During these trying days of social distancing, self-isolating and quarantines, days rife with fear and anxiety, my colleagues and I thought you might like some company. So each day we will be introducing you to poets we have met over the years. The only contagion they will expose you to is a measure of joy, reflection and meditation brought on by “the best words in the best order.”
Enjoy.
— Bill Moyers
In this clip from the 1999 Dodge Poetry Festival, poet Amiri Baraka talks about how if you ask Why often enough, you might get Wise.
Poems
Africa! Go back black see yourself, know yourself, touch yourself, be yourself, world, world.
Mighty ancient Africa. Creator of the human being. Of speech. Of music. Of the city. Africa.
Africa! Go back black see yourself, touch yourself, know yourself, mighty ancient beautiful Africa.
But when you put your hand on your sister, made her a slave.
When you put your hand on your brother, made him a slave.
Watch out Africa. Watch out Africa. The ghosts going to get you.
When you put your hand on your sister, made her a slave.
When you put your hand on your brother, made him a slave.
Watch out Africa. The ghosts are going to get you. Watch out for the ghosts. Aaaahhh.
How did I get here? On my back in the dark with the wind and water blowing through my ears. How did I get here?
On my back in the dark with the wind and water blowing through my ears. Shango, Obatala, Eesa, save me. Allah, save me, save me, save me, save me.
How did I get here? On my back in the dark with the wind and water blowing through my ears.
My brother the king. My brother the king. My brother the king sold me to the ghosts. My brother the king sold me to the ghosts.
You know my brother the king? He worked for Budweiser, now my brother the king sold me to the ghost.
At the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean there’s a railroad made of human bones.
At the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean there’s a railroad made of human bones.
Like ivory.
Shango, Eesa save me.
Allah, save me.
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, save me, save me, save me.
Wade in the water.
Wade in the water, children.
Wade in the water. God’s gonna trouble the water
If you ever find yourself somewhere lost and surrounded by enemies who won’t let you speak in your own language, who destroy your statues and instruments, who ban your oom-boom-bah-boom, you in trouble, deep trouble.
They ban your oom-boom bah-boom, you in deep, deep trouble. [Laughs]
Probably take you several hundred years to get out.
Poem #2
Watch out for the ghost. Ghosts get you.
Ghost. Watch out for the ghost.
In bitter darkness, screams, sharpnesses, smells and seas. Black voice
wails in the death filled darkness. Watch out for the ghost. Watch out for
the ghost. Their bodies disease beneath intoxicated floors. A sea,
shudder. Afraid it’s turned to blood. Watch out for the ghost. Watch out for the ghost.
The bodies they will in death skull. To Lionel Hampton ghost. Look out for the ghost. Look out for the ghost.
Ghost is — have us chains. As we were dying. It’s called Semad. Maniac.
Drunken, killing sea. Ghooooooost!!!!! Ghooooooost!!!!!
The nigger computers are bluely reporting. Ghosts ahead! Ghosts ahead!
The chains and dark, dark, and dark. If there was light it meant ghosts.
Rotting family we. Ghosts ate three of people flattened and chained and bathed and degraded in their own hysterical waste below. Beneath.
Underneath. Deep down. Up under. Watch out for the ghost. Watch out for the ghost.
Grave. Cave. Pit. Lower and deeper. Watch out for the ghost. Weeping.
Miles below sky scraper gutters. Watch out for the ghost. Blue blood hole into its blueness is the terror. Massacre. Torture.
And original western holocaust. Blue blood hole into which blueness is the terror. Massacre. Torture. An original western holocaust. Slavery. We were slaves.
Slaves! We were slaves! Slave. We were slaves. Slave. We were s — we were slaves. We were slaves. Sl — we were slaves! We were slaves. We were slaves. We were slaves. We were slaves. We were slave. Slaving. Slaving. Slaving they threw our lives away.
Beneath the violent philosophy of primitive canticles. Primitive. Violent.
Steam driven. Canticles. It’s my brother. My sister.
At the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. There’s a railroad of human bones.
Black ivory Black ivory.
Didi Didi di di…
[hums] Think of slavery as educational.
Watch Bill’s entire interview with Amiri Baraka from 1999.
We knew him as Amiri Baraka, but his name was LeRoi Jones when he burst on the public scene in the 1960s. The Beatniks shaped his poetry, and the struggle of American blacks for justice, his politics. Baraka studied philosophy and German literature, immersed himself in jazz and the blues, was a university professor and a political activist. His name is synonymous with the Black Arts Movement that changed American culture. On January 7, 2014, Amiri Baraka passed away, aged 79.
