Keith,

Thanks for the invite.  I'll jump right in with two poems from my re-visioning of American history entitled The American Cantos.

Sincerely,
Michael Ceraolo

Canto XXIV

The Reconstruction era has long been subject to

the bias of blatant racism in historiography:

being described as The Tragic Era because of

the fact of a brief black ascendancy,

                                                            and

the use of certain terms as pejoratives

when they shouldn’t have been such,

and the use of other terms as compliments

when they shouldn’t have been such either

( definitions as they should read:

carpetbaggers- Northerners who moved to the South,

some for noble motives, some for less than noble ones,

as has ever been the mix that animated American mobility

scalawags- Southerners who had never been treasonous,

or, if they had, were sincerely repentant for their actions

planters- people who had never actually planted anything

except the idea that they were entitled to reside in idleness

by coercing, under cover of law, the labor of others

Redeemers- those who redeemed the South from democracy)

And the first thing that needed reconstructing

was the image of the black that was held by whites

And they changed this image first by serving

the approaching Union Armies as laborers and spies,

abandoning the plantations the first chance they got

“The Negroes of the South have been in sympathy with us from the beginning,

and have always hailed the approach of our flag

with the wildest demonstrations of joy”

                                                                 And,

the soldiers soon discovered,

“Dishonesty and indolence . . .were the creation of slavery”

and the Negroes were soon permitted

to serve as soldiers,

                                 and further revelations were to occur

“The Negro is a man, a soldier, a hero”

                                                                And

soon the war was over and the real work begun

“Our little sovereignties and Feudal arrangements

are all leveled to the ground”

                                                but

that wouldn’t stop Southerners from trying

to re-create the defeated past

“Treason must be made odious”

                                                     but

when it was time to put up or shut up,

the government shut up

                                        Apparently

the only requirement for reinstatement

was that you had to have been against secession

at some point in your life,

                                          even

if it was only in a dream known only to you,

for even some Confederate generals

were permitted to resume officeholding

And the result of such a blunder was the Black Codes

“Their whole thought and time will be given to plans

for getting things back as near to slavery as possible”

the pass system and curfews,

prohibition from any job except farmer or servant,

vague vagrancy laws that allowed courts to compel labor,

forced false apprenticeships for ‘orphans’

including many who were adults

(and many more who were slavery orphans)

And violence, violence, violence

“Lawlessness and violence filled the land,

and terror stalked abroad by day,

and it burned and murdered by night”

“Lawlessness was its inheritance,

and the red splotch of violence its birthmark”

“Never threaten a man individually

If he deserves to be threatened,

the necessities of the times require that he should die”

“Murder is considered one of their inalienable state rights”

And before during and after Federal ‘protection’

were such scenes:

46 blacks and two whites killed

and hundreds of homes, businesses, and schools burned

in the Memphis police riot

in May 1866;

34 blacks and 3 white Radicals killed

outside the hall housing the constitutional convention

in New Orleans July 1866;

200 blacks killed in

St. Landry Parish Louisiana

by a marauding mob in 1868;

1000 murdered in Texas,

with no one ever convicted for any of those crimes;

the ‘Christians’ consecrating a holy day

by killing 70 blacks and 2 whites

in Colfax Louisiana on

Easter Sunday April 1873

and the uncounted thousands and thousands

killed for being prosperous against all odds,

or for trying to exercise their right to vote,

or for no reason other than their color;

And even the allegedly copious corruption

of the Reconstruction South

is just one more instance

of inequality of opportunity:

the small sums swiped pale in comparison

to the Tweed Ring et al

So let’s salute

Hiram Revels,

                          Blanche Bruce,

                                                     P.B.S. Pinchback,

Robert Smalls,

Robert Elliott,

and the numerous other officeholders

and ordinary citizens black and white

who made America,

                                 for a brief shining moment,

attempt to live up to its professed ideals

Canto XXV

Article Four:

“guarantee to every State in this Union

a Republican Form of Government”,

                                                             with

no specifics about how this mandate might be made to happen;

otherwise, there is a seemingly strange silence

in our secular Bible

about the right to vote

                                     Actually,
at the time of creation the common sentiment
was that the vote was
“a darling privilege of free men”
                                                      and should be

“extended as far as considerations of safety and order will permit”

The poor, it was believed by the beloved Founders, had
“no will of their own”
 and thus would be at the mercy of the rich,
                                                                      or, conversely,

that they had too much will of their own,
                                                                   that

“an immediate revolution would ensue”

And a strange silence about these contradictory strains
carries over to the teaching of history,

where it is generally implied,

                                                if not

explicitly stated,

                             that

the history of voting rights has been one long straight road

to the ‘universal suffrage’ of today

                                                            Well, not exactly

The tale has been more like a tide:

sometimes it comes in toward universal suffrage,

“The course of things in this country

is for the extension,

                                and

not the restriction of popular rights”

other times it goes out far away from it:

property requirements are dropped,

                                                           gradually,

but taxpaying requirements are put in place

and pauper exclusions are pushed

and poll taxes are implemented,

the poll tax not being outlawed
until the nineteen sixties;

the Fifteenth Amendment enfranchises blacks

(for a very short time only in the South),

(“Discrimination! 
Why that is precisely what we propose”

said a future Senator)

but Asians and Native Americans

are disenfranchised formally for far longer;

the secret ballot comes into play as a de facto way

to disenfranchise the illiterate and the immigrant

after more formal barriers lose favor;  

“the theory of the educational test

is that it furnishes an indirect method

of excluding those who are undesirable,

not merely because of their illiteracy

but for other reasons”

and all who would exclude did not have enumerate

women gain the vote,
                                   nationwide,

only one hundred thirty years

after the founding of the country;

                                                       then,

only ninety-five years after the passage

of the Fifteenth Amendment,

blacks are re-enfranchised;

and then eighteen-year olds are enfranchised

in the early nineteen seventies;

But there are still residency requirements
and registration hoops to jump through,

                                                           and

periodic purgings by those in power

of people who don’t vote during a specified slice of time

And there are the deliberate disqualifications

of those who are qualified,

as witnessed in the coup of 2000

Vigilance, not complacency,

must be eternal

-Michael Ceraolo

Ray,

Thanks for the praise of the American Cantos.  If/when they get published in book form I'll drop you a line.

Best,

Michael

Jack-

Haven't had a chance to read any of it yet, but I liked your blog setup.  Also, I was trying to remember where I'd heard your name before (it sounded familiar to me), and I think I figured it out:  I'm also a member over at the First Step Press Yahoo! group and Laura Stamps is a member.  I think she did an interview with you some time back.  I think that's where I recognize the name, but it could be from somewhere else.

Also, you mention Ralphy over at Lucid Moon on your blog.  I've been checking in at that site for some time now, and find it a fascinating place.  The entire world Ralph Haselmann Jr. has created at that site is truly personal and heartfelt.  I've been thinking of submitting for awhile now, but haven't decided on the right pieces yet.

Also, in regards to prolificism, Big Walt (Whitman) wrote less than a hundred poems in his entire, long lifetime.  He just kept revising until, ultimately, he'd revised himself into history as one of the beacons of American poetry.  So by all means, take your time (rushed work is always so cagey, anyway).

-Ray