Amiri Baraka's "Getting Less & Less Safe Out Here" (The Baffler Pulled It, Last Minute)

Aldon Lynn Nielsen in Wuhan, China, talking about Baraka. 

Getting Less & Less Safe Out Here
(Tin Tin Deo, Diz)

                               by Amiri Baraka

The world is less safe
without Hugo Chávez, imagine not, reality
Is ill enough. The world
Is less safe
Without the poets Jayne Cortez, or Louis Reyes Rivera,
Or Sekou Sundiata
much less safe without Arafat or Rabin,
A much more dangerous place
We in, with mouths closed by death, assassination. With
Chávez
We wonder is it the planet’s imperialist police
That killed him, like Arafat, some secret ugly
Shit, like you know they got
With Malcolm and Dr. King
The crazy white folks was screaming so loud
They shd die, there was even some negro zombie preacher
In Chicago, boy, joined with them at the hip
Who screamed and hollered and wallowed
On the sidewalks, they wanted to run Dr. King’s street
In front of his dope dispensing south side joint.
But Chávez, I swear I think
They killed him. Some kind of death ray white
poison like they slipped Arafat. With Cabral and Biko
The animal sounds of the racists
Allowed them to shoot straight out,
They cd take off Touré with the “gone to Europe
For medical treatment” tip
but Chávez I know they killed, Ditto
Arafat. Imagine
Rabin being stalked by a right-wing Israeli nut
A Patriot, Lieberman or Netanyahu might say, imagine that
The cries from money and a new edition
Of white supremacy canceled out opposition.
They tried to get Fidel for so many years
But Fidel being Fidel walked through the flail
with the wail of an organized people, and they failed
But Chávez, we gotta know
Imperialist death science is my feeling
They always either killin or stealin

____
Amiri Baraka, 2014. The Baffler (pulled before publication).

Amiri Baraka, 1934 to 2014

I have/had the proof page / pdf of this poem as it was to be published in The Baffler. Classy layout! The Baffler pulled the poem at the last minute due to concerns ("concerns" my rear end). I suppose they were worried there'd be a reaction similar to the massive misunderstanding about Baraka's poem, "Somebody Blew Up America." I was at the Dodd Poetry Festival when he read that poem and witnessed a few angry people pop up, out of their seats. It was a thing, is all I can say, which snowballed into ignorance and hatred, as if Roy Cohn or J. Edgar Hoover were the alive and kicking thinkers. Baraka was stripped of his very new position of Poet Laureate of New Jersey. A shameful time in poetry history.

Thomas Sayers Ellis, then Poetry Editor of The Baffler, offered to email the pdf to any who requested it and since I knew Ellis, by way of friends, from a few parties, and through our emails about Baraka, I asked and promised to post. And so. S.S. 2014. (Edited 2020)