Quincy Troupe

"SO WHAT"

miles blew "so what" on kind of blue
& eye do too, right here, right now,
"so what" is an attitude, a rhythm steeped & shaped,
the blues, what the cadences build then pick up,
'tudes bursting into light, high steppin it
through a room, space, where energy mimics style,
grace, the music dancing around whatever attitude brings
into the room, comes with the territory, -
living in the world is not free, the beauty we receive, here,
inside this moment, is the music, is whatever we are feeling right
about now, popping our fingers as we move through a groove,
like hip people suppose to, we goose up nights,
but the space most of us cruise through is not enough
to keep the feeling real, with what we know, with what we got,
with what is brought to the table, right here, right now,
"so what" says the wind up in the music,
blowing down our lives like a tornado exploding into view,
swirling like screaming headlines, leaving false rumors all around,
faked photographs made up in dark rooms,

"so what" says ivy league assassins employed by the cia,
the government of disinformation, who drop bombs of terror
throughout our lives, who kick down our doors,
like those ski-masked bounty hunters did over in phoenix,
who blast through our dreams just because they wanted to
& could do, playing war games as if they were gods,
"so what" say the kkk of paleontologist hubris, observation,
"so what" says day-to-day bullshit dumped into our laps,
the second reconstruction is here, at our door
step, is alive & kicking, now
"so what" miles blew in 1959
"so what" said the tornado blowing through our lives,
"so what" say the creators of war games, doing what they do,
for the public good, freedom & democracy,
"so what" says prop 209 in california, the second reconstruction
& it was all about attitude back in 1959
& it's all about attitude, right now

IMAGE & REMEMBRANCE

on a plane ride to flagstaff, arizona,
glittering snowflakes shoot through the right wing's
beacon light, outside my window, in the night's chilling
air, streak like tracer streams of bullets,
fired from a soldier's spitting gun,
on the front line of war, anywhere

WITNESSES

the lamp posts stand mute, cold as death camp sentries,
guards the dead caught a glimpse of, just before
they gave up their last breath in volleys of spitting gunfire,
dark shades of drooping trees whispered mournfully
overhead, back then, in the chilled night air,

their leaves were serenading shadows lengthening over
the spots where the dead fell silent, as these new stones here, now,
growing up fast, posing as humans, block by block mutes everywhere,
shape the tone of fiction & friction between these ravaged buildings
popular myth holds as sacred truth, for family, community,
that we trust as love, brother & sisterhood, all that nonsense,
but where the new walking dead living here now, under eaves of gables
hardly ever whisper, or pose beyond sulks, but live just to survive
this cold, silent place of bloody history & murder, red fingers
clawing graffitied walls, these dark-circled eyes those of witnesses,
are cold as cocked uzis, who have seen it all in blood & spades,
witnesses, whose eyes know the real deal beyond words,
witnesses, who know the truth going down, right now

SIGNALS & DEMARCATIONS

most times the lines are invisible as threats
eyes signaled when they flashed hate in the looks
of hitler's storm troopers in germany,
now distant cold stares in faces of well-scrubbed
apple-pie american flesh & blood images, replicated
& mailed from faraway zip codes, black christian crosses stamped
on their foreheads, most times the color of the moon (their speech
repeating in triplicate what they've heard each day from spin
doctors on radio talk shows, conservative programming,
who wave the flag in consideration for a few ducats or applause
or both-the more the merrier her e-
& preach a kind of jackbooted message
the already-converted want to hear-though it strangles
the goodwill that might flow in their absence-) so very smug
in their self-ordained righteousness
they too often live behind closed minds shut air-tight,
until they unhinge like gaping mouths of mamba snakes,
& strike a horror unreal as that in cemeteries,
their laughter muted & squashed
as death of all joy in any concentration camp,
beauty stifled & stuffed into sameness of squared,
evenly cut, postage-stamp lawns, look-a-like houses
guarded by rent-an-attitude policemen in black, circling the hush
like flakes in beady-eyed cars, patrolling like clocked robots,
it is a sign of the times, of what we have come to now,
in this last gasp of this bloody century repeating itself,
before it shuts down, mass graves in bosnia and herzegovina,
genocide in ruwanda & liberia, cracking gunfire piercing innocent
skulls on brooklyn streets, razors & bombs shearing faces off
buildings, even now, in oklahoma city, tanzania, kenya, smoke
& fires curling from eyes of world trade center buildings
in manhattan, is what this century has brought us to now,
white soldiers killing blacks for spiderweb tattoos
in north carolina, the oj simpson trial
meat cleaving a grand canyon wedge between races-
as if the chasm wasn't already wide enough-
where the lines are invisible as threats
cold eyes signaled before their jackboots cracked
skulls on pavements, flashed new signs of hitler's smug
attitude, self-righteous here as bible-toting moral-
majority-christians, their voices echoing crack
white ghosts of hitler's nazis reincarnated & rubber-stamped
in lines of skinheads storm-troopering through streets,
their jackboots cracking heads all over "the land of the free"
talking about Jesus, waving guns, the american flag

© 1999-2005 by Quincy Troupe