April 4th Poem (On the anniversary of King's death)

We went after the laws
We still do
It’s what we do

The NAACP taught us long ago
How to file briefs
How to make arguments
against racism
We memorized the Bill of Rights

We marched
We’ve boycotted
Been civilly disobedient
We sometimes appeal to your conscience
Seek compassion
Used moral suasion when we could

But above all
We have always gone after the law

Because what did King say?
“It may be true that
the law cannot make a man love me,
but it can stop him from lynching me,
and I think that's pretty important.”

Yeah, King I think that’s pretty important too.

Poem A Day Challenge: April 3rd poem (I've Seen, part I)

I’ve seen eagles mate
Make babies
Build enormous nests

To dangle over freeways

As if
All those cars, spiraling exhaust
Those loud and noisy humans

Hardly mattered

Poem A Day Challenge: April 2nd poem (For Trayvon)

April 2nd poem


Maybe it means too much to me
What happened to Trayvon
Because of what happened to me

I cannot read enough
News stories cannot
Learn enough facts

About this black boy
(because in the final analysis that is ALL
he was allowed to be)
About the murdering watchman
(Who and what was he watching for exactly?)

Maybe it means too much to me
Because of Oscar Grant
Because of Emmett Till
Because of Rodney King

Because of what happened to me
Which wasn’t in comparison
So bad really
I recovered (kind of)/I’m not dead
My family doesn’t have to grieve

But I can’t stop thinking of him
This innocent manchild
Looking “suspicious”
Hoodied tall and lanky
With such big big eyes

Carrying candy
In the rain

Love then what is it?

Love then what is it?
Two bodies twisting together
The tender baby bonding at the breast
The patriot-soldier in her devotion
The love of the people for their leader
The implicit trust?

What then is love
Where shall we find it
How ought we create it
What breeds it what keeps it
What distinguishes it
From everything else we do?

Love then what is it
Do we know?
Is there someone
A sage who can explain
Is there somewhere a book
A song a tree
To make it plain?

And if nobody tells us
How will we know
If nobody shows us
How will we know
What then is love?

On the [Red] Road....

Recently home from the Mashpee Pow Wow up on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. 

(Photo courtesy of Joyce Rain Anderson)

Wow, those Mashpee Wampanoags sure

know how to throw a powwow!!!

Deer meat, quahog chowder, raffles, quail, handsome men,bluefish, beautiful women, wampum, rabbit, contests galore and FIREBALL!!!

Guess they ought to since this was their 90TH annual...but still I gotta give 'em credit because they have survived so much and only recently (2007) got "recognized" by the [colonialist] federal government.

All those hundreds of years that the US government was saying they were wiped out they just kept on having pow wows and handing down traditions generation to generation. Impressive.

Keep in mind these are the Indians [think Squanto] who first befriended the misguided pilgrims-- a kindness they would live to regret.

Unfortunately there are other Wampanoag tribes who have yet to be recognized (like the Pocasset). They were at the Pow Wow too. 

How long will it take the US to recognize all the surviving descendants of all the tribes they tried to exterminate? 

My prediction: just as  long as it takes that same government to make amends with the descendants of the millions of Indigenous Africans kidnapped and enslaved in this country.

Meanwhile we will all still be having our Juneteenths and Pow Wows and will still be passing down our stories because you can't kill the spirit, people.

New Album: Say You're Sorry

So I have been going into the recording studio of late to work on my next poetry album, which I have affectionately dubbed my "angry album." I am collaborating on this album with a talented musician by the name of Nik Ritchie. He is also recording the album.

The centerpiece of the album is a poem I have been working on for some time called "Say You're Sorry: A Rant About Slavery" I decided quite a while ago that as a country we were never going to become anti-racist until we dealt with our shameful history. American racism was born out of our horrific history of slavery and genocide. The land was stolen from the Indigenous people, many of whom were slaughtered, and then Africans were stolen from their homelands and brought in chains to experience hundreds of years of what can only be described as one of the greatest acts of inhumanity in the history of the human being.

But we don't talk about this. The history books I grew up reading made light of slavery. The history books still in circulation when I became a teacher still failed to engage the history of slavery in any sustained way. Current discussions of racism or race relations continue to fail to engage this important issue.

So I am writing this poem and making this album and hoping to start a conversation on slavery and its aftermath. The final poem will be epic in length. Here is an excerpt from one chapter on lynching:

Say you're sorry that the lynching of blacks

Was a form a of recreation

A national pastime in our country

An outing for the whole family

Complete with food and drinks

Say you're sorry the thousands of Black people

Hung up, burned alive

Tortured castrated

Was entertainment for whites

Say you’re sorry it wasn’t

Just an abberant minority of white men

Wasn’t just the White Knights of  Columbus

Or the Klux Klux Clan

Operating under the cover of darkness

Say you're sorry it was whole communities

Law enforcement city mayors

Jailers and judges, legislators,

Upstanding white men

Say you’re sorry antil-ynching legislation

Was defeated in the US Senate

Again and again

In 1922 1937 and 1940

While black bodies hung

While Black bodies burned

Say you're sorry mutilated black bodies

Were hung from flagpoles and rooftops

White racism’s  “old glory”

Yes We Did! (for my students)

Yes, we did

For my students

When I got the job offer

People told me not to take it

Said The South

Is too racist sexist homophobic

For someone like me

They might have been right

But I came here anyway

Told them it may be that way now

But I’m gonna change it

I will teach those racists

How to love Black and Brown people

I said

I will teach those sexists how to love women and girls

I said

I will teach those homophobes

How to love The Queers

And I will gather up

The Young Ones

Teach them to rebel

Against the hatred of their elders

And together all the young ones

They will change things

Yes they will

Its been 7 years

And I changed things

Yes, I did.

Maybe not enough

To save my own skin

But we changed things

Yes we did

My students and I made a difference

We changed things, yes we did!