Question: Ya think any of these rioters can name a Maya Angelou poem? – IOTW Report

Question: Ya think any of these rioters can name a Maya Angelou poem?

Friday, 20 July 2018, 0:15 BFH Uncategorized 60

I hate to be really cynical, but I am sick and tired hearing about Maya Angelou. (The Rudyard Kipling poem “If” was just erased off a university campus mural and replaced with a Maya Angelou poem.)

This woman has been deified as if she has some major impact on black people. I don’t see it. The black community is getting more violent and more lost.

I read her poems and all it does is induce an eye roll because there is a huge disconnect between the victimhood in the words and the reality of who is the victim in 2018.

STILL I RISE

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

-Maya Angelou

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son.

-Rudyard Kipling

60 Comments on Question: Ya think any of these rioters can name a Maya Angelou poem?

  4. WHEN
    When you grow up and pull your own weight
    and can list your own accomplishments as freight;

    You will be a man
    And yes you can.

    But if you cry and fret disaster
    at your president, the master;
    you will crumble and fray and fall,
    and it will be better, for us all!

    -Meerkat

    21

  5. TIME, a limerick
    Hey, give me some more time
    to make my life on a dime.
    I got a social education,
    So I don’t know the nation
    And I won’t lead a life of crime.

    15

  8. Meerkat

    Wow dude. I don’t know. “Make my life on a dime”. Honestly if it doesn’t start out with “Roses are red”, probably ain’t worth shit. LOL.

    4

  9. I’ve had all I can stand
    And I can’t stand no more
    The DOJ is broken
    The swamp has spoken
    If Trump can’t fix it
    I’m done giving a shit
    Q gave me hope
    Now I feel like a dope
    Frustrated as hell
    But I’ll get well

    I don’t care for poetry, and I’m not really that depressed, just giving poetry a try. I still don’t like it.

    11

  12. BFH. I have always thought about that. None of my children can recite a poem. My friends know no poems. When in school, in Ireland, we committed to memory certain poems and bits and pieces of Shakespeare.
    Today that is considered bullshit. “Old dead white motherfuckers”
    telling us what to learn. I can still quote , off my head a brilliant bit from Shakespeare:
    “How sharper than a serpents tooth is is, to have a thankless child.”
    OK I think that was from King Lear.
    But what it means today, to me, is that modern Americans do not appreciate what the Founding Fathers gave them.
    But who understands that in the Bronx or San Francisco?

    22

  16. “Does my sassiness upset you?”

    Yes, yes, as a matter of fact it does. Now get back in the kitchen and make me some damn pancakes Jemaya.

    Sorry for the entendre, but just one more Mueller/Rosie death by a 1000 cuts…. I’m teetering in the edge.

    18

  17. joe6pak

    Well, see what happens when you run into an Xpert poets like me and Meerkat? LOL. Maybe we should try rap? Or is it wrap. I need a clarification on this shit.
    I’m gonna do Cowboy Rap/Wrap.

    “I’m an old cow hand, I learned to rope before I could stand” followed by exhaustive weird noises.
    “But my legs ain’t bowed and my cheeks ain’t tan
    I’m a cowboy who never saw a cow
    Never roped a steer ’cause I don’t know how
    Sure ain’t a fixing to start in now
    Oh, yippie yi yo kayah, yippie yi yo kayah”
    More weird noises.
    Wada ya think?

    6

  20. “He who steals my purse, steals trash. “Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been fool to many,
    But he who filches from me my good name, steals not what enriches
    him, but makes me poor indeed.” Shakespeare.
    Think Schmucky Schuemer and the media on Donald Trump

    8

  24. Hangin’ on the corner, calling out the PoPO,
    Go down to Social Services, and try to sign your name,
    even a dropout or never been can make an X, just ask Malcolm,
    Turned out to be a genius, wound up catching a little lead.

    Wow, my limited education, Dr. Seuss was the “Man”! Even Jay-Z agrees…
    Book name will be mayo on toast. Will be a best seller after the NYT review.

    5

  25. “I think we should practice in private before we go public.”

    You might have a point there. But I’m saying right freaken now, we need to wear Lederhosen during our performance.

    8

  26. Brad. Not happy with your medical assessment. I had a late-night concert. What makes you think I am drunk? My poems? They are all done under soberness. I am sober you jerk! I am am not a poet, I am only making fun of it!

    6

  27. Brad wrote: “wow, you are hammered. Read this tomorrow and you will laugh. Love ya buddy. Go to bed. Been there.”

    Hey asshole, I’m not “there”. What a statement! Unbelievable!

    1

  29. There once was gal named Angelou
    Who did not know what she should do
    Welfare didn’t pay quite enough
    Neither did renting out her muff
    So she thought she’d sell a rhyme or two

    15

  31. Anonymous, That’s good. Ho about this?

    There once was gal named Angelou
    Who did not know what she should do
    Welfare didn’t pay quite enough
    Neither did renting out her muff
    So she decided to run for office
    It took less effort then renting out an orifice.

    8

  32. Hey Bad Brad…You want to accuse people half way around the nation as doing something that you have no freaking knowledge of them doing? You better lay off! You are completely out of line! I feel sorry for you!

    2

  33. OK before I go to bed, here’s a little test for y’all.
    Say.” Misses Shea sitting in Misses Shea’s shop.” fast as y’all phucken can. Good night

    5

  34. Meerkat Brzezinski

    I feel sorry for me too. Just sayen, your slurring your typing. Go to bed, we’ll have a good laugh tomorrow. I’m out. No harm meant.

