s w i f t s  &  s l o w s: a quarterly of crisscrossings

Mulberry Bushes Looking For a Cherry
M A  Shaheed & John Greiner

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Join the Team, March

Fields

Fields filled with a wide variety of victims,
so unassuming, it is not so amusing.
They are no longer sure they are as pure
as someone one once told them.

Giving high fives as they dive head long
into confusion. Seeing the liquor sales
skyrocket, as they empty their pockets.

The other rockets looking fora safe place
to land, while leaving the Renfeild family
in command. You remember him that was
Dracula man.

Wanting to escape the lakes filled with
mistakes, they said you and I made, when
it was them that got paid.

It’s one virus following another, as they
plead to restart the greed that got the
decease started in the first place.

Different faces trading places with the
same plans in hand. Waking day after day
watching the colored guys take their place
as victim number one.

Being attacked by victim number two, who
was raised to judge by the color of your skin,
comfortably inviting Ted Bundy to come in.

Victim number three, hires the serial killers to
police you and me. All being controlled by victim
number four, that’s the one they couldn’t see.

The earth can’t boast for being the host to all
this victimology.

This Ma

Here We Go Loop Tee Loo

Soup lines and loop holes,
gaping holes fill empty bowls.
Fractured minds fall behind
Mulberry bushes looking for
a cherry.

Unable to find a solution they
can’t drink. Unable to find
satisfaction in their brief search
for it, they are satisfied they tried.

Being surrounded by unleashed
beasts, they are commanded by
these monsters they created.
They aren’t tired, they’re just sick.

No quick fix to a problem’s that have
festered for centuries. Negroes with
worn out knees thinking they can
please a twisted bastard.

Giving a billion dollars to a billion
negroes, you think that dollar is
going to solve their problem?

Deploying racist police to keep them
in line, like leading a sheep to slaughter.
They play patty cake, patty cake with
the boys in the band.

Lining up fake witnesses on the witness
stand. The negro is the bargaining chip,
so the ship doesn’t slip under waves, as
the earth waves good-bye.

Somewhere in the back of a demon’s mind
he won’t get fined for what he does. He’ll
join with the rest of the crooks in the books.

I’m talking about the ones he wrote. There he
stands, six- shooter in hand, telling the Planner
what he himself, the beast has planned. What
we’re dealing with here, is a real deranged kind
of man.

Revolt

You see What I Mean about Capital Gains?

I tried to tell you your neighbor was a
Nazi sympathizer. The other neighbor
down the block joined with the white
supremist cop.

Your milkman and the green grocery
would report you for your choice of
guests, the black ones coming in and
out of your house.

The owner of your favorite restaurant told
his leader, you shook hands with some colored
guy in the parking lot that he’s never seen
around there before.

The manager at your voting place saw who you
voted for, after which, he wouldn’t speak to you
anymore.

A lawyer friend you thought was ok, said she
was upset when you defended a negro for little
or no pay, she said, the negroes were always guilty
all the time anyway.

The judge, the jury and the Klan have demands,
That it should be only them who have control
over this land.

You couldn’t believe the reservation wasn’t a
place for a vacation, and the fort next to it wasn’t
the police station. Why I’m surprised!

No, the Indians didn’t just die. Your goons and you
committed genocide. Breaking a law that belongs
to you, ain’t something new for you to do.

Your in-laws, are the outlaws breaking all of nature’s
laws. Those are the laws that are going to finally get you.

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Poetry by Proet M A Shaheed. Décollages by John Greiner.

M A Shaheed began writing in the seventh grade and continued after high school. First published in White Motors newspaper under the name of Clyde Shy. The column was called “The Poets Corner,” that he’d helped to establish. In 1963/64 living in Stockholm, Sweden, he wrote stories for a photographer whose pictures were sold to newspapers & magazines. M A Shaheed became a professional musician, playing bass violin and played with major Avant Garde musicians. Continued to write, but it wasn’t on the front burner. In 1966 joined poetry workshop called the Muntu Poets, headed by Russell Atkins, noted Avant Garde poet and composer along with well- known poet and playwrite Norman Jordan located in Cleveland, Ohio. At the end of that year “68”, began to work on his spiritual development. M A Shaheed stopped writing for 3 decades, but driven back to his pen by a clearer understanding of the real reality. Has since published 44 books, been in numerous anthologies. Working with a new publisher, with 3 more books on the way. The genre includes novellas, poetry, short stories, Flash Fiction. “My goal is to keep writing until I stop, until I can no longer hear.”

John Greiner is a writer and visual artist living in New York City. He was educated at the New School for Social Research. Greiner’s work has appeared in Antiphon, Sand Journal, Empty Mirror, Sensitive Skin, Unarmed, Street Value and numerous other magazines. His books of poetry include Circuit (Whiskey City Press), Turnstile Burlesque (Crisis Chronicles Press) and Bodega Roses (Good Cop/Bad Cop Press). His collaborative work with photographer Carrie Crow has appeared at the Tate Liverpool, the Queens Museum and in galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Venice, Paris, Berlin and Hamburg.