{"id":176426308,"date":"2013-10-09T02:17:52","date_gmt":"2013-10-09T07:17:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/?p=176426308"},"modified":"2013-10-09T02:17:52","modified_gmt":"2013-10-09T07:17:52","slug":"literature-video-sekou-sundiata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/2013\/10\/09\/literature-video-sekou-sundiata\/","title":{"rendered":"LITERATURE + VIDEO: Sekou Sundiata"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<header>\n<div><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: small;\"><time datetime=\"2013-09-09\">\u00a0<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-01.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-176426310\" alt=\"sekou 01\" src=\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-01.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"301\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-01.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-01-300x141.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-01-920x432.jpg 920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h1><b><iframe width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/M0FIzRj7prY?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/b><\/h1>\n<h1><b><iframe width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YtGPXE2aVXM?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/b><\/h1>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: large;\"><strong>__________________________<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>SEPTEMBER 9, 2013<\/p>\n<h1><\/h1>\n<h1><\/h1>\n<h1><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: xx-large;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/leslieanne-mcilroy.squarespace.com\/sekou-e-pluribus-unum\/2013\/9\/9\/intersections-e-pluribus-unum-with-sekou-sundiata\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">INTERSECTIONS: <\/span><\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n<h1><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: xx-large;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/leslieanne-mcilroy.squarespace.com\/sekou-e-pluribus-unum\/2013\/9\/9\/intersections-e-pluribus-unum-with-sekou-sundiata\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">E PLURIBUS UNUM WITH <\/span><\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n<h1><span style=\"font-size: xx-large; color: #000000;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/leslieanne-mcilroy.squarespace.com\/sekou-e-pluribus-unum\/2013\/9\/9\/intersections-e-pluribus-unum-with-sekou-sundiata\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">SEKOU SUNDIATA<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n<\/header>\n<hr \/>\n<div>\n<div data-type=\"item\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div data-block-json=\"{&quot;layout&quot;:&quot;caption-below&quot;,&quot;description&quot;:{&quot;source&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;engine&quot;:&quot;wysiwyg&quot;,&quot;html&quot;:&quot;&quot;},&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;5230c488e4b0dedc2d88b65c&quot;,&quot;filename&quot;:&quot;Sekou.jpg&quot;,&quot;lightbox&quot;:false,&quot;stretch&quot;:false,&quot;linkTo&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;newwindow&quot;:false,&quot;floatDir&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;hSize&quot;:8}\" data-block-type=\"5\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-03.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-176426311\" alt=\"sekou 03\" src=\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-03.jpg\" width=\"594\" height=\"475\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-03.jpg 900w, https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-03-300x240.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 594px) 100vw, 594px\" \/><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div data-block-json=\"{&quot;html&quot;:&quot;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;HEArt &lt;\/em&gt;was the first to publish this poem by Sekou Sundiata, which I believe was central to his final performance piece, &lt;a href=\\&quot;http:\/\/www.walkerart.org\/channel\/2006\/the-51st-dream-state\\&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;51st (dream) State.&lt;\/em&gt;&lt;\/a&gt; &lt;a href=\\&quot;#\\&quot;&gt;&lt;\/a&gt;&lt;em&gt;51st\\n (dream) State&lt;\/em&gt; premiered in 2006, a little more than a year before Sekou\\n passed in July 2007. &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;The poem (then \\n\\&quot;Untitled\\&quot;), and companion essay that follows, were first printed in &lt;em&gt;HEArt's&lt;\/em&gt; last print edition in spring, 2002. Today we reprint both, along with this brief introductory\/explanatory communication\\n he sent \\u2014 all in response to 9\/11 these 12 years later, with no less a sense of artistic exigency.&lt;br&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;\/em&gt;&lt;em&gt;Leslie,&lt;\/em&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Here\\n is a version of the poem-in-progress that I can live with for the \\nmoment. I am working on a final stanza. I suspect it will be published \\nas a work-in-progress, which may be useful. &lt;\/em&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Part\\n of the idea of the poem (and part of the reason I'm wrestling with it) \\nis my search for language post 911. Having grown up in the radical \\npolitical movements of the 1960s-70s, I felt that the language of that \\ntime had been exhausted. And that it is, in any case, unable to capture \\nmy sense of where we are.\\n\\n\\n\\n&lt;\/em&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;By the way, I mention \\&quot;guaguanco and \\nquaquanco\\&quot; (I have to check the spelling) a couple of times in the poem.\\n That is a rhythm common to Afro Cuban\/Afro Caribbean music. Its origin \\nis in Africa. The \\&quot;montuno\\&quot; has a similar background.\\n\\n\\n\\n&lt;\/em&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;By the way, did you ever get the photo that I sent by email?&lt;\/em&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Soon,&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/em&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sekou&lt;\/em&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;h2&gt;Untitled&lt;\/h2&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;Donny Hathaway was explaining &lt;em&gt;For\\nAll We Know &lt;\/em&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;and all the trouble in the world\\ncame down &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;to the essential energies swirling\\nlike tea leaves in the bottom of a cup &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;In the early days of the\\nAftermath, I was in hiding &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;from the lost army of protest\\ncalling from the 20th century &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;for something boisterous and\\nskinny on the page &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;I began with the scratch and\\nwhisper of number two lead &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;spelling out the line from\\ninstinct to hand to eye: &lt;em&gt;earth&amp;nbsp;\\nwater fire&amp;nbsp; air &lt;\/em&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;Later that morning, I gathered\\nmyself in the thin rush hour to Manhattan &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;The inbound train stalled in a\\ntunnel and we sat in abeyance &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;by consensus it seemed no one\\nspoke or complained &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;The George Washington Bridge\\ncrumbles into the Hudson River &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;the city buckles from The\\nCloisters to South Ferry &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;and collapses eye-to-eye with its\\nforgotten underlife &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;I follow horse trails through the\\nsecret pathways, &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;the indigenous ghost caves and\\nAfrican Burial Grounds, &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;a quaquanco echoes down the\\nstreets, the Untouchables &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;and Enchanters doowoop and do-rag\\nin a spot of starlight &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;like they don't know they're dead,\\nas if to say See this &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;is what we always wanted to be,\\nthe rivers come crashing &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;through the river walls and the\\nfish begin their tales &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;por El Dia de Recuerdo, when the\\nvoice of God &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;which once said Transcend and then\\nsaid Expand &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;is finally now saying Wow in an\\nAmerican creole &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;both mystical and clear speaking\\nthrough history\\u201As anesthesia &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;I came to my feet at the Wall\\nStreet station and walked towards the door &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;like a reluctant witness to the\\nwitness stand &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;The crater recalled a lonely\\nplanet, a pockmarked moon of ridges &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;and man-sized valleys, earth\\nmovers, dump trucks and cranes, &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;a priest kneels in the powdered\\nash, the rescue stops &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;for the holy ghost and the angel\\nof death to cross paths, &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;someone calls for the jaws of\\nlife: &lt;em&gt;earth&amp;nbsp; water&amp;nbsp; fire air &lt;\/em&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;The sky, Ellington blue, pours\\nover the harbor, black smoke curling &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;into its soft watercolors mixing\\nthose burning isms &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;into