ChickenBones: A Journal is dedicated to Nathaniel Turner, prophet of Southampton, and Marcus Bruce Christian, Poet of New Orleans.
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Amiri Baraka Speaks
Why Is We Americans?
By Amiri Baraka
what i want is me. for real. i want me and my self. and what that is is what i be and what i see and feel and who is me in the . what it is, is who it is, and when it me its what is be....i’m gone be here, if i want, like i said, self determination, but i aint come from a foolish tribe, we wants the mule the land, you can make it three hundred years of blue chip stock in the entire operation.
We want to be paid, in a central bank the average worker farmer wage for all those years we gave it free. Plus we want damages, for all the killings and the fraud, the lynchings, the missing justice, the lies and frame-ups, the unwarranted jailings, the tar and featherings, the character and race assassinations. historical slander, ugly caricatures, for every sambo, step and fechit flick, we want to be paid, for every hurtful thing you did or said.
For all the land you took, for all the rapes, all the rosewoods and black wall streets you destroyed. all the mis-education, jobs loss, segregated shacks we lived in, the disease that ate and killed us, for all the mad police that drilled us.
For all the music and dances you stole. The styles. the language. the hip clothes you copped. the careers you stopped. All these are suits, specific litigation, as represent we be like we, for reparations for damages paid to the Afro-American nation.
We want education for all of us and anyone else in the black belt hurt by slavery. for all the native peoples even them poor white people you show all the time as funny, all them abners and daisy maes, them beverly hill billies who never got to no beverly hills. who never got to harvard on they grandfathers wills.
We want reparations for them, right on, for the Mexicans whose land you stole. for all of north Mexico you call Texas, Arizona, California, New Mexico, Colorado, all that, all that, all that, all that, all that you gotta give up, autonomy and reparations. to the Chicanos, and the Native Americans, who souls you ripped out with their land, give Self-Determination, Regional autonomy, that’s what my we is askin, and they gon do the same. when they demand it, like us again, in they own exploited name.
Yeh the education that’s right two hundred...years. We want a central stash, a central bank, with democratically elected trustees, and a board elected by us all, to map out, from the referendum we set up, what we want to spend it on. To build that Malcolm sense Self-Determination as Self-Reliance and Self Respect and Self Defense, the will of what the good Dr. Du Bois beat on — true self consciousness. Simply the psychology of Freedom.
Then we can talk about bein american. then we can listen without the undercurrent of desire to first set your [bleep] on fire. We will only talk of voluntary unity, of autonomy, as vective arms of self-determination. If there is democracy in you that is where it will be shown. this is the only way we is americans. this is the only truth that can be told.
Otherwise there is no future between us but war. and we is rather lovers and singers and dancers and poets and drummers and actors and runners and elegant heartbeats of the suns flame....but we is also to the end of our silence and sitdown. we is at the end of being under your ignorant smell your intentional hell. either give us our lives or plan to forfeit your own.
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/1/10/amiri_baraka_1934_2014_poet_playwright
Wailers
By Amiri Baraka
Wailers are we
We are Wailers. Don’t get scared.
Nothing happening but out and way out.
Nothing happening but the positive.
(Unless you the negative.)
Wailers. We wailers. Yeh, Wailers.
We wail, we wail.
We could dig Melville on his ship
confronting the huge white mad beast
speeding death cross the sea to we.
But we whalers. We can kill whales.
We could get on top of a whale
and wail. Wailers. Undersea defense hot folk
Blues babies humming when we arrive.
Boogie ladies strumming our black violet souls.
Rag daddies come from the land of never say die.
Reggae workers bringing the funk to the people of I. We wailers all right.
Hail to you Bob, man! We will ask your question all our lives.
Could You Be Loved? I and I understand.
We see the world. Eyes and eyes say Yes to transformation.
Wailers. Aye, Wailers.
Subterranean night color Magis,
working inside the soul of the world Wailers.
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/1/10/amiri_baraka_1934_2014_poet_playwright
Amiri Baraka and Maya Angelou cutting a rug!
Beautiful Black Women
By Amiri Baraka
Beautiful black women, fail, they act. Stop them, raining.
They are so beautiful, we want them with us. Stop them, raining.
Beautiful, stop raining, they fail. We fail them and their lips
stick out perpetually, at our weakness. Raining. Stop them. Black
queens. Ruby Dee weeps at the window, raining, being lost in her
life, being what we all will be, sentimental bitter frustrated
deprived of her fullest light. Beautiful black women, it is
still raining in this terrible land. We need you. We flex our
muscles, turn to stare at our tormentor, we need you. Raining.
We need you, reigning, Black queen.
It’s Nation Time
By Amiri Baraka
come out niggers niggers niggers niggers come out
help us stop the devil
help us build a new world
niggers come out, brothers are we
with you and your sons your daughters are ours
and we are the same, all the blackness from one black allah
when the world is clear you’ll be with us
come out niggers come out
come out niggers come out
It’s nation time eye ime
It’s nation ti eye ime
It’s nation ti eye ime
It’s nation ti eye ime
chant with bells and drum
it’s nation time
It’s nation time, get up santa claus
get up roy wilkins, get up diana ross, get up jimmy brown
it’s nation time, build it
get up muffet dragger
get up rastus for real to be rasta farari
ras jua
get up nigger get up nigger
come over here nigger
take a bow nigger
It’s Nation Time!
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/1/10/amiri_baraka_1934_2014_poet_playwright
