Saturday, January 11, 2014

Amiri Baraka

October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014

Some people are necessary to your life. I remember the aurora that Baraka bathed my life with. I felt special. I felt like I was a poet and an artist and have never stopped feeling that way since he entered. "I am inside someone who hates me," he wrote, or (paraphrase) "like a yellow mist," the fog choked the town. His life shifts, his intellectual and creative energy have remained a reflection of my world and a way of staying above and making art out of hate and discord.


like a bridge over the river
he carried us through
the ocean’s deepest depth
the swiftness of the yellow fog to
sculpt the touch of human kindness
against the blood-red wall

dutchman
preface to a twenty volume suicide note
blues people
the black arts movement


amiri baraka reported dead today
brother no, brother no
like a bridge over the river
he carries us across
c

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