a mute and inscrutable beauty\\n&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;I stood citizen-to-citizen three\\nrows deep &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;A man flipped through the Daily\\nNews, matching pictures to the scene &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;A couple in a doorway argued hop\\nhop versus R &amp;amp; B in time like these &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;they look up from their ideologies\\nto agree Mercury must be retrograde &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;A woman to my right worried a flag\\nthe size of a handkerchief, &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;the kind you get at the\\nfairgrounds, and Yes, Little Emmett Till came to me, &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;a face that long ago cured my\\nfaith in that schoolboy lyric &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;so that I could no longer since\\nwith the voice of praise &lt;em&gt;O beautiful for spacious skies &lt;\/em&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;I walked the Avenue of the\\nAmericas, past the photocopy gallery &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;of the missing and the dead\\nmounted on buildings, in store windows and lobbies, &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;posted on police barricades along\\nthe streets &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;I searched for familiar faces and\\nfound a few, but the names were wrong &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;Yet I knew them all by their\\nfictions: the lighthearted Capricorn &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;from Seven Hills playing with her\\ncat on a Crate &amp;amp; Barrel sofa, &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;the Hindu newlywed who immigrated\\nfrom India to the golden city, &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;Nestor, the brother of Milagros,\\nmenacing the lens ringside at the gym, &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;a Miss Trinidad look alike caught\\nin a calypso on Eastern Parkway, &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;and a pensive man in one of his\\nmoods red black and blue at the root &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;I could see my own anonymous face\\nin that show, cut and pasted &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;above a word or two about my love &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;of swimming in the ocean and my\\ntaste for sentimental ballads &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;where what is missing and gone is\\nhalf the song &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;I drowned in a flood of burning\\njet fuel &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;Down was looking like up when I\\njumped with my brains on fire &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;I ran from the falling tower and\\nwandered for days &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;I heard a montuno y quaquanco\\ncalling from miles away &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;I followed horse trails through\\nsecret pathways &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;E pluribus unum&lt;\/em&gt;&amp;nbsp; I went home and wrote history to the\\nbone &lt;em&gt;&lt;\/em&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;I have been written &lt;\/em&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;h2&gt;Intersections: e pluribus unum with Sekou Sundiata&lt;br&gt;&lt;\/h2&gt;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I. Poetry, wearing the time worn hat of Memory, called me to\\nw&lt;\/strong&gt;&lt;strong&gt;itness&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/strong&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/h3&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;Almost as soon as the news of the\\nattacks reached me, I began a struggle&amp;nbsp;for language. Not poetry, just\\nlanguage that could help me figure out&amp;nbsp;what I was experiencing. Last week,\\nI gave a keynote speech at a&amp;nbsp;conference called Intersections: Future\\nAesthetics. The conference was&amp;nbsp;organized by Roberta Uno at New World\\nTheater at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In the&amp;nbsp;speech I\\ntalked about the need to address the future by acknowledging&amp;nbsp;some new\\nrealities that have been long in the making, but that were&amp;nbsp;formally\\nintroduced on September 11th. And, I recounted the story of my&amp;nbsp;whereabouts\\n(literal and figurative) during that time to set up the&amp;nbsp;reading of this untitled poem. &lt;br&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;I was in the hospital on the\\nmorning of September 11th, having been&amp;nbsp;admitted through the emergency room\\na few days earlier. For some reason,&amp;nbsp;they put me in a private room so\\nunless I had visitors, it was just me&amp;nbsp;and the television, the news. I\\nwas&amp;nbsp;washing up and had trouble getting out of the gown so I buzzed\\nfor&amp;nbsp;assistance. But no one came. Finally, I went out onto the ward to\\nget&amp;nbsp;help. But the unit was bustling with the business of changing shifts.\\nIt&amp;nbsp;was like standing at a crowded intersection at rush hour. A fresh\\nteam&amp;nbsp;of workers from housekeeping, maintenance and food service was coming\\nin&amp;nbsp;with new doctors, nurses and physical therapists . . . all setting up\\nfor&amp;nbsp;the day. The overnighters were on the way out, relief and\\nfatigue&amp;nbsp;written in their faces. I decided it was too busy,&amp;nbsp;so I went\\nback into the room and the news was reporting the first plane&amp;nbsp;attacking\\nthe tower. I went back into the hallway and told one of the&amp;nbsp;nurses about\\nwhat I had just heard. She spread the word, and soon my&amp;nbsp;room was full of\\npeople, watching in silence as the second plane hit.&amp;nbsp;People drifted in and\\nout of my room between the news and the beginning&amp;nbsp;their workday until the\\ntowers collapsed.&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;This memory is vivid in my mind\\nbecause it set the tone for my struggle&amp;nbsp;to respond. I knew that at the\\ntime of impact, the activity in the World Trade Center probably resembled the\\nshift change at the hospital,&amp;nbsp;involving working people like the ones who\\ncrowded into my hospital&amp;nbsp;room: immigrants; Christians; maintenance,\\nsecurity and food service&amp;nbsp;workers; Jews; professionals; midnight shifters;\\nHindus; Muslims;&amp;nbsp;atheists; people who just happened to show up. And if\\nthey were not all&amp;nbsp;Americans before, they became Americans by virtue of\\nhistory and its&amp;nbsp;flames . . . which is to say, it could have happened, it\\ncan happen to any&amp;nbsp;one of us.&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;No sooner had the terrorists hit\\ntheir targets than my telephone began&amp;nbsp;to ring.&amp;nbsp; The \\u201Clost army of protest\\u201D calling me to read poetry\\nat&amp;nbsp;rallies, calling on me to denounce US foreign policy.&amp;nbsp; The emails came&amp;nbsp;streaming in as if\\nthey had just been released from call waiting: angry&amp;nbsp;poems, fighting\\npoems, anti-imperialist poems, peace poems. But I didn\\u2019t&amp;nbsp;have a poem. I\\ncouldn\\u2019t organize my thoughts with the kind of&amp;nbsp;certainty being demanded at\\nthat time. For me, it was a given that Malcolm X\\u2019s words upon Kennedy\\u2019s\\nassassination in 1963 was a penetrating&amp;nbsp;blues scripture that could be\\ncarried over to The Year of Our Lord,&amp;nbsp;2001: the chickens have come home to\\nroost. &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;BUT, I WAS TROUBLED BY A&amp;nbsp;DEEP\\nAMERICAN FEELING THAT ROSE UP IN ME SEEMINGLY OUT OF NOWHERE. AND&amp;nbsp;IT HAD\\nNOTHING TO DO WITH RED, WHITE AND BLUE.&lt;\/blockquote&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;But, I was troubled by a&amp;nbsp;deep\\nAmerican feeling that rose up in me seemingly out of nowhere. And&amp;nbsp;it had\\nnothing to do with red, white and blue. It was a feeling that I&amp;nbsp;had not known since I was a kid, when my\\nviews were whatever views my&amp;nbsp;parents held. They were democrats, so I was a\\ndemocrat . . . even though I&amp;nbsp;couldn\\u2019t vote. They were afraid of communism,\\nso I was afraid of&amp;nbsp;communism. I had thought this feeling had&amp;nbsp;been\\nhyphenated, manipulated and betrayed out of my consciousness back when I got my\\nfirst Afro, overthrew the Negro and called myself&amp;nbsp;black. Yet, there was a\\nspot with my name on it&amp;nbsp;at the protest.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;\\n\\n\\n\\n&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;The protest was over there,\\nand I was over here, in a less clear,&amp;nbsp;troubling place . . . along with\\nmost of the people I knew, with so many of&amp;nbsp;my students, with the lost and\\nthe sufferers. I don\\u2019t mean that in any&amp;nbsp;noble or self-righteous sense. I\\nmean that the Left seemed irrelevant&amp;nbsp;and&amp;nbsp;unconcerned about the well\\nbeing of \\u2018the people.\\u201D And I was feeling like&amp;nbsp;I was one of \\u2018the people,\\u201D\\nas opposed to some warrior-poet or prophet&amp;nbsp;set aside by ideology or\\nself-appointment.&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;There was, no question, a need for\\npolitical mobilization, to oppose the&amp;nbsp;madmen who wanted to drag the world\\nthrough their cowboy fantasies of&amp;nbsp;conquest: we\\u2019re gonna\\u2019 get the guys that\\nknocked over those buildings, hunt \\u2018em down, smoke&amp;nbsp; \\u2018em out, get \\u2018em running. But there was also a&amp;nbsp;need for\\nthe Left* to put forward what it is for, to demonstrate all&amp;nbsp;the humane\\npossibilities of what it could mean to be an American. But it&amp;nbsp;didn\\u2019t, and\\nit couldn\\u2019t. Because it does not know.