Water and White Cotton

strange fruit ..

can surprise you at times! Thanks, Paul. Much appreciated.

I've listened to a lot of Langston Hughes spoken work and I believe you have caught a certain feeling or ambiance to it. well penned.

One of the best compliments ever, Samael. Much appreciated.  So glad there's another Hughe's fan here.  Do you plan on entering the comp? I do hope so, particularly if you're familiar with him.

A well done tribute Ahvanti.  Hats off on this one.


hugs,
buddhakitty.

* curtsies *, Kitts! Thank you muchly. xo  

I do hope you consider entering?  You've been submitting some kickass poetry lately!

You, Queen, this is your year. I can just feel how powerful you've become in the birth of it.  This is epic.

Pfft! I am your lady in waiting when it comes to nature, Madame!

Hey! We miss you in the classics, and hope to see you return soon! xo

Isn't that the truth, sunsettown.  I know at some point there was unity, until the heart began coveting power.  Thank you Sir, it's muchly appreciated.

I do hope to see you brave the classic comps one day! Hughes would be a good place to start.  

"Blood is Life  
the good book says;    
but, water comprises the majority  
of our heart and lungs⁠—  
enables white bones    
  to hold up this black body⁠—  
  its silt reshaping    
  brief lessons in history"  
 
I enjoy the metaphor of silt, how it ends up wherever water deposits it. We are mostly water, so then water is mostly us. And if so then, collectively, water is all of us coming together and interacting and shaping the present moment after moment after moment into what is recorded as historical events.  
   
"I envision archaic journeys  
 for bartered captivity⁠—    
restless swells beat'n    
  ships against their breasts;    
demanding dead ancestors  
   for safe passage  
   across the Atlantic"      
 
Horrible, but beautifully described.  
   
"Water, everywhere—    
 churning dark as unborn blood;  
 and Negroes, bent back⁠—    
condemned to drown in an ocean    
  of white cotton; or, worse    
sway'n from a gnarled branch"  
 
Again, dark skin people have become as if silt itself, carried away by the collective and deposited elsewhere, treated as material without soul or will.    
   
"They'd still do that to us  
  in particular parts of the south—  
   
giv'n half a chance"  
 
The tides have turned, but .....  
 
I think Hughes would be thrilled to dive into such poetry about black lives with so much depth.  

As for the audio reading ..... Be still mah beat'n hahrt. 💕

📝❤  
 

So happy you got the metaphor of the silt! That is exactly what I was going for, the blood depositing along the way, altering evolution and thus history to suit the powers-that-be.  

The conditions on slave ships were unspeakable horrors where almost as many lost their lives as they did survive. Thrown overboard without so much as a word of prayer.  

Thank you for understanding this and hosting the classics with me! I think they're an integral part of DU!  ❤️

When great poetry inspires great poetry and I get to read it all and evaluate it and be inspired and write my own and do it all with you ... well, that's just my dream come true.

💜

We are living it, aren't we? 💜💜

Thank you, always. xo

Magnificent work!
I look forward to more of your spoken poetry

Thank you, Rickji!  Much appreciated. I attempted to voice this in the monotone accent Hughes was so noted for.  I am happy you enjoyed it.  

*silence*

you are a risen tide
carrying with you
the voices of the drowned
the drowning
so others may hear them speak

Thank you, butters! Wonderful poetic response. So happy to see you back-roun hee'yah!  Hope more to see you in these classic comps one day!

Another Aha master-poom.

Peace & Blessings/////

Thanks, dada! Much appreciated! xo

Wow, another masterpiece! And as for the audio ♥♥♥♥

Thank you, NuBorn!  Much appreciated! xo

I took a messy approach to reading and to this comment, owing to a sleepy grump with a ba-ba and too little time... all the same, your first verse sank in well like watering thirsty soil. Then I finished reading to see the context, slavery and cotton. Bravo! ❤️

Man... she's cute! ...and still trying to steal the iPad!

Yeah, definitely a stain on the south's history - or so the majority see it that way now, thankfully.  Still die-hard racists living about, hopefully another generation or so will correct that.

You take care of yourself and your babies.  I appreciate your time more than you know. ❤️

i fucking wept.
this is utterly raw, as tho you have just ripp'd the scab off of a faux-heal'd wound, off of the lie society calls progress and equality and social injustices we're told does not exist... this is the infancy, the seed of centuries still so deep root'd in society.
yup, wept like a baby.

When you comment like this, I know I've touched something deep inside you. . .thank you for this, Katja. I truly appreciate you sharing your feelings and response. Remorse is exactly what I was going for in this. That, and educating the masses who literally may not know of the south's history.  Like, a good part of the south!

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

this, along with genocide, is a topic that never ceases to stir too many emotions in me.
as you know, I'm living in Cape Town which was a hot spot for the slave trade as well as every colonizer who wanted prime property along the sea route. About seven years ago, as close as 100m off the coast of one of my favorite beaches, the wreck of a slave ship was discovered... the surviving records are horrifying regarding the conditions on board... more than 200 slaves drowned because they were shackled together and survivors were sold in town to Dutch farmers.
It is also not uncommon here for people of color to have surnames like January, February, March etc because those are the months their ancestors arrived here. This doesn't even begin to touch on the often humiliating names others were given on arrival. 
Our townships and what we refer to as the Cape Flats are areas where people of color were stashed so the city center, foreshore and blue flag beaches could be reserved for whites only.
I could go on forever and ever just about SA and then start on emigrating from the Ukraine for another few centuries.

That is really strange and coincidental regarding the discovery of a slave ship.  In Alabama they discovered one too off the shores of Mobile, claiming it was one of the last ships known to bring enslaved people from Africa to the U.S.

https://apnews.com/0bac9301603d448c9a2eff1ceebac3d1

And dang the south is STILL fighting over ownership of the ghosts.

