by Vincent K. Pollard
Distant thunder/unseen lightning —
a foreign war coming with all its fighting
to haunt the rulers and their rule
that brought the ruination of
more than one young generation.
Viet Nam
came home
last night
when no one was lookin'
that long-ago war
slips in the back door
That war slips down South Shore Drive and South Chicago Avenue
over to Ninety-First and Baltimore and back again
like a late winter wind blowing up Seventy-Ninth and
Brandon
with the vengeance of a
nightmare that never comes to an end.
This is the haunted house to scare away the politicians — the
bewitching house
whose name is
South Side Blues
the blues of the
working class people cursed by
foreign wars and shut-down factories
and blues
Oh, yeah,
BLUES —
for the ruling class
that will feel our wrath
one day!
__________
* Vincent Pollard's poem "Distant
Thunder, Unseen Lightning" was first published in Henry Blakely (ed.),
DuSable Seminar, Hoyt W. Fuller edition (Chicago: The DuSable Museum of African
American History, 1985), p. 26.
The unlikely but inspiring success of the Jearl Wood Defense Committee (1980-1982) and the continuing efforts of anti-war and anti-imperialist movements encouraged the then-automobile worker Pollard to write "Distant Thunder/Unseen Lightning." The choppy rhythm, beat and drive of Pollard's poem reflects the often relentless pace, subliminal backbeats, and unexpectedly welcome interruptions of the assembly line where he worked — and where he wrote drafts of the poem snatching moments in between keeping up with the elements of his repetitive job.
As an element in Pollard's performance art pieces, successive iterations of this poem were read by him to audiences at The DuSable Museum of African American History's "Martinmass" celebration, meetings of the International Black Writers Conferences, other artists' groups, the South Chicago Public Library, a creative arts event that he co-produced as a member of a special committee of UAW Local 551, military veterans' groups, a University of Illinois-Chicago classroom, and the 1991 University of Chicago Festival of the Arts, as well as other Chicago-area venues.
"Distant Thunder, Unseen Lightning" also was performed in the sound track of two experimental videos by Pollard — "Distant Thunder, Unseen Lightning" (1986) and "Arkipelika" (1990). A grant from the Chicago Office on Fine Arts assisted production of the latter. These videos were cablecast to audiences of Chicago-area community access cable TV stations.
More recently, this poem was part of the Peace Day Hawai‘i 2007 "Expressions of Peace" Literary Art contest, State Capitol, Honolulu, Hawai‘i, 21 September 2007. And it was included among visual displays during Irei no Hi commemorations sponsored by the Hawai‘i Okinawa Alliance at the Hawaii Okinawa Center in 2006 and 2007.
© 1985, Vincent K. Pollard.
Contribute to high-quality, accessible Internet research by reporting dead links.
It is prohibited to include this website's content in passworded or fee-for-service electronic databases. If your website uses "no-frames" html web pages, linking is allowed.