April Is National Poetry Month!
I WANT TO HEAR AN AMERICAN POEM
DEF JAM POETRY EDITION
RAS BARAKA
POET X AUTHOR X EDUCATOR X SOCIAL ACTIVIST X POLITICAN
X MAYOR OF NEWARK
Are there any American poets in here?
I wanna hear an American poem
Something American
South Carolina slave shouter
Alabama backwoods church shack call and response
I wanna hear an American poem
An American poem about
Share croppers on the side of the road
Of families in cardboard boxes
Not about kings or majestic lands
Or how beautiful ugly can be
I wanna hear some American Poetry
About projects
And lead poison
And poverty
And children in jail
I wanna hear a poem about a picket line
In a Joe Hill legend
Struggle for an 8 hour day
Hey you
Hey you
Where are all the American poems
About Harlem number runners
And barbershop conversations about
Colored faces on colored TVS
I wanna hear an American poem
Something American
As American as jazz
Or a South Bronx burner brandished on abandoned buildings
A scratch tune
A breakbeat
A backspin
A beatboxer
A rap song
In congo square
Niggas beating on buckets on broad street
As American as the Zulu Nation
And Latin Kings
I wanna hear an American poem
About a dead girl on Chadwick Avenue
With a bullet in her neck
From a cop doing his job
Ordered by Fascism
And crack cocaine
You know
Something made in the USA
Something American
And Afro-Cuban
New Yorican
Latin tinge
Beaten boom by and playna
Spiralling out of the wide open tenement windows
In the middle of winter
On the verge of East Harlem or North Newark
Palms of brown colonies
Of Albizu being tortured for breathing Taíno blood
Screaming African tongues
Dialoguing in Spanish for being him
Puerto Rican self, and
Worst of all
Loving it
My God where is all the American poetry
Just death marches
And stoic laughter
Niggas being funny
No more American poets
No I won't boost your morale
Or play your songs
Or make you feel comfortable
Or build your ego
Or Play my part
I just wanna hear an American poem
Something native
Like Trail of Tears
Wounded Knee
Like smallpox
And blankets
You know, American
Something that represents us
A colored rainbow
A big bright fist
An uncorrected sentence
Improper English
As American as COINTELPRO
As Peekskill, New York
As Robeson singing out the back of his truck
Like Nina Simone playing at the Village Gate
With Baldwin next to her on a piano stool
And Amiri and Amina Baraka in the audience
Air filled with Cognac
And Mississippi goddamn
Capture that moment!
Write Something about that
An American masterpiece
You know
An American poem
Something, strictly American
Like Red Summer
Strange fruit
pomarades
Hey you! Yeah you! Yeah you!
You, you!
Something American!
USA! America!
USA! America!
USA!
As American as the KKK
A poem about Emmett Till will do
The Tallahatchie River
Church bombings
Or child murders
About Alabama red dirt
And boycotts in Montgomery
About families migrating North
With dignity and shotguns
I wanna hear a poem,
A poem about a beautiful black boy
Can't you see him?
A beautiful black boy colored into the night
His eyes, the stars, his hands, our will
About a beautiful black boy in the middle of a project
Playing checkers with glass and stones
Who beat buckets or drums
And play the horn in his sleep
I wanna hear a poem
A poem about a beautiful brown girl
An incredibly beautiful brown girl
With an age, mahogany, smile, and
Flower pedals for her lips
And a beautiful brown girl with a poem in her eyes
A poem in her eyes
And a gun in her hand
Sitting in a puddle of tears
In Clinton’s women's facility
In the garden state
In the land of the free
You know something American
Something that represents me
A poem about Emmett Till will do
The Tallahatchie River
Church bombings
Or child murders
About Alabama red dirt
And boycotts in Montgomery
About families migrating North
With dignity and shotguns
I wanna hear a poem,
A poem about a beautiful black boy
Can't you see him?
A beautiful black boy colored into the night
His eyes, the stars, his hands, our will
About a beautiful black boy in the middle of a project
Playing checkers with glass and stones
Who beat buckets or drums
And play the horn in his sleep
I wanna hear a poem
A poem about a beautiful brown girl
An incredibly beautiful brown girl
With an age, mahogany, smile, and
Flower pedals for her lips
And a beautiful brown girl with a poem in her eyes
A poem in her eyes
And a gun in her hand
Sitting in a puddle of tears
In Clinton’s women's facility
In the garden state
In the land of the free
You know something American
Something that represents me
