TUTTI FRUTTI
A
A wop
A wop BOP
A wop BOP a
loo
A wop BOP a
loo BOP
A wop BOP a
loo BOP a LOP
A wop BOP a
loo BOP a LOP bam
A wop BOP a
loo BOP a LOP bam bom
A wop BOP a
loo BOP a LOP bam bom BOOM
A wop BOP a
loo BOP a LOP bam bom
A wop BOP a
loo BOP a LOP bam
A wop BOP a
loo BOP a LOP
A wop BOP a
loo BOP
A wop BOP a
loo
A wop BOP
A wop
A
PSALM 150 AND ALL THAT JAZZ
Hallelujah!
Praise the everything to which I am nothing!
Praise the nothing to which I am everything!
Praise the universe beyond us!
Praise the universe within us!
Praise with Freddie Hubbard trumpet tour of Cantaloupe Island!
Praise with
Purple Haze from Jimi Hendrix’s electrifying guitar!
Praise with Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man!
Praise with a Shakira Hips Don't Lie
dance!
Praise with Newport Jazz Festival secular humanists
dancing to gospel beat of Mahalia Jackson!
Praise with Don Cornelius Soul Train line dancers
introducing
on syndicated television show the latest dance moves!
Praise with Eric Dolphy playing Jitterbug Waltz on flute!
Praise with loud
crashing cymbals of Elvin Jones drum proclamations!
Praise with Willie “life-of-the-party” Bobo on conga!
Let everything that has breath
Sock-it-to-me! Sock-it-to-me! Sock-it-to-me!
GENESIS 3:9
And the Lord God called unto
Adam
and said unto him, WHERE
ART THOU?
And he answered, Just kicking
back
in Eden with Eve on a planet
orbiting one
of 400 billion stars in the
Milky Way, one
of around two trillion
galaxies touring
the observable universe which
could be
one of an infinite number
wandering
within a multiverse.
But, hey, I was getting ready to ask
you the same question!
Above condo pool
Cypress pine
in spiraling ascent
to Paradise
Below condo pool
Cypress pine
in spiraling
descent
to Inferno
So, oh my friends
and my foes,
Chose wisely the
Path you go
DEPRESSION KIDS
Cotton blond Dean James so cool
Dad owns two postwar model cars,
Gets to drive dazzling white
‘49 Ford any time he wants
Dean and Natalie crazy ‘bout each other
He likes to drive her to Springlake
amusement park and thrill the hell
out of her on roller coaster rides
One spring morning, Dean feels
day too beautiful to waste on boring
eighth grade classes and takes
Natalie for spin in father’s ’49 Ford
Speed limit sign says 65
but Henry Ford
don’t make Model T’s no more
FASTER! FASTER!
75 Miles per hour
Depression...World War II behind
Good times rolling like Oklahoma hills
FASTER! FASTER!
85-90...Washita River Bridge
Speeding toward them
Let’s see whatya got, hot mama!
It’s a great day to die in the Indian State
FATHER SKY/MOTHER EARTH
December, 1953
Freshman year at Oklahoma Baptist University located
in Shawnee, city named after first people’s nation led by Tecumseh who died 140
years ago in battle defending ancestral homeland from settler colonial invaders
Under darkening purple skies in Pontiac sedan,
our university evangelistic team drives to
Indian tuberculosis sanatorium
Blue northern icy Arctic wind blasts cheeks pink
as we step out of car parked on asphalt lot
Blue-eyed student preacher along with four other
ministerial students stands before plate glass window
separating healthy settler-colonial descendants from
coughing and wheezing indigenous inmates
lying in or sitting upon hospital beds
In warm, earnest tone, he assures dark, brown eyes
in Ghost Dance trance that though their sins be
as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow
through
We stand upon cold, concrete floor above moist,
crimson soil of the state where the Trail of Tears came
to an end and sing, “Just as I am without one plea
but that thy blood was shed for me”
Oklahoma is from Choctaw words
okla and humma—the land
of the Red People
THANKING THE BIRDS
While Swift Eagle walks on reservation
he hears sounds of boys playing in the bushes
“There’s another one. Shoot it!” shouts one boy.
He pushes through the bush and sees
a boy holding a BB gun while his buddies
stand around a dead chickadee, robin
and several blackbirds.
“Ah,” he says, “I see you have been hunting.
Pick up your game and come with me.”
He leads them to a ground where they can
build a fire and cook the birds.
