Americana
by
Charles W. Harvey
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Americana
Copyright © 2011 by Charles W. Harvey
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Americana
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Flavor of the 1960’s
Somebody’s Blues
Future Shock
About the Author
Discover other Writing
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Introduction to Americana
Introduction to Americana
Poems can be reflective or reactionary. In a reflective mood, the poet comments on past events. His or her voice may be calm, wistful, and longing. They are preservers of the moment. When poets put on their reactionary mantle, they are more vocal and want to move themselves and others to action In this small collection, Harvey has both the reflective voice and the force of the reactionary.
Viewing the Vietnam War, race relations, and the cultural renaissance of the 1960’s and 1970’s through the prism of a child’s eye shaped Harvey’s views and points of view. The poets Allen Ginsburg, Amiri Baraka, Langston Hughes, and Ai shaped his voice.
Here is an example of Harvey as he reflects on the 1990’s and those high flat tops in his poem “Philadelphia.”
...Tall boy with five inch hair
Sits wide legged on the sub in baggy trousers.
His throat is stiff with defiance, But his dark
Eyes linger in mine for a moment...
In the words of the Edgar Winter Band, “Come on and take a free ride” from the 60’s to the 90’s. Get out your “rakes,” “platforms,” and afro puffs.
These poems delight, entertain, and as CC Music Factory said, :make you go “hmm.”
Flavor of the 1960’s
****
Before the Big Chill, There was the '60's
The revolution was fought on fractured street corners,
By every splintered group in the world--
The Black African United Alliance,
The United Amistad Brothers of Soledad,
The African Cobra Warriors--
Led by tawny curly haired field marshals
Cursing the drop of white blood cruising their hearts--
Brother Mobutu, Deputy Cinque,
Buford X, Abdul Elijah Montu.
Everyone had a storefront, printing press.
Africa was on the wall,
Mary Jane in the blood stream.
Battle fatigued soldiers
Hiding behind amendment-one,
Saluted Castro with a gnarled fist
Celebrated the day Nat Turner was born,
Plotted victory marches through slums,
Made sex with plump chicken-fat colored blondes.
Every corner was a command center,
But the end was nowhere to be sighted,
Because the means were too far scattered.
The boy soldiers are now men kissing forty's face,
Cursing the lesson they forgot to learn:
Without gravity, everything drifts
1968/1988
"I don't know, but I've been told--Eskimo nookie is mighty cold!"
Jimmy Lee Johnson--balls full of manhood--
Chanted that song running up Que San Hill
Just before he tripped a chicken wire
And scattered his bones 8000 miles
To some southerner's plantation,
And left his name to be chiseled into great black granite.
Jimmy Lee, a poor boy, a black stallion
A boy so soft hearted and hard muscled
The girls write songs about him:
“Jimmy Lee Jimmy Lee, why don't you come back...”
But the only thing he can give back
Is a withered black hand.
The other one got left behind
"I don't know, but I've been told-¬Eskimo nookie is mighty cold!"
What else can we say about the war?
We're in this Together
oh America, your heart
Black, encased in gold
Build more guns,
Damn the old.
Blessed be thy California President
And all of the homeless residents
of thine concrete roads.
Bar your empty homes
Against these poor gnomes.
May thine media create desire
For Sister China’s
Worthless trinkets.
Sing your hollow praises
To Adolfo and Dior
As you pick those weak threads
And buttons from the floor.
Graft, lies. and greed
Be forever your creed.
You are my country
And I your beloved citizen.
Moon Mississippi
I went down into Moon Mississippi,
Down into Philadelphia Moon Mississippi.
I wanted to see the shrine
Where they buried three freedom fighters:
Schwerner, Goodman, Chaney,
Encased them in concrete
Down in Moon Mississippi
From where Miss America
Grew from root to tree.
That old Philadelphia moon
Did shine that night the Akins shot the kneecaps
Off Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney)
The same Miss America
That has little liberty torches etched in her teeth.
When she smiles and waves her magic wand
I think about freedom and death.
They love those two in Moon Mississippi. Philadelphia moon.
As much as they love Jews and Negroes.
Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney are buried there
As a memorial to the love of Moon Mississippians, Philadelphia moon.
Yes no good is done by digging up old graves,
Miss America was still the yoke in the placenta
While her folks planted the seeds of
Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney in their rock garden
In Moon Mississippi. Philadelphia moon.
Somebody’s Blues
****
Why Bernstein was Blue
"EVERYDAY, EVERYDAY I HAVE THE BLUES” .
This tune cake-walked across Bernstein's brain.
Why should he be blue, he thought.
