bullets

writes poems and songs and prayers and speaks shouts sings them into being.

[blackpoetsspeakout]

Suzi Q Smith

[badassladiesyoushouldknow]

How Four Teenage Girls Organized This Week’s Huge Silent Protest

It started with a simple tweet and grew into one of the largest (and most peaceful) protests this week.

“Eva Lewis is someone you should know. She and three other black teenage girls were the driving force behind Monday’s massive sit-in protest in Millennium Park and subsequent march to protest gun violence and police brutality in Chicago.The event to “break the divide between communities, and bring youth from all areas of Chicago in solidarity with Black Lives Matter,” drew more than 1,000 people and the attention of local and national media—not bad for a group of 16- and 17-year-olds who organized the whole thing on social media. “

via @rookiemag

[suziqsmith]

Why do we accept this sort of thing? We have numerical superiority-but they have guns and money. And then the righteous don't like to cut throats, so we languish in misery.

George Jackson, Soledad Brother

[suziqsmith]

After one concedes that racism is stamped unalterably into the present nature of Amerikan sociopolitical and economic life in general (the definition of fascism is: a police state wherein the political ascendancy is tied into and protects the interests of the upper class-characterized by militarism, racism, and imperialism), and concedes further that criminals and crime arise from material, economic, sociopolitical causes, we can then bum all of the criminology and penology libraries and direct our attention where it will do some good.

George Jackson, Soledad Brother

[nycartscene]

Editor’s Pick opens Feb 20:

“A New Republic”  Kehinde Wiley

Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY

Wiley’s signature portraits of everyday men and women riff on specific paintings by Old Masters, replacing the European aristocrats depicted in those paintings with contemporary black subjects, drawing attention to the absence of African Americans from historical and cultural narratives. The exhibition includes an overview of the artist’s prolific fourteen-year career and features sixty paintings and sculptures.  - thru May 24

[blu-flowr]

[suziqsmith]

A poem I wrote about Timberlake 3 years ago . . . still relevant.

Dear Justin,

 Hey.

I want to tell you

the truth. ‘Suit and Tie’

was my jam for a little bit.

 And really, I appreciate

the Michael Jackson callbacks

in ‘Take Back the Night’, but I wonder -

how many of your young fans

even know

that they are Michael Jackson callbacks?

How does Janet feel about you

and this ripping off?

 Not to call you

a thief, but when they call you Elvis Presley

in your dreams, do you wake up sweating

or smiling?

 Justin,

you might not know this,

but ‘Take Back the Night’

is the name of an organized movement

to end sexual violence.

 Since 1975, young organizers

around the country have been rallying together

and screaming in the streets

until the fear and danger quiet,

a flame sinking into an old candle.

 So naturally, I am wondering

who you, a straight cis-gendered white male,

are taking back the night from

exactly?  

 Has there been some shadow

stalking your shine, some dark

you are aiming to snatch at,

when you say ‘take it over’, do you mean

to pass

between your left

and right hands

or are you simply asking us

to dance? c. 2013 Suzi Q. Smith

[yuricema-deactivated20230814]

When Sky News went to Bournemouth to ask the locals about their views on immigration.

[yuricema-deactivated20230814]

These are the type of people who voted leave.

[nyokoko]

They in America too.

[kyssthis16]

Jesus fucking Christ

[suziqsmith]

Do we have any foreigners in the audience tonight? If so, please put up your hands. Wogs I mean, I'm looking at you. Where are you? I'm sorry but some fucking wog...Arab grabbed my wife's bum, you know? Surely got to be said, yeah this is what all the fucking foreigners and wogs over here are like, just disgusting, that's just the truth, yeah. So where are you? Well wherever you all are, I think you should all just leave. Not just leave the hall, leave our country. You fucking (indecipherable). I don't want you here, in the room or in my country. Listen to me, man! I think we should vote for Enoch Powell. Enoch's our man. I think Enoch's right, I think we should send them all back. Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white. I used to be into dope, now I'm into racism. It's much heavier, man. Fucking wogs, man. Fucking Saudis taking over London. Bastard wogs. Britain is becoming overcrowded and Enoch will stop it and send them all back. The black wogs and coons and Arabs and fucking Jamaicans and fucking (indecipherable) don't belong here, we don't want them here. This is England, this is a white country, we don't want any black wogs and coons living here. We need to make clear to them they are not welcome. England is for white people, man. We are a white country. I don't want fucking wogs living next to me with their standards. This is Great Britain, a white country, what is happening to us, for fuck's sake? We need to vote for Enoch Powell, he's a great man, speaking truth. Vote for Enoch, he's our man, he's on our side, he'll look after us. I want all of you here to vote for Enoch, support him, he's on our side. Enoch for Prime Minister! Throw the wogs out! Keep Britain white!

