Once upon a time, not so very long ago,They hung us up in trees so that they could have a show.
It was a celebration, they brought children and food, They called it “pick a nigger” and said that it was good. They taught their children hatred and they nurtured the hate, They told them “It’s the way to live”, and now it’s too late. They grew up hating Blacks and all minorities,But they knew they could no longer hang us from the trees.
Cause along came Civil Rights and they had to lay low for a time because they couldn’t let their true feelings show. And so the years went by until they came up with a plan, And nation-wide they formed the biggest organized gang. They talked it over briefly said, “We know what we’ll do, Put badges on our chests and wear uniforms of blue.
We’ll take an oath that says that we’ll protect and we’ll serve, That’ll give us back our power, that’ll give us back our nerve.”So now it’s open season on us once again, They’re shooting, beating, choking every Black that they can. Doesn’t matter if we’re walking, driving, waiting on a train,Or shopping in a store, the results are still the same.
The courts are full of bullshit we see it every day, When a cop is brought before them, they just let ‘em walk away. They slaughter us daily like they slaughter a lamb, The system is a joke and justice is a sham. The situation’s bad and it will only get worse, If nothing’s done to stop it, it’s like living a curse. We’ve got to come together, bring this all to an end, Do something that will keep them from killing our men. They’re killing up our children, let’s remember that too,Anyone’s fair game, it could be me it could be you.
They’re killing all our brothers, husbands, fathers and sons, They’ve traded in their ropes, now they lynch us with their guns.
THEY’VE TRADED IN THEIR ROPES, NOW THEY LYNCH US WITH THEIR GUNS!
THEY’VE TRADED IN THEIR ROPES,
NOW THEY LYNCH US WITH THEIR GUNS!
STOP !!!!
(c) Eva Withers-Evans 2019
NO COPYRIGHT INFRIDGEMENT INTENDED
Eva Withers-Evans is an accomplished actress and arts educator who has performed and taught in the Cleveland area for many years. As an actress, she has been seen in a number of productions at Karamu Performing Arts Theater including, “Jar the Floor,” the female version of the “Odd Couple,” and the premier of “Johnny Taylor’s Gone,” among other well-known plays. Eva was also a member of Karamu’s Theater Outreach Performance Series (T.O.P.S.) for four years. She has appeared in a number of Ensemble Theater productions including, “The Kentucky Cycle” and “The Rabbit’s Foot. ” As an arts educator, Eva has worked with Young Audiences of Cleveland where she has played the roles of Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks. She has also taught drama in the East Cleveland School District, and worked on a distance learning project with the Cleveland School of Music. Currently Eva is a member of “Women of Season,” a group of women who dramatize the spoken word. Eva is always happiest when she is performing.
May 21, 2019adminPoetryComments Off on Let the Winds of Change Push You Sweetly Into Yourself
LET THE WINDS OF CHANGE PUSH YOU SWEETLY INTO YOURSELF
by Arthur T. Wilson
Let the winds of change push you sweetly into yourself not remaking yourself, but discovering yourself anew, unbowed,
the self already present without panic or judgments turned askew against you let the winds of change embrace your heart to protect you from further bellowing maelstroms of someone else’s effete and desperate lies cradle your inner voice fiercely and remember early flesh seedling times when your own mother said to you, “nothing is ever impossible to overcome,
The devil is a liar, and God reigns in you” Let the winds of change Remove your soul’s alarm from any free lading fear
Until your tears only gush to celebrate change Like warm spring rains giving wisdom briefings to a new season of roots pushing to reawaken let the winds of change push you sweetly into yourself, for in our world of willful complacency social justice still needs a bold trumpeter, a home, a voice, a warrior a steadfast uncompromising love, where the winds of change push us all into loud uncontested prayers and action to feed out children a history worth living under star gaze moon, or rising sun.
On a daily basis I clash with discontent bent to circumvent the dissent of irrelevance and arrogant pretenders. Big spenders who dictate to irate poverty-invoked binge benders sending messages camped out on grounds that pound drums of maltreatment in a society that retreats when the streets fill with loosed truth. I must confess that I am less angry at those who may need mouthwash in the onslaught of human microphones gone too long without a voice. My choice to choose to march with them looms from flashbacks of yesterday for fear of a blighted society that my children and grandchildren may have to be aligned with.
I sit in dismay each day at the disarray of falsehood and misunderstood laborers who labor in vain and go insane trying to make sense of all the nonsense and I wonder when good recompense will be sent the way of the righteous.
Cursing won’t reduce profane management nor exchange the reign of terror on our youth. Not even the voting booth gives solace to those soldiers still fighting in wars that have killed scores
and maimed the other half of those drafted by duty not when the spoil and booty is oil
and there is recoil from what the people truly need.
Greed is of
great significance
and relevance is merely romance
in every beleaguered stance of circumstance
I tire under unlit fires of justice
when politicians say;
“trust us”
we must separate the real
from that which is pathetically false
and emphatically count our losses
tossed in the torn fabric of a world gone mad.
