Reginald Lockett

The Movement

Things weren't always like this.
We were circuit riders of Garvey's whirlwind,
working the rhythms of blues drenched streets,
jazz soaked nightclubs and gatherings
of houngans and necromancers committed to struggle,
breathing the fire of Malcolm's words.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Way was Grove Street,
and no children stood on comers
speaking the language of doom and hawking
the wares of self-doubt and destruction.
Fillmore was alive with the comings, goings, and doings
of a people dancing
across collard green floors and holding up combread walls
under buttermilk skies,
pawing, clawing, dreaming, scheming, screaming . . .
getting up, standing up, and flying, dying, crying,
conniving their way towards newer tomorrows.
Good brothers and sisters on the speedboat
of revolution, our sights set on this thing
called freedom.
Things weren't always dismal and dank like this.
We were cosmic griots taking the point,
searching infinite perimeters of sights and sounds
from the funky Four Comers of existence,
talking smack by the boatloads and getting one up
on the would-be grafters of our dreams,
slipping and sliding through concrete bayous
in urban undergrowth,
the bloodhounds of oppression, repression,
and suppression
snapping and baying at the iridescence of our heels.
Some of us drank gallons and gallons of Red Mountain
or shortneck after shortneck of Ripple
under the harsh glow of red and blue party lights,
and held tight to women blacker than forty midnights,
suddenly beautiful,
getting the R-E-S-P-E-C-T and do rightness
Aretha demanded in that brand new bag
James Brown shouted and hollered into our thoughts.
Things weren't always crazy like this.
Incarcerated in the desolate barnyards ofAmerikkka,
we were fast and slick in the way we saw ourselves.
We were cutesy tootsie roosters wearing our crowns
a good fifty degrees to the side,
and laid, sprayed, and ready to get paid
in plumage of silk and satin.
We kept the hawks of our misery confused and perplexed
beyond cocaine and cognac tainted perspectives.
We were keepers of the eagle's eye view
on the watch out for the cutthroats of reason
and the backstabbers of sanity
on these long, winding and twisting highways and byways,
booking midnight flights of fancy
on the music of Trane, Albert, and Pharoah,
the teachings of Fanon, Mao, Che, and Huey,
and the muses of Baraka, Sonia, Askia and Larry,
trying to get back home to Ditty-Wah-Ditty*
in a nick of time to call winners
and cash in all the chips
in this game of chance called life.

Honolulu , 1952

for Kathryn Takara

Me and Paul raced scorpions,
picked bananas and papayas
from trees that flourished
in the front yards and overlapped
the second story balconies
of our navy housing units,
ran up and down paths
that connected the backyards
of our Filipino, black, white,
Chinese and Japanese playmates
oblivious to our differences
until school began.

Me and Paul,
the only two blacks
in the two kindergartens
on the green, pristine,
well kept, well equipped
designated white side
of the fence
at Pearl Harbor Elementary
where we endured taunts
and told we had tails
like monkeys.

We could only talk
to our black friends
through the wire fence
that separated our playground
from the dilapidated
white bungalows
and filthy schoolyard
where they read raggedy
hand-me-down books
like I would a year later
in Texas at the country school
for coloreds my mother,
aunts, uncles, and grandparents
had all attended since the day
it opened in 1875.

Affirmative Action

When August Crumpler, Jr.,
whose father owned a pharmacy
and was a mover, shaker,
and agitator throughout the state,
became the first Negro policeman
hired in Berkeley ,
champagne glasses clinked,
radio broadcasts blared,
newspapers headlines glared,
TV cameras rolled.

Did the first of Berkeley 's colored sons
to protect and serve walk
the beat downtown along Shattuck
or patrol near the university?
No.

The mayor and chief sent him
straight to the roughest, toughest,
most dangerous part of town,
down by San Pablo Park
where street fighting Jack McCrary,
Shadow, Moose,
and the mean Dupree brothers lived.
Them niggas was wrong.

They kicked poor Augie's ass
every Saturday night
and left his badge, gun,
and cap on the police station steps
on Monday mornings.

Cover Design: Joseph McNair