The World Will Follow Joy Read online

Amused many)

  Films

  Us all

  Sitting

  Talking

  Eating

  Laughing

  Being with

  You,

  As you

  Play dead.

  Later in

  The van

  Leaving

  Your place

  Of enchanted

  Rest

  We marvel

  At who

  Life

  Has put into

  Our vehicle.

  Old friends

  By now

  Really

  Because

  Of you.

  There is

  No other

  Explanation

  Though

  You

  May

  Continue

  Your little

  Afterlife game

  Of

  Playing dead.

  ***

  Democratic Womanism

  For Wongari Maathai

  Traditionally capable, as in: “Mama, I’m

  walking to Canada, and I’m taking you

  and a bunch of other slaves with me.”

  Reply: “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  —from the definition of “Womanist” in

  In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens:

  Womanist Prose, 1983, by the author

  You ask me why I smile

  when you tell me you intend

  in the coming national elections

  to hold your nose

  and vote for the lesser of two evils.

  There are more than two evils out there,

  is one reason I smile.

  Another is that our old buddy Nostradamus

  comes to mind, with his dreadful

  400-year-old prophecy: that our world

  and theirs too

  (our “enemies”— lots of kids included here)

  will end (by nuclear nakba or holocaust)

  in our lifetime. Which makes the idea of elections

  and the billions of dollars wasted on them

  somewhat fatuous.

  A Southerner of Color,

  my people held the vote

  very dear

  while others, for centuries,

  merely appeared to play

  with it.

  One thing I can assure

  you of is this:

  I will never betray such pure hearts

  by voting for evil

  even if it were microscopic

  which, as you can see in any newscast

  no matter the slant,

  it is not.

  I want something else;

  a different system

  entirely.

  One not seen

  on this earth

  for thousands of years. If ever.

  Democratic Womanism.

  Notice how this word has “man” right in the middle of it?

  That’s one reason I like it. He is there, front and center. But he is surrounded.

  I want to vote and work for a way of life

  that honors the feminine;

  a way that acknowledges

  the theft of the wisdom

  female and dark Mother leadership

  might have provided our spaceship

  all along.

  I am not thinking

  of a talking head

  kind of gal:

  happy to be mixing

  it up

  with the baddest

  bad boys

  on the planet

  her eyes a slit

  her mouth a zipper.

  No, I am speaking of true

  regime change.

  Where women rise

  to take their place

  en masse

  at the helm

  of earth’s frail and failing ship;

  where each thousand years

  of our silence

  is examined

  with regret,

  and the cruel manner in which our values

  of compassion and kindness

  have been ridiculed

  and suppressed

  brought to bear on the disaster

  of the present time.

  The past must be examined closely, I believe, before we can leave

  it there.

  I am thinking of Democratic, and, perhaps

  Socialist, Womanism.

  For who else knows so deeply

  how to share but Mothers

  and Grandmothers? Big sisters

  and Aunts?

  To love

  and adore

  both female and male?

  Not to mention those in between.

  To work at keeping

  the entire community

  fed, educated

  and safe?

  Democratic womanism,

  Democratic Socialist

  Womanism,

  would have as its icons

  such fierce warriors

  for good as

  Vandana Shiva

  Aung San Suu Kyi,

  Wangari Maathai

  Harriet Tubman

  Yoko Ono

  Frida Kahlo

  Angela Davis

  Celia Sanchez

  & Barbara Lee:

  With new ones always rising, wherever you

  look. Recent writers for instance:

  Michelle Alexander, Isabel Wilkerson, and

  Nancy Turner Banks, MD. Whose

  books, read together, go a long way toward

  bringing us up to speed on how our

  declining country got this way.

  You are also on this list, but it is so long (Isis

  would appear midway) that I must stop or

  be unable to finish the poem). So just know I’ve

  stood you in a circle that includes

  Marian Wright Edelman, Amy Goodman,

  Sojourner Truth, Gloria Steinem and Mary

  McLeod Bethune. John Brown, Frederick

  Douglass, John Lennon and Howard Zinn

  are there too. Happy to be surrounded!

  There is no system

  now in place

  that can change

  the disastrous course

  Earth is on.

  Who can doubt this?

  The male leaders

  of Earth

  appear to have abandoned

  their very senses

  though most appear

  to live now

  entirely

  in their heads.

