Eco-Poetry.org

3 eco-poems by

ishmael reed : earth Quake blues ; Untitled ; kali's Galaxy

Ishmael Reed is author of twenty-nine books, including his tenth non-fiction work, Going Too Far: Essays About America's Nervous Breakdown (2012); his tenth novel, Juice! (2011); six collected plays in Ishmael Reed, The Plays (2009); and New and Collected Poems, 1964-2007 (2007). In addition he has edited numerous magazines and thirteen anthologies, of which the most recent is Powwow, Charting the Fault Lines in the American Experience-Short Fiction from Then to Now (2009), and he is a publisher, songwriter, public media commentator, and lecturer. Founder of the Before Columbus Foundation which offers he American Book Awards, and PEN Oakland, non-profit organizations run by writers for writers. Reed now teaches at California College of the Arts and taught at the University of California, Berkeley for over thirty years, retiring in 2005. He is a MacArthur Fellow, and among his other honors are the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize nominations, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award, San Francisco LitQuake's 2011 Barbary Coast Award, and the 2008 Blues Songwriter of the Year from the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame. He currently serves as San Francisco's first Jazz Poet Laureate, having collaborated with jazz musicians for over thirty years. Three new songs with Reed's lyrics will soon be released by Macy Gray and David Murray. His online international literary magazine, Konch, can be found at www.ishmaelreedpub.com/ His author website is located at www.ishmaelreedpub.org/ He is among America's most widely accomplished authors and a pioneer of the multicultural movement to recognize writers of every ethnos.

Earthquake Blues

Well the cat started actin funny
and the dog howled all night long
I say the cat started actin very frightful
and the birds chirped all night long
The ground began to rumble
As the panic hit the town

Mr. Earthquake Mr. Earthquake
you don't know good from bad
Mr. Earthquake Mr. Earthquake
you don't know good from bad
You kill the little child in its nursey
You burn up the widow's pad

The buildings started swaying
like a drunk man walking home
The buildings started swaying
like a drunk man walking home
The people they were running
and the hurt folks began to moan

Mr. Earthquake Mr. Earthquake
you don't know good from bad
Mr. Earthquake Mr. Earthquake
you don't know good from bad
You kill the little child in its nursery
You burn up the widow's pad

I got underneath my table
Had my head between my knees
I got underneath my table
Had my head between my knees
The dishes they were rattlin
and he house was rockin me

Mr. Earthquake Mr Earthquake
you don't know good from bad
You kill the little child in the nursery
You burn up the widow's pad
Mr. Earthquake Mr Earthquake
you don't know good from bad
You kill the little child in the nursery
You burn up the widow’s pad

I was worried about my baby
Was she safe or was she dead
I was worried about my baby
Was she safe or was she dead
When she phoned and said I'm
ok, Daddy. Then I went on back to bed.

Mr. Earthquake Mr. Earthquake
you don't know good from bad
Mr. Earthquake Mr. Earthquake
you don't know good from bad
You kill the little child in its nursery
You burn up the widow's pad .

Untitled

Alaska's rape dismemberment
disassembled piece by piece
and shipped to the lower

forty-eight so that people
in Dallas may own whale-
sized Cadillacs and lear
jets which cost Alaska an
arm and a leg just like
ravished Jamaica whose
stolen sugar built Mansfield
Park where idle gang rapers
discuss flower beds and
old furniture
Jamaica, Alaska, sisters
dragged into an alley
used and abandoned

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Kali's Galaxy

My 200 inch My 200 inch eyes are trained
on you, my love spectroscope
Breaking down your wavelengths
With my oscillating ear
I have painted your
Portrait: ermine curled about
Yonder's glistening neck

They say you are light-years
Away, but they understand so
Little

You are so near to me
We collide
Our stars erupt into supernovae
An ecstatic cataclysm that
Amazes astronomers

I enter your Milky Way
Seeking out your suns
Absorbing your heat
Circumventing your orbs
Radiating your nights

Once inside your heavens
I hop from world to world
Until I can go no longer
And Z out in your dust
Your new constellation
Known for my shining process
And fish-tailed chariot.

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