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;Sometime in the early Aftermath,\\nthe students at the college where I&amp;nbsp;teach organized a teach-in, and they\\ninvited me to speak. Up to that&amp;nbsp;point, I had been passing on those kinds\\nof requests because when the&amp;nbsp;organizers say they want a poem they really\\nwant a speech. They don\\u2019t&amp;nbsp;want reflection, contemplation and pensive\\nsilences; they want answers.&amp;nbsp;I didn\\u2019t have either. But I decided to\\nparticipate in the teach-in and&amp;nbsp;to speak from wherever I was at the time.\\n(This was quite a distance&amp;nbsp;from the poems of my undergraduate days, which\\nwent something like \\u201Cif&amp;nbsp;anything stands between you and freedom, burn it\\ndown\\u201D). &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;On the subway going to the\\nteach-in, the train stopped near Ground Zero. Something&amp;nbsp;told me to get off\\nthe train and go to the site to see for myself. As much as I dislike the term\\n\\u201Cground zero,\\u201D there is something&amp;nbsp;compelling about it and its origins in\\nthe Cold War era. The&amp;nbsp;dictionary defines it as the site directly below,\\ndirectly above, or at&amp;nbsp;the point of detonation of a nuclear weapon. It\\nconjures ideas about&amp;nbsp;total destruction, an end point and a starting point.\\nI have come to&amp;nbsp;think of it as what the critic Stephen Henderson called a\\n\\u201Cmascon&amp;nbsp;image.\\u201D \\u201CMascon\\u201D is a term he borrowed from the jargon of the US\\nspace&amp;nbsp;program meaning \\u201Cmassive concentration of energy.\\u201D He was setting\\nforth&amp;nbsp;a critical theory of black poetry at the time, but I have\\nfound&amp;nbsp;other uses for the term over the years.&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;THAT HOLE&amp;nbsp;IN THE GROUND WAS\\nMY SUBPOENA. THAT AND POETRY.&lt;\/blockquote&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;There are many mascon&amp;nbsp;places\\nthroughout the world, some of them commonly recognized, other&amp;nbsp;not. Sites\\nthat are highly charged with political, cultural, and spiritual&amp;nbsp;energy. In\\nthe case of known sites, they may become places of ritual&amp;nbsp;enactment or\\nremembering. In other cases, the sites are waiting to be&amp;nbsp;seen by the seers\\nand transformed into useful ritual spaces. We could&amp;nbsp;call them\\nIntersections. Ground Zero. A potential source of interlocking narratives that\\nshed light on the future. But this is all&amp;nbsp;hindsight. I wasn\\u2019t thinking\\nabout any of this when I got off that&amp;nbsp;train. The power of the crater was\\nenough, in and of itself. That hole&amp;nbsp;in the ground was my subpoena. That\\nand poetry. I know it sounds&amp;nbsp;romantic to say that it was poetry that told\\nme to get off that train,&amp;nbsp;nevertheless I believe that poetry, wearing the\\ntime worn hat of Memory,&amp;nbsp;called me to witness. Five months later, I\\nstarted working on a poem. It&amp;nbsp;is still in progress and still untitled.&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;IT SEEMS THAT I AM BEING FORCED\\nTO&amp;nbsp;CONFRONT, TO IMAGINE, TO INVENT WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AN AMERICAN . . .\\nAGAIN. FORCED TO THINK ABOUT WHAT IT IS THAT MAKES US DIVERSE, BUT\\nALSO&amp;nbsp;WHAT IT IS THAT MAKES US ONE. AND WHAT DO I MEAN BY \\u201CMAKES US\\nONE\\u201D&amp;nbsp;ANYWAY?&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/blockquote&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;Here\\u2019s how the story of my visit to Ground Zero ends. I went to\\nthe&amp;nbsp;subway station to catch an uptown train to the teach-in.\\nThe&amp;nbsp;station was in a remote location and it seemed to be empty as I\\nstarted&amp;nbsp;down the stairs. I could hear footsteps coming up the&amp;nbsp;stairs\\nand towards me. When I turned to&amp;nbsp;go down the second set of steps, I saw\\nand Arab man coming up. He passed&amp;nbsp;without looking at me, and didn\\u2019t say a\\nword. All you could hear was&amp;nbsp;our footsteps. The faces of the Al Queda\\nsuspects who hijacked the airplanes&amp;nbsp;and carried out the suicide missions\\ncame into my mind in the fashion&amp;nbsp;of a police photo book. Something told me\\nthat this guy had just planted&amp;nbsp;a bomb in the subway, and that it was going\\nto go off as soon as I got&amp;nbsp;down the stairs. The odor of melted steel,\\nconcrete dust and week-old&amp;nbsp;underground fires where heavy in my nostrils. I\\nstopped and told myself&amp;nbsp;I would be a fool to walk any further. I turned to\\nsee the man standing&amp;nbsp;street level at the top of the stairs. He was looking\\naround to one side&amp;nbsp;then the next. I started to walk back up the stairs\\nwhen I got a good look at his face. Suddenly, he became a Puerto&amp;nbsp;Rican. I\\nlaughed that \\u201Cfunny, but it ain\\u2019t funny\\u201D laugh at myself, went downstairs and\\ncaught the train.&amp;nbsp; &lt;br&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;I am a life long New Yorker. I\\ngrew up with close ties to my family\\u2019s&amp;nbsp;roots in the South, but I am a New\\nYorker . . . which is a very involved&amp;nbsp;and contentious identity. I am bound\\nto the land, to the city, the&amp;nbsp;streets, the cityscape, the neighborhoods,\\nthe people, the languages,&amp;nbsp;the waterways, the open spaces, the\\ncorruptions, the driving habits, the&amp;nbsp;impatience, the sudden flashes of\\nbrutality and unexpected flowering of&amp;nbsp;kindness, the racism and poverty . .\\n. all of it. As a kid I used to play&amp;nbsp;at the Polo Grounds, the home of the\\nNew York Giants. And I could see&amp;nbsp;Yankee Stadium from my living room\\nwindow. I have been eating Puerto&amp;nbsp;Rican and Cuban food, Italian and Indian\\nfood, Japanese and Chinese food&amp;nbsp;ever since I was a teenager. I used drugs\\nand sold drugs on those&amp;nbsp;streets. I went to jail on Rikers Island. I joined\\nthe revolution on the&amp;nbsp;campus of City College. I always understood that\\nthese things, and more, made me a New Yorker. I didn\\u2019t understand until the\\nAftermath, that they&amp;nbsp;also made me an American. I didn\\u2019t understand until I\\nsaw the flames&amp;nbsp;from the burning towers and smelled the smoke from the\\ncrater that you&amp;nbsp;could see from miles away.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;I have been trying to get at this\\nAmerican feeling that surfaced in me.&amp;nbsp;My writing life began from the\\noutside looking in. I wrote as the&amp;nbsp;un-American American. That\\u2019s how I\\nthink and feel to this day. But that&amp;nbsp;feeling is complicated by the\\nAftermath, and it will have implications&amp;nbsp;for aesthetic choices I will make\\nIt seems that I am being forced to&amp;nbsp;confront, to imagine, to invent what it\\nmeans to be an American . . . again. Forced to think about what it is that\\nmakes us diverse, but also&amp;nbsp;what it is that makes us one. And what do I\\nmean by \\u201Cmakes us one\\u201D&amp;nbsp;anyway?&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;I began answering that question by noticing a number of transactions \\ntook place in&amp;nbsp;that short period of time on those subway trains. The most\\nimportant to me was how willing I&amp;nbsp;was to flip the script. How the \\nprofiled\\nbecame the profiler. How the&amp;nbsp;victim became the victimizer. What if he \\nwas\\nPuerto Rican but had&amp;nbsp;greeted me with Asalaam Aliekum, papi? Now that I\\u2019m\\nfeeling all&amp;nbsp;American, what kind of American am I going to be? What\\u2019s \\nthat\\nsong from&amp;nbsp;back in the day?&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;paranoia strikes deep&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;into your life it will\\ncreep&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;it starts when you\\u2019re always\\nafraid&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;step out of line the man\\ncomes&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;and takes you away&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;stop, yeah what\\u2019s that\\nsound?&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;everybody look what\\u2019s going\\ndown&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;What kind of intersection was\\nthat?&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;II. Earth, water, fire, air&lt;\/h3&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;Earth, water, fire, air \\u2014 what I\\ncall in the poem essential energies \\u2014 have been on my mind for a&amp;nbsp;few\\nyears. I am on the up side of a prolonged personal battle with&amp;nbsp;illness,\\ndisease and injury. And for several months I have been working&amp;nbsp;on a one-man\\nperformance piece based on that experience. So much of what&amp;nbsp;went on during\\nthis period came down to essential energies: blood,&amp;nbsp;minerals, chemistry,\\nrespiration, metabolism and so forth. The rest of&amp;nbsp;the world fades into the\\nbackground as these basic things come up front.&amp;nbsp;They take center stage\\nwith an undeniable force and presence. Not just&amp;nbsp;for me, but for all of the\\npatients I met. Whatever titles we&amp;nbsp;wore, whatever categories we attended\\nto or praised, were qualified by&amp;nbsp;our hospital gowns and I.V poles. An\\nabsurd and poetic unity of&amp;nbsp;possibility. &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;I guess that I felt there was this\\nsame kind of unity in&amp;nbsp;the experience of the attacks and the Aftermath. It\\nis a kind of&amp;nbsp;awareness that war sharpens and heightens in a ways that\\npeace has&amp;nbsp;not . . . yet. Or, put another way, we don\\u201At know what peace can\\ndo.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;III. Past and present: the terrors leading to&amp;nbsp;the terror&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/h3&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;As an incurable insomniac, New\\nYork City is a dream catcher if there&amp;nbsp;ever was one. But everybody thinks\\ntheir dreams are different. And they&amp;nbsp;are. But they\\u2019re also the same (&lt;em&gt;Blue\\nOneness of Dreams&lt;\/em&gt;).** This dream life&amp;nbsp;includes memory and history and their\\nghosts. In the poem I refer to it&amp;nbsp;as the underlife. I believe that this\\nunderlife animates the city day to&amp;nbsp;day, moment to moment, as much as its\\nconscious life. The city would be&amp;nbsp;impoverished and unsustainable without\\nits ghosts, without its history.