    2

  38. Better poetry than this can be found in any greeting card section at your local drug store or supermarket.

    Not that I think much of Kipling’s “If,” but at least it isn’t dripping with anti-white racism.

    7

  40. I just thought Obama was a malignant narcissist. Maya Angelou wrote 7 autobiographies. Obama has only written 2 so far LOL.

    And this little snippet from her wikipedia page (written without a hint of irony) shows some of her hubris and self importance:

    “She did not earn a university degree, but according to Gillespie it was Angelou’s preference to be called “Dr. Angelou” by people outside of her family and close friends.”

    10

  44. Black culture is currently screaming the word nigger two hundred times while proclaiming how many bitches you’ve banged & how much drugs you’ve managed to destroy your neighborhood with. Black people are their own worst enemies.

    11

  45. Lyle,,, have you looked into the mirror in the past 30 years? You have much more to worry about than the rest of us. Like sticking to your parole,, and your alter ego Kati Lang.

    1

  46. Once upon a time
    Humpy dumpy sat on a wall
    And the Kings horses stampeeded
    and Jack an Jill ran up the hill
    and gorgie porgie puddin and pie
    couldn’t get the horses back in the coral
    ever again.
    And then Little Red Riding Hood met Robinson Crusoe in the jungle
    and Tarzan got all pissed off.
    All that stuff is racist,so stop it already!
    Just forget Huck Finn.

    4

  51. Angelou has always been overrated and she has one of the most annoying voices evah! Besides, Oprah loves her so that tells you something right there.
    Reading her stuff is like reading a collection of old sayings that have simply been compiled into one place. Not very original at all.

    4

  55. Take this kiss upon the brow!
    And, in parting from you now,
    Thus much let me avow —
    You are not wrong, who deem
    That my days have been a dream;
    Yet if hope has flown away
    In a night, or in a day,
    In a vision, or in none,
    Is it therefore the less gone?
    All that we see or seem
    Is but a dream within a dream.

    I stand amid the roar
    Of a surf-tormented shore,
    And I hold within my hand
    Grains of the golden sand —
    How few! yet how they creep
    Through my fingers to the deep,
    While I weep — while I weep!
    O God! can I not grasp
    Them with a tighter clasp?
    O God! can I not save
    One from the pitiless wave?
    Is all that we see or seem
    But a dream within a dream?

    -Poe 1845

    6

  59. I too always thought Hallmark cards were better than the “prose” this woman put out.
    I think it was more that she was old with white hair and wrinkles, so she needed to be revered as some wise old sage. Her words were never lofty as poetry goes, though.
    Just simple and earthy. And whiny.
    No wonder liberals loved her.

    1

  60. I got here late. But I will submit this anyway.

    No stir in the air, no stir in the sea,
    The Ship was still as she could be;
    Her sails from heaven received no motion,
    Her keel was steady in the ocean.

    Without either sign or sound of their shock,
    The waves flow’d over the Inchcape Rock;
    So little they rose, so little they fell,
    They did not move the Inchcape Bell.

    The Abbot of Aberbrothok
    Had placed that bell on the Inchcape Rock;
    On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung,
    And over the waves its warning rung.

    When the Rock was hid by the surge’s swell,
    The Mariners heard the warning Bell;
    And then they knew the perilous Rock,
    And blest the Abbot of Aberbrothok

    The Sun in the heaven was shining gay,
    All things were joyful on that day;
    The sea-birds scream’d as they wheel’d round,
    And there was joyaunce in their sound.

    The buoy of the Inchcpe Bell was seen
    A darker speck on the ocean green;
    Sir Ralph the Rover walk’d his deck,
    And fix’d his eye on the darker speck.

    He felt the cheering power of spring,
    It made him whistle, it made him sing;
    His heart was mirthful to excess,
    But the Rover’s mirth was wickedness.

    His eye was on the Inchcape Float;
    Quoth he, “My men, put out the boat,
    And row me to the Inchcape Rock,
    And I’ll plague the Abbot of Aberbrothok.”

    The boat is lower’d, the boatmen row,
    And to the Inchcape Rock they go;
    Sir Ralph bent over from the boat,
    And he cut the bell from the Inchcape Float.

    Down sank the Bell with a gurgling sound,
    The bubbles rose and burst around;
    Quoth Sir Ralph, “The next who comes to the Rock,
    Won’t bless the Abbot of Aberbrothok.”

    Sir ralph the Rover sail’d away,
    He scour’d the seas for many a day;
    And now grown rich with plunder’d store,
    He steers his course for Scotland’s shore.

    So thick a haze o’erspreads the sky,
    They cannot see the sun on high;
    The wind hath blown a gale all day,
    At evening it hath died away.

    On the deck the Rover takes his stand,
    So dark it is they see no land.
    Quoth Sir Ralph, “It will be lighter soon,
    For there is the dawn of the rising Moon.”

    “Canst hear,” said one, “the breakers roar?
    For methinks we should be near the shore.”
    “Now, where we are I cannot tell,
    But I wish we could hear the Inchcape Bell.”

    They hear no sound, the swell is strong,
    Though the wind hath fallen they drift along;
    Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock,
    “Oh Christ! It is the Inchcape Rock!”

    Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair,
    He curst himself in his despair;
    The waves rush in on every side,
    The ship is sinking beneath the tide.

    But even is his dying fear,
    One dreadful sound could the Rover hear;
    A sound as if with the Inchcape Bell,
    The Devil below was ringing his knell.

    -Rob’t Southey

    1

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