¡Victor Jara Presente!

Victor Jara was murdered by the U.S. backed-Chilean junta 39 years ago today.

"Let America Be America Again"

A despicable right-wing politician known for his bigotry and intolerance tried to use this the above phrase for his campaign slogan in the upcoming elections. Then somebody told him that it's from a poem by one of America's great poets, who happened to be both black and gay as well as a socialist, the great Langston Hughes (photo). He's thinking better of using the slogan now.

LET AMERICA BE AMERICAN AGAIN

Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

--Langston Hughes, 1938

(For Annie!)

Poetry of war & peace

This is a brief December 2010 performance from Brooklyn-based Palestinian/American poet Suheir Hammad. She recites two poems, "What I Will" and "break (clustered)." It's a really beautiful performance: the words are powerful and moving and her delivery is absolutely stunning. The message, of course, is everything, and somehow you know exactly what she's talking about, even though like many great poets her words are quite unspecific. It's funny because this makes the words so human, pulling shared threads together so evocatively you realize it's irrelevant whether she's talking about Palestine or Brooklyn. (Ditch the corporate propaganda video following the performance if you watch this by clicking through to the TED site. Sorry 'bout that.)

Thanks to my friend Jennifuh for turning me on to the work of her friend.

Freedom Fighter Marilyn Buck Dies Shortly After Parole

I was trying to decide whether to write about the parole recently granted to Marilyn Buck, an American revolutionary imprisoned since the 1980s. I am saddened to report that according to The Rag Blog, Buck passed away this morning in New York from cancer.

Marilyn Buck was arrested in the mid-1980s for her role in the notorious Nyack Brinks robbery that spelled the end of the road for a particular wing of the American left. Buck was alleged to have been a member of the May 19th Communist Organization, a group with roots in the Weatherman faction of Students for a Democratic Society. May 19th was the East Coast faction of a tendency that on the West Coast formed the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee. It straddled the lines of legality, supporting an network of leftists and revolutionaries driven underground by the government repression of the 1960s and 1970s counter intelligence program COINTELPRO. Buck is said to have taken part in the liberation of Assata Shakur from prison: a truly heroic and selfless act. I disagreed with many of the politics and actions of May 19th, but this was a woman who walked every moment of her talk. I remember those 1980s days of defeat and demoralization in the face of the Reagan juggernaut. I remember the witchhunt the media and the government undertook to paint these people as common criminals or terrorists. But Buck's life is enduring testament to the struggle for freedom not the mistakes of a particular group.

Buck was granted parole just a few weeks ago knowing that the cancer for which she had received inadequate care while in prison was likely incurable.

Here's "Rescue the Word," a poem she wrote in 1992, from the Friends of Marilyn Buck website:

sacred words are in danger
fugitives, they seek cover
bury themselves alive
shamed by the profane
purposes they are forced to serve
dressed in lily-white lies
words are in danger
english only vows
to tear out tongues
exiled witnesses
to collective memory and homeland ties
sacred words are in danger
trapped, they hang on billboards
judas-goats to conjure deception
sing them shout them
teach them
wear them
around your neck
amulets against amnesia

Ibaye. Presente!

There are a shocking number of political prisoners in American jails. They range from leftists like Buck to African-American and Native American revolutionaries, and Cuban fighters against terrorism. Here is a somewhat dated list.

Immigration Reform

Somehow, until recently, I had not actually read this whole poem.

The New Colossus, by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

"I believe in living"

This "holiday" weekend I've been reading Assata Shakur's autobiography, "Assata: An Autobiography." It's the story of the African-American freedom fighter who was framed for murder in the 1970s but who wound up miraculously escaping prison and fleeing to Cuba, where she now lives. The book opens with a poem which I wanted to excerpt here:

"I beleve in living.
I believe in the spectrum
of Beta days and Gamma people.
I believe in sunshine.
In windmills and waterfalls,
tricycles and rocking chairs.
And I believe that seeds grow into sprouts.
And sprouts grow into trees.
I believe in the magic of the hands.
And in the wisdom of the eyes.
I believe in rain and tears.
And in the blood of infinity.
I believe in life.
And I have seen the death parade
march through the torso of the earth,
sculpting mud bodies in its path.
I have seen the destruction of the daylight,
and seen the bloodthirsty maggots
prayed to and saluted...
I believe in living.
I believe in birth.
I believe in the sweat of love
and in the fire of truth.
And i believe that a lost ship,
steered by tired, seasick sailors,
can still be guided home
to port."

Check out the book for the whole thing. Powerful, beautiful stuff.

Echoes of a Past Life - Yesterday, Today, & Tomorrow

I wrote this little blur of Pagan poetry for the occasion of Stonewall 25, the 1994 celebration of the anniversary of the Stonewall riots; the beginning of gay pride. It appeared unsigned on a Queer Pagans flyer. (The photo is by me: a detail of a tombstone in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague, Czech Republic).

-----

We weren't then who we are now, nor then, did we know who we would come to be.
Imagining, once, we almost dreamed, and then forgot, the possibility of becoming who tomorrow we must discover in our bathroom mirrors,
and then, pretending, seeing no longer visions of unfolding design,
nor dust now remolded into plastic imitation,
but forging anew, like steel from iron,
like earthy coal from unaffordable diamonds,
like a ride on the subway from a pillow-tossed morning dream,
the stain on our hands, the dirt under our fingernails,
all proving gloriously our miraculous aliveness, and the inevitable perfection of Her world,
and the spiral that appears before our feet, like a precipice, yes,
but like a memory too,
and so we dance together, now, us,
in this place, here, who we are,
feeling each other's warm moving blood through thin membranes of palm and seeing all as it should be,
perfect and infinite.
No, not yesterday, today, now, the way to tomorrow unfolding as we walk.