  They murder humans and other

  animals

  forests and rivers and mountains

  every day

  they are in office

  and never seem

  to notice it.

  They eat and drink devastation.

  Women of the world,

  Is this devastation Us?

  Would we kill whole continents for oil

  (or anything else)

  rather than limit

  the number of consumer offspring we produce

  and learn how to make our own fire?

  Democratic Womanism.

  Democratic Socialist Womanism.

  A system of governance

  we can dream and imagine and build together. One that recognizes

  at least six thousand years

  of brutally enforced complicity

  in the assassination

  of Mother Earth, but foresees six thousand years

  ahead of us when we will not submit.

  What will we need? A hundred years

  at least to plan: (five hundred will be handed us

  gladly

  when the planet is scared enough)

  in which circles of women meet,

  organize ourselves, and,

  allied with men

  brave enough to stand with women,

  nurture our planet to a degree of health.

  And without ap
ology—

  (impossible to make

  a bigger mess than has been made)—

  devote ourselves, heedless of opposition,

  to tirelessly serving and resuscitating Our Mother ship

  and with gratitude

  for Her care of us

  worshipfully commit to

  rehabilitating

  it.

  ***

  Democratic Motherism

  My partner, a musician and Vietnam veteran

  (virtually kidnapped and forced to serve in

  that disastrous and genocidal war without his

  consent), is someone brave enough to stand

  with women, unafraid of being surrounded

  by or led by them. In conversing about what

  it will take to reclaim our planet we agreed

  that what Earth needs more than anything

  is mothering. Earth, Mother Earth, needs

  mothers, regardless of gender—though we all

  recognize who most mothers have been, and

  are. Mothering is an instinct, yes, but it is also

  a practice. It can be learned. For women it

  has been an eons-long experience: the art and

  necessity of taking care of all, of everything,

  of mothering. So perhaps the new “ism” we

  are talking about is not classic Womanism,

  but Motherism. Democratic Motherism.

  In any case, we will continue to endure,

  and detest, the systems currently in

  place, in which the condition of countless starving,

  tortured, enslaved and murdered children

  is seen as acceptable, unless we forthrightly

  begin to envision, and work for, something

  better: some way for humans to exist and

  thrive, without suffering the despair of every

  second of every day knowing our present

  predicament’s greatest cause is humanity’s

  fear of sharing equally with others, and its

  rapidly growing, partly because of this fear,

  self-hatred.

  On a recent visit to a still and quiet sacred

  site in Hawaii that is now surrounded by the

  pollution of unimaginable overcrowdedness

  and lack of peace, I recently experienced

  an insight that seemed at the time to be a

  direct message from ancestors who had used

  that site for thousands of years: it came to

  me in the form of the name for a new world

  political party (no kidding!). The Mother

  Defend Yourself Party. “Mother” referring to

  Earth. A poem (of course) accompanied it.

  Mother defend

  Yourself:

  We who love you

  Stand witness

  To

  Your innocence.

  One of this party’s first responsibilities would

  be to unite all segments of the globe in

  making offerings at the scene of every place

  the earth fights back in the effort to reclaim

  her freedom and integrity from the tyranny

  imposed on her by humanity. Where dams

  have burst, where forest fires have raged,

  where hillsides have crumbled. Where rivers

  have run wild. I am saying, as I believe, that

  we must begin again to have conversation

  with our planet.

  It was in Hawaii on an earlier visit, again

  to a sacred site (although of course all of

  Hawaii is sacred), that this became even

  clearer to me.

  A friend and I had gone on a “tour” of

  sorts that brought us to this place. We got out

  of the van and stood with our group at the

  designated “lookout” point. We were looking

  into a landscape that, though “beautiful”

  in the Kodak-moment sense, was lifeless

  and uninspiring. I commented on this to my

  Hawaiian friend, an artist, who shrugged and

  said: Of course. That is because what you’re

  looking at, this whole area, was traditionally

  sung to. What? I said. Yes, she said. Where

  we’re standing used to be almost like a stage.

  Folks who knew what they were doing,

  praising the aina (the land), would come here

  and sing their gratitude.

  Well, I said. You are a singer. Sing!

  Grabbing her tiny ukulele, which

  accompanied her everywhere, she did just that.

