Bigotry Poems

DEATH:
For my dagger is bathed in the blood of the brave,
I come, care-worn tenant of life, from the grave,
...

My fancies are fireflies, —
Specks of living light
twinkling in the dark.
...

Where would we go if told to leave
This land where our kidnapped forefathers grieved
For life as it once were
And not as destiny's mind perceived
...

I.
Dares the lama, most fleet of the sons of the wind,
The lion to rouse from his skull-covered lair?
...

He pulled the trigger
on that noisy morning
in the Bunker of Berlin.
The pages of Mein Kampf,
...

In a world that is

Free from terrible terrorism and death
Full of happy harmony and warmth
...

Scene, on the Cliffs to the Eastward of the Town of
Brighthelmstone in Sussex. Time, a Morning in November, 1792.
...

Children are born blind to hate and bigotry
With their big smiles and loving ways
They are taught ugliness
By unthinking adults and overheard conversation
...

There are two types of people:
Those who play golf,
And those who recognize it
for the idiotic malpractice that it is,
...

The tide of fate rolls on!--heart-pierced and pale,
The gallant soldier lies, nor aught avail,
...

Hatred smites too often
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
shaking our faith in mankind
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
...

EVEN as a river,--partly (it might seem)
Yielding to old remembrances, and swayed
In part by fear to shape a way direct,
...

And now, when poets are singing
Their songs of olden days,
And now, when the land is ringing
With sweet Centennial lays,
...

Let us all join hands
In celebration
Confederation
...

why am i doing this? Failure
to keep my work in order so as
to be able to find things
to paint the house
to earn enough money to live on
to reorganize the house so as
to be able to paint the house &
to be able to find things and
earn enough money so as
to be able to put books together
to publish works and books
to have time
to answer mail & phone calls
to wash the windows
to make the kitchen better to work in
to have the money to buy a simple radio
to listen to while working in the kitchen
to know enough to do grownups work in the world
to transcend my attitude
to an enforced poverty
to be able to expect my checks
to arrive on time in the mail
to not always expect that they will not
to forget my mother's attitudes on humility or
to continue
to assume them without suffering
to forget how my mother taunted my father
about money, my sister about i cant say it
failure to forget mother and father enough
to be older, to forget them
to forget my obsessive uncle
to remember them some other way
to remember their bigotry accurately
to cease to dream about lions which always is
to dream about them, I put my hand in the lion's mouth
to assuage its anger, this is not a failure
to notice that's how they were; failure
to repot the plants
to be neat
to create & maintain clear surfaces
to let a couch or a chair be a place for sitting down
and not a table
to let a table be a place for eating & not a desk
to listen to more popular music
to learn the lyrics
to not need money so as
to be able to write all the time
to not have to pay rent, con ed or telephone bills
to forget parents' and uncle's early deaths so as
to be free of expecting care; failure
to love objects
to find them valuable in any way; failure
to preserve objects
to buy them and
to now let them fall by the wayside; failure
to think of poems as objects
to think of the body as an object; failure
to believe; failure
to know nothing; failure
to know everything; failure
to remember how to spell failure; failure
to believe the dictionary & that there is anything
to teach; failure
to teach properly; failure
to believe in teaching
to just think that everybody knows everything
which is not my failure; I know everyone does; failure
to see not everyone believes this knowing and
to think we cannot last till the success of knowing
to wash all the dishes only takes ten minutes
to write a thousand poems in an hour
to do an epic, open the unwashed window
to let in you know who and
to spirit thoughts and poems away from concerns
to just let us know, we will
to paint your ceilings & walls for free
...

How often our beliefs more than our doubts
Ruin and mar us here, clog the soul's feet,
And shackle the heart's best impulses so,
...

The lonely malnourished Spanish man who lives
by himself in a house without a kitchen practising
Franciscan-learnt Latin; the lonely widow offering
Nicholas Shrady a walking stick, the poor people in
...

Zealot, I hear your heart is lost to them
Death resides in your hateful opinions
With toxic blame and killing floor speeches
Switchblade slick words that flick swift to murder
...

11th September,1893, Monday,
Was the inauguration day
Of the Parliament of Religions,
A congregation of all religions.
...

Beneath the weight of an unforgiving world, my son Stanford Suryaraju Mattimalla was robbed from me and was strangled by hands clothed with the garb of legal authority—a system that treats the vulnerable as experimental rats—by a neo-Nazi gynecologist in Regensburg, who saw not a life but a body to be used. On June 28, Wednesday,2023, in the asylum camp of Bajuwarenstr.,1A, my African wife, Selamawit Hailu Bezabih, became a vessel for their cruelty at the time of her 37th week and 3rd day of pregnancy, injected with Repevax, a vaccine she never needed, a shot that was never mandatory, a decision disguised as care but woven with malice. They spoke of protection, of winter's looming chill, but instead, they froze my son in death's embrace. And then, by July 2nd or 3rd, this tiny form lay still, silenced by a cold indifference that carried the name of science but reeked of something far more ancient: racism, xenophobia, and the quiet brutality of those who hold power over the displaced.

The German state, its legal systems, and its medical minds all turned away and dismissed our cries with the cruel insistence that his death was natural. What is natural about injustice? What is natural in the course of a life stolen before it had a chance to unwind? But Stanford was not a victim of mere migration; he was a victim of a world that feasts on the helpless, a history repeating itself in endless cycles of bigotry and denial. As Hindu swallowed my nameless Untouchable Madiga child in the blood-soaked name of Hindu honor, Africa and Germany took Stanford in the mask of migration and medicine. My son was declared dead on Tuesday, July 4,2023, at Caritas-Krankenhaus St. Josef in Regensburg, and by Tuesday, July 11,2023, he was laid to rest in 'Friedhof am Dreinigenberg, ' or 'Cemetery on Trinity Hill, ' in Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany. But there is no rest in my heart, no peace in this world justifying the unjust, which buries its sins beneath legal verdicts and scientific jargon. My son's name should have been a song, a future, a light—but instead, it is an echo swallowed by silence, a grief I must carry in a land that refuses to see.
...

At Ruby Bridges they threw rocks
And swears and curses, bigotry and blocks,
Just for trying to go to school
To her they were evil and hateful and very cruel.
...

Love is...joy...of losing...bigotry
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I want my black and brown friends to always know this
I'm not a bigot or a racist,
I grew up and I live in a very small town
Where racism and bigotry still makes me frown.
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Dear Serena Williams…I want to take a moment and apologize to you
for something I didn't say…something I did not do.

As we waited under a crab apple tree for our pizza the other day
...

We marched for peace again on Sunday…and from the very start….
Lup-dup…lup-dup…lup-dup
our footsteps on the ground made the sound of a beating heart.
Lup-dup…lup-dup…lup-dup
...

For 39 years I learned from the students with Autism I was teaching.
and the most important lesson I learned…by far
was how the true greatness of a person can be judged
by how they treat those they see as different…who to them seem a little bizarre.
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I would rather have a neighbor flying a rainbow flag
Even though many will scream it supports a gays as a brag,
They are proudly supporting someone's right or pride
With a solidarity they are sympathetically and morally at their side.
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It didn't start with gas chambers
If all remembers,
That is not how it all started
But, that is how many souls suffered and departed.
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I was never a great speller…in school…when my teacher called on me
I was never really sure if the ‘I' came before…or after the ‘e'

When it came to certain words…I always found it telling…
...