Echoes of a Past Life - Maferefun Obatala

I wrote this short poem for my godfather about the Yoruba deity Obatala in 1996, shortly before I was initiated into the religion of Santeria. I was crowned "Olo Obatala Yeku-Yeku" and given the Yoruba name "Baba Adeleke" (My Father's Crown Triumphs). It sat on my jazz site jazzsupreme.com for years; since that site has sadly disappeared into the ether, I wanted to return it to internet life.

I'm not a very good santero, in that I don't participate in very much of the community's life; but I feel profoundly grateful for the sense of peace and balance that the religion has blessed me with; and I'm awed by the presence of Obatala's timeless wisdom and creative energy in my life.

Obatala

With cathode rays of red, green, blue,
miraculously, technologically,
my computer creates being out of electricity
pulling rays of different nothings into something
steered by fingers, tapping, and minds, whirling
and blood, rushing,
driven by irresistible sparks of hidden origin,

Red, green, blue lights; tiny beams of tamed fire
become one light, white light, brilliant,
all one thing suddenly,
shape and pattern revealed in form and shadow

One thing not another,
someplace else no longer,
now made distinct, crystalline:
One thing, one piece, white cloth.
No seam visible, no beginning, nor end,
like magic.

Like everything. Alive.

Echoes of a past life: My Seven African Powers

I published a small edition of a hand-made booklet for friends and family in 1993. Entitled "My Seven African Powers" I published it under the Six of Swords Press imprint: it had a color xerox cover (a rarity back then) and illustrations that combined found objects, original photos, appropriated art scans, weird typography, and a series of poems and brief epigraphs I had written over a few years, tied together with a natural fiber ribbon cut from a grass skirt.

Like most of my writings, the poems covered both political and spiritual subjects, and were arranged to loosely correspond to the 22 trumps of the Tarot deck, starting with the The Fool. Some are doggerel, and some I'm very happy with. Several of the poems had their origins in Pagan rituals that explored expressing life experiences in a sacred manner. My Tarot teacher, Cayte Jablow, (also my co-leader of Queer Pagans and of our smaller private "coven") was working out an experiential three-dimensional study of the Tarot and of Aleister Crowley's version of the Qabbalah; her vision of personal intimacy with the images of the Tarot was a spiritual revelation to me that's all over this short booklet. The title and cover art are references to the syncretic "7 African Powers" prayer card of spiritualist/botanica-style Santeria: the Orishas of Yoruba religion are combined with iconographic Catholic saints in a way that manages to be both cartoonishly simple and a profound statement about the universality of spiritual experience.

Here are a few of the poems. Perhaps the omitted ones will make an appearance here later. With the benefit of many years hindsight, I've edited a couple of these. They're my poems; I'm entitled!

-----

My Seven African Powers
by Ian Scott Horst
Six of Swords Press, 1993

How odd and wonderful it is that we each walk that path anew, and sometimes, when our feet land in stony fossil indentations, we say, "Aha!" thus remembering, until the glint of a golden sun blinds us to all but its shining presence.

STEPS
Each moment is a crossroads--
there we dance
possibility and danger
promise and regret,
hope and forgetfulness.
There the past is not relived
nor the future predicted--
instead the sweaty brilliance
of the now is embraced
its dizzy terrifying vertigo
revealing steps,
in pattern yet unknown,
on solid earth and level grade,
that in their steady fall
guide each beating heart
to its content
(February 9993)

MY SEVEN AFRICAN POWERS
With heart of amber
And lens of amethyst
Ruby-shod
I reach for the mirror
Emerald fingers
Wrapped in silver
Rivers of hot indigo
Animating glassine flesh

Inner visioned eyes tilt
Balance fails...I shudder

And golden tongues, shimmering, dancing,
Change yearning to black dust

No longer reflected
But real.
(January 9993)

ODE TO DIONYSUS & CHANGO
It begins like fever,
Wet hot skin heaving,
breath short quick, quivering.

The pulse-kindled flame that
Spreads outward
Engulf hips
Dizzies legs
Shuts eyes inward
Reaches, grasps at things that cool.

Transformed, I am one
With sad, inebriate madness
With visioned and welcomed fate.

Bitter tears tasted
Reveal edges felt,
And tested skin, like tight gloves
Stretched, regretfully confined
Now in this brief combustion
A delirious rhythm graces
Feet bare and feeling.

Beat-beat pause beat-beat.

My heart, wild and cruel,
lies throbbing on stone.
I grasp it.

One, in this red hot
Driven blur
Of
Dancing fire that eats need
and
Gives birth to love.
(January 9993)

ECOLOGY
I hear electricity. The waves roll and bounce.
I see, as in a mirror, a chrome and plastic lie, blue-tinted.
I touch glass and metal, reading, brailled, not the thing but its ghost.
I breathe raspy, wet and shallow, acrid piss and vivisected flower.
I taste ash and thirst.

I dance in concrete fields. My legs break and snap. I sink into shimmering, rainbow-shining mire.

And shit and
blood and
bottles and
rinds and broken
things become my
sustenance. And my
arm, rising, is blackened, ashen.

As in a memory, I saw a circle.
What was taken, was given back.
What was given back, remained to be shared again.

The memory wrinkles.
The mirror splits and grates.
And the bloom turns to poison,
acid, bitter, sad.
And I am witness.
(Samhain 9992)

THIS JOURNEY
And suffered pains
And griefs give way
On the dawning of that day

These weary shoulders,
Their secret burdens released
No longer shrugged nor stooped
Now move in breath's
Steady rhythmed motions

For this journey shuffles
Mud-caked souls to the embrace
Of some remembered destination
And yields...

...Hope.
(Winter 9993)