The Curse of Ham

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FranktheFrank
Posts: 1983
Joined: 02 Mar 2016, 18:07
Location: Between the mountains and the sea

The Curse of Ham

#1 Post by FranktheFrank » 11 Jan 2018, 20:06

They choked the nicest boy in Kansas to death,
No Governor's reprieve and he died on schedule.

Bernard Henrie - 11 October 2017 - The Writer's Block

On a drilling platform
floating on the Niger delta
a Slumberger's man drifted into
our messroom, a 78 played
Summer Grass. We spun
out the time rolling Liar Dice.

Ironsay had been slain in '65,
a year ago, his body discovered
rotting in a forest glade. General Ojukwu
moved his forces into the Mid-West
to avenge the one hundred
thousand Ibo killed in pogroms,
half of them children.

Slumberger man spoke about his
glory days as a police deputy.
We listened as we played.

He spoke in front our Ibo mess boy,
brazen about hunting
coloured suspects,
of how the dogs would pen them
until the Law caught up to blast
them into oblivion as if they were
nothing but animals.

I wanted to warn him, there were ears
only too ready to shop him.

I pondered on America that day,
how could it be
the land of the free,
the land of the brave.

How long could he survive
in a Biafran gaol, why didn't
we condemn his wickedness.

Bernie01
Posts: 777
Joined: 30 Jul 2015, 11:14

Re: Racism

#2 Post by Bernie01 » 11 Jan 2018, 21:55

Frank---


how grim this event was so many years ago., but still like just this morning.

i covered celebrities. Peter Paul and Mary, Louis Armstrong, and Gov. Faubus who stood in the doorway to prevent a few black kids to attend school.

then a fellow university of Kansas student murdered his mother, father and his sister.

it was no longer a front page murder case, the city editor thought a feature writer might find an angle.


damn me, i labeled him "the nicest boy in Kansas."

the label stuck.


Frank, your poem today has those human elements---distance, an over powering and undeniable act of mass criminality, and senseless violence.

a stark poem from which the human tragedy emerges.


wonderful poem.


bernie

FranktheFrank
Posts: 1983
Joined: 02 Mar 2016, 18:07
Location: Between the mountains and the sea

Re: The Curse of Ham

#3 Post by FranktheFrank » 12 Jan 2018, 02:28

Hi Bernie, I have revised that rough draft of this morning,
I was going through some of the back pages of this forum to read
old poems, yours brought to mind a moment in Nigeria. It shocked me
then and is still with me now. At that moment I saw little difference
between the racial tensions there in Nigeria between the tribes
and the way this American who spoke about murdering
the descendants of Ham[sic] as if it was no big thing.
Thanks for feed back.

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