  As she sang in Hawaiian (a language

  outlawed by U.S. colonial rule for decades; her

  aunt had created a Hawaiian dictionary in an

  effort to preserve the language) it seemed to

  me the trees and other vegetation responded

  by standing taller, fluffing themselves up. The

  flowers among them appeared to fling their

  scent. I became vividly aware of everything’s

  aliveness.

  This token of gratitude, awareness, affection,

  might be our party’s first step.6

  ***

  After Many Years and Much Silliness

  After many years

  and much silliness on both our parts

  I invite you back to this sacred place

  we used to come

  to rest, to sleep, to dream;

  to heal

  our brokenness.

  I know you’ve missed it.

  The rosa morada trees

  whose blossoms consoled us

  and the moonlit maguey

  that made us wonder

  were taken out by last month’s hurricane.

  I witness the bare spaces with your eyes. And wait,

  humbled, for your murmurs of acceptance

  and letting go.

  We are adrift now. Every boat has left the shore.

  Everything in Nature is warning us

  to hurry up

  and share.

  ***

  When I Join You

  When I join you

  in the effort for peace

  I give myself over.

  There

  and not there.

  Marching

  with you

  alongside

  the many who have died

  it is as if we are marching

  across the Universe

  and just ahead of us

  if only in another galaxy

  there is a door.

  ***

  Going Out to the Garden

  Going out to the garden

  this morning

  to plant seeds

  for my winter greens

  —the strong, fiery mustard

  & the milder

  broadleaf turnip—

  I saw a gecko

  who

  like the rest of us

  has been reeling from the heat.

  Geckos like heat

  I know this

  but the heat

  these last few days

  has been excessive

  for us

  & for them.

  A spray of water

  from the hose

  touched its skin:

  I thought it would

  run away.

  There are crevices

  aplenty

  to hide in:

  the garden wall

  is made of stones.

  But no

  not only

  did the gecko

  not run away

  it appeared

  to raise

  its eyes

  & head

  looking for more.

  I gave it.

  Squirt after

  squirt

  of cooling

  spray

  from the gr
een

  garden hose.

  Is it the end

  of the world?

  It seemed to ask.

  This bliss,

  is it Paradise?

  I bathed it

  until we were both

  washed clean

  of the troubles

  of this world

  at least for this moment:

  this moment of pleasure

  of gecko

  joy

  as I with so much happiness

  played Goddess

  to Gecko.

  ***

  Notes

  1. The poems of The World Will Follow Joy: Turning Madness into Flowers were written between October 2009 and August 2011.

  2. Three deep bows to Noelle Hanrahan, Angela Davis and Gloria LaRiva. Champions of liberty; long distance, unwavering.

  For a fuller comprehension of this poem please view these films: Incident at Oglala, In Prison My Whole Life, Trudell, and Why We Fight.

  3. B. B. King and Lucille, his guitar.

  4. April 20, 1997, New York City, the 92nd St. Y. Italicized portion of the poem written in September, 2009.

  5. Happy Birthday, beloveds! Gloria, Quincy, Mel, Tracy, Flannery. And especially the March-born hero who started it all: my brother Bill. William Henry Walker. Born March 23, a smiling, generous, well-balanced baby and child who was the same as a man.

  6. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson; AIDS, Opium, Diamonds and Empire: The Deadly Virus of International Greed, by Nancy Turner Banks, MD; and The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander—these three books, read in this order, are a university course in history and present-day reality hard to obtain otherwise. Enjoy! Not because they’re easy to read. They’re not. They are deeply painful. The joy comes from their existence, since our only hope is knowing what is (and has been) going on.

  Someone has said,”We don’t need another ‘ism’.” And I agree that the “isms” of the past have been tiresome; but this is partly because woman, and especially dark woman, had no real place in them. In any event, this offering, like all those made now, is comparable to a simple discarded stone brought with humility to the collective pile of our understanding as we look the future in the face and resolve, whatever our fears, to move forward.

  Photo Credits

  Page 44: (top) New dormitory for the girls of Margaret Okari Primary School © Kwamboka K. Okari; (middle) Yvonne and Brenda © Kwamboka K. Okari; (bottom) Flower image courtesy of the Dale M. Mcdonald Collection, State Library and Archives of Florida.

  Page 52: Alice Walker and Sean Lennon © Pratibha Parmar/Kali Films.