Poem on the Death of Princess Diana - June Jordan

At least she was riding
beside
somebody going somewhere
fast
about love

June Jordan

Poem for South African Women - June Jordan

Our own shadows disappear as the feet of thousands
by the tens of thousands pound the fallow land
into new dust that
rising like a marvelous pollen will be
fertile
even as the first woman whispering
imagination to the trees around her made
for righteous fruit
from such deliberate defense of life
as no other still
will claim inferior to any other safety
in the world

The whispers too they
intimate to the inmost ear of every spirit
now aroused they
carousing in ferocious affirmation
of all peaceable and loving amplitude
sound a certainly unbounded heat
from a baptismal smoke where yes
there will be fire

And the babies cease alarm as mothers
raising arms
and heart high as the stars so far unseen
nevertheless hurl into the universe
a moving force
irreversible as light years
traveling to the open eye

And who will join this standing up
and the ones who stood without sweet company
will sing and sing
back into the mountains and
if necessary
even under the sea:

we are the ones we have been waiting for.

June Jordan

Poem For Nana - June Jordan

What will we do
when there is nobody left
to kill?


*


40,000 gallons of oil gushing into
the ocean
But I
sit on top this mountainside above
the Pacific
checking out the flowers
the California poppies orange
as I meet myself in heat
I’m wondering
where’s the Indians?


all this filmstrip territory
all this cowboy sagaland:
not
a single Indian
in sight



40,000 gallons gushing up poison
from the deepest seabeds
every hour


40,000 gallons
while
experts international
while
new pollutants
swallow the unfathomable
still:


no Indians


I’m staring hard around me
past the pinks the poppies and the precipice
that let me see the wide Pacific
unsuspecting
even trivial
by virtue of its vast surrender


I am a woman searching for her savagery
even if it’s doomed


Where are the Indians?


*


Crow Nose
Little Bear
Slim Girl
Black Elk
Fox Belly


the people of the sacred trees
and rivers precious to the stars that told
old stories to the night


how do we follow after you?


falling
snow before the firelight
and buffalo as brothers
to the man


how do we follow into that?


*


They found her facedown
where she would be dancing
to the shadow drums that humble
birds to silent
flight
They found her body held
its life dispelled
by ice
my life burns to destroy


Anna Mae Pictou Aquash
slain on The Trail of Broken Treaties
bullet lodged in her brain/hands
and fingertips dismembered


who won the only peace
that cannot pass
from mouth to mouth


*


Memory should agitate
the pierced bone crack
of one in pushed-back horror
pushed-back pain
as when I call out looking for my face
among the wounded coins
to toss about
or out
entirely
the legends of Geronimo
of Pocahontas
now become a squat
pedestrian cement inside the tomb
of all my trust


as when I feel you isolate
among the hungers of the trees
a trembling
hidden tinder so long unsolicited
by flame


as when I accept my sister dead
when there should be
a fluid holiness
of spirits wrapped around the world
redeemed by women
whispering communion


*


I find my way by following your spine


Your heart indivisible from my real wish
we
compelled the moon into the evening when
you said, “No,
I will not let go
of your hand.”


*

Now I am diving for a tide to take me everywhere


Below
the soft Pacific spoils
a purple girdling of the globe
impregnable


*


Last year the South African Minister of Justice
described Anti-Government Disturbances as
Part of a Worldwide Trend toward the
Breakdown of Established Political and Cultural
Orders


*


God knows I hope he’s right.

June Jordan

Poem For My Love - June Jordan

How do we come to be here next to each other
in the night
Where are the stars that show us to our love
inevitable
Outside the leaves flame usual in darkness
and the rain
falls cool and blessed on the holy flesh
the black men waiting on the corner for
a womanly mirage
I am amazed by peace
It is this possibility of you
asleep
and breathing in the quiet air

June Jordan

Poem for Bob - June Jordan

Protected by a .357
Magnum out of sight
the sign says,
'Ken's Garage'
and right around the gas
pumps
ten tomato plants loll
ripening
inside a vine confinement
wire tent that's set
to let them
climb
and mime the latitude
of flowers wild
enough
to fly

Today they're green
(Or what about them can be seen)

just like your tee shirt
putting on all passers by
with
'BUM EQUIPMENT'
stretched across your muscled
gut
but really
you can fix
whatever's broken

CHEAP
NO TRICKS!!

June Jordan

Poem About Process And Progress - June Jordan

for Haruko


Hey Baby you betta
hurry it up!
Because
since you went totally
off
I seen a full moon
I seen a half moon
I seen a quarter moon
I seen no moon whatsoever!

