Jeremy
Hogan
A
poem for Porterville ..
where the Great Spirit embodies Tom Joad
Porterville
is beat as in Beat poetry beat
as in Jack Kerouac was pickin cotton a
few miles away livin with Latinos
memorializin the Central Valley all
its unemployment On the Road drivin
up and down highway 99 drinkin thinkin
bout life and writin bout exploitation
that kept farmworkers down for generations
and
then came Cesar Chavez a hero he
stood up to his oppressors said no we won't
do that and no you won't do that to us once
when I was a kid saw the United
Farm Workers
marchin
down Olive but they never taught
bout him in the schools never did teach me
why my family was called okies why we was
poor or that my grandfathers were
marched
to death
on a trail of tears why my dad was
born in a shack because they was sharecroppers
later
livin in tents in the southwest pickin
cotton a hundred pounds for a dollar
hands
bleedin livin
in a labor camp on the outside
of Porterville and after Nam Dad came home
exploited
for someone else's Freedom then
I was born years passed we got a home in
Suburbia cause dad worked all day 12 hours
white folks got outta the fields
I saw Latinos
marchin
and asked who are they what are
they doin and when Chavez died a few years
later it was beat the feet of 50,000 marchin
to his funeral the Chicago Tribune
the New
York Times
the LA Times payin him tribute
white folks black folks brown folks payin
final respects on a Spring day when wild
flowers rise from winter hills after
the ghost
of Tom
Joad whispers all winter on cold
foggy mornins I'll be back with a beat
and
the ghosts of Native American ancestors
of Okies and Latinos will take back
the Suburbs
the
stripmalls mainstreet drummin the Great
Spirit tearin down the Supercenter
takin
back the
fields where the Tule River once emptied
into Native American Paradise
-
Jeremy Hogan -
©
August 7, 2005 All rights reserved
For
the Reverend King, an ode to Langston Hughes and a poem for the six billion lovers
of freedom
Thursday
ten-thousand fragments of Martin Luther King will be haunting the streets crying
like fallen angels and dancing like skeletons, while court jesters are playing
as patriots, then dark knights in black limos will parade past, a hundred thousand
pawns will be off to their deaths, steel eagles will be roaring psychadelically
across the sky on a bad trip and a lollapallooza of czarism disguised as a democracy
will laugh hysterically.
At
the end of the day the translucent jack-in-the-box will spring from his throne
and declare himself a defender of nations and people that, "love freedom"...but
perhaps there is a little demonic computerized robot down there controlling this
theatre connected to springs because anyone can see right through to the bottom
is this well of truth once drank from that has been polluted by the sad tears
of six billion hearts of the Reverend King.
So,
where is Reverend King and all his children after his blood ran in Memphis? And
just what does happen to all the dreams of the 6 billion souls? And what will
happen when these powerful beings do start to love their freedom and demand it
and unite to reclaim it? Will they dry up, like a raisin in the sun...or will
they fester like sores...and then run...will they stink like rotten meat when
their oppressors bomb them...or will they crust and sugar over...like a syrupy
sweets...perhaps the weight of all their anger will sag...then they will riseup
like a heavy load waiting to crush into submission those that told them they had
freedom while holding them in spiritual and physical bondage...and then when each
these six billion fragments of Reverend King finally take justice by being themselves...perhaps
they will explode like blooming flowers on a sunny spring day...while this jester,
in jest, talks about freedom...they will be free like six billion souls of the
Reverend King...whose star dust is still among us and rising...finally reclaiming
what we were promised and going to the mountain.
Learn
More about Jeremy Hogan
at his newly re-vamped website, www.jeremyhogan.com
.
