VacuolateTuna's profile

Musical expression has long been a means for the oppressed to alleviate their hardship. The Irish had their working songs, the Gypsies had their folk chants and the plantation workers had their gospel songs. Despite its Creole roots, the ultimate form of expression for the overworked black factory man in the North came in the form of jazz, a blend of African call-and-response rhythms and forms and white Creole orchestral ability. Jazz was born from the aching wanderings of the once-accepted b...

The children wake in frigid fear Of noisy bustle and angry drill As the cruel world stops to sneer. Ripped from the arms of mothers dear They weep in streets, sleep in the chill. The children wake in frigid fear. Within the crowd, they disappear Begging for food or a dollar bill As the cruel world stops to sneer. They work the horde throughout the year Stealing money for their fill. The children wake in frigid fear. Without homes, in frost severe They huddle closer, growing ill As the cruel w...

O cruel goddess of warmth! I know that you lie, And envelop the world in your temporal shroud As chicanery brings you to trick us, to lie Under every blue sky, under every soft cloud For I know that the dead crunching leaves do belie Time’s truth in your swift deadly turn of the crowd. O malicious dear heart! You bring halcyon days As you creep in the stillness and wait for the time When innocent younglings dance in Helios’s rays And old ones rejoice: no more chill! No more grime! All the whi...

The ambrosia of all humankind rose from her searing womb. Its birth was slow, slow, slow. As ichor flowed into the groom She was pummeled, twisted, to be forced into an early bloom. Legerdemain connived to form a goddess from the spume And so she was pulled, slammed and turned, from morning to the noon. Then, for hours, she was left untouched, fertile and left to rollick Her pregnant belly growing as she wallowed in godly rubric Left to rise, to grow, but to be thumped back in manners rhythmi...

Weep and sigh, O my lullaby. Our children have risen to scorn. That which we make is now gone when they wake In the callous cruel beam of the morn. As long days go by, they forget how to fly And hear only voices that warn. The pigs, how they flutter! Yet they leave such a clutter That poor Mother Hubbard must shove in her cupboard The tea kettles rattle as nightingales tattle On mischievous chickens colluding with kittens And our children wake early in the hurly-burly To learn science. Closed...