Long Blacks Poems

Merov’s Ghost (1) and Other Shots Across My Bow!

In mid-November of Fourteen, I published my first web verse here, (2)
the earliest spanned sixty years, composed for Senior English class
one night in Nineteen Sixty-One. Assigned just...

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I heard two distinct voices in the night,
Conversing amongst themselves most eagerly
They whispered like children in excitement
Their sardonic mouths sung many savvy tunes
It was Death I could perceive, defending me,
And he, a strange, distant friend
Seemed...

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Don't you think that this title is darkly divine?
But, of course, there will have to be weirdness that’s funny,
Though my nightmares are many and have complex arcs
There’s some risk here I might have to work...

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Hello. I was born after the Civil War and met my fate after much civil unrest. You may have never encountered me, but some things you might already know. My name is Jim Crow, and...

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La Charte des Droits de l’Homme pour les Aborigènes - Translation of Oodgeroo Noonuccal's Aboriginal Charter of Rights by T. Wignesan


Nous avons besoin de l’espoir, pas de racisme,
La fraternité, pas d’ostracisme
Du progrès pour les Noirs,...

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Despite the day-to-day signs of man’s bitter degradation, there were many in the South who somehow still failed to see the endless pain of segregation. From the viewpoint of those who never lived there as...

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I killed my friend,
I never wanted,
Do not see me cruel,
I did it for love.
We both ran naked
Under this influential shower.
No one uncoupled his lips
Against this faint madness,
We were indebted,
Either had to earn the prize.


It was...

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“Barking Up the Wrong Tree” 

ghost gums
shed their bark 
the min-min 
makes good use of it
papyrus, soft enough to 
imprint and write
thoughts, like the 
ripening welts of 
green ants 
small bites sting
subcutaneous and 
meridional, 
terra...

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ME dear FATHER you already know,
But you need to be briefed,
On a tragedy I believe you must not know.
There’s a deadly dance with violence killing teens in America’s Black Communities.
Use to be, 
Good Christian mothers,...

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Hey bruh, 
haven’t you heard,
ain’t you read the news?
The White House is gonna eradicate 
the fear infested inner city blues
That Trump fella says,
he’s got his poison pen ready to use
He says black folks got nothing...

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I arose a proud African lineage from far Mid Northern, Southern, Western;
                      Stolen, Trick,...

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When I Was Born in '45
By Franklin Price
08/08/202

When I was born in '45, was another time and place
Merritt Island, I called home, we had not gone to space
Segregation was the way, we lived back in...

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Martin, a very senior citizen, wants to get a bucket and knife and go hunt up some greens in a field in Alabama. But in spite of his yearnings for a big bowl of greens,...

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Part 1



Genecia, was an angry girl. Actually, Genecia was always angry, 24/7, 365 days a year. This was even reinforced by her own mother, who told her often enough
Genecia, you were born angry. Well, if...

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SAD Seasonally Affective Disorder

Some are prone to depression in winter when days get shorter when
less light enters the brain through the eyes and thoughts become darker

I am also affected and when news gets explosive when...

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Trumptopia
Let's be honest and real you have more bias then flammable steel? 
What if Hitler found the truck was not alive but yeah he's a man?
Would if be fine if the only reason
Trumptopia
Why he won...

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Poet:  Ken Jordan 
Poem:  One Knee 
Edited by:  Sparkle Jordan 
written:  September 2017


One Knee

Yes, I kneel down on one knee 
damn right I do -
I will not honor an Anthem 
of...

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Gateway town, Mississippi and Missouri river flooding confluence,
with its celebration of manifest destiny, its looming, iconic archway.
Stainless westward marker, its culture flowed southward for influence
within the lawn-jockey, pink flamingo neighborhoods of moral decay. 

T.S, Eliot,...

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A smile won’t help at this very moment
A moment of peace, a moment of rest that ditched me long ago
Wondering what has been unknown…for many, many years
A million, million, million miles away have you been
I...

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Where was I on "Bull" Conner's day,
When the world saw white-hate on display?
Attack dogs, hoses, and lawmen's feet,
Blacks felled like timber on a southern street.
As fists and batons flayed the air,
Hate left the wounded laying...

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ITS ALWAYS THE MONEY
by
JOHN M. ARRIBAS


It’s always the money I’m saddened to say
Put your hand in someone’s pocket its time to pay
When it’s not the money, it’s a crusade
Or revenge for a crime that was...

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I have this burning desire
To find old mate
I want to sit
And chat with him
Under a Gum and setting sun
About what has come
And what has passed
Times of old
Places we’ve been told
Along the wallaby track
Signs of danger
Moments...

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I went from ghetto living
And the ghetto kind of days
To being up out of it
And to seeing better days.
Now the truth stays 
And my mind plays,
in a blessed way
defying the lie defining me 
in my...

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I sit here steeping in the History 
of Our Land, a class, my eyelids dense.
Our Flag hangs in the corner of the class
Red and White folds in deluge, licking the
framed portrait of our Thomas Jefferson,
our...

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It was both a complicated and simpler place and time.
Mostly a quiet place tucked away, but not far off the beaten path.
Occasionally, a noisy and sometimes uncivil place, but very little crime.
A place though legally...

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