Before they eat, Swift Eagle says, “It
is important
to thank the birds for the gift of their songs,
feathers and bodies as food.”
As they eat he tells stories.
After his last story, he says, “You know the Great Spirit
gave the gift of life to everything that is alive.
Life is a very sacred thing.
But our Creator knows we have to eat to live.
That is why it’s permitted to hunt
So I understand you boys must have been
very, very hungry
to kill these little birds.”
A TRADER JOE’S SUPERMARKET IN MANHATTAN
I saw Walt Whitman at Trader Joe’s the other day. “Good
call,” he said smiling as I placed
two five ounce cups
of Greek nonfat blueberry yogurt in my shopping cart.
“Delicious and healthy while
only 130 calories.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “My stomach feels so good every
time I eat some and it doesn’t exit my body too hard
like an egg,
potato, and cheese burrito nor loose as
chocolate candy bars or a bag of roasted peanuts.”
The Ancient Mariner from Samuel Coleridge’s poem
appeared. “Every year 8 million tons of
plastic are dumped
into our oceans,” he
said. “Plastics, plastics, every
where
while albatross chicks with bellies bloated with
plastic bits are dying of starvation.”
Mary Oliver pushed her shopping cart over.
“Did you know,” she said, “during the course of
their lives the albatross, while traveling thousands
of miles on their migratory journeys, spend up
to five years in the skies without touching land?”
“What’s does Samuel Coleridge’s poem have to do with us?”
Whitman asked. “This store is too far from the
ocean
and the plastic cup will most likely end in a landfill
after it’s thrown away.”
Dorothy Parker behind Mary Oliver said, “Whether
thrown away
and ending in a landfill or the Great Pacific Garbage
Patch,
it will take centuries for a plastic bottle to
decompose
after a few minutes gulp of a soda pop.”
“Thank you for this
information, Ms Parker,” Whitman said.
“Obviously, we the consumers of
America need to recycle
more and throw away less.”
Edna St. Vincent Millay was shopping with Dorothy
Parker
“What good would that do, Walt?” she asked? “Globally
we
recycle less than 10% of all the plastic we produce.”
“When I was a kid,” I said, “I’d walk to a grocery store with
an empty quart of milk glass bottle and pay only 10¢ instead of
15¢
if I hadn’t brought the bottle. I don’t understand why they
stopped making glass bottles you can use for deposit
today.”
Pablo Neruda hearing us from a refrigerated counter,
dropped a package of Chilean sea bass in his shopping
bag
and said, “Es muy facil,
companero. By reducing labor costs
which comes with the washing and reusing of glass
bottles,
food and soda drink corporations make greater profits
increasing size of landfills and ocean plastic garbage
patches than manufacturing glass bottles which can
be used over and over again.”
Whitman shook his head. “I noticed your sea bass was
wrapped
in plastic over a styrofoam rectangle plate, Pablo,”
Emily Dickinson wearing a gray house robe over a
striped calico
dress and walking in slippers passed by. “That’s because
they don’t wrap meat in paper any more, Walt.”
Pablo Neruda was about to comment when
Thoreau rolled his cart by, “You mean to tell me
that for nearly 300,000 years we have lived without
plastics and all of a sudden, we can’t live without them.”
Allen Ginsberg walked in Trader Joe’s. “Hey, Walt baby,”
he said grinning!
“Hello, Allen,” Whitman smiled back.
“Do you still hear America singing,” Ginsberg asked?
BILLIE’S BLUES
Daughter of African-American unwed teenage couple,
brought before juvenile court at nine years old for
truancy,
dropped out of school at age 11,
also at 11 a neighbor attempted to rape her,
at 12 found job running errands at brothel,
started singing as teenager in Harlem nightclubs,
first black female singer to tour segregated South,
called a "nigger wench” in Louisville, Kentucky,
asked to use service elevator at New York hotel
instead of the one used by hotel guests because
white patrons were complaining,
protested low pay and poor working conditions,
fired for being "temperamental and unreliable,”
began using hard drugs in early 1940s
arrested in 1947 for possession of narcotics,
can’t leave man who isn’t true and beats her too,
won’t stop singing “Strange Fruit”
since
they’re still lynching her people,
Lady Day
with white gardenias covering
left side of black hair
sings the blues.
