Scholl's Ferry Rd., Part II
Dedicated to Poetry Magazine and Twitter
To praise one
Is to praise both
I don’t have a Guggenheim fellowship,
And probably I never will;
Those who live in cars
Can’t get the contacts, usually.
They tell me I am privileged because my skin;
Well, tell that to the cop
Who caught me for illegal camping;
Tell that to the clergyman of Unzen.
I am the minority in
Senegal and Monterrey,
And even ancient Greece –
But let’s start with the magazines:
Tyranny beneath another name
Is tyranny the same;
All went well with Robespierre
For one delightful year.
“Silence is complicit.”
Silence is complicit?
Channing Ode is ancient writ;
Bet you haven’t heard of it.
I have read a thousand books;
I am some ten thousand books.
I am not the voice of hatred;
I speak for the hated.
Amplify my tone,
You amplify your own.
I am dangerous argument;
I speak for the mute.
I am the unpublishable –
My words aren’t that dangerous.
I speak not the dread word:
CENSORED.
“Negress”
Is a word I’d hate to use.
Grandma said it often, also
“Japanese” and “Jew”.
. . . . .
Tear down all the articles?
Can’t tear down ideas.
Would you wreck or lift?
Oh, but you fall silent…
Don’t you have poetic gifts?
And if we cannot sing, why drown
The elevated thing
In counterpoint of rock,
O’ lapidating masses?
Here’s a hint to see what’s right:
Look at all the good thoughts
Actively suppressed,
And those suppressed good thoughts are right.
I will tell you how diversity is lost,
O’ lapidating masses;
I will tell you how diversity of speech is lost,
But first I’ll give my street credentials.
. . . . .
I’m the nurse that diagnosed America bipolar;
I was present at the moment of the fall of Rome;
I was tossed from the Tarpeian Stone;
I’m a million and three years old;
Just turned eighteen and gettin’ started;
I lived in the badlands clad in wild buffalo;
I smoked with the Dené Navaho;
Taught them the secrets of the seas;
I buried my own grandma,
Confided with Zenobia,
Hid with Billy the Kid,
Tutored Quanah Parker,
Wrote for Saul Alinksy;
I’m the Dialectic and the Open Society;
I am your worst enemy,
The gadfly,
The mayfly,
The mosquito trumpeting of fame;
Loose taboos unfurl
From my loose tongue
Like forming thunderheads;
Try to stop my throat?
Try to put the Great Northeaster
in a child’s snow globe.
. . . . .
Let us go then you and I
To
Twitter
Readers of the future
Twitter
is
an
Abstract marketplace for dogbarks
where the big dog barks
the cats all mewl
the one cat chased the dog
the big dog chased the cat uptree and
Barks and mewls both fill the land
Readers of the future
Twitter
is
an
Abstract piece that sunders peace
And He Who Spread the Canvas
Ruined our museums and ran off with the cash
Twitter is bubble and a speculation
A chorus for and by the toads
Dorsey
Glass and
Stone
Oppenheimer
Hahn
Readers of the future
Twitter
is
. . . . .
I’m the gagged man thinking truths;
They got that clamp light on my head,
That shotgun to my temple;
There’s dust moving in and out of the shadows;
My hands are bound in my country’s flag;
I’m in a basement underneath some Russian highway;
There’s a Tom Thumb Stalin in the back playing pipa
And no one’s making any sense;
I think they’re angry;
I think there’s asbestos in the air or something;
I think they’re trying to kill me grandma,
And once I’m in the dumpster
And the ransom’s square,
They’ll come for you
With words for worse.
(Progress is accompanied by music;
Never with a silence.
Silence raises hell.
Progress is accompanied by music;
Never with a silence.
Silence raises hell.)
. . . . .
I know (you think) you have to keep your jobs, so
Let me provide what the bootlickers won’t.
A moment of silence for the word unheard:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/153812/scholls-ferry-rd
I know (you think) you have to keep your jobs, so
Let me provide what the fakers won’t.
A moment of silence for the Poet of the Rose:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/153812/scholls-ferry-rd
Gaze upon these black and white dead spaces, o’ ye mighty, and be fearful.
Gaze upon these empty spaces, o’ ye mighty, and be fearful.
. . . . .
Did those words so horrify,
‘O Illustrious Foundation?
O’ manipulators at the vestibule,
Do these words so horrify?
“Pull the doorman’s sleeve
To get the landlord’s coat.”
Think he’ll give it up?
Why this change of clothes,
And not another wearer?
Let me tug your tails once more:
Though one be oppressed, a freedom won by
Wicked means will change, and re-oppress.
No crook staggers through the
Brambled patch of history
With unmolested clothes,
O’ dear Illiterati.
(What an age!
Where jail guards imitate the inmates
For the warden’s favor!)
. . . . .
I am not
your poet,
thank the lord
(I’m closer to the fool);
I am not
the mob—the crowd—the mass.
no work of the world is done through me.
I am not sebond – i don’t apologize
I am not
the poetry foundation,
sizeman,
dickman,
shapiro, green; i am not
the black girl, nor the queen,
the burka, nor
the salesman, nor
the label, nor
obsession with the form;
I don’t have a form.
CANNOT READ YOUR SIGNAL
YOU NEED TO TRY YOUR EMERGENCY SET
SOS SOS CQD CQD TITANIC
CQD THIS IS TITANIC
CQD THIS IS
. . . . .
We all owe ourselves some peaceful means.
We all owe ourselves real peace through peaceful means.
(Wicked is the one who offers easy peace.)
We all owe ourselves compassion.
We all owe ourselves some true compassion.
(Wicked is the one who promises with false compassion.)
Money – that great lie – is not our glue.
Money – that great lie – can’t be our glue.
(Warm our hearts and let our thoughts be cool.)
Peace:
Maybe you don’t think you want some peace,
But I am here to say,
“You will.”
Especially when waking in a cell.
Compassion:
Maybe you don’t think you want compassion,
But I am here to say,
“You will.”
Especially when waking in a cell.
. . . . .
Go ahead and kill me,
I’ll be coming back in words.
(MLK who will win freedom)
Go ahead and kill me,
I’ll be coming back in thoughts.
(Socrates admonishing the jurors)
Go ahead and kill me,
I’ll be coming back in books.
(Jesus moves the boulder)
Erase me –
I return.
Censor me –
I grow in volume.
Cancel me?
You can’t.
I’m no one.
So are you.
And that’s the hardest truth.
(No real sense of being comes from being in a group;
All will face a private hell in total solitude.)
in this twittering world
three of us …
two broken windows …
Oh
God
Fire!
Fire!
Fire!