OLD-TIME FOLKS

1. Old-Time Folks (Invocation)

Carry us, Black Warrior, through hushed thickets,

holy mounds, sun-blazed fields,

dead-white seas of cotton,

the black fog of the mills,

the oil-slicked, deep-stained Gulf,

so we can know and trust and feel

from whom all of our blessings flow,

Mvskoke saints facing mechanized

conquistadors and privatized troops,

defending land and old souls

from the priests and the suits.

Tallassee, Tallahassee, Tulsa.

Freedom is a holy old town

that moves down a mean, snaky road.

Black rebels gripping microphones,

fountain pens, AKs, and cane knives,

the barons hiding behind

white hoods and redlines,

hissing lies to sunburnt rabble

holding bullwhips and 9’s,

drums in the streets and swamps growing loud,

from tent villages, red-brick projects,

dusty co-ops, secret freedom schools,

Igbo poets, Bantu scholars,

rebel peasants of British rule,

to white mansions and glass towers,

bankers and Big Mules,

peeking through the blinds at the churning crowd,

rising up like a mighty cloud

of old-time folks.

Old-time folks.

Old-time folks.

Old-time folks.

Cherokee and Mayan survivors

banging on Appalachian prison bars,

Communist lawyers and sharecroppers

parting courthouse lynch mobs,

queer angels and prophetesses

walking and talking with God—

bush-arbor, street-corner, briar patch.

Downtown moaning sub-bass

invocations, sanctified blues of

conjure women, Greek priests,

Muslim MC’s, down-home Jews,

their eyes flashing gentle and wild among the blooms

of teargas, gun smoke, and coal-ash.

Child, the Lord don’t make no trash—

just old-time folks.

Old-time folks.

We’re just old-time folks.

We’re old-time folks.

We ain’t machines.

We ain’t monsters.

We ain’t numbers.

We’ve got names.

This ain’t a brand.

This ain’t a look.

This ain’t content.

It’s stories.

We’re all stories.

We’re old-time folks.

We’re old-time folks.

We’re old-time.

We’re old-time folks.

2. LIZARD PEOPLE

Nah, nah, nah,

Nah, nah, nah,

Lizard People!

Interstate rumble, dashboard rattle, talk radio.

Smoke spinning in the van like a twister,

tongue spinning in his head like a weevil,

spinning past desolated Cotton Belt towns,

endless rows of the Big Mules’ untaxed pines,

blaming it on the Hebrews and the Papists

and the Blacks and the Commies and the Lizard People.

The latest blue-eyed Northern swindle with a trap beat

rattling the tags of a passing German whip, I ask him,

“What’s it like to have the world steal your sound?”

He‘s like, “Dawg, that shit is evil.”

He wipes the sweat from his phone, shows me how the

Satanists and Masons got the whole game beat.

We keep digging that trench in the South Atlanta heat,

like we’re hiding from the Lizard People.

Nah, nah, nah,

Nah, nah, nah,

Lizard People!

In that garden,

tried to buy power with bliss.

Been liable

to play lizard ever since.

We've got the gold dome surrounded.

Yonder stands a bronzed Tom Watson--that old snake,

sent to Atlanta by rent-gouged sons of slaves and serfs,

hungering for freedom, praying for upheaval.

But forked-tongued CEOs and Grand Wizards slithered

in his pocket, hissing, "Throw them off our scent, and

we got you. Sic the Crackers on the Blacks and Jews.

Any heart can ooze cold blood like Lizard People."

Nah, nah, nah,

Nah, nah, nah,

Lizard People!

Everybody’s good.

Everybody’s evil.

But why does it pay

to play like Lizard People?

Everybody’s good.

Everybody’s evil.

But why do we let it pay

to play like Lizard People?

3. THE BATTLE OF ATLANTA

The thieves called it Terminus.

It means end of the road.

They torched Pakanahuili,

tore down the Bankhead Projects.

They rebranded it Atlanta,

sold tomahawks to

tourists, diluted trap music

for the global markets.

Sometimes it feels like home.

Ms. Rosa's peach preserves.

Hugging necks at the church.

Taylor's Southern-fried drag shows.