I seen a equinox
I seen a solstice
I seen Mars and Venus on a line
I seen a mess a fickle stars
and lately
I seen this new kind a luva
on an' off the telephone
who like to talk to me
all the time

real nice

June Jordan

Letter To The Local Police - June Jordan

Dear Sirs:


I have been enjoying the law and order of our
community throughout the past three months since
my wife and I, our two cats, and miscellaneous
photographs of the six grandchildren belonging to
our previous neighbors (with whom we were very
close) arrived in Saratoga Springs which is clearly
prospering under your custody


Indeed, until yesterday afternoon and despite my
vigilant casting about, I have been unable to discover
a single instance of reasons for public-spirited concern,
much less complaint


You may easily appreciate, then, how it is that
I write to your office, at this date, with utmost
regret for the lamentable circumstances that force
my hand


Speaking directly to the issue of the moment:


I have encountered a regular profusion of certain
unidentified roses, growing to no discernible purpose,
and according to no perceptible control, approximately
one quarter mile west of the Northway, on the southern
side


To be specific, there are practically thousands of
the aforementioned abiding in perpetual near riot
of wild behavior, indiscriminate coloring, and only
the Good Lord Himself can say what diverse soliciting
of promiscuous cross-fertilization


As I say, these roses, no matter what the apparent
background, training, tropistic tendencies, age,
or color, do not demonstrate the least inclination
toward categorization, specified allegiance, resolute
preference, consideration of the needs of others, or
any other minimal traits of decency


May I point out that I did not assiduously seek out
this colony, as it were, and that these certain
unidentified roses remain open to viewing even by
children, with or without suitable supervision


(My wife asks me to append a note as regards the
seasonal but nevertheless seriously licentious
phenomenon of honeysuckle under the moon that one may
apprehend at the corner of Nelson and Main


However, I have recommended that she undertake direct
correspondence with you, as regards this: yet
another civic disturbance in our midst)


I am confident that you will devise and pursue
appropriate legal response to the roses in question
If I may aid your efforts in this respect, please
do not hesitate to call me into consultation


Respectfully yours,

June Jordan

July 4, 1974 - June Jordan

Washington, D.C.

At least it helps me to think about my son
a Leo/born to us
(Aries and Cancer) some
sixteen years ago
in St. John’s Hospital next to the Long Island
Railroad tracks
Atlantic Avenue/Brooklyn
New York

at dawn

which facts
do not really prepare you
(do they)

for him

angry
serious
and running through the darkness with his own

becoming light

June Jordan

Jim Crow: The Sequel - June Jordan

An angry Black woman on the subject of the angry White man:

We didn't always need affirmative action
When we broke this crazy land into farms
when we planted and harvested the crops
when we dug into the earth for water
when we carried that water into the
big house kitchens and bedrooms
when we built that big house
when we fed and clothed other people's
children with food we cooked and
served to other people's children, wearing
the garments that we fitted and we sewed
together, when we hacked and hauled
huge trees for lumber and fuel, when we
washed and polished the chandeliers,
when we bleached and pressed the linens
purchased by blood profits from our daily
forced laborings, when we lived under the
whip and in between the coffle and chains,
when we watched our babies sold away
from us, when we lost our men to
anybody's highest bidder, when slavery
defined our days and our prayers and our
nighttimes of no rest--then we did not
need affirmative action.

Like two-legged livestock we cost the
bossman three hundred and fifteen dollars
or six hundred and seventy-five dollars
so he provided for our keep
like two-legged livestock
penned into the parched periphery of very
grand plantation life. We did not need
affirmative action. NO! We needed
freedom: We needed overthrow,
revolution and a holy fire to purify the air.
But for two hundred years this crazy
land the law and the bullets behind the law
continued to affirm the gospel of
God-given White supremacy.
For two hundred years the law and the
bullets behind the law, and the money and
the politics behind the bullets behind the
law affirmed the gospel of
God-given White supremacy/
God-given male-White supremacy.

And neither the Emancipation Proclamation
nor the Civil War nor one constitutional
amendment after another nor one Civil Rights
legislation after another could bring about a
yielding of the followers of that gospel
to the beauty of our human face.

Justice don't mean nothin' to a
hateful heart!

And so we needed affirmative action. We
needed a way into the big house
besides the back door. We needed a chance at
the classroom and jobs and open housing
in okay neighborhoods.
We needed a way around the hateful hearts of
America. We needed more than freedom
because a piece of paper ain't the
same as opportunity
or education.
And some thirty years ago we agitated
and we agitated until the President said,
'We seek...
not just equality
as a right and a theory
but equality as a fact
and as a result.'

And a great rejoicing rose like a spirit
dancing
fresh and happy on the soon-to-be-the-
integrated-and-most-uppity ballroom floor
of these United
States.
And Black folks everywhere dressed up in
African-American pride
and optimism.
From the littlest to the elders
we shined our shoes and brushed our hair
and got good and ready for
'equality as a fact.' But
three decades later, and come to find out
we never got invited to the party
we never got included in 'the people'
we never got no kind of affirmative action
worth more than a spit in the wind.