&amp;nbsp;And that history is in and on the\\nbuildings, in the neighborhoods, in&amp;nbsp;the rock and soil beneath the streets,\\nand it\\u2019s in the people. Although it is an underlife that is largely out of view\\nand forgotten, it is&amp;nbsp;active. It initiates and mediates; it petitions and\\nit spills its guts.&amp;nbsp;It wants to be reckoned with. &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;It\\nis a kind of&amp;nbsp;awareness that war sharpens and heightens in a ways that\\npeace has&amp;nbsp;not . . . yet. Or, put another way, we don\\u201At know what peace can\\ndo.&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/blockquote&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;There are aspects of that\\nunderlife that&amp;nbsp;are like the so-called phantom limbs of amputees that have\\na felt&amp;nbsp;presence even though they are no longer there . . . having been cut\\noff&amp;nbsp;from the dominant narratives that guide the city. In the poem, I try\\nto&amp;nbsp;suggest these \\u201Cphantom limbs\\u201D with images of secret pathways and\\nstreet&amp;nbsp;gangs and burial grounds.&amp;nbsp;But New York is also a city of Now,\\na fast paced, ever changing Now. So,&amp;nbsp;the habit of power has been to build\\nand layer over its memory. The&amp;nbsp;marketeers will sell nostalgia, but\\nnostalgia is an airbrushed memory&amp;nbsp;without consequence. For me, there was\\nsomething about those towers&amp;nbsp;being razed and brought low that implied not\\nonly the moment but the&amp;nbsp;accumulations of moment that led to the event. The\\nterrors leading to&amp;nbsp;the terror.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;On the flip side, that section of\\nthe poem reminds me that the city is&amp;nbsp;also a microcosm of a civilization. A\\nvery particular place that is a&amp;nbsp;repository of memory for the country \\u2014 a\\nmascon site.&amp;nbsp;I\\u2019m saying all of this, but really the image of the crater\\nbrought up&amp;nbsp;the idea of the descent of the Now and the Next to the level of\\nthe&amp;nbsp;past . . . maybe there is some notion of necessary reconciliation\\ncoming out&amp;nbsp;of that but it\\u2019s not so evident to me right now.&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;IV. An&amp;nbsp;American synonym for nothing&lt;\/h3&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;\\u201CWow,\\u201D is a thoroughly American,\\nconsumer-size bite of sound that, on good&amp;nbsp;days, speaks to wonder and\\nmystery. On most days, Wowism reduces very&amp;nbsp;complex, incomprehensible\\nhappenings to a cynical pop denominator. I guess it sits in for silence. So,\\nsuppose God spoke&amp;nbsp;American and whereas God might have told Thoreau to\\ntranscend and&amp;nbsp;Timothy Leary to Expand, the message now is Stop! Behold!\\n&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;The truth is,&amp;nbsp;it just had the ring of something when I wrote it. It could\\nbe an&amp;nbsp;American synonym for nothing.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;V. Hate is jealous&lt;\/h3&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;Ground Zero. Yes, I do believe\\nthat hate, as a characteristic quality of the human&amp;nbsp;heart as it has\\nevolved so far, is thoroughly at home in America. Hate,&amp;nbsp;it seems, is\\njealous and does not like Americans to stray too far way&amp;nbsp;from its embrace.\\nAnd maybe it is most jealous of not love, but of&amp;nbsp;indifference, complacency.\\nAnd takes them as invitations to reassert its&amp;nbsp;passions. I think the\\nindifference of this country to the rest of the&amp;nbsp;world and its complacent\\nattitude towards karmic justice, so to speak,&amp;nbsp;should be evident to most\\nconscious people. Hate, though, is an all&amp;nbsp;around opportunist capable of\\nmoving in subtle, unexpected ways. Just&amp;nbsp;when the speaker-as-citizen is\\nbearing witness, the flag triggers&amp;nbsp;memories of domestic terror, bitterness\\nand hate.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;VI. I have been written:&amp;nbsp;\\nultimately it&amp;nbsp;is about moving forward&lt;\/h3&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;In the final stanza, through the\\n\\u201Cexhibition,\\u201D the speaker is compelled to&amp;nbsp;push past history towards an\\nencounter with the victims in a&amp;nbsp;personal, compassionate way. In spite of\\nthe hate triggered in the&amp;nbsp;previous stanza, he is forced by virtue of the\\nbits of humanity conveyed&amp;nbsp;by the photos and captions to cross the lines of\\ndifference, anonymity,&amp;nbsp;history and propaganda. He discovers that he\\n\\u201Cknows\\u201D these people,&amp;nbsp;especially the man who is \\u201Cred, black and blue at\\nthe root.\\u201D I guess the&amp;nbsp;ways in which their stories were written in those\\nphotocopy biographies&amp;nbsp;also spelled his life and dreams, even the simple\\none of having&amp;nbsp;a job to go to on Monday morning with the expectation of\\nreturning home&amp;nbsp;safely at the end of the day. That was one of those common\\nprayers I&amp;nbsp;heard in church when I was growing up, Lord, bless our comings\\nand&amp;nbsp;goings. Thank you for waking us up and putting us to sleep. In\\nthis&amp;nbsp;sense, the much betrayed Latin phrase written on our money, e\\npluribus&amp;nbsp;unum (from many, one), is something he is willing to contemplate\\nfor real meaning.&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&amp;nbsp;\\u2026 IT IS STILL AS\\nSEARCH AND NOT A&amp;nbsp;DISCOVERY&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/blockquote&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;The list at the end is a mix of\\nimages from the conscious world of the&amp;nbsp;attack and the underlife of the\\ncity. It is a culmination of experience&amp;nbsp;in the unity of past and present.\\nIt is for me, the speaker, a&amp;nbsp;heightened consciousness through which all of\\nthis comes together. For&amp;nbsp;all my talk about the past here, it not a matter\\nof going back and&amp;nbsp;starting over. There is some idea about reclamation, but\\nultimately it&amp;nbsp;is about moving forward. What are the images and the verse\\nfor this&amp;nbsp;necessary kind of heightened consciousness? I think many poets\\nhave been&amp;nbsp;searching for that already, but it is still as search and not\\na&amp;nbsp;discovery.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;Not only is the poem unfinished, the\\npresent ending is unsatisfactory to&amp;nbsp;me. I\\u2019m not even sure that it doesn\\u2019t\\nwant to be a longer poem.&amp;nbsp;Something tells me if I find a way to end that\\nstanza, I\\u2019ll know whether&amp;nbsp;or not the poem goes on. By the way it tastes\\nand smells and, most of&amp;nbsp;all, how it sounds.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;*I realize that I am being\\nnostalgic and generous when I talk about&amp;nbsp;Left these days. I am using it\\ngenerically to refer to a broad and very&amp;nbsp;loose amalgam of people and\\norganizations that were born in the Cold War&amp;nbsp;and, for the most part, still\\nlive there. &lt;br&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p class=\\&quot;MsoNormal\\&quot;&gt;**Title of Sundiata\\u2019s first CD&lt;\/p&gt;&quot;,&quot;wysiwyg&quot;:{&quot;source&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}\" data-block-type=\"2\">\n<div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\"><em>HEArt\u00a0<\/em>was the first to publish this poem by Sekou Sundiata, which I believe was central to his final performance piece,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.walkerart.org\/channel\/2006\/the-51st-dream-state\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>51st (dream) State.<\/em><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<em>51st (dream) State<\/em>\u00a0premiered in 2006, a little more than a year before Sekou passed in July 2007.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">The poem (then &#8220;Untitled&#8221;), and companion essay that follows, were first printed in<em>HEArt&#8217;s<\/em>\u00a0last print edition in spring, 2002. Today we reprint both, along with this brief introductory\/explanatory communication he sent \u2014 all in response to 9\/11 these 12 years later, with no less a sense of artistic exigency.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\"><em><\/em><em>Leslie,<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\"><em>Here is a version of the poem-in-progress that I can live with for the moment. I am working on a final stanza. I suspect it will be published as a work-in-progress, which may be useful.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\"><em>Part of the idea of the poem (and part of the reason I&#8217;m wrestling with it) is my search for language post 911. Having grown up in the radical political movements of the 1960s-70s, I felt that the language of that time had been exhausted. And that it is, in any case, unable to capture my sense of where we are.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\"><em>By the way, I mention &#8220;guaguanco and quaquanco&#8221; (I have to check the spelling) a couple of times in the poem. That is a rhythm common to Afro Cuban\/Afro Caribbean music. Its origin is in Africa. The &#8220;montuno&#8221; has a similar background.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\"><em>By the way, did you ever get the photo that I sent by email?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\"><em>Soon,\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\"><em>Sekou<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\"><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-02.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-176426312\" alt=\"sekou 02\" src=\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-02.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"301\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-02.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-02-300x141.