FROM THE ARCHIVES
A San Francisco police chief says, “Yes, you poets make points. But they are all silly,”
Police chief sowing a mouth onto a mouth
Police chief looking straight through the poet
Flesh market both sides of the levy
Change of plans both sides of the nonviolence
On no earth
Just an earth character
His subordinate says, “Awkward basketball moves look good on you, sir... Yes, we are everywhere, sir… yes, unfortunately for now, white people only have Black History … we will slide the wallpaper right into their cereal bowls, sir … Surveil the shuffle.”
I am a beggar and all of this day is too easy
I want to see all of the phases of a wall
Every age it goes through
Its humanity
Its environmental racism
We call this the ordeal blues
Now crawl to the piano seat and make a blanket for your cell
Paint scenes of a child dancing up to the court appearance
And leaving a man,
but not for home
Atlantic ocean charts mixed in with parole papers
Mainstream funding (the ruling class’s only pacifism)
Ruling class printing judges (fiat kangaroos)
Making judges hand over fist
Rapture cop packs and opposition whites all above a thorny stem
Caste plans picked out like vans for the murder show
anglo-saints addicting you to a power structure
you want me to raise a little slave, don’t you?
bash his little brain in
and send him to your civil rights
No pain
Just a white pain
Delicate bullets in a box next to a stack of monolith scriptures
(makes these bullets look relevant, don’t it?)
I remember you
Everywhere you lay your hat is the capital of the south
The posture you introduced to that fence
The fence you introduced to political theory
If you shred my dreams, son
I will tack you to gun smoke
The suburbs are finally offended
this will be a meditation too
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Contributor Notes
Tongo Eisen-Martin is the Poet Laureate of San Francisco. He is the author of someone’s dead already (Bootstrap Press, 2015), nominated for a California Book Award; and Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights, 2017), which received a 2018 American Book Award, a 2018 California Book Award, was named a 2018 National California Booksellers Association Poetry Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for the 2018 Griffin International Poetry Prize. Eisen-Martin is also an educator and organizer whose work centers on issues of mass incarceration, extrajudicial killings of Black people, and human rights. He has taught at detention centers around the country and at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University.