It is sad to watch continuously
but as things may incomprehensively
be woven with threads of simplicity
I know not where they begin
or end in this trend of insanityTherefore, I close the door to hope
dangle a rope from the highest beam
and dream of suicide in denied compromise
to the wise and listen with an open mind
to try at best to find answers to questionsI have yet to ask
because bringing people to task
who wield power
causes the scouring of nothing
and I already embrace bad taste
wasted in the scheme of things
things that people tend to say
Renee Matthews-Jackson, was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. She made her Theatre debut in 1987 in Joseph Walker’s classic, The River Nigerat the world famous, Karamu House Performing Arts Theatre. Ms. Jackson’s credits include: From The Mississippi Delta, Zooman and The Sign, Fires In The Mirror, The Waiting Room, and countless more. Renee was in the 2004 – 2005 production of Jar The Floor, at Karamu. She directed Steal Away by Ramona King in October of 2005, at East Cleveland Theatre, In February 2006 she was seen in Sorrows and Rejoicingsby Athol Fugard at The Brooks Theatre in the Cleveland Play House, an Ensemble Theatre production, and in Jungle Bookas a cast member for The Cleveland Play House Youth Production. Her most recent perfromances was with an ensemble cast at Karmau in the World Premiere, A Colored Funeral by Gregory Carr and Ensemble Theatre’s production of Dividing the Estate.
May 19, 2019adminPoetryComments Off on No Offense Taken
no offense taken * by Renee Matthews Jackson
no offense taken
Emerging triumphant in spite of phenomenal odds, Americans removed from Africa through an economic condition called slavery is most miraculous. Slaves exemplified a drive and determination of the human spirit, reinventing themselves while living under the most inhumane, oppressive, and exploitive circumstances imaginable. In the very midst of slavery; a whole new culture, inclusive of language, art, lifestyles, religions, and the hardest to accomplish in such obligatory conditions, family evolved. Indeed the African American has reason to celebrate the triumph of the human spirit. In no way was the enslaved African more of a victim than a forerunner in the shaping of our country.
Artwork by Donovan Nelson
During the colonial period (1492 – 1776), 6.5 million people crossed the Atlantic to settle in America. One million were European. The other 5.5 million were African. Here is the intriguing fact; some 450, 000 of the ten million Africans survived the Middle Passage during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and settled in the Continental United States. By 1860, these 450,000 had grown to more than 4 million people of African descent, and more than 40 million today.
Artwork by Donovan Nelson
How was it possible for a people to steadily multiply in numbers while being eliminated through disease, lynching, war, genocide, you name it? No other group in the history of America has managed this feat. For well over two centuries, slavery was the central factor in American development. Slavery and the economic fiber from the slave trade shaped the modern world. It fueled the economics of Europe, disrupted the politics, and social life of Africa, and changed global economics for all time.
Today, most Americans avoid the study of the Institution of Slavery. A varied rationale is most understandable. To visualize slavery would be too haunting a picture for those whose ancestors were slave masters because of guilt and shame. Those who had direct ancestry to slaves, embarrassment, and feelings of being even further demeaned would be the result. So, most Blacks and Whites find it easier to look away from slavery at all costs. The images of this oppression are at best extremely harsh.
For over five hundred years, the hand-me-downs of slavery have been helpless victimization and unimaginable cruelty. Black bodies packed in slave ships like sardines, bound, shackled and beaten, ravaged and raped…. Images of those downtrodden, degraded, perennial victims, stripped of their culture, identity, and humanity… were more than humane people could bear. Ironically, abolitionist promoted images like these to further their mission prior to the Civil War. Their efforts were to appeal to the moral consciousness of ordinary American citizens.
Artwork by Donovan Nelson
Not until present day have we been able to look at slavery as more than a crime of villainous slave ship captains and crews of cowering African victims. It is now understood that slavery and its world-changing effects are far more than the day-to-day acts of brutality and unrequited labor. The slave trade is regarded today as the one singular event in the history of the Americas, and Europe that laid its foundation, as well as the onset of the underdevelopment of Africa from the 16th century to the 19th century.
Even more important is how slaves made a mockery of the institution by surviving and reinventing themselves to adapt to a foreign land that had nothing good in store for them. Studying the lives of slaves can lead all Americans to a better understanding of human endurance and ingenuity. It teaches us about living, surviving, and winning in the face of insurmountable odds.
No matter where we now stand, with all that, is true and real to the heart, and embark on the events of slavery; we will no doubt find a people who are victorious. In spite of dehumanizing conditions, such as being called “nigger”, (the lowest form of man) of setbacks, and racial profiling, and many other degradations, the ultimate example, and one of the greatest conquest in the history of this nation is the triumph of the African, removed from the Motherland, and placed in America.
May 19, 2019adminPoetryComments Off on Tribute to An Artist and A Brother
tribute to an artist and brother direct/a (for Dale Ricardo Shields) * by Toni King
trickster, traveler trumpet for life i saw you ticking off the minutes to showtime the writing on your shoes the winning number each one held after five minutes of your time daddy dale falling from the tongues of tough guys the secret language of comrades in truth i saw you teach/a, preach/a, motivate/a living lean, edgy, keen lifting large so their lives could talk back make plain speak a mountain into volcanic ash!
tribute to an artist and brother direct/a
toni c. king (C) All rights reserved
1/2/2012 for Dale
May 19, 2019adminPoetryComments Off on With A Boisterous Scream
with a boisterous scream*by Lennie Johnson III
Young man or Young soldier, hold pencil and write sentences, or grasp guns and fight wars. Militant warfare occurs here at the intersection, Always interrupted by probable cause, my flaws are tattooed to me, glued to me, I cant, hear, see or smell defeat with a boisterous scream, I , Too, Sing America, a story different from yours, yours, yours, and defiantly yours. The most important thing, is knowledge!
All rights reserved
(c) Lennie Johnson III
From the Denison University production
of I, Too, Sing America! (c) Dale Shields