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-02-920x432.jpg 920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">UNTITLED<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">Donny Hathaway was explaining\u00a0<em>For All We Know<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">and all the trouble in the world came down<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">to the essential energies swirling like tea leaves in the bottom of a cup<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">In the early days of the Aftermath, I was in hiding<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">from the lost army of protest calling from the 20th century<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">for something boisterous and skinny on the page<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">I began with the scratch and whisper of number two lead<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">spelling out the line from instinct to hand to eye:\u00a0<em>earth\u00a0 water fire\u00a0 air<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">Later that morning, I gathered myself in the thin rush hour to Manhattan<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">The inbound train stalled in a tunnel and we sat in abeyance<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">by consensus it seemed no one spoke or complained<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">The George Washington Bridge crumbles into the Hudson River<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">the city buckles from The Cloisters to South Ferry<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">and collapses eye-to-eye with its forgotten underlife<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">I follow horse trails through the secret pathways,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">the indigenous ghost caves and African Burial Grounds,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">a quaquanco echoes down the streets, the Untouchables<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">and Enchanters doowoop and do-rag in a spot of starlight<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">like they don&#8217;t know they&#8217;re dead, as if to say See this<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">is what we always wanted to be, the rivers come crashing<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">through the river walls and the fish begin their tales<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">por El Dia de Recuerdo, when the voice of God<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">which once said Transcend and then said Expand<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">is finally now saying Wow in an American creole<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">both mystical and clear speaking through history\u201as anesthesia<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">I came to my feet at the Wall Street station and walked towards the door<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">like a reluctant witness to the witness stand<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">The crater recalled a lonely planet, a pockmarked moon of ridges<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">and man-sized valleys, earth movers, dump trucks and cranes,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">a priest kneels in the powdered ash, the rescue stops<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">for the holy ghost and the angel of death to cross paths,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">someone calls for the jaws of life:\u00a0<em>earth\u00a0 water\u00a0 fire air<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">The sky, Ellington blue, pours over the harbor, black smoke curling<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">into its soft watercolors mixing those burning isms<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">into a mute and inscrutable beauty<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">I stood citizen-to-citizen three rows deep<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">A man flipped through the Daily News, matching pictures to the scene<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">A couple in a doorway argued hop hop versus R &amp; B in time like these<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">they look up from their ideologies to agree Mercury must be retrograde<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">A woman to my right worried a flag the size of a handkerchief,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">the kind you get at the fairgrounds, and Yes, Little Emmett Till came to me,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">a face that long ago cured my faith in that schoolboy lyric<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">so that I could no longer since with the voice of praise\u00a0<em>O beautiful for spacious skies<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">I walked the Avenue of the Americas, past the photocopy gallery<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">of the missing and the dead mounted on buildings, in store windows and lobbies,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">posted on police barricades along the streets<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">I searched for familiar faces and found a few, but the names were wrong<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">Yet I knew them all by their fictions: the lighthearted Capricorn<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">from Seven Hills playing with her cat on a Crate &amp; Barrel sofa,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">the Hindu newlywed who immigrated from India to the golden city,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">Nestor, the brother of Milagros, menacing the lens ringside at the gym,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">a Miss Trinidad look alike caught in a calypso on Eastern Parkway,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">and a pensive man in one of his moods red black and blue at the root<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">I could see my own anonymous face in that show, cut and pasted<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">above a word or two about my love<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">of swimming in the ocean and my taste for sentimental ballads<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">where what is missing and gone is half the song<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">I drowned in a flood of burning jet fuel<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">Down was looking like up when I jumped with my brains on fire<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">I ran from the falling tower and wandered for days<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">I heard a montuno y quaquanco calling from miles away<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">I followed horse trails through secret pathways<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\"><em>E pluribus unum<\/em>\u00a0 I went home and wrote history to the bone<em><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\"><em>I have been written<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-04.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-176426313\" alt=\"sekou 04\" src=\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-04.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"609\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-04.jpg 600w, https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-04-295x300.jpg 295w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">INTERSECTIONS: E PLURIBUS UNUM WITH SEKOU SUNDIATA<\/span><\/h2>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\"><strong>I. POETRY, WEARING THE TIME WORN HAT OF MEMORY, CALLED ME TO W<\/strong><strong>ITNESS\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">Almost as soon as the news of the attacks reached me, I began a struggle\u00a0for language. Not poetry, just language that could help me figure out\u00a0what I was experiencing. Last week, I gave a keynote speech at a\u00a0conference called Intersections: Future Aesthetics. The conference was\u00a0organized by Roberta Uno at New World Theater at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In the\u00a0speech I talked about the need to address the future by acknowledging\u00a0some new realities that have been long in the making, but that were\u00a0formally introduced on September 11th. And, I recounted the story of my\u00a0whereabouts (literal and figurative) during that time to set up the\u00a0reading of this untitled poem.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">I was in the hospital on the morning of September 11th, having been\u00a0admitted through the emergency room a few days earlier. For some reason,\u00a0they put me in a private room so unless I had visitors, it was just me\u00a0and the television, the news. I was\u00a0washing up and had trouble getting out of the gown so I buzzed for\u00a0assistance. But no one came. Finally, I went out onto the ward to get\u00a0help. But the unit was bustling with the business of changing shifts. It\u00a0was like standing at a crowded intersection at rush hour. A fresh team\u00a0of workers from housekeeping, maintenance and food service was coming in\u00a0with new doctors, nurses and physical therapists . . . all setting up for\u00a0the day. The overnighters were on the way out, relief and fatigue\u00a0written in their faces. I decided it was too busy,\u00a0so I went back into the room and the news was reporting the first plane\u00a0attacking the tower. I went back into the hallway and told one of the\u00a0nurses about what I had just heard. She spread the word, and soon my\u00a0room was full of people, watching in silence as the second plane hit.