But this deathless city 

don’t mourn the front-porch laughter

or the sweet hickory smoke. It marches

on into the glass and the chrome.

The City trashed Mike's tent.

We picked his wet clothes

and mementos off the sidewalk,

loaded them up in the van.

Watching the rows of fortified condos

blur through the window, he says,

"I've lived here all my life.

Gonna die here if I can."

Now, some general died

over by the title pawn,

according to a metal sign.

Its paint is all chipped.

But the sign don’t say, and it’s hard to tell

from the deep red clay,

how many poor Georgia folks

are lying in that ditch

from the Battle of Atlanta.

The Battle of Atlanta.

The Battle of Atlanta.

The Battle of Atlanta.

La Raza streams from his backpocket—

Trump, Fox, NAFTA, el pared—

deep in a thicket by the

ruins of a shotgun-house.

The maestro ties the bandana

around his head. Lights a

smoke. Says, "Vato, they're always

trying to keep a working man down."

Some fool said a worker’s only as good

as their tools, but Summerhill breathes

the ghosts of the Rebellion

and the Washerwomen’s Strike,

and Jose Luis shows me how to

clear a kudzued acre

with a duct-taped machete, a rusty

hoe-axe, and a truckstop knife

like the Battle of Atlanta.

The Battle of Atlanta.

The Battle of Atlanta.

The Battle of Atlanta.

In a dark corner of the museum,

far from the blazing

corporate campaign of a

city too busy to hate,

a silver photo shows a multitude

swelling the sweet black

avenue, where now the rents

are like to make you faint.

Those college men searched the city’s

tattered skirts. I'm not sure where

they found his chariot--Hapeville,

or damn near to Coweta County--

but I read he'd said, Y'all,

when I fall, I don't want a

limousine to haul me.

Carry my body by mule and buggy

through the Battle of Atlanta.

The Battle of Atlanta.

The Battle of Atlanta.

The Battle of Atlanta.

4. (IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE) 40-HOUR WEEK

When you’re dead-broke, pushing pallets

in the dusty aisles of a cinderblock tomb,

till your back is stove up,

your coughs are black,

and your thoughts are frayed,

you can call on the Magic City outlaws

drop-forged in this smog-choked valley,

who scrapped with the Big Mules,

the gun thugs, and the scabs,

for their honor and their share of pay.

O, children, in the concrete and pines,

working with our hands and on our feet,

O, children, holding that holy old line --

in remembrance of the 40-hour week.

When you’re rent-strapped, threading symbols

through the pale rows of a flickering screen,

till your wrists are trashed,

your mind is static,

and your eyes are stung,

you can call on the Etowah outlaws

who worked and spun their fingers raw,

who walked out of red-brick caves 

along the falling waters, and

into the light of a brand new day.

O, children, in the concrete and pines,

working with our hands and on our feet,

O, children, holding that holy old line --

in remembrance of the 40-hour week.

Seems like lately,

we get up

to go to work,

get ready for work.

We head to work,

and we work

till we get off work,

and take it to the house from work.

We hit the kitchen,

and we get to work.

We talk about work.

We worry about work.

We dream about it.

When you’re dog-sick, snatching plates

from the greasy jaws of this greedy Post-Life,

and the quicker you rush them out,

the quicker it gobbles them up,

and you gather what it spills,

you can call on the Tallapoosa outlaws,

who burnt their necks stooped to the Black Belt soil,

who raised hammer and hoe to the landlords,

hollering, God’s people shall eat of our own fields--

we shall eat of our own fields!

O, children, in the concrete and pines,

working with our hands and on our feet,

O, children, holding that holy old line --

in remembrance of the 40-hour week.

5. OUTLAWS

A black battlement of pines hides Holman from the

big-rig yeomen on the highway.

Barbwire stockades. Sniper turrets. Cottonfields.

Mechanized ghost of Fort Mims.

Down that green river, like a wire, like a nerve, like a vein,

sacred names crawl through the mist.

Alabama. Tallapoosa. Burning plantation walls of

the little man who called that sweet land his.

I wasn't ready.

I wasn't even there.

