our good sense to have the leadership class
in profoundly uncomfortable ways the fbi
despite being the same embarrassions
the fbi despite being profoundly uncomfortable ways
the fbi despite being the same embarrassing profoundly uncomfortable way
the fbi despite being problems of your revenges
our good sense to have the leadership class
and rely on that leadership class
in problems of your good sense to enact our revolution
your enemy of meaning profoundly uncomfortable
in ways the fbi despite being so long
as we outsource outsource outsource
our revolution you want revenges our revolution
you want a revenge our victories our revenges our good sense
to have the same embarrassing thot leadership class
in problems of meaning
the leadership class in profoundly uncomfortable ways
the fbi despite being so long
as we outsource outsource outsource our enemy of meaning
profoundly uncomfortable ways
the fbi despite being profoundly uncomfortable
weighs the fbi despite being profoundly uncomfortable
ways the fbi despite being profoundly uncomfortable
the dealership class
in profoundly uncomfortable ways is the fbi
despite being problems of meaning
problems of meaning profoundly uncomfortable ways
the fbi despite being the leadership class
to have the same embarrassing profoundly uncomfortable ways
the fbi despite being profoundly uncomfortable weighs the fbi
despite being the same embarrassing problems of meaning
the same embarrassing fbi despite being the leadership class
in profoundly uncomfortable ways the fbi despite
profound problems of meaning
the same embarrassing profoundly uncomfortable fbi
despite being problems of your victories
our good sense to have the same embarrassing fbi
despite being the same embarrassing
so long as we outsource outsource outsource
outsource outsource outsource
outsource outsource outsource
boom bip we gone
“The real problem is you don’t know the real problem.” Remind us: Keep peeled.
A great podcast was released sometime: William J. Harris, Tyrone Williams, and Aldon Nielsen join Al Filreis (always generous) to discuss Baraka’s “Something in the Way of Things.”
I’m delighted Filreis chose to play the version of the poem from the Roots’ 2002 album “Phrenology”. The album—I bought it from the Staten Island Mall on day one—was essential in showing this young introverted weirdo that his suspicions about people being easily defined was specious—contrary to everything my small island peers had suggested. Punk. Rap. Poetry. R&B. Soul. Sound collage. Techno. Profoundly compelling instrumentation. Music as preparation. As runway.
Hard to conceive I first heard Amiri Baraka’s words 16 years ago.
Anyway, the podcast discussion is accessible and criminally brief.
After I listened to it, I was sent back to my bookshelves to hunt down a collection of Baraka’s work from 2014—the year he died—SOS. The hardcover version of the work collects some of the poet’s final poems. That’s how I’ll be spending my night.
I had to share it with all of you in hopes you might share it as well. Be well.
Pat your foot
and turn
the corner. Nat Turner, dying wood
of the church. Our lot
is vacant. Bring the twisted myth
of speech. The boards brown and falling
away. The metal bannisters cheap
and rattly. Clean new Sundays. We thought
it possible to enter
the way of the strongest.
But it is rite that the world's ills
erupt as our own. Right that we take
our own specific look into the shapely
blood of the heart.
Looking thru trees
the wicker statues blowing softly against
the dusk.
Looking thru dusk
thru dark-
ness. A clearing of stars
and half-soft mud.
The possibilities of music. First
that it does exist. And that we do,
in that scripture of rhythms. The earth,
I mean soil, as melody. The fit you need,
the throes. To pick it up and cut
away what does not singularly express.
Need.
Motive.
The delay of language.
A strength to be handled by giants.
The possibilities of statement. I am saying, now,
what my father could not remember
to say. What my grandfather
was killed
for believing.
Pay me off, savages.
Build me an equitable human assertion.
One that looks like a jungle, or one that looks like the cities
of the West. But I provide the stock. The beasts
and myths.
The City's Rise!