\u00a0People drifted in and out of my room between the news and the beginning\u00a0their workday until the towers collapsed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">This memory is vivid in my mind because it set the tone for my struggle\u00a0to respond. I knew that at the time of impact, the activity in the World Trade Center probably resembled the shift change at the hospital,\u00a0involving working people like the ones who crowded into my hospital\u00a0room: immigrants; Christians; maintenance, security and food service\u00a0workers; Jews; professionals; midnight shifters; Hindus; Muslims;\u00a0atheists; people who just happened to show up. And if they were not all\u00a0Americans before, they became Americans by virtue of history and its\u00a0flames . . . which is to say, it could have happened, it can happen to any\u00a0one of us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">No sooner had the terrorists hit their targets than my telephone began\u00a0to ring.\u00a0 The \u201clost army of protest\u201d calling me to read poetry at\u00a0rallies, calling on me to denounce US foreign policy.\u00a0 The emails came\u00a0streaming in as if they had just been released from call waiting: angry\u00a0poems, fighting poems, anti-imperialist poems, peace poems. But I didn\u2019t\u00a0have a poem. I couldn\u2019t organize my thoughts with the kind of\u00a0certainty being demanded at that time. For me, it was a given that Malcolm X\u2019s words upon Kennedy\u2019s assassination in 1963 was a penetrating\u00a0blues scripture that could be carried over to The Year of Our Lord,\u00a02001: the chickens have come home to roost.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">BUT, I WAS TROUBLED BY A\u00a0DEEP AMERICAN FEELING THAT ROSE UP IN ME SEEMINGLY OUT OF NOWHERE. AND\u00a0IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH RED, WHITE AND BLUE.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">But, I was troubled by a\u00a0deep American feeling that rose up in me seemingly out of nowhere. And\u00a0it had nothing to do with red, white and blue. It was a feeling that I\u00a0had not known since I was a kid, when my views were whatever views my\u00a0parents held. They were democrats, so I was a democrat . . . even though I\u00a0couldn\u2019t vote. They were afraid of communism, so I was afraid of\u00a0communism. I had thought this feeling had\u00a0been hyphenated, manipulated and betrayed out of my consciousness back when I got my first Afro, overthrew the Negro and called myself\u00a0black. Yet, there was a spot with my name on it\u00a0at the protest.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">The protest was over there, and I was over here, in a less clear,\u00a0troubling place . . . along with most of the people I knew, with so many of\u00a0my students, with the lost and the sufferers. I don\u2019t mean that in any\u00a0noble or self-righteous sense. I mean that the Left seemed irrelevant\u00a0and\u00a0unconcerned about the well being of \u2018the people.\u201d And I was feeling like\u00a0I was one of \u2018the people,\u201d as opposed to some warrior-poet or prophet\u00a0set aside by ideology or self-appointment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">There was, no question, a need for political mobilization, to oppose the\u00a0madmen who wanted to drag the world through their cowboy fantasies of\u00a0conquest: we\u2019re gonna\u2019 get the guys that knocked over those buildings, hunt \u2018em down, smoke\u00a0 \u2018em out, get \u2018em running. But there was also a\u00a0need for the Left* to put forward what it is for, to demonstrate all\u00a0the humane possibilities of what it could mean to be an American. But it\u00a0didn\u2019t, and it couldn\u2019t. Because it does not know.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">Sometime in the early Aftermath, the students at the college where I\u00a0teach organized a teach-in, and they invited me to speak. Up to that\u00a0point, I had been passing on those kinds of requests because when the\u00a0organizers say they want a poem they really want a speech. They don\u2019t\u00a0want reflection, contemplation and pensive silences; they want answers.\u00a0I didn\u2019t have either. But I decided to participate in the teach-in and\u00a0to speak from wherever I was at the time. (This was quite a distance\u00a0from the poems of my undergraduate days, which went something like \u201cif\u00a0anything stands between you and freedom, burn it down\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">On the subway going to the teach-in, the train stopped near Ground Zero. Something\u00a0told me to get off the train and go to the site to see for myself. As much as I dislike the term \u201cground zero,\u201d there is something\u00a0compelling about it and its origins in the Cold War era. The\u00a0dictionary defines it as the site directly below, directly above, or at\u00a0the point of detonation of a nuclear weapon. It conjures ideas about\u00a0total destruction, an end point and a starting point. I have come to\u00a0think of it as what the critic Stephen Henderson called a \u201cmascon\u00a0image.\u201d \u201cMascon\u201d is a term he borrowed from the jargon of the US space\u00a0program meaning \u201cmassive concentration of energy.\u201d He was setting forth\u00a0a critical theory of black poetry at the time, but I have found\u00a0other uses for the term over the years.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">THAT HOLE\u00a0IN THE GROUND WAS MY SUBPOENA. THAT AND POETRY.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">There are many mascon\u00a0places throughout the world, some of them commonly recognized, other\u00a0not. Sites that are highly charged with political, cultural, and spiritual\u00a0energy. In the case of known sites, they may become places of ritual\u00a0enactment or remembering. In other cases, the sites are waiting to be\u00a0seen by the seers and transformed into useful ritual spaces. We could\u00a0call them Intersections. Ground Zero. A potential source of interlocking narratives that shed light on the future. But this is all\u00a0hindsight. I wasn\u2019t thinking about any of this when I got off that\u00a0train. The power of the crater was enough, in and of itself. That hole\u00a0in the ground was my subpoena. That and poetry. I know it sounds\u00a0romantic to say that it was poetry that told me to get off that train,\u00a0nevertheless I believe that poetry, wearing the time worn hat of Memory,\u00a0called me to witness. Five months later, I started working on a poem. It\u00a0is still in progress and still untitled.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">IT SEEMS THAT I AM BEING FORCED TO\u00a0CONFRONT, TO IMAGINE, TO INVENT WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AN AMERICAN . . . AGAIN. FORCED TO THINK ABOUT WHAT IT IS THAT MAKES US DIVERSE, BUT ALSO\u00a0WHAT IT IS THAT MAKES US ONE. AND WHAT DO I MEAN BY \u201cMAKES US ONE\u201d\u00a0ANYWAY?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">Here\u2019s how the story of my visit to Ground Zero ends. I went to the\u00a0subway station to catch an uptown train to the teach-in. The\u00a0station was in a remote location and it seemed to be empty as I started\u00a0down the stairs. I could hear footsteps coming up the\u00a0stairs and towards me. When I turned to\u00a0go down the second set of steps, I saw and Arab man coming up. He passed\u00a0without looking at me, and didn\u2019t say a word. All you could hear was\u00a0our footsteps. The faces of the Al Queda suspects who hijacked the airplanes\u00a0and carried out the suicide missions came into my mind in the fashion\u00a0of a police photo book. Something told me that this guy had just planted\u00a0a bomb in the subway, and that it was going to go off as soon as I got\u00a0down the stairs. The odor of melted steel, concrete dust and week-old\u00a0underground fires where heavy in my nostrils. I stopped and told myself\u00a0I would be a fool to walk any further. I turned to see the man standing\u00a0street level at the top of the stairs. He was looking around to one side\u00a0then the next. I started to walk back up the stairs when I got a good look at his face. Suddenly, he became a Puerto\u00a0Rican. I laughed that \u201cfunny, but it ain\u2019t funny\u201d laugh at myself, went downstairs and caught the train.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">I am a life long New Yorker. I grew up with close ties to my family\u2019s\u00a0roots in the South, but I am a New Yorker . . . which is a very involved\u00a0and contentious identity. I am bound to the land, to the city, the\u00a0streets, the cityscape, the neighborhoods, the people, the languages,\u00a0the waterways, the open spaces, the corruptions, the driving habits, the\u00a0impatience, the sudden flashes of brutality and unexpected flowering of\u00a0kindness, the racism and poverty . . . all of it. As a kid I used to play\u00a0at the Polo Grounds, the home of the New York Giants. And I could see\u00a0Yankee Stadium from my living room window. I have been eating Puerto\u00a0Rican and Cuban food, Italian and Indian food, Japanese and Chinese food\u00a0ever since I was a teenager. I used drugs and sold drugs on those\u00a0streets. I went to jail on Rikers Island. I joined the revolution on the\u00a0campus of City College. I always understood that these things, and more, made me a New Yorker. I didn\u2019t understand until the Aftermath, that they\u00a0also made me an American. I didn\u2019t understand until I saw the flames\u00a0from the burning towers and smelled the smoke from the crater that you\u00a0could see from miles away.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">I have been trying to get at this American feeling that surfaced in me.\u00a0My writing life began from the outside looking in. I wrote as the\u00a0un-American American. That\u2019s how I think and feel to this day. But that\u00a0feeling is complicated by the Aftermath, and it will have implications\u00a0for aesthetic choices I will make It seems that I am being forced to\u00a0confront, to imagine, to invent what it means to be an American . . . again. Forced to think about what it is that makes us diverse, but also\u00a0what it is that makes us one. And what do I mean by \u201cmakes us one\u201d\u00a0anyway?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">I began answering that question by noticing a number of transactions took place in\u00a0that short period of time on those subway trains. The most important to me was how willing I\u00a0was to flip the script. How the profiled became the profiler. How the\u00a0victim became the victimizer. What if he was Puerto Rican but had\u00a0greeted me with Asalaam Aliekum, papi? Now that I\u2019m feeling all\u00a0American, what kind of American am I going to be? What\u2019s that song from\u00a0back in the day?