Revolutionary Petunias Page 2

  Within the cleanswept tower stair

  Rock Eagle pinesounds

  Rush of stillness

  Lifting up my hair.

  Pinned to the earth

  The eagle endures

  The Cherokees are gone

  The people come on tours.

  And on surrounding National

  Forest lakes the air rings

  With cries

  The silenced make.

  Wearing cameras

  They never hear

  But relive their victory

  Every year

  And take it home

  With them.

  Young Future Farmers

  As paleface warriors

  Grub

  Live off the land

  Pretend Indian, therefore

  Man,

  Can envision a lake

  But never a flood

  On earth

  So cleanly scrubbed

  Of blood:

  They come before the rock

  Jolly conquerers.

  They do not know the rock

  They love

  Lives and is bound

  To bide its time

  To wrap its stony wings

  Around

  The innocent eager 4-H Club.

  Baptism

  They dunked me in the creek;

  a tiny brooklet.

  Muddy, gooey with rotting leaves,

  a greenish mold floating;

  definable.

  For love it was. For love of God

  at seven. All in white.

  With God’s mud ruining my snowy

  socks and his bullfrog spoors

  gluing up my face.

  J, My Good Friend (another foolish innocent)

  It is too easy not to like

  Jesus,

  It worries greatness

  To an early grave

  Without any inkling

  Of what is wise.

  So when I am old,

  And so foolish with pain

  No one who knows

  me

  Can tell from which

  Senility or fancy

  I deign to speak,

  I may sing

  In my cracked and ugly voice

  Of Jesus my good

  Friend;

  Just as the old women

  In my home town

  Do now.

  View from Rosehill Cemetery: Vicksburg

  for Aaron Henry

  Here we have watched ten thousand

  seasons

  come and go.

  And unmarked graves atangled

  in the brush

  turn our own legs to trees

  vertical forever between earth

  and sun.

  Here we are not quick to disavow

  the pull of field and wood

  and stream;

  we are not quick to turn

  upon our dreams.

  Revolutionary Petunias

  for June and Julius

  Beauty, no doubt, does not make

  revolutions. But a day will come when

  revolutions will have need of beauty.

  —Albert Camus, The Rebel

  REVOLUTIONARY PETUNIAS

  Sammy Lou of Rue

  sent to his reward

  the exact creature who

  murdered her husband,

  using a cultivator’s hoe

  with verve and skill;

  and laughed fit to kill

  in disbelief

  at the angry, militant

  pictures of herself

  the Sonneteers quickly drew:

  not any of them people that

  she knew.

  A backwoods woman

  her house was papered with

  funeral home calendars and

  faces appropriate for a Mississippi

  Sunday School. She raised a George,

  a Martha, a Jackie and a Kennedy. Also

  a John Wesley Junior.

  “Always respect the word of God,”

  she said on her way to she didn’t

  know where, except it would be by

  electric chair, and she continued

  “Don’t yall forgit to water

  my purple petunias.”

  Expect Nothing

  Expect nothing. Live frugally

  On surprise.

  Become a stranger

  To need of pity

  Or, if compassion be freely

  Given out

  Take only enough

  Stop short of urge to plead

  Then purge away the need.

  Wish for nothing larger

  Than your own small heart

  Or greater than a star;

  Tame wild disappointment

  With caress unmoved and cold

  Make of it a parka

  For your soul.

  Discover the reason why

  So tiny human midget

  Exists at all

  So scared unwise

  But expect nothing. Live frugally

  On surprise.

  Be Nobody’s Darling

  for Julius Lester

  Be nobody’s darling;

  Be an outcast.

  Take the contradictions

  Of your life

  And wrap around

  You like a shawl,

  To parry stones

  To keep you warm.

  Watch the people succumb

  To madness

  With ample cheer;

  Let them look askance at you

  And you askance reply.

  Be an outcast;

  Be pleased to walk alone

  (Uncool)

  Or line the crowded

  River beds

  With other impetuous

  Fools.