(And what is history, then? An old deaf lady)
burned to death
in South Carolina.
white politicians are their
weapons of there
be black poems written until love
let their weapons or they is
their weapons
leaving whose
brains
souls
splintered steps or
loud stumbling assassins
we want a bar stool in
the
liberal spokesman for trees
of there william calcraft
poison gas bullshit unless
here’s a negroleader pissing
we want a
bar
stool in the white poems written
for steel love and death wrestlers
or shudder
on the wrestlers' heaving breast
or loud with
lizbeth taylor’s
smear on girdlemamma mulatto bitches whose
brains souls pulled for the crow crowd
splintering fire
we want
a black people arrgh
“What can I do to myself? Bones / and dusty skin. Heavy eyes twisted / between the adequate thighs of all / humanity (a little h), strumming my head / for a living. Bankrupt utopia sez tell me / no utopias. I will not listen. (Except the raw wind / makes the hero’s eyes close, and the tears that come out / are real.” Amiri Baraka, 1964
downtown
mall kill 32-year-old woman some thirty
four others injured fights date over bloodiest fights
date over
bloodiest
city’s choice
remove
statue robert e lee nationalists no plan
demolition
nineteen rally city’s choice remove
statue robert
e lee
nationalists no plan
demolition nineteen
rally city’s choice remove statue robert e lee
nationalists no plan
demolition nineteen rally
city’s
choice remove
statue robert e
lee nationalists no plan
demolition
nineteen rally city’s
choice remove statue robert e lee nationalists no
plan
demolition nineteen rally city’s
choice remove
statue
robert e
lee
nationalists no
plan demolition nineteen rally city’s
choice remove statue robert e lee nationalists no
plan
demolition nineteen
rally city’s
choice
remove
statue robert
e lee nationalists
no
plan demolition
nineteen rally city’s choice remove statue robert e
lee nationalists no plan demolition nineteen rally
city’s choice remove statue robert
e lee
nationalists no
plan demolition
nineteen
rally city’s downtown mall kill 32-year-old woman
some
thirty
four others
injuredition nineteen rally
city’s choice
remove statue robert e lee
nationalists no plan demolition nineteen rally
city’s downtown mall
kill 32-year-old
woman some
thirty four
others
injuredition nineteen rally city’s choice remove
statue robert e lee nationalists no plan demolition
nineteen rally city’s downtown mall kill
32-year-old woman some
thirty four others injuredoice
remove
statue robert e lee nationalists no plan
demolition nineteen rally city’s choice
remove statue robert e
lee
nationalists
no plan demolition nineteen rally city’s choice
remove statue robert e
lee nationalists no
plan demolition nineteen rally city’s choice
remove
statue robert e
lee nationalists no plan demolition nineteen rally
city’s choice
remove statue robert e lee nationalists no plan
demolition nineteen rally city’s choice remove statue
robert
e
lee nationalists
no
plan demolition
nineteen rally city’s
choice remove statue
robert e lee nationalists no plan
demolition nineteen rally city’s choice
remove statue robert
e lee nationalists no plan
demolition nineteen rally city’s downtown mall kill
32-year-old woman some thirty four others injuredition nineteen rally
city’s choice remove
statue robert e lee
nationalists no
plan demolition nineteen rally city’s choice
“I have only two charms in my pocket” Frank O’Hara
not every sentence needs a verb this one for instance does not demand it
now this small pocket of music
set down by leroi jones in my genes
must be crawling through the world’s
fetid cast it’s not that he’s dead he’s
just one man anyway the poet as strap
material not dead as in buried but
we’re some kind of threadbare king
barren times they are a-changin’
one’s critical diaper so goods perhaps
this terrible diction and so much
psycho-holy meaning depends upon
yourself of ideas retention into the soul
perhaps ripples through leroi
into the irony into delicious diction
of all talk about a few pleasing lines
about the anonymous backwards
kind of blue about o’hara’s poem
consciously poetical as though one were
writing about art food or never will be
just a finger on a hand fingering about
oneself for the god of godless faith
