Lamont B. Steptoe

"Gulf of Tonkin"

GULF OF TONKIN

Damn you, rich lawyer
sons of lawyer
sons of bitches
that rule our lives like Roman patricians.
Damn you to hell
with your sex-gates,
cocaine-gates,
zipper-gates,
Iran Contra-gates
pumping out foreign policy
between tokes and strokes of pleasure.
You’re not America,
just GM and Ford and IBM
and trilateral commission lackeys
dancing to the tune
of magicians of darkness
hellbent on importing
the flames of Hades
to Earth’s shores.
In the names of the Vietnam dead
I curse you
in these post-Frank Reynolds days,
I curse you, Pentagon generals
at the video arcade of the world
thinking you can win
like kids win games of Pacman.
You frigid, unemotional
computer-prick assholes,
I survived your Vietnam charade
I survived,
this black man survived
to scream these curses at you.
Washington is a town of morticians
otherwise why the big black limousines?
All these years you’ve been
showing us the end
riding in your funeral processions
to and from white houses
and cold marble tombs.
You’re not America,
just big business and robber barons,
and La Cosa Nostra evil
polluting our amber waves of grain.
I curse you with the juju of Africa
the juju of my ancestors
who cursed your southern soil
while plowing fields
and chopping cotton
under the bloody sun
of American slavery.
I curse you for the hardships
of poor people everywhere
while you spend trillion dollar budgets
on weapons of destruction.

Interview with Lamont by Jordan Green- http://www.summersault.com/tilt-a-whirl/tour/steptoe.html

"Paris", by Lamont B. Steptoe- http://www.summersault.com/tilt-a-whirl/tour/steptoe_poetry.html

The Steptoe Session- http://www.rattapallax.com/spotsteptoe.htm

Lamont B. Steptoe is a poet / photographer / publisher born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is author of eight books of poetry including In the Kitchens of the Master, Mad Minute, Uncle's South Sea China Blue Nightmare, Cat Fish and Neckbone Jazz, Dusty Road, Common Salt and Trinkets and Beads. Steptoe is a father, Vietnam veteran, and founder of Whirlwind Press.

"Thinking back on it, I was really exposed to black poetry through the church. Because, as the late writer Henri Dumas said, “every black poet is a preacher and every black preacher is a poet.” My work is influenced by the fire and brimstone that black preachers generally exhibit in the context of the church on Sunday mornings. Rev. Augustus C. Sumter from South Carolina was the first person to call me a poet. I had written a poem about the fact that they were going to be tearing down our church and I read it and word got back to him and he announced to the congregatoin one Sunday, “We have a poet in our midst!”. And it was like a revelation. Like a little light went on."

He has read his work at the Library of Congress, the National Library of Nicaragua, the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, Shakespeare & Co. in Paris, the Knitting Factory, the Schomburg Center for Black Culture, and colleges and universities throughout the United States. Steptoe is also an activist in human rights, environmental issues, and gay/bisexual issues.