  Make a merry gathering

  On the bank

  Where thousands perished

  For brave hurt words

  They said.

  Be nobody’s darling;

  Be an outcast.

  Qualified to live

  Among your dead.

  Reassurance

  I must love the questions

  themselves

  as Rilke said

  like locked rooms

  full of treasure

  to which my blind

  and groping key

  does not yet fit.

  and await the answers

  as unsealed

  letters

  mailed with dubious intent

  and written in a very foreign

  tongue.

  and in the hourly making

  of myself

  no thought of Time

  to force, to squeeze

  the space

  I grow into.

  Nothing Is Right

  Nothing is right

  that does not work.

  We have believed it all:

  improvement, progress,

  bigger, better, immediate,

  fast.

  The whole Junk.

  It was our essence that

  never worked.

  We hasten to eradicate

  our selves.

  Consider the years

  of rage and wrench and

  mug.

  What was it kept

  the eyes alive?

  Declined to outmode

  the

  hug?

  Crucifixions

  I am not an idealist, nor a cynic,

  but merely unafraid of contradictions.

  I have seen men face each other when

  both were right, yet each was determined

  to kill the other, which was wrong.

  What each man saw was an image of the

  other, made by someone else. That is

  what we are prisoners of.

  —A personal testament by Donald Hogan,

  Harper’s Magazine, January, 1972

  Black Mail

  Stic
k the finger inside

  the chink;

  nail long and sharp.

  Wriggle it,

  jugg,

  until it draws blood.

  Lick it in your mouth,

  savor the taste;

  and know your diet

  has changed.

  Be the first at the crucifixion.

  Stand me (and them and her and him)

  where once we each together

  stood.

  Find it plausible now

  to jeer,

  escaped within your armor.

  There never was a crucifixion

  of a completely armored man.

  Imagine this: a suit of mail,

  of metal plate;

  no place to press the dagger in.

  Nothing but the eyes

  to stick

  with narrow truth.

  Burning sharp,

  burning bright;

  burning righteous,

  but burning blind.

  Lonely Particular

  When the people knew you

  That other time

  You were not as now

  A crowding General,

  Firing into your own

  Ranks;

  Forcing the tender skin

  Of men

  Against the guns

  The very sun

  To mangled perfection

  For your cause.

  Not General then

  But frightened boy.

  The cheering fell

  Within the quiet

  That fed your

  Walks

  Across the mines.

  A mere foot soldier,

  Marching the other way;

  A lonely Particular.

  Perfection

  Having reached perfection

  as you have

  there no longer exists

  the need for love.

  Love is ablution

  the dirtied is due

  the sinner can

  use.

  The Girl Who Died # 1

  “Look!” she cried.

  “I am not perfect

  but still your sister.

  Love me!”

  But the mob beat her and kicked her

  and shaved her head;

  until she saw exactly

  how wrong she was.

  Ending

  I so admired you then;

  before the bloody ending

  of the story

  cured your life

  of all belief.

  I would have wished

  you alive

  still. Or even

  killed.

  Before this thing we

  got,

  with flailing arms

  and venomous face

  took our love away.

  Lost My Voice? Of Course. / for Beanie*

  Lost my voice?

  Of course.

  You said “Poems of

  love and flowers are

  a luxury the Revolution

  cannot afford.”

  Here are the warm and juicy

  vocal cords,

  slithery,

  from my throat.

  Allow me to press them upon

  your fingers,

  as you have pressed

  that bloody voice of yours

  in places it could not know

  to speak,

  nor how to trust.

  * A childhood bully.

  The Girl Who Died #2 / for d.p.

  No doubt she was a singer

  of naughty verse

  and hated judgments

  (black and otherwise)

  and wove a life

  of stunning contradiction,

  was driven mad

  by obvious

  professions

  and the word

  “sister”

  hissed by snakes

  belly-low,

  poisonous,

  in the grass.

  Waiting with sex

  or tongue

  to strike.

  Behold the brothers!

