A Poem –
Short, But Way Too Long
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1.
Miss sippi,
back woods
pine filled
country.
Pineyville,
home of Leroy Boyd James,
lynched
1959.
Pineyville,
in the deep South
where black bones lay
on river bottoms
cause the current
didn’t carry them away;
or lay in unmarked graves.
Disappeared
under soggy,
red soil,
under pine needles
weighed down
by horrors unnamed
and people hold memories
silently inside.
“Miss sippi,
god damn.”
“God damn
Miss sippi.” *
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2.
If only trees could talk,
they could tell
how crushing summer heat,
air stealing thunderstorms,
were not worth mentioning
compared to the way
Black folks
couldn’t even
hold up their heads
without getting beat,
or worse.
If trees could talk,
they could tell
how white teens’
Friday night fun
was shooting
into Black folks homes.
They could testify
that anytime,
for any reason,
or no reason at all,
nooses bearing
Black skinned fruit
would swing from their limbs.
White death
always held its arms
around Black folks shoulders,
like they was
good friends.
If only tress
could balk
at bearing human fruit.
Better yet,
strike down
any attempt.
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3.
Miss sippi like
New York,
Pennsy vanee,
Ill nois,
Cali fornee,
Flo ida;
like
Ken tukee,
Mary land,
Vir ginie,
Ala Bam,
no place to be free.
God Damn.
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4.
At least not yet.
It will take a revolution for that.
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~~redzone 3.31.13
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* NOTE: I used “Mississippi god damn” which comes
from the Nina Simone song of the same name.
I borrowed her words cause I felt they captured
both the feeling she was expressing, and I was
trying to portray in writing this poem. I hope
I did justice to Nina with these words.
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Outstandingly and brilliantly written my friend, You brought justice to them… and that last verse! smart very very smart and says it all. It really surprises me how some people thinking is till this day extremist and racist, but truth from where I am and what I’ve seen in the past years, nothing surprising me anymore. I admire your poem and admire You for writing it.
Okay, I have to say, this brought tears to my eyes. Such imagery should never exist but also never forgotten. I believe you did Nina justice here
I’m with Willow on this.
Racism is an issue that’s close to my heart for very personal reasons.
Outstanding poem, Red.
Light, Willow, and Mary, thank you so much for your visit and for your comments on this poem. One of the reasons I became a revolutionary was because of digging deeper into the oppression of Black people. At first, it was more based on a religious basis, but after reading books like Griffin’s, “Black Like Me”; Baldwin’s, “The Fire Next Time”; and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, I began to realize it has deeper roots in a whole system, the rise of capitalism and its colonial conquests and genocide and slavery. This led me to Marx and Lenin and Mao, and now Bob Avakian. We do not have to live this way, and we are capable of ending all oppression. This is the reason for those last 2 lines.