Swamp-slick trailers flank the reconstructed fort,

waiting on a 400-year dream.

Stars and stripes rotted to strips. The faded slavers’ cross.

King Trump's banner.

I hope the little man feels earth shake the day the flags drop,

the walls come tumbling down.

Downriver, the cotton’s rotting in the fields. They’re hollering.

No prisons, no plantations in a Free Alabama!

I wasn't ready.

I wasn't even there.

Outlaws!

O, please, make us fit to be

Outlaws!

O, please, make us fit to be

Outlaws!

O, please, make us fit to be

Outlaws!

Through wild moonlight, across MLK, up to

the city lockup's brutal bulk,

rebel songs for debtors, indocumentados,

the sweating streets, the shuttered hoodoo shop.

Durag-crowned, dashiki-draped, black-masked,

cowboy-booted in Troy Davis Park,

indivisible under sweeping choppers, SWAT tanks,

the burnt matchbook of faceless cops.

I wasn’t ready.

I wasn’t even there.

Outlaws!

O, please, make us fit to be

Outlaws!

O, please, make us fit to be

Outlaws!

O, please, make us fit to be

Outlaws!

I’ve been held by

the hazy skylines

of downtown

Tuskegee,

Anniston,

Birmingham.

I've bowed my head in the streets

where they stood strong.

I’ve looked up into

their ageless faces,

gazing off yonder

into the thickets and the pines,

and I believe

what they said.

The old-time

inscriptions read:

We fought the law, and we won!

We fought the law, and we won!

We fought the law, and we won!

We fought the law, and we won!

6. GENTLEMEN

Granddaddy said,

“A gentleman of this land

has an abiding sense of place.”

But they’ll zone

    Cabbagetown shotguns for executives, the

    Southtown projects for retail space,

foreclose family 

farms from McDonough to Calera for 

stucco-mansion mazes called Heritage Trace.

Granddaddy, are these really gentlemen

who don’t seem to give a damn about this place?

No, these whitewashing boys

don’t give a good damn about this place.

Granddaddy said,

“A gentleman of this land

has a deference to women.”

But they’ll traipse 

through the Highlands, grabbing ladies’ 

bodies, cussing the spirit within them,

and, in Montgomery and Atlanta, 

try to outlaw everybody that

fights back, transcends, or transitions.

Granddaddy, are these really gentlemen,

who try to walk all over women?

No, these puffed-up little boys

are just about scared to death of women.

Granddaddy said,

“A gentleman of this land

is from down-home, old-time folks.”

But they’ll brand

people with the station of their birth, try to

put them to the bullwhip and collar yoke,

and bathe

Juliette’s babies in coal-ash, and feed

Tarrant City’s children on slag and smoke.

Granddaddy, are these really gentlemen,

who have it out for down-home, old-time folks?

No, these no-count boys will try to live off 

the sweat of down-home, old-time folks. 

Boy, on that lightning day

the rivers all sing

a rolling hallelujah,

and carry us down to

the soft sands

of God’s balmy shore,

I don’t care to see

cash or deeds,

titles or degrees,

but the only trophies

I hope you’ll have to show

will be able hands,

a fertile mind,

a gentle soul.

A gentleman of this land.

A gentleman of this land.

A gentleman of this land.

A gentleman of this land.

7. REDNECKS

Down at the bus stop, a cleaning lady waits in the exhaust and gnats. 

She’s growling inside that Red Mountain mansion

about the rabble and the election. The reddening face. The sneering lip.

She grinds her teeth on the remains of the smog-choked, old-time

girls she scrambled over and above. The velvet cover

on that hard-edged Jones Valley twang starts to slip.

Don’t call her a redneck;

she’s your sister.

You ain’t no better than her,

or anybody else.

When she struggles,

you struggle with her.

If you go against your sister,

you go against yourself.

Skyline goes pink beyond the warehouse wall. The crickets

start to fiddling. We grab our puny paystubs,

drag the dying, aching day to the truck.

Down the line, E pulls on his wave cap, pries off his boots,

groans, and sparks a blunt. I can smell the whiskey

on Jim’s mustache, talking that same old junk.

Don’t call him a thug;

he’s your brother.

