Unknown Speaker  00:08
As a scholar of political action one rack on your back in your seats, quickly the music and the poetry will begin like I grew up here, I used to play

Unknown Speaker  01:01
Come on. Alright, I will begin. June Jordan was born in Harlem and raised in Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, where she began writing poetry at the age of seven.

Unknown Speaker  01:24
June Jordan was born in Harlem and raised in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn where she began writing poetry at the age of seven. If you came back to your seats and were quiet, we could start this officially right on June Jordan was born in Harlem and raised in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, where she began writing poetry, the age of seven. She's the author of several award winning books, and she has today published a total of 14. Among her most recent books, are civil wars, a collection of her political essays between 1960 and 1980 and passion a selection of new palms 1977 to 1981, both published by Beacon Press. Her palms, articles, essays and reviews have appeared in black world first world, Ms. The New Republic, the New York Times Esquire, the nation, the Village Voice, essence, partisan review, American Poetry Review and elsewhere. Her personal and political accounts of a trip to Nicaragua appeared recently in the Village Voice and in essence magazine. As Jordan has received numerous awards, Mr. Jordan has received numerous awards, including a Rockefeller grant and creative writing and the priesthood Rome in Environmental Design. She's currently a full professor of English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and Adrienne troth, musical studies began at the age of three with instruction in piano music theory and history. Her knowledge of music as an expressive language is strongly conveyed in both her performance and compositions, and her virtuosity as a fine pianist is evident in the ease with which she moves from one musical genre to the other. Since 1980, Adrienne has toured extensively with vocalists Holly near and Linda Tillery. Her record her recording credits include piano synthesizer, and arrangements on the most recent releases by Ferran and Meg Christian. I'm sorry live at Carnegie Hall with Chris Williamson and Meg Christian, Olivia records 1983 and journeys 1983 speed of light 1982 and fire in the rain 1981 or with Holly near on Redwood record records, a graduate of Smith College and Stanford University. Miss Torres resides in Brooklyn, New York and Oakland, California. Adrian torfx is currently collaborating with the award winning poet activist and teacher Jun Jordan. That works include a commission from the New York Shakespeare Festival Theatre and freedom now which will be performed this evening and immediately following this performance, maybe not. Immediately following this performance there will be a reception upstairs on the fourth floor in the James room to which you're all invited in Thank you.

Unknown Speaker  04:48
I will no longer lightly walk behind the one of you who fear me, be afraid. I plan to give you reasons for your jumpy fits and facial tics. I will not walk politely on the pavements anymore. And this is dedicated in particular to those who hear my footsteps or the insubstantial rattling of my grocery cart. Then turn around see me and hurry on away from this impressive terror I must be. I plan to blossom bloody on an afternoon surrounded by my comrade seeing terrible revenge in merciless accelerating rhythms. But I have watched a blind man studying his face. I have set the table in the evening and sat down to eat the news regularly. I have gone to sleep there is no one to forgive me. The dead do not give a damn. I live like a lover who drops her dime into the phone. Just as the subway shakes into the station, wasting her message canceling the question of her call fulminating or forgetful, but late. And always after the fact that could save or condemn me. I must become the action of my fate. How many of my brothers and my sisters Will they kill before I teach myself retaliation? Shall we pick a number? South Africa for instance, do we agree that more than 10,000 in less than a year but that less than 5000 slaughtered in more than six months will What is the matter with me? I must become a menace to my enemies. And if I if I ever let you slide who should be extirpated from my universe who should be cauterized from Earth completely Law and Order jerk offs of the first the terrorists degree then letting my body fail it Solon its speed doubled let you ease and if I if I ever let love go because the hatred and the whisperings become a phantom dictate I obey in lieu of impulse and realities, the blossoming flamingos of my wild Mimosa trees then let love freeze me out I must become I must become a menace to my enemies.

