Category: community

beating brow

blue painted steel after night sky
gravity focused
dull brown brick in pink light
sharing load
orange stripes
tertiary painting
last of white street light
stored electrons
fundamental simple
means dignity justice voice

steel bridge at sunrise
(members of the welfare rights coalition camped out at department of social service headquarters in 1969 until the agency agreed to responsibly meet demands addressing basic human rights)

day without

thou shalt not believe in
victory dollar
victory vote
winning love
detached voice
common enemy
single-sourced fact
warstrategem
labelism
natural state nationarchy
killing

hospital at sunrise
(in 1969 local 1199 organized hospital and nursing home workers and negotiated for decent wages, good working conditions, job security, respect, and dignity with johns hopkins)

clean this shit up

digging roots
metabolorderhotcerealfreshfruit
portable midday
bones bagged extraction
distraction
arrests incarceration
first waves gathering storm
concessionsjobs materielleopiomanicsomuchhorseshit
know the stalking patience
prey
slowly devour predator
salivablood love chewedorgan swalllowingpeace
understandingincising

eager street at dawn
(the baltimore branch of the black panther party started working out of east eager street in 1968)

free agnew confrontation

random bestial power coursing
bunches of quakers praying
so many reminders
cars careening
in the same cell suffering
most solitary sadnesses
tiny shards in strong wind
bodies along to get it wrong
if only a law is just life celebration

maryland avenue at sunrise
(the baltimore defense committee, operating out of 2525 maryland avenue, organized several days of nationally prominent anti-war and social justice protests in 1968 during the trial of the catonsville 9)

 

best that ever

my violent law
my oppressing order
knees locked heels digging
lookup bluesky reeling
silhouettes surround swirling circling
smoke and flames
your hope despair your rage
my war

president street at sunrise
(criminal and governor spiro agnew mistook a hole in the ground after several days of unrest after martin luther king jr. was murdered in 1968, condescending to community leaders in his president street office)

radio message to silk stockings

large shattering glass windows
rage coming up the road
coursing action
shockwaves
human lithosphere elastic
subsiding in eerie melody of alarms
then sunlit bayonets
faultlines recharging

gay street at sunrise
(several days of unrest resulting in twelve million dollars of property damage in 1968 first started in the four hundred block of gay street two days after martin luther king jr. was murdered)

bringing up

in the crackle of burning paper
lost prayers on asphalt
smoke rising into seas unknowable
your answer god
god is war

frederick road at sunrise
(in 1968 daniel berrigan, phillip berrigan, david darst, john hogan, tom lewis, marjorie melville, thomas melville, george mische, and mary moylan seized draft records from a draft office at the catonsville knights of columbus building and burned them in the parking lot)

ninetynine fortyfour b

streaming straightrun snowdrops
bursting reformate
catalytic gay colors cracking
into instant suds hydrocrackating
prolonging alkylate sliprayonlife
mild isomerate gentle butanic
efficiencyfatal
safest possible incendiary soap a motherfucker can use

charles village street at surnise
(in 1968 bill o’connor and dean pappas mixed a test batch of napalm in bill’s charles village basement for the catonsville 9, who were preparing to raid the catonsville draft office and burn draft records)

drylands in rainfall

all who wish walk here
listen and say
arms lock sweat lift
path unseen waiting earth
touch stones smell tubers watch burrows and webs
hail paths crossing
continuing together

homes at sunrise
(in 1967 bonnie ellis, shirley pryor, and lousie alston helped establish the lafayette-douglass food buying club)