Long Plantations Poems

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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The hearts of white men are silently fuming
The spirits of  angry widows steadily   grow bitter 
The bosoms of weeping mothers  open wide
While the relics of the past kept washing upon our...

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June nineteenth one hundred and fifty nine years ago

The conclusion of the American Civil War commenced with the articles of surrender agreement of the Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, at Appomattox Court House,...

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A JUNETEENTH PRAYER

Closing our eyes is easy…it’s probably the best way
to think, to hope, to dream…to make a wish…to kiss…to pray.

The quiet darkness behind our eyes is where we start
to heed the teachings of our...

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                Interview with an Angel

After a long surgery brewed in urgency,
I lie supine with the body pining with fury
With eyelids...

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A civil war ferociously raged...

within complex edifice...
derelict hulking corpse delineated courtesy
seared, singed, smoldered smithereens
formerly robust warrior
slain during prime of his life
heavenly corporeal outstanding entity
subjected to fateful foragers
courtesy camping buzzfeeding carrion -
fancy feast for famished
uber twittering,...

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{"It’s 4:05 pm, darkness is mending over the horizon, the city, I’m fighting and thrashing against the flames that shroud. With secrets yet to resign, they dwindle at nightly dusk as it topples over. 
Down...

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I ask myself a rhetorical question regarding...
the durability, longevity, and tenacity of Homo sapiens,
after screaming headlines report one after another atrocity.

How did the human species manage to survive
with many means
of self destruction at their disposal?

Atomic...

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If I were S/He
I would look downstream
for a power so high
this mythic enlightenment feels sacredly deep
and widely therapeutic
mystical in feeling,
practical in  application.

If I were She
I would declare a new Wisdom:
National superpowers corrupt
toward fundamentally polarizing...

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When the colonists felt that with the king of Great Britain they could no longer reason,
Their leaders signed the Declaration of Independence, though they knew it was treason.
Because of their belief in the unalienable rights...

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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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by Vicki Acquah 
Monday, January 17, 2011

Do you hear it; Brother can you hear it? Sisters do you feel it? I can't hear it! I been listening, but I do not hear it, cause ain't...

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Gunshots and tasers aimed at the back
tracking the movements and memories
of unsuspecting dark-skinned citizens 
marked by the scars of a history denied

For Rumain Brisbon, 34
it was crime to be black in Arizona
For Tamir Rice, 12
it...

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Banks o' Doon
by Robert Burns
modern English translation by Michael R. Burch

Oh, banks and hills of lovely Doon,
How can you bloom so fresh and fair;
How can you chant, ecstatic birds,
When I'm so weary, full of care!
You'll...

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Tomatoes are red and perishable as are roses,
Specializing in their trade takes a heart.
Eggs are fragile,as are glasses,
It is not easy to hawk them around.
Honey is sweet but comes from a far.
That's why I sell...

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SLAVERY AND REPARATIONS
I am a descendant of slaves - from India!
Anyone who demands REPARATIONS shake & quake at my words
Competition? So, we have competing tales of bondage?
The Jewish people's perhaps the longest & cruelest,
With smaller...

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I wanted to write & testify, one-time suicidal Dr. Anil Deo, is reborn during second half-century on earth! Yes, Jesus is real to me, to revive hope and the desire to live or write, or...

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Faith in politics is not popular.
Other than optimistic civics teachers
and elected office holders,
faith feels troublesome
when mixed with social empowerment
over Others.

"Others" holds and hides broad diversity:
children
women
people of color
prisoners
slaves
indentured servants
pets
cattle
sheep
farms
plantations
ranches
watersheds
melting ice caps
rising sea levels
polluted air
worn out topsoil
sewage...

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They captured and tortured my humanity.
They believed slavery and colonization would slaughter my Africanness.
Their heirs now ask me to sing praises of assimilation and integration,
To become yet another mop in service of the Republic of...

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They were exhibited as strange curiosities,
 They all had a face, a name, an identity on this land soiled by negrophobia.
 They looked without seeing, their eyes lost in the ruins of their humanity violated...

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DOES CHANGE CHANGE?
For history is wont to repeat itself
Ever reneging, constant turning on the hinges
For the old in nature’s obeisance 
Enter oblivious existence
That the present may succeed the past
For things now visible and feasible
Were once...

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June nineteenth one hundred and fifty years ago

Juneteenth hint: three hundred
and sixty six days
after eighteen sixty four.

Major General Gordon Granger
led the Union Soldiers to Galveston, Texas,
to announce the end of the Civil war
and the freedom...

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Yolanda? 
You are a stranger, 
weaker than our strength, 
we are too proud for our scientific breakthroughs, 
you are softer than a cotton ball, 
more delicate than a tamed sheep, 
as passive as the most...

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Poet:  Ken Jordan 
Poem:  Confederate Flag
Edited by:  Sparkle Jordan 
written:  July/2015


      O'Dirty South,.....U'Dirty South 
your hatred, and storied history - is sadly 
legendary-  

 ...

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Author's note: This is an epic length poem that will have to be split into parts and will be serialized in successive posts.

Part 3


Dr. D. confers in panic 
with Rex and boys at the Limbo...

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