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">paranoia strikes deep\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">into your life it will creep\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">it starts when you\u2019re always afraid\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">step out of line the man comes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">and takes you away\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">stop, yeah what\u2019s that sound?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">everybody look what\u2019s going down\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">What kind of intersection was that?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">II. EARTH, WATER, FIRE, AIR<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">Earth, water, fire, air \u2014 what I call in the poem essential energies \u2014 have been on my mind for a\u00a0few years. I am on the up side of a prolonged personal battle with\u00a0illness, disease and injury. And for several months I have been working\u00a0on a one-man performance piece based on that experience. So much of what\u00a0went on during this period came down to essential energies: blood,\u00a0minerals, chemistry, respiration, metabolism and so forth. The rest of\u00a0the world fades into the background as these basic things come up front.\u00a0They take center stage with an undeniable force and presence. Not just\u00a0for me, but for all of the patients I met. Whatever titles we\u00a0wore, whatever categories we attended to or praised, were qualified by\u00a0our hospital gowns and I.V poles. An absurd and poetic unity of\u00a0possibility.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">I guess that I felt there was this same kind of unity in\u00a0the experience of the attacks and the Aftermath. It is a kind of\u00a0awareness that war sharpens and heightens in a ways that peace has\u00a0not . . . yet. Or, put another way, we don\u201at know what peace can do.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">III. PAST AND PRESENT: THE TERRORS LEADING TO\u00a0THE TERROR\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">As an incurable insomniac, New York City is a dream catcher if there\u00a0ever was one. But everybody thinks their dreams are different. And they\u00a0are. But they\u2019re also the same (<em>Blue Oneness of Dreams<\/em>).** This dream life\u00a0includes memory and history and their ghosts. In the poem I refer to it\u00a0as the underlife. I believe that this underlife animates the city day to\u00a0day, moment to moment, as much as its conscious life. The city would be\u00a0impoverished and unsustainable without its ghosts, without its history.\u00a0And that history is in and on the buildings, in the neighborhoods, in\u00a0the rock and soil beneath the streets, and it\u2019s in the people. Although it is an underlife that is largely out of view and forgotten, it is\u00a0active. It initiates and mediates; it petitions and it spills its guts.\u00a0It wants to be reckoned with.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">It is a kind of\u00a0awareness that war sharpens and heightens in a ways that peace has\u00a0not . . . yet. Or, put another way, we don\u201at know what peace can do.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">There are aspects of that underlife that\u00a0are like the so-called phantom limbs of amputees that have a felt\u00a0presence even though they are no longer there . . . having been cut off\u00a0from the dominant narratives that guide the city. In the poem, I try to\u00a0suggest these \u201cphantom limbs\u201d with images of secret pathways and street\u00a0gangs and burial grounds.\u00a0But New York is also a city of Now, a fast paced, ever changing Now. So,\u00a0the habit of power has been to build and layer over its memory. The\u00a0marketeers will sell nostalgia, but nostalgia is an airbrushed memory\u00a0without consequence. For me, there was something about those towers\u00a0being razed and brought low that implied not only the moment but the\u00a0accumulations of moment that led to the event. The terrors leading to\u00a0the terror.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">On the flip side, that section of the poem reminds me that the city is\u00a0also a microcosm of a civilization. A very particular place that is a\u00a0repository of memory for the country \u2014 a mascon site.\u00a0I\u2019m saying all of this, but really the image of the crater brought up\u00a0the idea of the descent of the Now and the Next to the level of the\u00a0past . . . maybe there is some notion of necessary reconciliation coming out\u00a0of that but it\u2019s not so evident to me right now.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">IV. AN\u00a0AMERICAN SYNONYM FOR NOTHING<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">\u201cWow,\u201d is a thoroughly American, consumer-size bite of sound that, on good\u00a0days, speaks to wonder and mystery. On most days, Wowism reduces very\u00a0complex, incomprehensible happenings to a cynical pop denominator. I guess it sits in for silence. So, suppose God spoke\u00a0American and whereas God might have told Thoreau to transcend and\u00a0Timothy Leary to Expand, the message now is Stop! Behold!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">The truth is,\u00a0it just had the ring of something when I wrote it. It could be an\u00a0American synonym for nothing.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">V. HATE IS JEALOUS<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">Ground Zero. Yes, I do believe that hate, as a characteristic quality of the human\u00a0heart as it has evolved so far, is thoroughly at home in America. Hate,\u00a0it seems, is jealous and does not like Americans to stray too far way\u00a0from its embrace. And maybe it is most jealous of not love, but of\u00a0indifference, complacency. And takes them as invitations to reassert its\u00a0passions. I think the indifference of this country to the rest of the\u00a0world and its complacent attitude towards karmic justice, so to speak,\u00a0should be evident to most conscious people. Hate, though, is an all\u00a0around opportunist capable of moving in subtle, unexpected ways. Just\u00a0when the speaker-as-citizen is bearing witness, the flag triggers\u00a0memories of domestic terror, bitterness and hate.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">VI. I HAVE BEEN WRITTEN:\u00a0 ULTIMATELY IT\u00a0IS ABOUT MOVING FORWARD<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">In the final stanza, through the \u201cexhibition,\u201d the speaker is compelled to\u00a0push past history towards an encounter with the victims in a\u00a0personal, compassionate way. In spite of the hate triggered in the\u00a0previous stanza, he is forced by virtue of the bits of humanity conveyed\u00a0by the photos and captions to cross the lines of difference, anonymity,\u00a0history and propaganda. He discovers that he \u201cknows\u201d these people,\u00a0especially the man who is \u201cred, black and blue at the root.\u201d I guess the\u00a0ways in which their stories were written in those photocopy biographies\u00a0also spelled his life and dreams, even the simple one of having\u00a0a job to go to on Monday morning with the expectation of returning home\u00a0safely at the end of the day. That was one of those common prayers I\u00a0heard in church when I was growing up, Lord, bless our comings and\u00a0goings. Thank you for waking us up and putting us to sleep. In this\u00a0sense, the much betrayed Latin phrase written on our money, e pluribus\u00a0unum (from many, one), is something he is willing to contemplate for real meaning.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">\u00a0\u2026 IT IS STILL AS SEARCH AND NOT A\u00a0DISCOVERY\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">The list at the end is a mix of images from the conscious world of the\u00a0attack and the underlife of the city. It is a culmination of experience\u00a0in the unity of past and present. It is for me, the speaker, a\u00a0heightened consciousness through which all of this comes together. For\u00a0all my talk about the past here, it not a matter of going back and\u00a0starting over. There is some idea about reclamation, but ultimately it\u00a0is about moving forward. What are the images and the verse for this\u00a0necessary kind of heightened consciousness? I think many poets have been\u00a0searching for that already, but it is still as search and not a\u00a0discovery.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">Not only is the poem unfinished, the present ending is unsatisfactory to\u00a0me. I\u2019m not even sure that it doesn\u2019t want to be a longer poem.\u00a0Something tells me if I find a way to end that stanza, I\u2019ll know whether\u00a0or not the poem goes on. By the way it tastes and smells and, most of\u00a0all, how it sounds.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">\u00a0*I realize that I am being nostalgic and generous when I talk about\u00a0Left these days. I am using it generically to refer to a broad and very\u00a0loose amalgam of people and organizations that were born in the Cold War\u00a0and, for the most part, still live there.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">**Title of Sundiata\u2019s first CD<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div data-block-json=\"{}\" data-block-type=\"47\">\n<div>\n<hr \/>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div data-block-json=\"{&quot;layout&quot;:&quot;caption-below&quot;,&quot;description&quot;:{&quot;source&quot;:&quot;&lt;p&gt;Photo by Jana Leon&lt;\/p&gt;&quot;,&quot;engine&quot;:&quot;wysiwyg&quot;,&quot;html&quot;:&quot;&lt;p&gt;Photo by Jana Leon&lt;\/p&gt;&quot;},&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;522e54e6e4b05dc312e59bf6&quot;,&quot;filename&quot;:&quot;Sekou.jpg&quot;,&quot;lightbox&quot;:false,&quot;stretch&quot;:false,&quot;linkTo&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;newwindow&quot;:false,&quot;floatDir&quot;:&quot;right&quot;,&quot;hSize&quot;:6}\" data-block-type=\"5\">\n<div data-description=\"&lt;p&gt;Photo by Jana Leon&lt;\/p&gt;\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div>\n<div id=\"attachment_176426309\" style=\"width: 510px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-06.