by Amiri Baraka

We in some hot water

Fulla crocodiles. Boy

Come along

In a boat say “Get in, get in”

“I can save yr ass from these crocks

And these diles.” So we get in, then

When I look up,

I has to say, like Mantan Moreland,

Oh, Oh ! . . . . thass right, Oh !  Oh !

Why ? Boy got crocodiles in the boat

With him. Oh Oh . . .. . thass right . . . . Oh Oh!

He got them crocs and them Diles

Right there in the boat

With him.

Oh Shit !

by Lewis Warsh

It was like a scene from a movie
starring Fred MacMurray and Vincent Price:
“But I bought you everything you own,”
the character in the movie says, stumbling
out the back door. Some people say
that “the path to satisfaction may lead
almost anywhere” but when the boat
stops in the harbor you better get off.
My consultation fee is $5 an hour, on a
sliding scale, but if you pay for it out of pocket
it’s twice as much. More people claim
they act without thinking and pay the price.
If all the motels are full we can always sleep
inside the car. It’s preferable to sleeping
on the beach or in the subway. Sleeping on
a subway platform is not my idea of a good
time.

It’s always summer where you are and a man
is singing a song about Margaritaville against
a backdrop of ocean and sky. “Some people
say,” the singer tells us, “there’s a woman
to blame,” and then he pauses, “but no,” another
pause, “it’s my own damn fault.” A new
beginning is not a bad idea. It’s no one’s
fault if you can’t see the sky through the tops
of the trees. Once I sat in a room and pretended
to be invisible. “Pass the tabasco sauce,”
I said, but you didn’t hear.

This music is my subterfuge, I can turn
it down if you like. It’s possible to confuse
two people in your head at the same
time. It’s also possible to drink a whole
bottle of wine in one sitting (you leave the
party and pass out at the foot of the stairs).
The party goes on without you but it’s not
like you’re missing out on anything by not
being there. Let your mind go blank
for a moment and her face appears. A chance
meeting on Elm Street between the Quick
and the Dead.

by Charles Plymell

It was the voice of the Game Lord
  only heard when you know it
at the intersection where
  ancient people walked the four paths
in four directions were decimated, tortured and enslaved.

But in every eye the universe is never forgotten
         marked the rock where we heard the voice
coming from the great plains when it was a sea and from the
heaven’s night wind galaxies
shaking conical huts of the inverse
whose breath formed the world of animals and
civilizations

The Hopi made crossed their trails outward from the point of
  north east south and west
like a backward swastika
  some went far south to Aztec land to call again their voices from space.

The Apache stayed and fought invaders first, the Spaniards on the
  quest for metal
for hundreds of years tribes roamed.
Navaho north path fire camp at rock the Kansa, Crow and
  Pawnee and later Sioux.

The swastika was bent to turn forward in Europe
              for destruction and conquering races later
same claw that came to the land of Apache who
          turned their outstretched hands upward toward the sun the
   dolphins of the water had peace already
brains as large as humans but no hands to attack.

When the rock crumbles the human land also from across the sea
   they came to steal and plunder
the native paradise taught them how to scalp.

Cut out women’s genitals to decorate their saddle horns
              cut off their breasts to sew purses and sell as
souvenirs on Turk street in San Francisco.

Gold rush greed through centuries became scalps of future like
  paper floating in the great dust
numbers the figures of accountant’s world trade
    from others bringing their gods with their names
having spinal cords for brains
                        oil the new gold.

All forgotten in the tally of innocent deaths
            criminals have no account of their spoils
left for indifferent history of blood
   fires, earthquakes, floods each human decimals
trapped in time like animals chewing off their limbs for freedom
           that all religious disciples will forever eat away

On the accountant’s tally for each animal killed there is an
  equivalent sacrifice in horror
like each baby screaming in the prairie blood
       of its mother dying in the dust from horses’ hooves.

Each cry is amplified into the voice rising again where rocks hold
  life inside them
         from other regions like carbon and crystal
               separate in memory, composite in carnality
        hot on inside cold on the out
                             the boundaries no longer hold
the rock crumbles outside television & alternate realities.

Even the dream of a shy animal
                fascinated, frightened, alone in flight
explodes center of self like waiting chemicals of the sun
            faces become silent space
dreams the only animation without hands
           blown together in the world of flesh
   the odyssey of chances inconceivable
voice of both animal and human in catastrophe.

Below the rock
       people turned like the lines of gears
the forward swastika of war departments
  same war now in Afghanistan.
Karma has no footprints, no court, whoever is slain pays equally
like the trapped beaver or the bear cousin
    the piles of dead Buffalo for sport
nature regurgitates the toxin and rot
    no eyes in her upheavals
too late now to pay for those who wantonly kill
   no catastrophic accounting now, no tallies or equalities.