ERIC CLAPTON, 1976.

This kind of rhetoric and ideology had a lot to do with how Brexit happened.  It reminds me of the secession of the Confederate states, which led to the U.S. civil war. 

[suziqsmith]

23/30 - National Poetry Writing Month

the night prince died,

my daughter tried to make me smile.

i was too deep in pondering immortality,

wondered about the stretch of an echo,

the music of dark matter,

muted piano keys,

the memory of how it’s supposed to sound

even when a voice is drowning.

 the night prince died,

i called the homegirls.

i could not bear the company

of those who might question my grief.

we gathered around the fire pit

under the full moon

and drank and laughed

and cried and remembered

and danced and kissed babies

together in our heavy.

 the night prince died,

i had a sex dream about questlove.

our bed became a stage.

my breasts were exposed.

we had an audience.

i didn’t mind.

we knew everything was ours

and theirs, too,

the weakness of this desperate want,

it would have been selfish to lock the doors.

  c. 2016 Suzi Q. Smith

[artsnquotes]

More important than a work of art itself is what it will sow. Art can die, a painting can disappear. What counts is the seed.

Joan Miro  (via wnq-art)

[suziqsmith]

On Rachel Dolezal: Come See Me or You Ain’t Gotta Lie to Kick It or Go ‘head on and Write That Book but Send Me the Royalties

Lord knows I did want to talk about you.

Did not want to write this poem.

You have already taken enough from me.

But every time your face shows up on my news feed

a fury awakens in my blood and curls my fingers into fists.

 You are a thief, Rachel.

People think it’s funny to tell me you look like me.

You should look like me.

You wore me as a costume.

Funny how you chose my identity to cloak that white guilt

or whatever it is you working with.

Ionno.  I’m not a therapist.

 You really tried it, Rachel.

Tanned it up just to achieve my shade of light skinneded as a motherfuck.

I just think it’s funny how you could take me off when you feel like it.

 You know all them sideways glances black people be givin when you show up in black spaces (I know you know), but the thing is

you supposed to get them looks,

all those question marks people give me are for you.

Here.  You can have them.  I got questions too.

 You know I got the side-eye from everybody in the beauty shop

the day after your story broke?

Like they ain’t had their own hands all up and through these naps for years?

Like they ain’t walk me through my journey from the relaxer to the realest fro?

Like they ain’t do my cousins and my daughter’s hair too?

 Now you selling books, Rachel?  

Bish, is you even a writer though?  

You ever carved ink from your flesh to map out a plan for survival?

Had to spell out and memorize words that will save your life?

 My father is black, Rachel.

Both of his parents are black, Rachel.

All of their parents were black, Rachel.

All of their parents were slaves, Rachel.  

What that ancestry do, Rachel?

 What you know about these generations of blood and scab?

What you know about descending from people that survived it to make you?

What you know about blackness that you ain’t choose?

 I understand a complex racial identity, Rachel.

You ever taken a fist to the jaw for it?

Had your eyes blackened?

You ever had somebody call you a nigger to your face and mean it?

Feel your lineage tremble with thirst?

 I know how to fight, Rachel.

Been doin that shit since forever.

You ever had to bust somebody upside they head?

Snatch your hair from they scalp?

Snatch your story out they mouth?

 - Suzi Q. Smith

[suziqsmith]

The problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , “The Three Evils of Society,” 1967

[suziqsmith]

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Beyond Vietnam,” 1967

[suziqsmith]

In honor of the guilty verdict in the #DanielHoltzclaw trial.

[youareoutofyourelementdonny]

[juicyvelourtracksuit]

ME

[suziqsmith]

when you realize that you are out of deodorant

but remember in your bathroom drawer you have that natural deodorant

and you don’t remember why you ever stopped using it

it has natural aloe and tea tree oil

and must be naturally good for the skin

and somewhere in the mid-afternoon

you raise your natural arms in your natural dance moves

in the kitchen after you successfully wash all the dishes

and catch a sniff of your own, natural, citrus-sharp funk

and remember as sharply as the scent why you stopped

using that natural deodorant and remind yourself

to take your natural behind to the store.