Ahmos ZuBolton The Poet

Ahmos ZuBolton The Poet
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“The ability of writers to
imagine what is not the
self, to familiarize the
strange and mystifiy the
familiar, is the test of
their power.”—Toni Morrison,
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness
and the Literary Imagination

returning from the war—
back home to take up from
where you left off with LSU back
when we believed in poetry

you stayed on the west coast—
finishing your baccalaureate at
california state polytechnic
university in 1971

but the black muse—
had abandoned you after
what happened in viet nam
poetry exile in fugitive freedom

your fastlane california muse—
talking in tangents that tied
up your tongue: who could believe
in delta poetics anymore?

those nascent dayz at LSU—
when I knew you before the
fates plotted against us lurking
in america with its hate & rage

you lost your delta innocence—
we all did I suppose after JFK
dallas viet nam did all us
young naïve baby boombers in

I remember the 1960’s when—
black liberation first got started
when desegregation hit campus
us poets struggling with words

trying to get beyond—
the same old poetics taught
but it seemed the times were
plotting against our muse

us poets were all in a cage—
the old WWII and korea crowd
making sure the moon & stars
dimmed our chances real good

the approaching nightmare—
johnson, nixon, watergate all
those shitty 1984 dystopias
ganging up on us

how could one write poetry—
though after the sixties?
we needed some kind of
hoodoo voodoo poetics...