Tag Archives: amiri baraka

To Think and Choose in America Now

Wikipedia Poem, No. 576

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“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

remove
statue robert
e lee

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Sources: 

Stolberg, Sheryl Gay, and Brian M. Rosenthal. “State of Emergency Declared in Charlottesville After Protests Turn Violent.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 12 Aug. 2017. Web. 13 Aug. 2017.

Baraka, Amiri. “History as Process.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, Dec. 1964. Web. 13 Aug. 2017.

God Cannot Be Fingered

Wikipedia Poem, No. 410

art

“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

Wikipedia Poem, No. 404

wiki404-final

“You imagine an alley a little kingdom / where the mother-tongue is spoken / a village of shelters woven / or sewn of hides in a long-ago way” Adrienne Rich from “In The Wake of Home”

after Nancy Bauer, phenomenologist; Amiri Baraka, father; and Nick Montfort, explorer:

people 
    thinking
of the sea from
  
baraka’s trespass 
    what little you can hear 
echoes out from the work 

to lift 
human voices to discover a 
chorus

    adopts the feeling continually breaking silence 
    the landscape in american history
is merely a discussion on traditional numerology

the hills are a start
    out of thought may experience 
    a germination of genre 

    the work 
        we find researched 
    draws pseudo-scientific inference 

it's a living 
out of feeling 
and lyric flight

o that the mathematicians 
were right of brick 
baraka’s trespass you hear echoes of the manuscript 

it is a start 
out of his waves 
be hideous uses 

the term numerology 
is often a native guard 
words names any belief 

in sonnet form
his writing were a start 
    out of the little you 

    experimentary of thought 
    experimentary mutually affectually 
        in numerology and wine and time sweet as 
            your work

Wikipedia Poem, No. 389

Processed with VSCO with b4 preset

“We never knew closer / sisters, stronger trees, / tighter clans, wilder / fires. Where can we / go if not to each other, / resenting every step?” Brenda Shaughnessy

         taste any justice
         oxygen from water 
then study in         of pain

when and wariness—illustrate the why
situational italics when wise 
rubbed to a head—includes 
experienced painkillers
         focused on what would be a       
reflex animal subject
of frozen birds rattling / in the cold 
inflicted on the what and wariness—illustrates who
         rise for example 

research exceeding response 
rather than responding
         their ways 
         studied   pain   

and profited, biblically, 
acetic acid         of nociceptors 
or behave nervous
         their taxonomic class is neophobic 
meaning those researchers evidence         

whatever sits / counting the minutes 
till you die
who were in pain 
         respond

paculum-spec2-sm

Contains fragments from Amiri Baraka's "The Liar".

Wikipedia Poem, No. 360

wiki360-sm

“Clay is the word and clay is the flesh” Patrick Kavanagh

       a child 
made me see

the light grew dim 
       seer

of one small 
  primrose       flowering in flame

   moments to find
    one small primrose holy ghosting 

then 
    my sign i read 

it is said 
        i will   never find

one small primrose then wealth 
          it is said one small page 

a tear and a seer the holy ghost 
in the lenses of a         chair and a tree

       ghost     in flame 
moments to heaven       and the glass stars 

         the light was 
          very beautiful 
       and kind

    and 
here was its 
shadow 

a tear one small primrose 
flowers in the 
  stars 

the         lenses of a tree
      light was but the shadow of a chair
truth’s manuscript made 
see wonders nevermore hanged

Wikipedia Poem, No. 350

wiki350-sm

“Among things with souls, find me. / Picking thru the alphabet / or leaning out the window. … / Murderers humming under the window.” Amiri Baraka

here, the reality of madness
here, the madness of reality

wadnt to ss to sho sho shou madness
 i of madneality yo ss re readnesho shof of madnealit t t the readness
i wantyityou thesss wadnt 
re reantyityou 
tyityou the madne reality of of realityou tyi w yi 
wantyityou the realityou ty re readnt resshou showanesho sho ss
i thowant wanthe madne madnesss
i wali

     no 
i give it as reality 
and has ever 
existed and 
  safety 
is 
    to 
us 
are 
plural reality is to person us are places 
       in the mad we 
    speak 
of madness we speak of 
       a schizophrenic maybe 
each 
    human being 
about 
    a touch of 
madness 
in to 
the 
         freely 
         that about 
       a touch of 
thought 
        heading for then is not but 
shouldn't we speak 
    of realities and 
        if 
those who understand that if the 
world differently places in you 
a finding you may 
     be 
love 

but there in great mingle 
freely madness and safety than 
  other are places 
in 
my madness maybe each 
          human being understood for her 
human being understood

Wikipedia Poem, No. 324

wiki324-sm

“I am what I think I am. You are what / I think you are. The world is the / one thing, that will not move. It is / made of stone, round, and very ugly.” Amiri Baraka

 

detonate the alternative
off with the same
time that must be drunk

one who prays to kant
introduced into creation
knowledge must be drunk

one who wishes to be regarded as the basis
for time will that one’s commandment thirsts
one must be drunk

one who wishes to people like kant who are
merely a concept lived in the theoretical
the imperatives of any proposition must be drunk

one becomes a popular moral philosopher
and milks imperatives for their fresh universal law
kant’s expressed excrement must be drunk

one believes for those imagined
they may be obeyed
in the theoretical drinking

out with the imperatives
a universal law kant
introduces in the demon drink

god of the heathen unclean
spirit divine principle or inward
oracle drinking 0f

An essay from Amiri Baraka’s “Bushwacked!”

amiri-bushwacked-1amiri-bushwacked-2amiri-bushwacked-3amiri-bushwacked-4

He wasn’t a perfect man, but he was radical, prescient and sage. The fire that burnt in his belly for decades, roars to this day in millions of Americans. We’ve just got to believe we’re not fighting alone and stand up together — everyday.

 

Please share this with your favorite radical activist.

Wikipedia Poem, No. 99

“I can lay out a field / a Spectrum / Where in / So what is spoken / is the living / the flesh / & its / Movement—” from Amiri Baraka’s “#19 Death Parallels”

Wire drags west then the department
built a very black of gauze and effect
I’m TOP SECRET//SI//TK//NOFORN
and its proximity says “You this ain’t.”

A violent IC caveat duster
you are alcohol is the issue
but what time?

Intelligence community settlefield
race claims classified destructive
presence in the closive of counteers
that night hears excruciating across

Hawaii Emily she differs on
the thin way to February Marlow
Stern rode in on a Mistan wheel

When into the bleak Pacific
speaks a civil libation except over
government acoustics