You ain’t no better than him,

or anybody else.

When he struggles,

you struggle with him.

If you go against your brother, boy,

you go against yourself.

Don’t go against yourself.

Don’t go against yourself.

Don’t go against yourself.

Don’t go against yourself.

Outside the punk show, down a dark sidestreet, in the

San Francisco of the Smokies, they try to bum a light.

He shakes his head, and they shuffle past.

He smokes, and cocks his head at their faded hair-dye and baggy clothes,

and groans in his Midwestern drone, "At least back home,

poor people have the dignity to pull up their pants."

I’m like, listen here, son,

Don’t call them trash;

they’re my kinfolk.

You ain’t no better than them,

or anybody else.

When they struggle,

you struggle with them.

If you go against my kinfolk, hoss,

you go against yourself.

Don’t go against yourself.

Don’t go against yourself.

Don’t go against yourself.

Like a dog gnawing off its tail.

Don’t go against yourself.

Don’t go against yourself.

Don’t go against yourself.

Like a saw cutting off its cord.

Don’t go against yourself.

Don’t go against yourself.

Don’t go against yourself.

Like the desperate denying the sweet grace of the Lord.

8. POST-LIFE

It barks, pledge allegiance

to the FBI, submit to the

will of the self-guided rocket.

It hisses, swear fealty

to the CEO, beg for mercy

at the altar of the market.

It'll run your mind till it skitters

like a ragged-out hard drive,

push your body till it smokes

like a rented machine,

feed you ice-cold hope

to reinstall the system,

synthetic dope

to wipe the memory clean.

Time to time,

I just get a mind

to resign.

It’s got shocking new proof

virtues are obsolete,

old-time religion's just superstition.

It grants eternal life in the

cryonic vault, all-knowing judgment

in the facial-recognition.

Down at the Sunday-morning 

laser-light show,

I can’t find no sanctuary,

and they don’t sing the old hymns.

It’s twisted scripture into

science, Jesus into Caesar,

being yourself

into a sin.

Lord, I pray that

on some happy day

I'll fly away

from this

Post-Life.

You can't hide out in the country!

You can't wild out in the city!

There's no place but here!

There’s no time but now!

It’ll rip the soul from your cooking,

the homeplace from your voice,

the thunder from your songs.

It’ll sell you back the bootlegs, stare

at you with dead flickering eyes

like it didn't do nothing wrong.

As it's sticking the cash

in the vault, it'll smirk and

give a lecture on the myth

of authenticity and truth.

But when you come for

what you're owed, it'll put

lawyers on the steps

and guns on the roof.

Hot damn, boy,

what a joyful noise

when we destroy

this

Post-Life!

It'll turn your soul into a brand, your story into content.

It'll turn your friends into followers, your town into a market.

It'll turn your car into a taxi, your house into a hotel.

It'll turn the past into a vapor, the future into a cold hell.

It’s got high-dollar, low-flavor gringo tacos.

It’s got weak-blooded, focus-group, nostalgia-cult rock shows.

It’s got do-gooder trophies for billionaire sweatshop bootstrap-stranglers.

It’s got peace prizes for genocide-chiefs, land-thieves, and droneswarm-slingers.

9. OLD FRIENDS

Lost my old friend.

Fell headlong into his phone.

Hunched and writhed

at his computer so long,

it pulverized his bones.

It pulverized his bones.

Lost my old friend.

Hunkered down in the decay.

Each shot of dope

was a sandbag to the flood

till her brittle veins gave way.

Her brittle veins gave way.

O!

Out in the pines.

O.

Lost my old friend.

Cowering in his shed,

armed up against infidels, invaders,

criminals, sinners--

mind to dust, heart to lead.

Burnt his mind to dust and his heart to lead.

O!

Out in the pines.

O.

10. DONE PLAYING DEAD

Co-ops turned to dust in Tuscaloosa oldfields,

union-hall ruins along the muddy banks of the Warrior,

sealed-off mines underneath the

hidden jungles of Beat-10,

lint-headed women, coaldusted men under the boss’s guns,

little children burnt black, brown, red in the sun,

spit at retired generals and dandy barons

what it really means to rise again.