I believe that you, too, are Jewish, and we share that history regarding the holocaust as well.  Add the Native American to mine and we also share the same passionate adversity toward slavery and genocide that much of the world knows nothing about.

Cape Town sounds a lot like the south in the sectioning of areas for whites and blacks.  It's unreal to me; absolutely unreal, and I don't understand, nor ever have, the mindset of owning another human being.  I don't even own animals, they choose and own me.

Thank you for extrapolating, I wasn't aware it was that dire there, simply because it's not taught here.  Anymore than our own history is. The south likes to sweep things under the carpet quite a bit. . .

history here is, fortunately,  taught in painstaking detail... segregation only ended in the late 1980's so it's a fresh wound, centuries of colonialism and then the apartheid era have had far reaching consequences now resulting in a genocide denied by government.

thank you for the link, I'm definitely going to give it a read.
here is our wreck: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/São_José_Paquete_Africa
goddamn slavers.

That is so horrid.  It also makes you wonder, despite the gruesome death, if they were the lucky ones in never having to serve as a slave.   Their lives were so rough and so many were beaten, hanged, and murdered in other ways here.  

I found it very touching that they scattered that earth from their homeland and held that memorial.  

One horrific story is how gater hunters in the Bayou would take black children and babies and use them for bait whilst hunting.  It's as bad as the Egyptians throwing the Israelite children to the alligators.  We don't learn from history and it literally tears me apart.

I do envy your country in that it teaches history accurately, Katja.  That is the first step to change: knowledge and acknowledgment of wrong doing. Here in the south - pffft, we were not taught of slavery, much less it being wrong.  Why? because here segregation didn't end until the  1954, with a supreme court ruling. It had to go to the highest freaking court in America to stop it.

Then, as if that wasn't enough, it took a Civil Rights Act of 1964 to supercede ALL state and local laws regarding segregation.  I was in that mess - I started Kindergarten when I was five-years-old in 1964, and will forever remember the fights and bloodbaths. Not just between black and whites, oh no! But between whites and whites if you were even caught talking to, much less associating with a black person.

Now they touch base on it - but before college, I knew NOTHING of the cruel history outside of witnessing it firsthand. Oh they taught of the Civil War, etc. and the Revolutionary War - but none of it had to do with slavery ( according to the history books ).  

As an example ( not to drag this out ), but I posted this to my facebook page to test the waters.  My poetry is typically well-received; however, this one, crickets from anyone in the south. The only respondents were those from the north.  Because down he'yah, ya don't tawk about it.

you have such an ageless spirit that i sometimes forget we've a few years separating us and that you've lived thru scourges like segregation. 
i have naively, for quite some time, assumed that the states would be a lot more progressive but all the conservative horseshite iro race, gender, freedom of religion etc. at least more progressive than here where people still hunt albinos for body parts because it allegedly makes good muti...
... meanwhile, here in this godforsaken country, we legalised same sex marriage before the states, we've also had a landmark case where someone was convicted of racism and actually sentenced to prision. hate speech isn't tolerated.  just this week, some racist sod took to social media and charges have already been laid against them.
i personally feel that this kind of stance should be adopted by countries where segregation/genocide has and still divides the population... much like germany where it's illegal to fly the old swastika.

it's loathsome to admit that i can see why there are people who would flat out ignore this poem. it's an uncomfortable truth, a pebble in their shoe... ya know it's there buuuuut eh too much effort and introspection necessary to further examine.
there's a saying i hears in georgia years ago "satan in a sunday hat" and i think it reflects a large portion of the south... lawd it's pretty, but scratch beneath the surface...

'Satan in a Sunday hat' is a perfect reflection of the old south ( and some new, depending on how one was raised ).  

We were very progressive under President Obama; however, are going backwards to a masochistic rule under President Trump. I mean "Grab 'em by the pussy" and all.  I am completely befuddled by the mindset that finds no wrong in anything he does, be it transfer campaign funds to his private businesses, publicly lie ( which i understand politicians do - but not in the context he has ), not to mention bypassing the senate in regards to war to prevent impeachment and get reelected.  Its like he's attempting to make the whole world afraid of him - and I am afraid it's going to be American troops and war on our own soil that shows him some countries are not afraid of bullies.  

I commend your country's actions; every country should follow suit in regards to racism.  You have such an old soul that I, too, forget the age difference between us. xo

Langston is inspiring many great pieces. Your poem is beautiful and honest Ahavati.
Thank you for sharing.

Thank you, Wally! He certainly is.  This is a great month for the classics! I cannot wait to see your entries! Thanks always for your support!

What a fantastic response, Relic!  You should really enter these classic comps.  

I saw your forum post regarding erotic, which is something I rarely read here.  The reason doesn't matter. I just don't.  And i think when I originally checked out your work it was? I don't know; I can't honestly remember.  But, if you're posting stuff like this, then that's a totally different story.

I am curious as to why you posted an old poem of yours to a current post like this?  I personally don't mind, but without an explanation, it leads us to believe that our poetry inspired it. Posting an old poem to another's post seems a bit tacky and self-promotive, in my not so humble opinion.  

What else would you expect by posting ann old poem in response to another member's post without another word?  While personal references are common in responses ( I rather enjoy them ), you made it ALL  about yourself, which is rude any way viewed.  
 
As I said, I don't care. It's a great poem and didn't really bother me; except, without an addendum, I thought it was inspired by mine.    
 
Now I see you've dramatically deleted your account over a little honesty.  Let me be more honest: don't think one instant I didn't know who you were; and, still are in this board.

It's really is getting hard to trust new faces around here when so many are the latest incarnation of past problematic users.  

Anyhoo ... on with the poetry!