Unknown Speaker  08:57
The poetry and the words and the music that we are presenting today, the results of a collaboration of about almost a year today between myself and Adrian Torres although it's been very difficult because she has been living in California and I refuse to move out of Brooklyn. But anyway, so we're very pleased to present some of our work today you're so hot so hot so hot. So hot so what's so hot so hot I got so many stamps in the mail. I thought Maybe I should stand down. I made up my mind to be decent and kind to let my character shine. I said 10,000 Food Stamps back to the President and his beautiful wife and I can't pay the rent. But I sent 10,000 new sales back to the President and his beautiful wife. How lucky they made a mistake for pricing. And I gave it away to the President. I thought that was legal. I thought that was I can't pay the rent. But I said 10,000 Food Stamps back back back to the President. So hot so hot so hot, so wet so hot so wet so hot so hot shots just cruising down the avenue carrying nuclear garbage right next to you and it's legal is radioactive. Jules past the bars the crude schoolhouse in the church, and if the trucks run out or crash or even lurch too hard around the corner, we will just be honest and as legal as radio action. And don't be Jimmy because it's legal radio action Rodan the road Avenue A Avenue B Avenue C Avenue D Avenue of the Americas

Unknown Speaker  11:49
hot so hot so what so hot so what's so hot so hot so hot so hot so hot so what's so hot so right so hot so what?

Unknown Speaker  12:39
Something there is a shoe I must love a plane. No matter how many you kill with what kind of bombs or how much blood you manage to spill. You're never will hear the cries of Something there is that sure must love a plane. The pilots are never crazy and bombing our hospitals quick and is clean and how could you call such precision and say something there is that your most mobile play

Unknown Speaker  13:37
this is not as you know an ideal setting for listening to music and poachy acoustically. So we will do our best and we ask only that you do your best to hear and listen

Unknown Speaker  13:54
there is a Vietnamese fable that points out to people that water dropping slowly on a stone seems powerless relative to that stone but that over the years in fact the stone has worn away and the water continues on its path. My Christian and Holly near wrote a song called the rock will wear away and the chorus says shall we be like drops of water falling on the stone splashing breaking dispersing and air. weaker than the stone by far but be aware as time goes on the rock will wear away in the music goes like this

Unknown Speaker  18:17
Nicaragua so little, I could hold the edges of your earth inside my arms, your coffee skin the cotton stuff the rain make small. Your boundaries of sea and ocean slow or slow escape possession. Even a pig would move towards you dignified from mud. You're inside walls a pastel stucco for indelible graffiti movimiento del pueblo Anita, a handkerchief conceals the curling of your outlaw lips, a pistol comes the trembling of your fingers. I imagine you among the mountains eating early rice. I remember you among the birds that do not swallow blood. Nicaragua Warzone on the night road from El Ramah the cows congregate fully in the middle and you wait. Looking at the cow hide colors bleached by the high stars above their bodies big with ribs. At some point you just have to trust somebody else. The soldier wearing a white shirt, the poet wearing glasses, the woman wearing red shoes into combat. At dawn, the student gave me a caramel candy and pigs and dogs ran into the streets as the sky began the gradual wide burn and towards the top of a new mountain. I saw it The teenage shadows of two centuries, armed with automatics, checking the horizon for slow stars. Photograph of Managua. The man is not cute. The man is not ugly. The man is teaching himself to read. He sits in a kitchen chair under a banana tree. He holds the newspaper. He tracks each word with a finger and opens his mouth to the sound. Next to the chair, the old vz rifle leans at the ready. His wife chases a baby pig with a homemade broom and then she chases her daughter running behind the baby pick. His neighbor washes up with water from the barrel after work. The dirt floor of his house has been swept the dirt around the chair where he sits has been swept. He has swept the dirt twice. The dirt is clean, the dirt is his dirt. The man is not cute, the man is not ugly. The man is teaching himself to read poem for Guatemala. No matter how loudly I call you the sound of your name makes the day soft. Nothing about it sticks to my throat, Guatemala syllables that lilt into Twilight and last Guatemala syllables to melt bullets. They call you Indian. They called me West Indian. You learn to speak Spanish when I did. We were 30 I will shoes. I ate rice and peace. The beans and the rice in your pot brought the soldiers to hack off your arms work like that into the kitchen. Walk like that into the clearing girl with no harms. I had been playing the piano because of the beans and the rice in your pot. The soldiers arrived with an axe to claim you gorilla girl with no arms. And Indian is not supposed to own a pot of food and Indian is too crude and Indian covers herself with dirt so the cold times will not hurt her. Cover yourself with no arms

Unknown Speaker  23:18
they bury my mother in New Jersey. Black cars carried her there. She wore flowers and a long dress. So just pushed into your mother and tore out her and whipped her under a tree and planted to fly in the bleeding places so that worms spread through the flesh. Then the dogs in the buzzards then the soldiers laughing at the family of the girl

Unknown Speaker  23:58
you go with no arms among the jungle treacheries you go with no arms into the mountains hunting my bench. I watched you walk like that at the kitchen. Like that into the clearing. Girl was learning new syllables of evolution. Guatemala, Guatemala girl was no arms

