Poem Call: Amiri Baraka

In Memory of Radio

Who has ever stopped to think of the divinity of Lamont Cranston?
(Only jack Kerouac, that I know of: & me.
The rest of you probably had on WCBS and Kate Smith,
Or something equally unattractive.)

What can I say?
It is better to haved loved and lost
Than to put linoleum in your living rooms?

Am I a sage or something?
Mandrake's hypnotic gesture of the week?
(Remember, I do not have the healing powers of Oral Roberts...
I cannot, like F. J. Sheen, tell you how to get saved & rich!
I cannot even order you to the gaschamber satori like Hitler or Goddy Knight)

& love is an evil word.
Turn it backwards/see, see what I mean?
An evol word. & besides
who understands it?
I certainly wouldn't like to go out on that kind of limb.

Saturday mornings we listened to the Red Lantern & his undersea folk.
At 11, Let's Pretend
& we did
& I, the poet, still do. Thank God!

What was it he used to say (after the transformation when he was safe
& invisible & the unbelievers couldn't throw stones?) "Heh, heh, heh.
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows."

O, yes he does
O, yes he does
An evil word it is,
This Love.
-Amiri Baraka

A few years ago, Baraka was made the Poet Laureate of New Jersey; when he published a poem criticizing the government's reaction to 9-11, he was removed from the position. It upset my creative writing teacher at the time- a man who, despite being largely ineffectual as a teacher, helped me keep myself from falling apart for the first half of that year. So I have a fondness for Amiri Baraka that has nothing to do with his poetry, as I've read very little of it.

I think I'll have to remedy that, particularly in regards to his earlier work.