Monday, January 15, 2018

January 15: John Lewis, June Jordan, "In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr."

This morning, while I was waiting to be wheeled into my procedure at the hospital, I was watching The View on television.  It was a Martin Luther King Day special.  One of the guests on the show was Congressman John Lewis, who was a friend of Dr. King.  Marched with him.  Got arrested over 40 times during the Civil Right Movement.  He is a hero in every sense of the word.

During his time on The View, he said that, if Martin Luther King had lived, Donald Trump would not be President of the United States.  He said that the United States is still recovering from the assassination of Dr. King, fifty years later.  Yet, despite having white supremacists marching in the streets of contemporary America, despite the "shithole" in the Oval Office, Representative Lewis said that he still has hope.  He said that we can't lose hope, or else we have already lost.

So, in honor of this day, I give you a poem by June Jordan,  It's a howl of a poem, full of anger and righteousness.  I imagine Jordan standing in the middle of a church, fists raised, yelling these words at the top of her lungs.  There's no real form to it.  It's all pain.  Fury.

Saint Marty is not losing hope, Mr. Lewis.

In Memoriam:  Martin Luther King, Jr.

by:  June Jordan

I

honey people murder mercy U.S.A.   
the milkland turn to monsters teach   
to kill to violate pull down destroy   
the weakly freedom growing fruit   
from being born

America

tomorrow yesterday rip rape   
exacerbate despoil disfigure   
crazy running threat the   
deadly thrall
appall belief dispel
the wildlife burn the breast   
the onward tongue
the outward hand
deform the normal rainy   
riot sunshine shelter wreck
of darkness derogate
delimit blank
explode deprive
assassinate and batten up
like bullets fatten up
the raving greed
reactivate a springtime
terrorizing

death by men by more
than you or I can

STOP


       II

They sleep who know a regulated place
or pulse or tide or changing sky
according to some universal   
stage direction obvious   
like shorewashed shells

we share an afternoon of mourning   
in between no next predictable
except for wild reversal hearse rehearsal   
bleach the blacklong lunging
ritual of fright insanity and more
deplorable abortion
more and
more

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