He was Cadillac rich, with his name on a door
to a room In Temple Beth Israel--
'Cause his donation built that room.
But my man Bernstein was blue.
He stood hat in hand watching the securities
Scroll up and down the ticker
Like a squad of Brown Shirts goose stepping.
Bernstein kept his eye on one security, A three letter symbol--LOV
Dropping a half point each hour.
LOV dropping, dropping, dropping
Bernstein's losing a grand each hour Because of LOV
And that damn negro song cake-walking Across his brain .
"Moses, where are you now," shouted Bernstein.
"Lord, part the red sea for me!"
EVERYDAY, EVERYDAY I HAVE THE BLUES”
Charlotte
It's dark as hell outdoors.
Men are driving by
In their big silver phallic mobiles,
Staring up at the eleventh floor window
Of the bronze Marathon Building
Where Charlotte sits bare breasted
Typing out the latest list
of souls bought so the company can prosper.
The men love Charlotte's
breasts--
But Charlotte is a wire mesh woman planted by Marathon
To lure men and their money.
So every night when darkness kisses the earth
The men slowly stroke their silver phalluses
Toward the Marathon Tower to view
Charlotte's breasts and the latest profit margins
Scrolling in amber waves down a computer screen
Into Charlotte's crotch.
Anxiety on Lily White Avenue
One morning at 3 am
Mr. Charlie's anxiety
Woke him up.
"Lord, lord, what's becoming of my world?"
He shouted to his shadow on the wall.
"Black black everywhere. Black cats
On the corner making crack—
¬I can't drive down Lily White Avenue no more.
Black cats running for my Board Room--
It ain't safe in the executive toilet.
My boy, Johnny Marine is dating a black fag--
Even my wife lays down with the garbage man.
Lord, lord, what's becoming of my world?
Jesus, I wish I could cry, but that's so unmanly--
And I am a man, hard and white. My bald spot glows
Like a polished halo. Maybe I ought to
Send myself to heaven. But I ain't brave enough
To face no razor blade and warm water at 3 am.
His shadow spoke to him:
"Turn on the radio, Charles.
Stick your smooth pale hands to the wire,
Breathe in the blue smoke from your flesh,
Turn your soul over to the Five Blind Boys or BB King.
Yes the thrill is slowly going away from Lily White Avenue.
Selling Short
Brown clay, red wine for blood--
Come here. Let me look at you.
Let me kiss yo' lips."
I say, "Hey man,
Alabaster skin, flax hair
Red wine for blood--
Ain't you talkin' about my Mama?"
He say, "Oh no.
It's you, man. It’s you.
I say, "A fag live down the street
With his daddy ma yellow shotgun house."
He say, "I don't like no fag.
They got too much of their momma's soft ways.
I like muscles, the hard edge of a man
His dark solitude, closed mouth."
I say, "Let me close my door."
He say, "Please, please, please!
I can do the James Brown."
I say, "I don't like James Brown.
Do you know William Burroughs?"
He say, "He's a fag writer, no I do not know him.
But I know Little Richard. I know Angel Face."
I say, "I know William Shakespeare
And what the Ides of March mean.
I ain't no nigguh."
He say, "Oh you one alright.
And you swallow men's babies."
I say, "Take your foot outta my dark door.
I'ma call the police!"
He say, "I like police.
They so blue, cool, crisp and kind."
I say, "Man, where you get your fantasies--
from the back end of Venus?
He say, "I get my fantasies
from looking at you, boy--
Your sleeping eyes, your hair soft
and black like the baby Jesus 5,
Your mother-of-pearl teeth, hard thighs,
heaving rib cage--
The smooth back of your adolescent neck,
Your hot testicles swimming with future generations,
And that rhinoceros horn there
that makes you shiver all jazzy-¬You are where I get my fantasies, nigra.
And here is $300."
I say, "Man, I ain't selling no black jazz to you.
He say, "Humph, uppity nigra.
There's plenty mo' where you come from."
I say, "A fag live down the street
With his daddy ma yellow shotgun house."
He turn his corpulent fat face to leave.
I say, "Hey Joe, ain't information worth a $100?"
He say for me to kiss where the sun don't shine.
I say, "The sun don't shine
In Cicero Illinois or Queens New York."
I close my dark door and lock away secrets.
Dealership Blues and Life
Here I am
Sitting in a rip-off shop--
("You know I bought the car yesterday.")
Glued to a vinyl couch
As red and slick as white girls in the sun.
The television blares from its laminated walnut house.
The picture is bad--
Full of red fire spots and low TB whispers.