Done playing dead.

Done playing dead.

Yeah, they’re done.

Yeah, they’re done playing.

Yeah, they’re done playing dead.

The sweet White Hall grass stirring with the ghosts of Tent City,

smell of potluck greens on the Letohatchee breeze,

ancient nighttime whispers of the

freedom schools all through Bloody Lowndes,

in the gravel lot of a pinebox church, grandchildren of

the enslaved tote 12-gauges, and make their

their mark for the Black Panther at the

sanctified sunken edge of that Blackbelt town.

Done playing dead.

Done playing dead.

Yeah, they're done.

Yeah, they're done playing.

Yeah, they're done playing dead.

Is it that we’re cursed,

or that we’re blessed

that when we’re backed in a corner

is when we fight our best?

From slash-cut hunting grounds around Notasulga,

the dammed-up falls at Tallassee,

the factory gates where the Prophet stomped,

shook the earth out from under Tuckabatchee square,

the old-time folks turned refugees by Jackson

taking root deep down into the cypress swamps.

Two hundred years, three wars, and the richest

empire on earth can’t push them out of there.

Done playing dead.

Done playing dead.

Yeah, they're done.

Yeah, they're done playing.

Yeah, they're done playing dead.

11. CALIGULA

The electrician stares at the drought-thin, dammed-up Tallapoosa.

The sun sinks. We watch it drown.

The cracks in his hands are still black with the dust

of the mine down in Colombia, the country not the town.

It was like stepping back in time. His voice shakes. 

The women and children. The armed guards. The 12-hour days.

The ropes and the mules and the buckets and the shacks.

That little man working them poor folks like slaves.

He ain't nothing

but a little-bitty man

in some little-bitty boots.

He ain't nothing

but a little-bitty man

in some little-bitty boots.

Get up, get up, get up, get up, get up off me.

Get up, get up, get up, get up off my back.

Among the ruins of Old Cahawba,

the columns of the Yankee's plantation house loom.

Generals parleyed there before the Battle of Selma,

civilly warring in the parlor room.

Did they speak to the Black women who fixed the bountiful supper?

Did they study their curves with lizard eyes?

Could they agree on things like duty and honor and 

sitting back behind the front lines while all the poor boys died?

He ain't nothing

but a little-bitty man

in some little-bitty boots.

He ain't nothing

but a little-bitty man

in some little-bitty boots.

Get up, get up, get up, get up, get up off me.

Get up, get up, get up, get up off my back.

The crew’s sunken quarter-tons. The boss's towering crewcab.

It's ironic, isn't it?

These days, it’s like the bigger the truck a body's got,

the less work they do with it.

They call him a planter, but he didn't plant nothing.

They call him a builder, but he doesn't build shit.

Old Jeff Davis never hoed one row.

Old Donald Trump never laid one brick.

He ain't nothing

but a little-bitty man

in some little-bitty boots.

He ain't nothing

but one little-bitty man

in two little-bitty boots.

Get up, get up, get up, get up, get up off me.

Get up, get up, get up, get up off my back.

Get up, get up, get up, get up, get up off us.

Get up, get up, get up, get up off our backs.

12. God’s A-Working, Man

Captives cry freedom

from a crucifix of sheds

the state calls Corrections

between Lock 17 and Toadvine,

where the bank and the landlords

stole my great-granddaddy's days,

where the Lord taught him to read

scripture by the coal-oil light.

Joy Harjo reads between the

Tobesofkee and her folks’ mounds.

Elders call through death:

an eagle, a song, her mama’s old biscuit pan.

A boy murmurs in the mic,

has a briarpatch saved her life?

Like, when his mama got strung out, and his

grandparents took him by his little shaking hands.

Old broken things to fix,

a riled-up, wild-eyed band,

piles of winding stories,

a sanctified, beaten-down land.

The longer I’ve been living,

it seems like the less I understand.

But every morning I hit my knees,

and thank God my God’s a-working, man.

I thank God that He came down here

to get to working, man.

Sweet sad old Gulf.

Saltwater licking at my wounds.

I drank deep of my failure.

