1.
The Earth has kept on traveling round the Sun
Since the day it shook and pulled them down.
Down
Down
Down
Everything fell:
Shacks and church pews smashed through sewers
Palace collapsed – an empty shell.
Three hundred thousand
(counted, fewer;
Thousands buried, never found).
The whole world ruptured.
Catacombs
Unleashing walled-up winds of hell.
La Terre Tremblé.
2.
Will we forget what that shaking ground
Revealed for all to see, who cared to look?
The way the streets filled up with bloated bodies?
The way the troops drove on, and let them cook?
The “Aid” delayed, as if for fear of zombies
rising from their rubble graves to run –
White eyes blazing bloody memories
of how white masters came and took by gun?
And yet, and yet,
poor Haitians did not riot;
worked to pull each other from the ruins.
Carried those who died,
and those who wouldn’t,
for a while,
And those who lived.
Gave until they had no more to give.
(Meanwhile,
“Security,” guns in hand;
Stand in for gates that no longer can,
Protecting property of those in command.)
3.
A sudden eruption
of broken heart blisters
oozing dry on Live TV
far flung news anchors aim
for the ripe wound,
peeling it back,
letting us see
seeking the perfect angle to capture that
“inexplicable-horror-of-it-all,”
(just a dash of sugared hope thrown in for the folks at home)
that sweet spot
where the latex glove meets the bandage meets the hand meets the ballot box
meets the sky--
Where it hurts to look.
And makes you cry
(But never lets you find out How or Why).
From such fastened hooks
America hangs
Prepared to unleash its charity thang.
Solemn celebrities claim center stage:
And all who are seated are moved.
Millions shut their eyes in prayer
(secretly thankful that they’re not there)
Ready to do what good people should:
for a minute, an hour, or even a week.
But never letting the Haitians speak.
What do the people there have to say?
When looking at US, what do they see?
Who will dare to take a peek today?
Caught in the sun, the pocked eye turns away.
How much can the blinded stand to see?
Band-aids slap where barricades should be.
4.
Worldwide
They say there are a dozen cities
With at least a million people each
Lying, waiting, sleeping on a fault line
(Slum-dweller flesh to feed the breach).
For each year, the Earth, it shivers
In the endless cold of space,
Quakes and quivers,
like an ox
whose skin
must knock flies from its face.
The fault is not the moving Earth’s–
We know that quakes will come, and even where –
At fault:
a world-wide class affliction
Razing mounds of contradiction:
Bubbling boils that bust through skin,
Seeping hot pus, sweat and blood – and liquid gold
That trickles up to rulers’ lips ice cold.
Parasites suck membranes thin:
Vulture claws cleave crater-trails,
Until all precious flesh
is drawn in scabs and scars
to fit the scales.
(Heed the bankers’ dark command:
Plow the farmers off the land.
Build estates on bone and sand.
Spill the poor in pavement cracks.
Stitch the workers into seams
Of rulers’ cloaks– Breaking their backs –letting them choke --gasping for air –
stripping them down to their dreams,
then bare.)
The earth, we know,
will quiver.
The brittled surface,
tear.
5.
This predator plague has no plan
for poor people,
except for the juice to be squeezed
from their veins
To quench its viral thirst.
Markets pressure
and hearts burst.
So long as endless profit reigns.
(The heads of state remain aloof:
Crisis = opportunity, after all.
Helicopter blades give the world a roof.
And there’s plenty of sweat to catch,
as they
fall.)
6.
Outside Port au Prince:
Refugee Cities –
Rain-soaked sheets
Flap on and on,
But only the bugs and bats can
fly.
The people, gathering:
Grasp at Why.
Peering eyes out fraying holes;
Fingers point:
jetliners tearing the sky.
Aboard corporate planes:
Thirsty agents
Ties loosened,
Clinking drinks in hand,
Toast to a future
for which they’ve signed.
Traveling home,
to milder climes:
If they look down
through parting clouds–
see only some
dirty laundry lines.
(Originally written in January, 2011. Updated August. 2022)
Joseph G. Ramsey, PhD, is an educator, organizer, scholar, and activist, located in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Joe is a Senior Lecturer in English and American Studies at UMass Boston, where he is an activist in the Faculty Staff Union (FSU/MTA), and a founding member of the anti-austerity Save UMB Coalition. His scholarly research area focuses on African American literature and the Left, with a book project in the works on the critical communism of Richard Wright. Joe is also an editorial board member at Cultural Logic, an electronic journal of marxist theory and practice, at the journal Socialism and Democracy, and host and co-producer of the pandemic-era internet show Shelter and Solidarity: A Deep Dive with Artists and Activists.
