Four Poems|Dee Allen
SAMARITAN
Anyone else
Would’ve left that Far Right Reactionary sprawled on the concrete To bleed out, suffer in his
Paroxysms of serious hurt, receive Disaster of the steel-toed kind.
But not you.
The Good Samaritan Reflex kicked in, Wouldn’t let you
Abandon someone in need of help.
Distinctions such as
“Friend” and “foe” didn’t matter. Whom you saw laying at your feet Wasn’t an “enemy”.
Just an injured man.
So you lifted him in your arms, Slung him over your shoulder Like a heavy sack of laundry,
Carried him in a firefighter’s hold
With a cordon of protection around you, Your four comrades having your back, Moving past a raging crowd
And riot-cops
With the boisterous sounds Of the inner-city battleground In both of your ears—
Football songs, national anthem,
Protest chants, flares and smoke grenades— Maybe you thought
One dead White man
Wasn’t going to bring back
One dead Black man
In Minneapolis,
One dead Black woman In Louisville,
One dead Black man
In a Wendy’s© parking lot in Atlanta,
Martyrs from American Racial flashpoints—
Maybe you thought That injured man’s
Life was more worthy of salvation
Than stone monuments to previous wars, Winston Churchill’s statue
And the Cenotaph.
Descriptions such as “Hero” didn’t matter either.
You’re just a man protecting A neck that wasn’t your own
And you wanted
Equality, right this minute, For your children,
For your grandchildren, For the generations ahead,
For England and troubled America, If we can get past
Misunderstanding and factions. Brother,
I wish I had
Your Good Samaritan Resolve.
[ For Patrick Hutchinson. ]
[ Inspired by a photograph by Dylan Martinez from the international news service Reuters. ]
SLAVE STATE
The South’s Original sin Hadn’t missed The North.
Dutch and English Settlers in colonial times Bought and worked
By the head imported
Living commodities Subjects of kidnapping
From Africa, South Carolina, Forced to build the material wealth
At the ironworks, Farms, apple orchards, For a more Condescending kind.
Social codes Bullwhip brutality
Black and Native together In abject captivity—
The nasty Little secret
The Garden State
Continues to omit from their ongoing story—
It will take
More than an apology From a politician’s mouth
For us to develop any trust in systems, Northern or Southern—
[ For Bruce Hansen—1947 – 2019 . ]
GRAND MAROON
was the highest honour ever given to
a Black person for a noble act:
Freeing themselves from slavery.
Grand Maroon
was the prestigious title bestowed to
a Black person who would rather
die in the swampwater of the Bayou
than return to find the tree, the rope,
the overseer, the bullwhip &
hours in the standing sugarcane patch
by force waiting.
[ For Malik Rahim, Bilal Ali & Ayodele Nzinga. ]
NOT THE TIME
[ SONG – LYRICS ]
Now is not the time To be silent
Now is not the time
To turn your eyes from the violent
Now is not the time
To show your pokerface Now is not the time
To walk from attacks on another race
CHORUS: Not the time [ 3 TIMES ]
To ignore another’s distress Not the time [ 3 TIMES ]
To side with those who oppress Not the time
Now is not the time To be silent
Now is not the time
To turn your head from the violent
Now is not the time
To hold on to a selfish choice When you see oppression,
Remove your fear and raise your voice [ REPEAT CHORUS ]
Not the time
To give the cold shoulder This is the time
For this hate to be over [ TWICE ]
Photo by British Library on Unsplash
Dee Allen.
African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California. Active on the creative writing & Spoken Word tips since the early 1990s. Author of 5 books [ Boneyard, Unwritten Law, Stormwater and Skeletal Black, all from POOR Press, and his newest from Conviction 2 Change Publishing, Elohi Unitsi ] and 27 anthology appearances [ including Your Golden Sun Still Shines, Rise, Extreme, The Land Lives Forever, Civil Liberties United, Trees In A Garden Of Ashes and the newest, Colossus: Home ] under his figurative belt so far.
