All history as reconstruction of the past is of course myth

Nigga in the Woodpile

a rant

for James Watson, Bonnie Hardwick, et al.

by J.J.Phillips

Part I

I am that nigga

In your woodpile

black hole

everything that is

no thing.

Dark matter

inscrutable

presence of absence

skulking in the back

alleys of your mind.

Bête noire

bad dream

that refuses to disperse

at daybreak

ineluctably mordant

force gone ape.

Labbalabbalabbalabbalabbalabbalabba

labbalabbalabbalabba

labbalabba

labbalabbalabbalabba

labbalabbalabbalabbala.

Mean cut you with a razor gene

shiftless vagrant in the blood

caught in the kink of the chromosome

caught in the kink of the hair curling

in the nostril’s angry flair

in the prognathous jaw locked

in a truculent pout of the lip

in a certain sly cast

of the mind and eye it lies

in a big high butt
and jut of hip.

A telltale trace

at the base of the fingernail

betrays the race.

Mitochondria

Yo mama.

Labbalabbalabbalabbalabbalabbalabbalabba

labbalabbalabbalabbala

labbalabbalabbalabba

labbalabbalabbalabba

labbalabbalalala.

Skeleton rattling in the closet

jump back Jack

dem dry bones gwine rise.

Spook

Spade

Rastus

Shine

Macaca

Alligator bait

Missing Link

in the Great Chain of Being

Native bearer

of the genetic load.

Wild thing in you

raging untamed

nourished in the blackest

folds of your heart dark

fear of self you dare not

face turned inside out

the son of Ham

the brand of race

shame of self

you give my name.

I am that nigga

in your woodpile

Labbalabbalabbalabba

Jiggajiggajigga Boo!

A really good article, and definitely an eye opener! Nothing can be compared to what I have read quite long time. To my readers, I’ll try to post the article as html format later. Meantime, you can read it as PDF text (only 14 pages).

In the US academy Langston Hughes is considered a great `folk poet’. This specialist sort of literary designation is not wrong; the problem is that it has come to replace the more historically accurate and generalist description of Hughes as one of the most well-rounded writers and intellectuals of the twentieth century. Outside the United States, Hughes is usually ranked alongside Eliot and Yeats, both in terms of overall intellectual influence within the English language and literature tradition and for his catholic literary output over the course of four decades of work. The thesis here is that the downgrading of Hughes in the US academy, from world-class writer and intellectual to `Negro folk poet’, is not only symptomatic of the endurance of white racial oppression in US society, but also extremely costly for students and scholars of American literature who have thus far been made familiar with only a fraction of his writings. (more…)

She said, “I love you “; “you’re a liar,” I said,
“cheat someone else who cannot scrutinise
these words which I can’t accept!
For truly I say, no one loves an old man!
It’s like saying. ‘We have tethered the wind’,
or like saying, ‘Fire is cold’ or ‘water is aflame’.”

Another poem:

Her father asked her to choose between an old man
and rich, or a poor young man.
She said: what a difficult choice, but should I have to choose, then anything is happier for me
than an old man’s face.
A man might be poor but become rich, but the other one will never again be young.