GOOD FRIDAY SONNET*
Golgotha trees bear a strange fruit
Bodies of insurgents writhing in
breeze
Blood on cross branches and at the
roots
Strange fruit hanging from Golgotha
trees
With bulging eyes and twisted
mouths,
Here is a fruit for the crows to
pluck
Pastoral scene of the imperial south
Here is a fruit for the wind to suck
Felons tortured under midday heat
This is a fruit for the sun to rot
and for the dogs to eat
Here is a strange and bitter crop
Resistance to Caesar’s reign futile
Punishment cruel and unusual
*
Excerpt
from a novella I am writing titled DECOLONIZE THIS GOSPEL
Illustration by
Mark Stilwell
EVERY OTHER DAY IN AMERICA
Every other day
in America a person of color killed by police
Three cops
killed unarmed black with 50 bullets on wedding day
murdered by cop
chokehold--Justice can’t
breathe
“Hands up! Do’t
shoot. Ferguson cop kills Michael Brown anyway
His body lies
like a dead dog on the street
Every other day
in America a person of color killed by police
Lives of black
and brown people don’t
matter
Unarmed Latino
shot from behind while running from cops in Disneyland city
Eric Garner
murdered by cop chokehold--Justice can’t
breathe
Grand Jury
convicts teen Michael Brown of his own murder
Police were only
doing their job of enforcing order of white supremacy
Every other day
in America a person of color killed by police
Police allowed
to use deadly force if they believe it’s
"immediately necessary“
African-American
boy with BB-gun in park killed by cops without warning
Eric Garner
murdered by cop chokehold--Justice can’t
breathe
Seldom have
police officers been found guilty of any killing
They were only
doing their job of keeping order
in the. colony
Every other day
in America a person of color killed by police
Eric Garner murdered by cop chokehold--Justice can’t breathe
ORANGE PREZ
Sez you speak Spanish.
You look Mexican.
Go back to where you come from.
Orange Prez’s got a God complex.
Data shows D.C. violent crime
at 30-year low.
Sez there’s big crime wave there.
Sends National Guard to nation’s capital.
Orange Prez’s got a God complex.
Sez without evidence, Venezuelan fishing boats drug vessels,
orders at least 20 military strikes against them in
international waters, killing some 80 people.[1]
Orange Prez’s got a God complex.
Scientists say if we want to
stick around,
we need to keep oil in the ground.
Sez he knows better. Drill, baby, drill!
Orange Prez’s got a God complex
Holds lavish Great Gatsby party at Mara Lago.
Over 40 million people lose SNAP benefits.
Jesus says when you feed the hungry, you feed me.
Christ quote not in Orange Prez’s upside down Bible.
A NEOLIBERAL PA$TORAL
The Free
market is my mantra.
For
offshore tax havens, I shall not want
It leads
me to spray glyphosates on green pastures
and lay
factory wastes into still waters
To cut
costs it guides me to lay off American workers
and move
operations overseas to hire cheap labor
Though I
walk through a valley deforested by climate catastrophe,
I fear no
evil for my government and media say
don’t worry
A banquet
is prepared for me far from the sight of over
two
billion people on earth who are food insecure
Surely
perpetual growth on a finite planet shall
follow me all the days of my life
World
without end Amen
Amen
Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
The Wealth of Nations
How can they call a corporation a person?
We’re told like a good neighbor, they are there.
I’ll believe they’re a person when Texas executes one.
Why no blame for the greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere?
Capitalism’s driving force is for ever more
accumulation.
Nature has no value until resources turned to
commodities.
Infinite growth on a finite planet is a fiction.
Invisible hand can not bring unlimited prosperity.
Capital applauds enterprise of the top one percent.
Claims that the fortune of a few benefits everyone
but ignores plight of those with no employment.
For mercy from Mammon, the poor can expect none.
Without wealth, there’s no work claims employer.
Without labor, there’s no wealth replies worker.
CREDO
I
am am a dues paying member of
Democratic
Socialists of America -
Los Angeles
I believe everybody has the right to
a
living wage,
housing,
healthcare,
tuition
free college education
I
don’t believe corporations have the
right to use skies
as
their private sewer for greenhouse gas emissions,
nor
oceans from being their plastic junkyard,
nor
to build crude oil pipelines, nor drill for oil
or
frack for gas on sacred ancestral homelands
of
the first peoples of the Americas
I
do not apologize for being
a
democratic socialist
If
you believe in the same rights I do,
maybe you’re one too
 |
