Wild Poppies
Marilyn Buck
I remember red poppies, wild behind the school house
I didn’t want to be there, but I loved to watch the poppies
I used to sit in the window of my room, sketching charcoal trees
what happened to those magnolia trees, to that girl?
I went off to college, escaped my father’s thunderstorms
Berkeley. Rebellion. Exhilaration!
the Vietnam war, Black Power, Che took me to Chicago
midnight lights under Wacker Dr. Uptown. South Side. Slapped
by self-determination for taking Freedom Wall photos
without asking
on to California, driving at 3:00 in the morning in the mountains,
I got it: what self-determination means
A daunting task for a young white woman, I was humbled
practice is concrete … harder than crystal-dream
concepts
San Francisco, on the front steps at Fulton St.
smoking reefer, drinking “bitterdog” with Black Panthers and white
hippie radicals, talking about when the revolution comes
the revolution did not come. Fred Bennett was missing
we learned he’d been found: ashes, bones, a wedding ring
but later there was Assata’s freedom smile
then I was captured, locked into a cell of sewer water
spirit deflated. I survived, carried on, glad to be
like a weed, a wild red poppy,
rooted in life
Marilyn Buck was an Anti-Imperialist
political prisoner, who spent 25 years in prison for her anti-imperialist actions carried
out in support of national liberation, women's liberation, social and economic
justice. In 1985 she was captured and and faced 4 separate
court trials. She was charged with conspiracy to support and free PP/POWs
and to support the New Afrikan Independence struggle through expropriations.
In 1988 she was indicted for conspiracy to protest and alter government policies
through use of violence against government and military buildings and received
an additional 10 years for conspiracy to bomb the Capitol. While in prison she developed uterine cancer, which resisted treatment. Seriously ill, she was released on July 15, 2010. She died a couple of weeks later, on August 3.
This poem is also read by Marilyn herself
on her poetry CD Wild Poppies, produced in 2004 by Freedom Archives
and available from leftwingbooks.net - click here for more details.