  They strut behind

  the casket

  wan and sad

  and murderous.

  Thinking whom

  to blame

  for making this girl

  die

  alone, lashed

  denied

  into her room.

  This girl who would not lie;

  and was not born

  to be “correct.”

  The Old Warrior Terror

  Did you hear?

  After everything

  the Old Warrior Terror

  died a natural death at home,

  in bed.

  Just reward

  for having proclaimed abroad

  that True Believers never

  doubt;

  True Revolutionaries never

  smile.

  Judge Every One with Perfect Calm

  Follow the train full of bodies;

  listening in the tiny wails

  for reassurance of your mighty

  right. Ride up and down the gorges

  on your horse

  collecting scalps.

  Your creed is simple, and even

  true: We learn from each other

  by doing. Period.

  Judge every one with perfect calm.

  Stand this man here and that one

  there;

  mouths begging open holes.

  Let them curtsey into the ditch

  dug before them.

  They will not recall tomorow

  your judgment of today.

  The QPP

  The quietly pacifist peaceful

  always die

  to make room for men

  who shout. Who tell lies to

  children, and crush the corners

  off of old men’s dreams.

  And now I find your name,

  scrawled large in someone’s

  blood, on this survival

  list.

  He Said Come

  He said come

  Let me exploit you;

  Somebody must do it

  And wouldn’t you

  Prefer a brother?

  Come, show me your

  Face,

  All scarred with tears;

  Unburden your heart—

  Before the opportunity

  Passes away.

  …Or maybe the purpose of being

  here, wherever we are, is to increase

  the durability and the occasions of

  love among and between peoples. Love,

  as the concentration of tender caring

  and tender excitement, or love as the

  reasons for joy. I believe that love

  is the single, true prosperity of any

  moment and that whatever and whoever

  impedes, diminishes, ridicules, opposes

  the development of loving spirit is

  “wrong” /hateful.

  —June Jordan

  Mysteries

  The man who slowly walked away from

  them was a king in their society. A day

  had come when he had decided that he

  did not need any kingship other than the

  kind of wife everybody would loathe

  from the bottom of their hearts. He had

  planned for that loathing in secret;

  they had absorbed the shock in secret.

  When everything was exposed, they had

  only one alternative: to keep their prejudice

  and pretend Maru had died.

  —Bessie Head, Maru

  MYSTERIES

  Your eyes are widely open flowers.

  Only their centers are darkly clenched

  To conceal Mysteries

  That lure me to a keener blooming

  Than I know,

  And promise a secret

  I must have.

 
I

  the gift he gave unknowing

  she already had

  though feebly

  lost

  a planted thing

  within herself

  scarcely green

  nearly severed

  till he came

  a magic root

  sleeping beneath

  branches

  long grown wild.

  II

  and when she thought of him

  seated in the dentist’s chair

  she thought she understood

  the hole she

  discovered through

  her tongue

  as mysteries in

  separate boxes

  the space between them

  charged

  waiting till the feeling

  should return.

  III

  but she was known to be

  unwise

  and lovesick lover of motionless

  things

  wood and bits of clever

  stone

  a tree she cared for swayed overhead

  in swoon

  but would not follow

  her.

  IV

  and his fingers peeled

  the coolness off

  her mind

  his flower eyes crushed her

  till

  she bled.

  Gift

  You intend no doubt

  to give me nothing,

  and are not aware

  the gift has already been

  received.

  Curse me then,

  and take away

  the spell.

  For I am rich;

  no cheap and ragged

  beggar

  but a queen,

  to rouse the king

  I need in you.

  Clutter-up People

  The odd stillness of your body

  excites a madness

  in me.

  I burn to know what it is like

  awake.

  Arching, rolling

  across

  my sky.

  Your quiet litheness

  as you move across the room is

  a drug

  that pulls me

  under;

  your leaving slays me.

  Clutter-up people

  casually track

  the immaculate

  corridor/passion

  of my death

  and blacken the empty air

  with talk of war,