrust that corrodes like the bloodstained must
that gathers on restored antebellum porches,
legacies of future fast driven porsches
by the sons of fergus, with multiple divorces
and stock options fashioned by pale mobs with torches.
the strange fruit of billie’s best lyrics,
since the first days of emmett till’s disappearance,
the musted rust of a cotton gin fan
to leave evolution hanging in the balance-
four hundred years, with little more than violence,
despicable white supremacist talents
for genocidal scourges, codified ethnic purges,
the forward push of the basest urges-
from far more than the sons of fergus,
du bois and his “wages of whiteness”
has a most contemporary likeness:
in appalachian republicans, and arizoned out
trailer park supplicants,
hands not out, but rather pushed, against
the same different reality:
this shitstem is the original failure,
a veritable master tailor
of dysfunctional, grab-baggedy suits
stitched together with tear gas and jackboots,
stranger fruits may emerge
than even billie could have nightmared.
as we all wake up, hair at war with each
family follicle, polar ice caps
melting in well-groomed yards,
acid rain falling in miniscule shards.
and still the Youth march, triumphant,
across the beaten-down blacktop of colfax,
from the shadows of moribund warehouses
in montbello, from the fecund strip mall
niches of federal boulevard, in triumphant shards!
maybe, if we’re lucky, action from the conscious sons of fergus, here
in the outer rim: such protest could really hurt them,
advance us, even more, because the saddest fact
of perennial justice struggle, a truth rarely told,
is that a bad system dies so much quicker, gets old rapidly
in its vapid malignancy, when those who benefit most
and therefore make the most excuses
decide that whatever they loses
is the new dawn that the rest of us freely chooses,
after all
when can we really be
one human family, free of capitalist
distortion and inclinations to easy depravity?
is another world possible, despite such constant obstacle?
can we push through, east high, and make a planet so sweet,
worth licking like a long-awaited popsicle?
and here I am, alone at home, with a whole
digital universe to roam, and travel,
as real, honest reality starts to unravel,
and life becomes the calculated sum
of looking down at my gadget, as soul dies slow
in this glitterous magnet, distractable,
reactable, we cannibalize each other like hannibal
and still the lambs go on screaming
as a talented mechanic in kinshasa
goes on dreaming, scheming, won’t stop believing
that fate is such a sour pill to swallow,
whilst over in “murica, sleepy like Hollow,
gone are the days
when james brown could start a Revolution
by just showing up, onstage at the apollo.
and sometimes i still wonder
if i really have to swallow
the lies that someone else created, who never hesitated
to unleash deception unabated, probably
the first time when agriculture created an elite,
back when the fertile crescent was not trammeled
by competing conqueror feet, when
the first hunters and gatherers
got really tired, for good, needed to chill
not looking for another beast to kill
when it was high time
to build something permanent on the highest hill,
willy nil if Reason becomes shrill
then it's because there is
simply no change left in the till,
robbed by centuries of deliberate ill
and if I could bring back the life blood
of emmett till, then I would ask
when can we really be,
one human family, free of capitalist
distortion and easy inclinations to depravity?
Is another world possible,
despite such constant obstacle?
"people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them"
-james baldwin
ferguson, is all of us, because all of us, if you must,
is the sum of the corrosive constellations
of interstate mistrust, perennial,
mistrust that corrodes like the bloodstained must
that gathers on restored antebellum porches,
legacies of future fast driven porsches
by the sons of fergus, with multiple divorces
and stock options fashioned by pale mobs with torches.
the strange fruit of billie’s best lyrics,
since the first days of emmett till’s disappearance,
the musted rust of a cotton gin fan
to leave evolution hanging in the balance-
four hundred years, with little more than violence,
despicable white supremacist talents
for genocidal scourges, codified ethnic purges,
the forward push of the basest urges-
from far more than the sons of fergus,
du bois and his “wages of whiteness”
has a most contemporary likeness:
in appalachian republicans, and arizoned out
trailer park supplicants,
hands not out, but rather pushed, against
the same different reality:
this shitstem is the original failure,
a veritable master tailor
of dysfunctional, grab-baggedy suits
stitched together with tear gas and jackboots,
stranger fruits may emerge
than even billie could have nightmared.
as we all wake up, hair at war with each
family follicle, polar ice caps
melting in well-groomed yards,
acid rain falling in miniscule shards.
and still the Youth march, triumphant,
across the beaten-down blacktop of colfax,
from the shadows of moribund warehouses
in montbello, from the fecund strip mall
niches of federal boulevard, in triumphant shards!
maybe, if we’re lucky, action from the conscious sons of fergus, here
in the outer rim: such protest could really hurt them,
advance us, even more, because the saddest fact
of perennial justice struggle, a truth rarely told,
is that a bad system dies so much quicker, gets old rapidly
in its vapid malignancy, when those who benefit most
and therefore make the most excuses
decide that whatever they loses
is the new dawn that the rest of us freely chooses,
after all
when can we really be
one human family, free of capitalist
distortion and inclinations to easy depravity?
is another world possible, despite such constant obstacle?
can we push through, east high, and make a planet so sweet,
worth licking like a long-awaited popsicle?
and here I am, alone at home, with a whole
digital universe to roam, and travel,
as real, honest reality starts to unravel,
and life becomes the calculated sum
of looking down at my gadget, as soul dies slow
in this glitterous magnet, distractable,
reactable, we cannibalize each other like hannibal
and still the lambs go on screaming
as a talented mechanic in kinshasa
goes on dreaming, scheming, won’t stop believing
that fate is such a sour pill to swallow,
whilst over in “murica, sleepy like Hollow,
gone are the days
when james brown could start a Revolution
by just showing up, onstage at the apollo.
and sometimes i still wonder
if i really have to swallow
the lies that someone else created, who never hesitated
to unleash deception unabated, probably
the first time when agriculture created an elite,
back when the fertile crescent was not trammeled
by competing conqueror feet, when
the first hunters and gatherers
got really tired, for good, needed to chill
not looking for another beast to kill
when it was high time
to build something permanent on the highest hill,
willy nil if Reason becomes shrill
then it's because there is
simply no change left in the till,
robbed by centuries of deliberate ill
and if I could bring back the life blood
of emmett till, then I would ask
when can we really be,
one human family, free of capitalist
distortion and easy inclinations to depravity?
Is another world possible,
despite such constant obstacle?
