Category: Poetry Friday Post

Molly Hogan is hosting Poetry Friday at her blog Nix the Comfort Zone with a magical Inklings prompt.

In this Black History Month, I wanted to give witness here to James Weldon Johnson, author of this prayer poem that became known as the Black National Anthem. The anthem was written in 1900, when Jim Crow laws kept Black people segregated, without basic rights, and in danger of lynching. It is easy to read white history in the piece as well, with phrases like “chastening rod,” “blood of the slaughtered,” “weary years,” and “silent tears.” Johnson was an early civil rights activist, a leader of the NAACP, and helped develop the Harlem Renaissance.

Lift Every Voice and Sing

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand.
True to our God,
True to our native land.

By James Weldon Johnson
In public domain

 

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Read the story of how Johnson and his brother prepared this song and then forgot about it for a while.

Fifty Years and Other Poems by James Weldon Johnson at Project Gutenberg

Meanwhile, Yesterday in America

unmarked cars
no uniforms
home depot
i.c.e. raid
two men nabbed
we’re not safe
in yucca valley
do you carry
proof of citizenship
with you?

how will we lift
every voice?

Today is Poetry Friday and our host is Patricia J. Franz at Reverie with a Tahoe Tanka and a wonder walk through the forest for Write Out.

ICE Agents Storm My Porch

by Maria Melendez Kelson

The Indiscriminate Citizenry of Earth
are out to arrest my sense of being a misfit.
“Open up!” they bellow,
hands quiet before my door
that’s only wind and juniper needles, anyway.
read the rest here

I appreciated reading Kelson’s poem with all the descriptive, beautiful, interesting images like “a lock of my natal dust”, “fluttering fiber of lacebark pine” and “Undergoing re-portation.”

I watch the news these days, with the destruction of the White House and the daily vulgarities of I.C.E. in America, and I can’t write poetry anymore, but I keep trying even if I just record history. Like this week, having called the I.C.E. office four times and only getting the runaround, this was my poem for today.

I.C.E.
Real ice is transparent,
lets the light shine through.
and doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not.
I.C.E. is Incompetent, Cruel Exploitation
with their masked men who refuse to show IDs,
their jumping people in the streets,
(and snatching people from homes)
their detaining citizens and green card holders,
their refusal to answer questions
and won’t pass on messages to the supervisor
who authorized the kidnapping of Rocio,
their jackboots on the neck of America.

Today is Poetry Friday, and Karen Edmisten is hosting. Thank you!

Thank you, Poetry Sisters, for the invitation to join you in passing notes to a poem. I chose to use first lines in Nikki Giovanni’s “Talk to Me, Poem, I Think I Got the Blues” to start my stanzas. Then I wrote a note to Mary Oliver’s “Poppies”, a poem that I loved and read several times last weekend when I was with my family at my brother-in-law’s memorial service.

Talk to me, Orange Poem
(After Nikki Giovanni and Mary Oliver)

Talk to me, Poem.
Orange has always been
a color of happiness.

Have you been hijacked, Poem?
Your poppies as orange flares
with their sweet yellow hair–
I love those poppies of orange.

I know poems grow old,
but you are just over thirty.
So, not so old.

I know poems get remembered,
and I will remember you.
When I forget beauty.
When I forget invitation.
When the deep, blue night
tries to make me forget orange.
I will remember you, Poem.

What are your strengths, Poem?
levitating light,
happiness done right,
a kind of holiness,
washed and washed,
you say.
Yes, your strengths.

Talk to me, Orange Poem.
Make me happy again.