Heard my mama curse the day I was born.

The sun pierced my lids.

Great-Granddaddy touched this water

the only time he left Alabama,

Mimi and Granddaddy singing and waving from the shore.

Old broken things to fix,

a riled-up, wild-eyed band,

piles of winding stories,

a sanctified, beaten-down land.

The longer I’ve been living,

it seems like the less I understand.

But every morning I hit my knees,

and thank God my God’s a-working, man.

I thank God that He came down here

to get to working, man.

I searched Talladega's ruined mills

for the spirit of the strike,

its soft hills for the Red Stick warsongs.

Amistad blazed on the Ritz Theater marquee.

Dark air. College kids. Town elders.

Blue light. Flashing blades. Broken chains.

Sengpe calls to the ancestors through

the ancient speakers and the dim screen.

Old broken things to fix,

a riled-up, wild-eyed band,

piles of winding stories,

a sanctified, beaten-down land.

The longer I’ve been living,

it seems like the less I understand.

But every morning I hit my knees,

and thank God my God’s a-working, man.

I thank God that He came down here

to get to working, man.

In the coal-dusted holler

of her barefoot starvation youth,

some church-shadowed stones

cried out my Grandmama's name.

A lady fixing flowers,

eyes flashing at me that we're kin.

She weaves lives through the

grave-rows, old-time falling like rain.

Old broken things to fix,

a riled-up, wild-eyed band,

piles of winding stories,

a sanctified, beaten-down land.

The longer I’ve been living,

it seems like the less I understand.

But every morning I hit my knees,

and thank God my God’s a-working, man.

I thank God that He came down here

to get to working, man.

I squatted at his feet.

Did he preach to the Union, black and white,

before they shut down the

Jasper streets or the Corona mine?

Clouds spread across the land.

Led me down to the Lock 17 Dam.

The Black Warrior sang its song.

An eagle opened up like a blackbound book in the sky.

Old broken things to fix,

a riled-up, wild-eyed band,

piles of winding stories,

a sanctified, beaten-down land.

The longer I’ve been living,

it seems like the less I understand.

But every morning I hit my knees,

and thank God my God’s a-working, man.

I thank God that He came down here

to get to working, man.

Did they tell you

He could frame out a house?

Did they tell you

He could clean a mess of fish?

Did they tell you

He had love for the working girls?

Did they tell you

He told the rich man to go and cut a switch?

... Old-Time Folks (Benediction)

They walled up that porch like a fort, ran surveillance-camera wire,

neighborhood watch blows up my phone like artillery fire,

when kids burn one on the street,

old girl builds a fire,

dirtbikes run hot, sub-bass rumbles low.

Would they call the cops on Rev. Hosea Williams, armored in overalls,

sipping corn with barbershop comrades, unbought and unbossed?

They whooped the Klan, damn right,

this street bears his name, like

freedom ain't the end of the line; it's a holy old road.

Sipping margaritas by the Black Warrior, he foretells the fall of the border:

stolen land, government overreach, social disorder.

He asks the lady with the chips

if she can take our order--

Desoto’s tongue in Mayan and cracker accents.

Granddaddy was a Union man, voted Wallace a couple shameful times,

breadline-burns on his skin, eviction-sting in his eyes,

tried to help sidewalk guys

survive white-flight and redlines.

He’d been on the wrong side of that fence.

He didn't trust bosses, generals, or presidents.

He trusted old-time folks.

Old-time folks.

Old-time folks.

We're just old-time folks.

His teeth gleam, dead eyes shine, hisses in the headset mic,

swings the Bible at the dopesick, broke, locked-up, not-right,

flicks his tongue at Black rage and

queer love, grins into the lights.

He'll throw you in the pit or put you to the lash.

He sat in the back pew, hair all wild, britches all torn,

death-wished, gaslit, scripture-whooped, stair-thrown.

He’d hurt and raged. Hostage love.

Snaking lies. Whiskey storms.

The pastor smiled as she smudged on the ash,

like, child, the Lord don't make no trash--

He just makes old-time folks.

Old-time folks.

We're just old-time folks.

Old-time folks.

We’re old-time folks.

Old time-folks.