Unknown Speaker  25:28
Independence Day in the USA. I wanted to tell you about July 4 in North America and the lights computerized shrapnel and white or red or Fast Fuse blue to celebrate the only revolution that was legitimate in human history. I wanted to tell you about the baby screaming this afternoon where the park and the music of 1000s who eat food or stay hungry or homicidal on the subways or the window sills of the city came together loud, like the original cannon shots from the only legitimate revolution in human history. I wanted to tell you about my Spanish how it starts like a word aggravating the beat of my heart then rushes up to my head where my eyes dream Caribbean flowers and my mouth waters around black beans or coffee that lets me forget the hours before morning. But I am living inside the outcome of the only legitimate revolution in human history. And the operator will not place my call to Cuba. The mailman will not carry my letters to Managua, the State Department will not okay my visa for a shortwave conversation and you do not speak English and I can dig it.

Unknown Speaker  27:19
Snow knuckles mountain to pass a black water face like a landslide of stores and the dog. icicles plunging to rake in the grave tree berries purple and bitten by birds. curves of Verizon squares on the sky telephone wires glide down the moon

Unknown Speaker  27:50
outlines are space later pieces of land with names like they root with a game is to tear up the whole hemisphere into pieces of children in patches of sand pieces of children faces of children faces of children and patches of sand sleep on a pillow the two of us whisper we know about apples and hot bread and honey

Unknown Speaker  28:25
waiting for safety and ego for the leaders who chew up the land with names like we read where the game is to tell the whole hemisphere and two pieces of children and patches of safe. I'm standing in place I'm holding your hand and pieces of children on patches of sand. I'm on the roads

Unknown Speaker  29:39
for Alice Walker sorrow last Sunday. She told me to write this poem I told her write her own poem. Anyway, I wrote it. She's very persuasive. One once in a while. It's like calling home long distance but nobody lives there anymore at home New Hampshire, white mountains or trout streams or rocks sharp as a fighter plane simply a float above the super highways free from traffic in the sweet life almost by herself, trying to live free or die, a white girl twitching white tears unpolluted under the roar of PS Air Force Base immortalized by flyboys taking out her Russia but now real interested just to take her out anywhere at all. This is not racist to running imagery through the arteries of her pictures posted up against apartheid, what does a young black poet do? What does a young black woman poet do after dark $6 in her backpack, carrying the streets like a solitary Sentinelle possessed by visions of new arms, new partners? What does she do? What does the black man in his early 30s and abama jacket? What does the black man do about the poet when he sees her? After he took the $6 after he punched her down after he pushed for a pussy after he punctured her lungs with his knife, after the black man in his early 30s In a bomber jacket, after she stopped bleeding after she stopped bleeding, please don't hurt me. What was the imagery running through the arteries of the heart of that partner? This is not racist. Three. The lady wanted to have a drink. The lady wanted to have two drinks. For men drag the lady to the table. Two men blocked the door. All of them laughing for men, two men, all of them laughing. A lot of the time the lady could not breathe. A lot of the time the lady wanted to lose consciousness. Six men, one lady. All of them Portuguese. This is not racist. This is a promise I am making it here. legs spread on the pool table of New Bedford. I am not racist. I am raising my knife to carve out the heart of no shame. This is the promise I am making it here on this table. The very next thing that I say to you will kill

Unknown Speaker  32:54
why the white man will not give the black man a glass of water. Why the white man will not give the black man a glass of water why the white man will not give the black man death to the Klan. You cannot say a glass of water to a thirsty black man. You cannot say a glass of water you cannot say death to the clan. Death to the clan

Unknown Speaker  33:33
we studying you cannot say does to the clan. You cannot say does to the clan does to the clan. You cannot say just to the class we answering why the white man will not use a glass of water. White man

Unknown Speaker  34:28
the black man tears to the class. You cannot say

Unknown Speaker  34:34
Steve you cannot say does this too tests

Unknown Speaker  35:34
I agree the sorrow sorrow sour of many more left hand or right black children and white men the mountaintop sorrow, sorrow sob the factory staring at the night sometimes I say sometimes sometimes America, America the shame skate territory and the southern earth like valleys, gigantic weeping, weeping willow flood, I say that you're going to hear me now. God bless say sometimes a woman she turns around

Unknown Speaker  37:14
begin the ending of all the fantasies of seasons start and stop. The cycle leads to no surprise, justice not only life can kill these times the spirit of the people has to ask the spirit of the people and the spirit of the people his