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-176426309\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-176426309\" alt=\"Photo by Jana Leon\" src=\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-06.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"308\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-06.jpg 500w, https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-06-300x184.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-176426309\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: small;\"><em><strong>Photo by Jana Leon<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div data-block-json=\"{&quot;wysiwyg&quot;:{&quot;engine&quot;:&quot;code&quot;,&quot;mode&quot;:&quot;htmlmixed&quot;,&quot;isSource&quot;:false,&quot;source&quot;:&quot;&quot;},&quot;html&quot;:&quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Biography from ALLMUSIC&lt;\/strong&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;by John Bush&lt;\/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=\\&quot;http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/sekou-sundiata-mn0000003602\\&quot; class=\\&quot;name-link\\&quot;&gt;Sekou Sundiata&lt;\/a&gt;\\n was one of New York's most intelligent and gifted poets of the \\nAfrican-American consciousness. A native of Harlem who taught English \\nliterature at the New School for Social Research, &lt;a href=\\&quot;http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/sundiata-mn0000003602\\&quot; class=\\&quot;name-link\\&quot;&gt;Sundiata&lt;\/a&gt; became quite a performer in his own right as well, usually leading a band on frequent club dates reminiscent of &lt;a href=\\&quot;http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/june-jordan-mn0000256306\\&quot; class=\\&quot;name-link\\&quot;&gt;June Jordan&lt;\/a&gt;, &lt;a href=\\&quot;http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/amiri-baraka-mn0000017301\\&quot; class=\\&quot;name-link\\&quot;&gt;Amiri Baraka&lt;\/a&gt; (&lt;a href=\\&quot;http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/leroi-jones-mn0001227684\\&quot; class=\\&quot;name-link\\&quot;&gt;Leroi Jones&lt;\/a&gt;), and &lt;a href=\\&quot;http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/quincy-troupe-mn0000380766\\&quot; class=\\&quot;name-link\\&quot;&gt;Quincy Troupe&lt;\/a&gt;. &lt;a href=\\&quot;http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/sundiata-mn0000003602\\&quot; class=\\&quot;name-link\\&quot;&gt;Sundiata&lt;\/a&gt; began writing for the musical theater, and premiered The Mystery of Love in 1994, with songwriting help from &lt;a href=\\&quot;http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/doug-booth-mn0001906811\\&quot; class=\\&quot;name-link\\&quot;&gt;Doug Booth&lt;\/a&gt;. The duo also teamed up on &lt;a href=\\&quot;http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/sundiata-mn0000003602\\&quot; class=\\&quot;name-link\\&quot;&gt;Sundiata&lt;\/a&gt;'s debut album, &lt;a href=\\&quot;http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/album\/the-blue-oneness-of-dreams-mw0000090138\\&quot; class=\\&quot;album-link\\&quot;&gt;The Blue Oneness of Dreams&lt;\/a&gt;, with &lt;a href=\\&quot;http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/booth-mn0001906811\\&quot; class=\\&quot;name-link\\&quot;&gt;Booth&lt;\/a&gt; contributing both songs and his soulful vocals to the project. The album was released on Polygram in 1997; &lt;a href=\\&quot;http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/album\/a-long-story-short-mw0000051827\\&quot; class=\\&quot;album-link\\&quot;&gt;A Long Story Short&lt;\/a&gt; followed in early 2000. The following year he joined &lt;a href=\\&quot;http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/ani-difranco-mn0000046794\\&quot; class=\\&quot;name-link\\&quot;&gt;Ani DiFranco&lt;\/a&gt;\\n on her \\&quot;Rhythm and News\\&quot; tour, all the while continuing his \\nprofessorship in the writing program at the New School. Sadly, in July \\n2007 &lt;a href=\\&quot;http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/sundiata-mn0000003602\\&quot; class=\\&quot;name-link\\&quot;&gt;Sundiata&lt;\/a&gt; passed away due to heart failure.&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&quot;,&quot;engine&quot;:&quot;visual&quot;}\" data-block-type=\"2\">\n<div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\"><strong>Biography from ALLMUSIC<\/strong><strong><br \/>\nby John Bush<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: medium;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/sekou-sundiata-mn0000003602\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Sekou Sundiata<\/span><\/a>\u00a0was one of New York&#8217;s most intelligent and gifted poets of the African-American consciousness. A native of Harlem who taught English literature at the New School for Social Research,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/sundiata-mn0000003602\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Sundiata<\/span><\/a>\u00a0became quite a performer in his own right as well, usually leading a band on frequent club dates reminiscent of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/june-jordan-mn0000256306\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">June Jordan<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/amiri-baraka-mn0000017301\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Amiri Baraka<\/span><\/a>(<a href=\"http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/leroi-jones-mn0001227684\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Leroi Jones<\/span><\/a>), and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/quincy-troupe-mn0000380766\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Quincy Troupe<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/sundiata-mn0000003602\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Sundiata<\/span><\/a>began writing for the musical theater, and premiered The Mystery of Love in 1994, with songwriting help from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/doug-booth-mn0001906811\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Doug Booth<\/span><\/a>. The duo also teamed up on\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/sundiata-mn0000003602\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Sundiata<\/span><\/a>&#8216;s debut album,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/album\/the-blue-oneness-of-dreams-mw0000090138\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The Blue Oneness of Dreams<\/span><\/a>, with\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/booth-mn0001906811\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Booth<\/span><\/a>\u00a0contributing both songs and his soulful vocals to the project. The album was released on Polygram in 1997;\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/album\/a-long-story-short-mw0000051827\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">A Long Story Short<\/span><\/a>\u00a0followed in early 2000. The following year he joined\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/ani-difranco-mn0000046794\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Ani DiFranco<\/span><\/a>on her &#8220;Rhythm and News&#8221; tour, all the while continuing his professorship in the writing program at the New School. Sadly, in July 2007\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/sundiata-mn0000003602\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Sundiata<\/span><\/a>\u00a0passed away due to heart failure.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&gt;via: <a href=\"https:\/\/leslieanne-mcilroy.squarespace.com\/sekou-e-pluribus-unum\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/leslieanne-mcilroy.squarespace.com\/sekou-e-pluribus-unum<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: large;\">\u00a0__________________________<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1 itemprop=\"name\"><a href=\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-05.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-176426317\" alt=\"sekou 05\" src=\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-05.jpg\" width=\"720\" height=\"548\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-05.jpg 900w, https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sekou-05-300x228.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><\/a><\/h1>\n<h1 itemprop=\"name\"><b><iframe width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6b6ydMA3tAM?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/b><\/h1>\n<h1 itemprop=\"name\"><span style=\"font-size: xx-large;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Blink Your Eyes: <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n<h1 itemprop=\"name\"><span style=\"font-size: xx-large;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Sekou Sundiata Revisited<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/63183992\" width=\"922\" height=\"519\" frameborder=\"0\" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; \u00a0 __________________________ SEPTEMBER 9, 2013 INTERSECTIONS: E PLURIBUS UNUM WITH SEKOU SUNDIATA \u00a0 HEArt\u00a0was the first to publish this poem by Sekou Sundiata, which I believe was central to his final performance piece,\u00a051st (dream) State.\u00a051st (dream) State\u00a0premiered in 2006, a little more than a year before Sekou passed in July 2007. The poem (then [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[6],"tags":[4,12,11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176426308"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176426308"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176426308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176426325,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176426308\/revisions\/176426325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176426308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176426308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176426308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}