And yesterday
the new man
in the White House/
the new President declared,'What we have
done for women and minorities is a good
thing, but we must respond to those who
feel discriminated against...This is a
psychologically difficult time for the
so-called angry White man.'
Well I am here to tell the world that
46 percent of my children living in poverty
does not feel good to me
and my brothers in prison and not in college
does not feel good to me
psychologically
or otherwise!

Catch that angry White man and tell him
'Get a grip!'

Forty-six percent of the American labor
force is constituted by White men but White
men occupy 95 percent of all senior
management positions!
And as a wise Black man
recently observed
'This supposedly beleaguered minority
(White males are about one-third of the
population) makes up 80 percent of the
Congress, four-fifths of tenured university
faculty, nine-tenths of the Senate
and 92 percent of the Forbes 400.'

Tell me who's angry!

I say the problem with affirmative action
seems to me like way too much affirmative
talk and way too little action!

And unless you happen to belong to that
infinitesimal club of millionaire Black folks
got one hundred and eight thousand dollars
to throw into the campaign pot of their
nearest and dearest
full-time political racist,
I think you better join with me to agitate
and agitate for justice and
equality we can eat
and pay the rent with
NOW.

June Jordan

It’s Hard To Keep A Clean Shirt Clean - June Jordan

Poem for Sriram Shamasunder
And All of Poetry for the People


It’s a sunlit morning
with jasmine blooming
easily
and a drove of robin redbreasts
diving into the ivy covering
what used to be
a backyard fence
or doves shoving aside
the birch tree leaves
when
a young man walks among
the flowers
to my doorway
where he knocks
then stands still
brilliant in a clean white shirt


He lifts a soft fist
to that door
and knocks again


He’s come to say this
was or that
was
not
and what’s
anyone of us to do
about what’s done
what’s past
but prickling salt to sting
our eyes


What’s anyone of us to do
about what’s done


And 7-month-old Bingo
puppy leaps
and hits
that clean white shirt
with muddy paw
prints here
and here and there


And what’s anyone of us to do
about what’s done
I say I’ll wash the shirt
no problem
two times through
the delicate blue cycle
of an old machine
the shirt spins in the soapy
suds and spins in rinse
and spins
and spins out dry


not clean


still marked by accidents
by energy of whatever serious or trifling cause
the shirt stays dirty
from that puppy’s paws


I take that fine white shirt
from India
the threads as soft as baby
fingers weaving them
together
and I wash that shirt
between
between the knuckles of my own
two hands
I scrub and rub that shirt
to take the dirty
markings
out


At the pocket
and around the shoulder seam
and on both sleeves
the dirt the paw
prints tantalize my soap
my water my sweat
equity
invested in the restoration
of a clean white shirt

And on the eleventh try
I see no more
no anything unfortunate
no dirt


I hold the limp fine
cloth
between the faucet stream
of water as transparent
as a wish the moon stayed out
all day


How small it has become!
That clean white shirt!
How delicate!
How slight!
How like a soft fist knocking on my door!
And now I hang the shirt
to dry
as slowly as it needs
the air
to work its way
with everything

It’s clean.
A clean white shirt
nobody wanted to spoil
or soil
that shirt
much cleaner now but also
not the same
as the first before that shirt
got hit got hurt
not perfect
anymore
just beautiful


a clean white shirt


It’s hard to keep a clean shirt clean.

June Jordan

In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr. - June Jordan

I

honey people murder mercy U.S.A.
the milkland turn to monsters teach
to kill to violate pull down destroy
the weakly freedom growing fruit
from being born

America

tomorrow yesterday rip rape
exacerbate despoil disfigure
crazy running threat the
deadly thrall
appall belief dispel
the wildlife burn the breast
the onward tongue
the outward hand
deform the normal rainy
riot sunshine shelter wreck
of darkness derogate
delimit blank
explode deprive
assassinate and batten up
like bullets fatten up
the raving greed
reactivate a springtime
terrorizing


death by men by more
than you or I can


STOP

II


They sleep who know a regulated place
or pulse or tide or changing sky
according to some universal
stage direction obvious
like shorewashed shells

we share an afternoon of mourning
in between no next predictable
except for wild reversal hearse rehearsal
bleach the blacklong lunging
ritual of fright insanity and more
deplorable abortion
more and
more

June Jordan

For Alice Walker (a summertime tanka) - June Jordan

Redwood grove and war
You and me talking Congo
gender grief and ash

I say, 'God! It's all so huge'
You say, 'These sweet trees: This tree'

June Jordan