Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

One Of These Is A Poem (#6 in a series)

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#1. Ka’Ba
By Amiri Baraka

A closed window looks down
on a dirty courtyard, and black people
call across or scream or walk across
defying physics in the stream of their will

Our world is full of sound
Our world is more lovely than anyone’s
tho we suffer, and kill each other
and sometimes fail to walk the air

We are beautiful people
with african imaginations
full of masks and dances and swelling chants

with african eyes, and noses, and arms,
though we sprawl in grey chains in a place
full of winters, when what we want is sun.

We have been captured,
brothers. And we labor
to make our getaway, into
the ancient image, into a new

correspondence with ourselves
and our black family. We read magic
now we need the spells, to rise up
return, destroy, and create. What will be

the sacred words?

#2. To His Mistress Going to Bed
By John Donne

Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tir’d with standing though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven’s Zone glistering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th’eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.
Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime,
Tells me from you, that now it is bed time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals,
As when from flowery meads th’hill’s shadow steals.
Off with that wiry Coronet and shew
The hairy Diadem which on you doth grow:
Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread
In this love’s hallow’d temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes, heaven’s Angels used to be
Received by men; Thou Angel bringst with thee
A heaven like Mahomet’s Paradise; and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know,
By this these Angels from an evil sprite,
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.

Licence my roving hands, and let them go,
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America! my new-found-land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man mann’d,
My Mine of precious stones, My Empirie,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.

Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth’d must be,
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta’s balls, cast in men’s views,
That when a fool’s eye lighteth on a Gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.
Like pictures, or like books’ gay coverings made
For lay-men, are all women thus array’d;

Themselves are mystic books, which only we
(Whom their imputed grace will dignify)
Must see reveal’d. Then since that I may know;
As liberally, as to a Midwife, shew
Thy self: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
There is no penance due to innocence.

To teach thee, I am naked first; why then
What needst thou have more covering than a man.

Comments

  1. It appears that poetry no longer contains the parameters of old. In the first poem, I did not feel the majesty of meter and rhyme. I will say that it was not terrible but I feel that it was much more prose than poetry, whereas, the second poem by John Dunne met all the specifications and enjoyment of poetry. Dunne was one of the poets that my college professor emphasized during English 202 because the poet used the English language so well.

  2. One Of These Is A Poem (#6 in a series)
    ……………………………………………….

    “Amiri Baraka”–the former LeRoi Jones–is not just a very bad poet, but also a vicious antisemite and hater of whites:

    “For Tom Postell, Dead Black Poet”, which contained lines including

    “…Smile jew. Dance, jew. Tell me you love me, jew. I got something for you … I got the extermination blues, jewboys. I got the hitler syndrome figured … So come for the rent, jewboys … one day, jewboys, we all, even my wig wearing mother gonna put it on you all at once…”

    He has lauded black rape of white women, and claimed that white women who *didn’t* enjoy being raped by black men were racist.

    Perhaps his worst piece was the vicious “Somebody Blew Up America”, about the 9/11 terror attacks, where he implies that Jews were respnsible.

    The entire piece is a poorly-written screed against America and the values of the West.

    You can find that ugly thing here:

    http://www.lem.seed.pr.gov.br/arquivos/File/livrosliteraturaingles/sbua2.pdf

    • he and I obviously have different values. I consider rape to be akin to physical torture and physical torture equates with murder. I could never get along in society with the likes of him and guess what, IMO, I dont consider that a problem. Yes I say to him, go away, good riddance. Our society doesn’t need you nor do we want you so do us all a favor and be gone with your loathsome self already.

  3. Well all I have to say after reading all that is, that’s heavy man, but not in a good way.

    The fact is Africa with its massive resources should have been a powerhouse in the world a long time ago. The inconvenient truth is, Africans never got their shit together by seeing the big, Africa, picture. They have never been able to unite and get along. It is not anyone or anyplace in the world that is at fault for Africa’s failures.

    • And in these modern times if you spend all your time whining and complaining about your terrible plight you never get anything done that needs to be done, done.

      • When it don’t rain, da roof don’t leak
        When it rain, I cain’t fix it no-how
        — African philosophy

        Couple of videos to look up:

        “Empire of Dust” (trailer is on youtube, no need to watch the rest)

        “African Language and the African Mind”
        (most illustrative is the anecdote about vaccinations)

        • I’m waiting to see China preform a miracle for Africans that no one else in history has been able to do.

          Also, if Africans think China is as benevolent as Westerners they got another thing coming.

          One reason China is in Africa is to eat all the animals there. China would gobble up the entire Earth and not think about it till it is too late.

        • I checked them all out. You cant argue with the truth and as most of us know the truth can be uncomfortable. But after all is said and done there is only truth or an eventual decent in to lunacy. I know that sounds extreme, it sounds crazy, but take a look, that is where we all are right now.

          Thanks, Reziac.

    • It takes up to twenty years to write a Haiku poem which must compact surprise, irony, wit, visual evocation, and succinctness into 17 syllables. That mud bucket did not qualify as filthy drivel. As a black male it behooves me to state that all civilizations that hope to succeed must emulate whatever works. Those that only aspire to violence without peaceable intentions sooner or later degenerate into dust. Africans in too many instances exalt self-destruction. Israel, China, Japan and India if emulated by Africa would produce a super modern civilization. But Islam is Africans’ foremost choice. Haiti exemplifies the African predisposition superbly.

  6. Some have no time,
    For peotry that does not rhyme,
    Their constant pursuit of things sublime,
    Is something for which I have no time,

    The Liberal mind seeks innocence,
    In thoughts and deeds,
    And to plant flowers where once were weeds,
    But Africa was best left alone,
    To count its slaves and ivory bone.

  7. This was such love that with my pen – I’ll set it down to live again
    “She walked in beauty like the night” – a firestorm by candlelight…
    Or sing it out to lyre and lute – “She walked in nightie like a beaut”
    Now ageless Time preserves that thrill – inked on parchment, etched with quill
    And when my love she bids me come – I answer “Madam – I am Donne”

    • Superb. As a hymn to beauty, its on a par with Bonzo Dog’s Big Shot.or AC/DC’s Whole Lotta Rosie.

      • I shall have to remind myself of them. Meantime – having borrowed the famous line “She walks in beauty, like the night” – I thought I should at least look it up, and see how the rest of it goes and who wrote it.

        The poem is “She Walks In Beauty” and it was written in 1814 by Lord Byron. According to Google it is written in “iambic pentameter” – according to me, it’s an A-B-A-B-A-B rhyme scheme.

        Worth reading and sufficiently romantic for those who find John Donne a bit too “earthy”.

  8. ” To Love ” 3 January 2024
    To Love, the past matters not;
    For the sake of love, all the Past
    becomes forgot,
    With grace to never come to mind
    again.
    And if such grace does not stand
    therein,
    Then that which stands, is not love….
    terry

    Here is a simple poem. The Uni-party fools are deluded frauds, plain and simple. And love, agape love, they know not. Lies, deceptions, defrauding, and looting they know well.

  9. Neither one is worth my time to read through to the end. What may be treasure for others in these “poems” is junk to me.
    The first is just racist and whining.
    The second is all about immorality. What should be private, is more and more made public; and it stinks.

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