Confined​: History Re-Mixed

Assemblage: Canvas, acrylic paint, acrylic ink, wood sticks, vintage stamps and postmarks, skeleton keys, locks, galvanized steel hardware cloth, political sticker
H 48" x W 36" x D 3"
(2017)
​
This work evolved from a gallery viewing of civil rights photography at the High Museum in Atlanta, GA. As I sat and viewed the patrons viewing the work, I wrote this poem on the margins of the exhibition program, reminiscent of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. writing on the margins of newspapers in a Birmingham, AL jail cell.

History Remixed: An Uncivil Guide

I​
Writing from my cell
I see photographs
Documenting an era
Hardened by anger
Tempered by time
Unsettling lives
Men, women
Framed within 
Black and white borders
Margins on a page
America’s fringe
 
II
Crossroads, good and evil
Paths, separate and unequal
Goals, desperate and disparate
Black and white
White and black
Separated by hate
Gathered by love
Oppressed by ignorance
Freed by nobility
 
III
From my cell I see kings
Bearing non violent swords
Severing racist vines in
Segregated forests
Freeing pine and oak
Reaching for stars
Against blue black sky
On blood spilled flag
Dripping stripes of crimson
Upon white cotton field
 
​IV
From my cell I see
Dogs trained to kill
Dignity and humanity
Police beating conscious minds
Unconscious
I see devilish hoods removed
For photo ops
While James Meredith lies
On a solemn road
Blood, red stained white shirt
Crying help, not for self
For nations sake
 

V
​From my cell I see
Children bombed in
Sunday school
Men shot by snipers
From roadside stands
Grassy knolls
And city streets
Freedom riders
Buried in dams
Hung from trees
Thrown in swamps
As gator feed

VI 
From my cell
I see crowds of people
Holding hands
Marching, singing
Praying, dreaming
One day
Peace shall prevail
Justice will be just
Equality, equal
And freedom
Will actually mean free

​VII 
From my cell I see
Symbols and signs
White Only
Colored Only
Inconspicuously hidden
Among the syntax
In coded lines
Framing the times
Code name “baby’s daddy”
African names need not apply
Affirmative action
Affirmatively denied
We accept online applicants only
Are you a graduate of an HBCU?
‘We’ll get back with you’
 ​

VIII
From my cell
I see prisons filled
With black and brown men
No hope of future
Resigned to bestial ways
Bearing tattoos declaring
I AM A MAN
Chorusing
We don’t give a damn
While a black man
Runs for president
Singing ‘yes we can’
Praising the audacity of hope
 
IX
From my cell I see a museum
Civilizations storehouse
Displaying images
Of an un-civil nation
I hear cell phones ringing
Many have come to hear my story
See my pictures, join hands and stare
As if at a church funeral
Or library of hushed voices
Expressing silent thoughts like
‘I don’t know if I could
Take that beating’
Under breath, saying
‘I don’t know those people’
or ‘How could they’
or ‘Why’ And ‘I never knew’
 
X
From my cell I see change
Black men are not present
In equal numbers at this gathering
Locked in cages
We have found a way
To deny them the right to vote
Removing them from families,
Churches and baby’s lives
Doing what mobs, dogs, kkk
National guardsmen and
Segregationists could not
So we print new signs
To march
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Copyright © 2008 by F. Geoffrey Johnson   All rights reserved