A show called "Loving" slow-drags across the screen
Two women claw each other like cats full of pepper
Over a guy named Mike Muscle
Who's really a homosexual
In love with both of their brothers.
Brothers are in love with Mike Muscle's mother
Whose husband had an affair
With those two clawing cats .
And the writers keep on writing--
You see this serial must fulfill contractual obligations.
Slick-haired car salesman
Slides into the room-¬Red ostrich boot, camel-skin coat
Gray polyester pants too tight-¬Butt breathes in/out when he yawns.
Battalion of vending machines beckon him:
"V8, New Coke, Old Coke, Dead Coke--
Strip your candy bar right down to the brown," he sings.
He's chanting to Baby Ruth or Vanessa Williams--
Two things too sweet to be any good.
He eyes innocent me.
"Sap Sap Sap,'~ his tongue
Smacks against his pinked pursed lips.
"I love vinyl," I say
"Stops your butt from breathing."
Before he sits down, he's getting up
To strike someone else a deal for
Built-in obsolescence
He's already raped me.
He likes a fight.
At the wink of his blue-gray eye.
My calm is too crazy for him-¬Raises his blood pressure.
He likes teeth and nails-¬Makes him feel like he's earning his bread.
"Look how hard I work," he wants to say
To mousey wife stirring up stew.
So my man spots Big Jack--top lip curled with venom,
Jeri-curl going natural wild,
Angry and black like Big Jack himself.
He's mad 'cause somebody told him,
"White folks are not like us. They have more of everything."
Big Jack and my slick white cat
Tango on the hood of a poor man's $18,000 Dodge.
Big Jack wins, roars off in a greased black
Hell-and High-Water 1998 Iacocca Fire Spitter.
Everything he didn't do in adolescence
Flashes like gunfire in front of his eyes.
He grabs the stick shift and jerks,
Tires scream like a chick boiling in oil.
Baby watch out for Big Jack.
Me, I gotta sit here
While some oil jockey
Rolls up my cash and takes a long drag.
"30 dollars an hour plus parts," quote the jock.
I just give up my cash
At the wink of his blue-gray eye.
I turn and watch the television.
The screen covered with Puerto Rican lips
Screams at me. I weep with Geraldo
As he weeps over the bodies of
Quadriplegia lesbians raped by their fathers.
"God may the world end soon," he shouts.
I spot Big Jack heading back in
Buck naked, flailing himself with a silver door edg
e guard.
He falls to his knees, beats his chest,
And asks God to take away his libido.
"Make this thing between my legs dead!
Make it dead, Lord! Rot it away from me.
Oh, how foolish I have been.
Make me an old man, so that I can become wise.
My fire spitter dream is dead.
The girls didn't speak in tongues
When they smelled my burning rubber.
They kept asking me, 'What are you about, Black Man?
Is that all there is to you,-- to woo me to wound me?,
Then they flashed their onyx eyes at me
And said, that real power is in blue-gray eyes--
Not in black. Not in rubber.
Oh God, help me to cope!"
I look out the window, rub my head,
Open my legs. My eyes are hooked on the Fire Spitter.
I don't see wisdom staring me in the face.
Tomorrow I too will etch my name
in the book of lamentations.
The Long Illness
I'm sick of seeing
Black men in gold chains.
In fact, I'm sick of seeing
Black men in chains at all.
Philadelphia
Philadelphia--6128 Jefferson Street Row houses, long neck boys
Guy next door in black shades,
Eyes behind those shades staring at me,
Pepper the poodle fucking my leg my first day there
Cousin Bill drunk drunk drunk,
His wife Lucy old and man weary.
A fat ass next door making his bed springs cry
Every time he farts, so close are the houses.
Cars everywhere, turning streets into cholesterol choked veins.
The living room of 6128 Jefferson--French Provincial covered in plastic laminate.
I asked Lucy how many quarters did she
Put in the laminate machine to get all that transparent stuff for her couch.
Bill drunk as a skunk. The dog pisses on his pillow.
Lucy's Brother Mayo pushing his false uppers
Back into his upper gum.
The liberty bell is cracked.
Scrawny Park service guy gives me some bullshit
About some structural problem with the bell
But I know ol' Liberty got cracked when
Bull Connor dropped it on some poor Negroes’ head.
Arch Street--Tall boy zippered in spandex wants me.
I check out the hole he's dived into.
It's a black hole. I move on.
Subway full of white negro men in Business suits
Grim thin lips locked tight
Calling me nigger with their eyes.
Germantown Street on the hot trolley
Five funeral homes in a row full of ribs
Five barbecue pits across the road
Tended by fine young cannibals cooking breast bones