Black Dada Nihilimus

By Amiri Baraka

                                . Against what light

is false what breath

sucked, for deadlines.

                                Murder, the cleansed

purpose, frail, against

God, if they bring him

                               bleeding, I would not

forgive, or even call him

black dada nihilismus

The protestant love, wide windows,

color blocked to Mondrian, and the

ugly silent deaths of jews under

the surgeon's knife. (To awake on

69th street with money and a hip

nose. Black dada nihilismus, for

the umbrella'd jesus. Trilby intrigue

movie house presidents sticky the floor

B.D.N., for the secret men, Hermes, the

blacker art. Thievery (ahh, they return

those secret gold killers. Inquisitors

of the cocktail hour. Trismegistus, have

them, in their transmutation, from stone

to bleeding pearl, from lead to burning

looting, dead Moctezuma, find the West

a gray hideous space

2.

From Sartre, a white man, it gave

the last breath. And we beg him die,

before he is killed. Plastique, we

do not have, only thin heroic blades.

The razor. Our flail against them, why

you carry knives? Or brutalized lumps of

heart? Why you stay, where they can

reach? Why you sit, or stand, or walk

in this place, a window on a dark

warehouse. Where the minds packed in

straw. New homes, these towers, for those

lacking money or art. A cult of death,

need of the simple striking arm under

the streetlamp. The cutters, from under

their rented earth. Come up, black dada

nihilismus. Rape the white girls. Rape

their fathers. Cut the mothers' throats.

Black dada nihilismus, choke my friends

in their bedrooms with their drinks spilling

and restless for tilting hips or dark liver

lips sucking splinters from the master's thigh

Black scream

and chant, scream,

and dull, un

earthly

hollering. Dada, bilious

what ugliness, learned

in the dome, colored holy

shit (i call them sinned

or lost

          burned masters

                                 of the lost

                                                nihil German killers

                                                                             all our learned

art, 'member

what you said

money, God, power,

a moral code, so cruel

it destroyed Byzantium, Tenochtitlan, Commanch

                                                                          (got it, Baby!

For tambo, willie best, dubois, patrice, mantan, the

bronze buckaroos.

                           for Jack Johnson, asbestos, tonto, buckwheat,

                           billie holiday

                                   For tom russ, l'ouverture, vesey, beau jack,

(may a lost god damballah, rest or save us

against the murders we intend

against his lost white children

black dada nihilismus

*   *   *   *   *

posted 27 March 2006