Poetry

W. Duffus

BILL DUFFUS

 Brother Bill Duffus's first poem to hit the streets Handsworth in a big way was his powerful letter to the community and in a similar style to Marcus Garvy, that he had read out over the airways of PCRL, and whose last verse was used later as an upliftment radio jingle on the radio station played even to our last day!

CIVILISATION BEGINS WITH US (a.k.a. Wake Up Blak Man)

   There are those amongst us who have no regard or respect for the lives of the African family; the elderly, the women, our men, our children, the weak or the strong. There are those amongst us whose pattern of behavior is that of a savage, a wounded human beans out of control, incapable of functioning with intelligence. For many of us this has gone beyond all comprehension and reason. The contempt that is now manifesting it's self is causing a major shock wave over Britain and can no longer be tolerated. We cannot stand by and watch the streets of America, Manchester and certain parts of the Caribbean come to the streets of Handsworth, Birmingham.
   The call for action to eradicate the now growing problem which is spiralling out of control, holding us hostage in terror and fear, could never be more urgent. The strategy must be and will be, that we must become the protectors, the judges, the jury, which governs our own. The system has planned the condition of our people and do not care about our fears, as their conspiracy is working to achieve the limitation of our people by our own people. Civilisation began with us, a free people, everyone else has learned how to build their civilisation from us, and if we are to survive as people we must rebuild what has been stolen.
   This is a time of decision, this is how we did run things which retained respect, social order, vision and wisdom beyond compare. The defenders of the black community feel that this action to be taken is just, right and necessary, for our very survival, given that we know the truth about who by what and why were going to be destroyed. The solution is evident, without question, search, find, identify, expose, illuminate and destroy the perpetrators and their family's who hide, intimidate, or threaten those who dare to speak out, and demand justice for there loved ones, from these mindless savages that produce them. Who then brag about them and are prepared to protect them.
   We the defenders of the community who have decided on this action will not protect our family's if they have done wrong or have committed acts of injustice towards others, brothers and sisters. The judgement will be the same. We the defenders of the community understand that our people have drunk the wine of violence and there ore those in the community who are working hard to correct the condition of our people from the elements of self destruction. However, unfortunately we must come to realize that there are those in our community who are so filled with evil, that they are beyond saving or reasoning with and therefor must be destroyed, incapacitated using whatever means necessary. We the responsible loving careers of our people will not stand idly by and allow mindless and irresponsible minority, who create havoc, suffering, pain and distress among our people, are not to be held accountable for there action.
   Please, please, please be warned, you have been warned justice is here!  Wake up black man, wake up black man the sleeping warier, protect your children, protect your women, protect the elderly, protect yourself, protect your pride, your nation and your dignity. Your people demand this of you now, our destiny as a people is in your hands, they know it, we know it, you know it  . . .
. . . Wake up black man ,  wake up black man and take your stand. You are the sphinx the alpha and omega you were the first and the last , the original black man. Your divine creator ancestors commands you with your wisdom to rise and reign again - Wake up black man, wake up!    

(c) Bill Duffus/PCRL 1996

(If you would like some of Bill's poetry on compact disc set to music then e-mail Mickey Nold at pcrl103fm@hotmail.com)

MARCUS GARVEY

MARCUS GARVEY
THE TRAGEDY OF WHITE INJUSTICE (Verse 1 out of 70!)

Lying and stealing is the whiteman's game;
For rights of God nor man he has no shame
(A practice of his throughout the whole world)
At all, great thunderbolts he has hurled;
He has stolen everywhere - land and sea;
A buccaneer and pirate he must be,
Killing all, as he roams from place to place,
Leaving disease, mongrels - moral discrace.

Marcus Garvey - New York 1927

GIL SCOTT-HERON

PAINT IT BLACK

Picture a man of nearly thirty

who seems twice as old with clothes torn and
   dirty.
Give him a job shinning shoes
or cleaning out toilets with bus station crew.
Give him six children with nothing to eat.
Expose them to life on a ghetto street.
Tie an old rag around his wife's head and
have her pregnant and lying in bed.
Stuff them all in a Harlem house.
Then tell them how bad things are down South.
Gil Scott-Heron - Third World Press, Chicago

SISTA CAROL (Birminghams')

 Carol is our female voice in the Black Heroes Tributes at 8 PM and midnight every day on PCRL. She is a strong mother and wife and is always speaking out for a better family unity with a Pan-Africanist approach. Her opinions are often given as a phone-caller on 'Talk-Back' on Sundays. In this poem she talks to the black man head on....

Magnificent Specimen
1
African man, black man
once a magnificent specimen of a man.
Let you desires for all thing physical
 be as great as your desire for knowledge.
There you have it

The 'Fine Black Man'

a combination that can't be beaten.
2
My brother, men who dwell in the superficial
will never build a nation of substance.
You run a hundred metres in less than ten seconds,
you knock a man out in one punch
and yet a nation of wimps ban together
to defeat men of your substance.
3
So weak is the mind set in many
that only the heathen's hatred binds us.
I see a streak of meanness in every bothers face
and yet no one fears us collectively.
Who among us can keep a secret?
for what we desire is a secret organisation
to deal with the man who is undermined what
has been ordained.
4
Your outlook is individualistic
whilst the man picks us off one by one.
Your lack of conviction and principles as delivered
a continent into the man's hands.
So African man - black man
be a magnificent specimen of a man!
(If you would like some of Carol's poetry set to music on a compact disc - E-Mail us at pcrl103fm@hotmail.com)

(c) Sister Carol - Birmingham 1997

LINTON QUEZI JOHNSON

Yout Rebels
a bran new breed of blacks
have now emerged,
leadin on the rough scene,
breakin away takin the day,
sayin to capital neva
movin forward hevva.

Johnson

they can only be
new in age
but not in rage,
not needin
the soft and also
shallow councilin
of the soot-brained
sage in chain;
wreckin thin-shelled words
movin always forward.

young blood
yout rebels
new shapes
shapin new
linkin
blood risin surelycarvin a new path
movin forwud to freedom
Linton Kwesi Johnson 1975

PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR

"Sympathy" (1899) 

I know what the caged bird feels.
Ah me, when the sun is bright on the upland slopes,
when the wind blows soft through the springing grass

P. L. Dumbar

and the river floats like a sheet of glass,
when the first bird sings and the first bud ops,
and the faint perfume from its chalice steals.
I know what the caged bird feels.

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
till its blood is red on the cruel bars,
for he must fly back to his perch and cling
when he fain would be on the bow aswing.
And the blood still throbs in the old, old scars
and they pulse again with a keener sting.
I know why he beats his wing.

I know why the caged bird sings.
Ah, me, when its wings are bruised and its bosom sore.
It beats its bars and would be free.
It's not a carol of joy or glee,
but a prayer that it sends from its heart's deep core,
a plea that upward to heaven it flings.
I know why the caged bird sings.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

MARGARET WALKER

ROBERT PINSKY, Poet Laureate:

Margaret Walker’s first volume of poetry, “For My People,” was chosen for the Yale Younger Poet Series in 1942. In that year, for a 27-year-old woman, such publication with a laudatory preface by Stephen Vincent Benet, was all but unique. Like her novel, “Jubilee,” this book of poetry defied racial cliches and expectations by existing as a landmark, as well as by its eloquence and its materials. Walker, the daughter of a preacher, a student of Langston Hughes, a reader of Walt Whitman, understood the force of directness, of cadences, of oratorical series. Margaret Walker’s first volume of poetry, “For My People,” was chosen for the Yale Younger Poet Series in 1942. In that year, for a 27-year-old woman, such publication with a laudatory preface by Stephen Vincent Benet, was all but unique. Like her novel, “Jubilee,” this book of poetry defied racial cliches and expectations by existing as a landmark, as well as by its eloquence and its materials. Walker, the daughter of a preacher, a student of Langston Hughes, a reader of Walt Whitman, understood the force of directness, of cadences, of oratorical series.
The title poem, “For My People,” begins:
For my people everywhere singing their slave songs repeatedly: their dirges
and their ditties and their blues and jubilees, praying their prayers
nightly to an unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an unseen power:
The final peroration of her poem is a challenge in its frank rhetoric:
For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way from confusion,
from hypocrisy and misunderstanding, trying to fashion a world that
will hold all the people, all the faces, all the adams and eves and their
countless generations;
In the poem's very last phrase, Walker envisions liberation for humanity, itself, "a race of men," she says, suggesting that in the words of her great contemporary, Ralph Ellison, she may be speaking on the lower frequencies for you.
Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born.
Let a bloody peace be written in the sky.
Let a generation full of courage issue forth;
let a people loving freedom come to growth.
Let a beauty full of  healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing
 in our spirits and our blood.
Let the marshal songs be written, let the dirges disappear.
Let a race of men now rise and take control.

LANGSTON HUGHES

Emperor Haile Selassie

 Liberation Day, May 5, 1966

That he is human ... and living
And of our time ...
Makes it seem a miracle
All the more sublime
That he became a symbol
Of our Negritude,
Our dignity ... and food
On which men who are neither
Kings of Kings nor Lions of Judah
Yet may feed their pride ...
And live to hope for that great day
When all mankind is one
And each is king in common
Of all his eyes survey.
And each man shares
The strength derived from head held high ...
And holds his head, king of kings ...
Our symbol of a dream
That will not die.

(L. Hughes, 1966)

SISTER SOULJAH

(b. 1964) 

I never said I was an angel. Nor am I innocent or holy like the Virgin Mary. What I am is natural and serious and as sensitive as an open nerve on an ice cube. I'm a young black sister with an unselfish heart who overdosed on love long ago. My closest friends consider me soft-spoken. Others say I have a deadly tongue. And while it's true that I have a spicy attitude like most of the ghetto girls I know, I back it up with a quick, precise, and knowledgeable mind. My memory runs way back and I'm inclined to remind people of the things they'd most like to forget.

No Disrespect 

Souljah was not born to make white people feel comfortable 

I am African first, I am Black first 

I want what's good for me and my people first 

And if my survival means your total destruction, then so be it 

You built this wicked system 

They say two wrongs don't make a right
But it damn sure makes things even
The Hate That Hate Produced

-- No Disrespect