Christal
Cooper - 4,113 Words
The Poetic Deaths of
Willie James King
The first complete memory of poet and educator
Willie James King was when he was five years old: he, along with his dog he
called My Puppy, was standing on a rock, waiting for his brother and sister to
return from school.
“My Puppy ran out in
front of the bus and all I heard was one squeal. I cried that night. My Puppy and I were buddies and that was all
I had left to play with during the day.
Dad came the next day and he had another dog. We named him Busy because he was so
busy. It took a long time to actually
accept that dog because I learned what death was.”
Death has always been and still is a
prevalent Being in his life, especially with the Michael Brown shooting,
joining other black men and women that have touched King’s life in some
way: Maya Angelou, Michael Brown, Troy
Davis, Michael Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr., Trayvon Martin, and Emmett
Till.
King – born in April 5, 1953 in Orrville,
Alabama, a small town southwest of Selma, - remembers listening to Martin
Luther King Jr. on the radio as a little boy.
Reverend King, along with his bodyguards, would travel from Selma to
Montgomery and deliver radio sermons, which he and his family listened to with
both ears wide open.
But there were two people he listened to more than
anyone else – his parents, Robert Lee King born in 1923, and Lula Mae, born in
1925. King, the youngest son, described
them as having different temperaments toward their eight children.
“My
father had such wisdom. With his fifth
grade education there are people in 2014 with high school diplomas who can and
would not compete with that man.”
Robert Lee King accepted his fate at
the Miller Lumber Company where he worked hard every day, accepting his
position in life, but refused to allow his children to settle for his lot in
life: his children would have more.
“The other boys would go
work at the mercantile stores – community stores owned by whites who were not
very kind. And a lot of them got
trapped. A lot of them lost their self-esteem
and ended up working for those folks for life.
And they grew fat and they grew old fast. And they started looking like their
parents. But my father said, “You are my
responsibility until you graduate from high school and then you can work.” I didn’t know (then) what I know now.”
And Now I Know
You just don’t do that!
my daddy would say,
defining
the line between father, son.
No
new learning could change or make him sway
from
using words like Yisstidy and Yurn,
as
long as he knew I knew what he meant.
Slop the hogs; walk the dogs; get the wood
in.
You got sistas, fool; don’t bring home no
frien’!
Strict
for sure, but his ways were never bent
He
wanted to live the separation
that
set me apart from him, as if he
were
an emblem of a generation:
not
of the things to come, but those that be.
And
now I know: someone taught him that
talk,
who
closed the school, and set aside the chalk.
“And Now I Know” from Autumn’s Only
Blood
Blood
Page 5
Copyright
by Willie James King
“My
mom had an 11th grade education and somewhere she acquired a love
for language. She would constantly ask: Is that right (and) did you say that
correctly? It made one cognizant to language. It’s a given trait in my family. Some of my nieces and nephews have PhDs and are
very articulate and we came from rural Alabama.”
“My mother was the opposite of my father. She was more lenient in a way. My father did not fuss. On Monday if you couldn’t get away with
something you don’t try it on Friday.
Don’t try it next year – because you will get the same
consequences. He was very strict. My father did not fuss. He would tell her: “You don’t fuss at my children. You whip them and leave them alone.” When he said something you were silent. We could talk back to her and she would try
to whip us but she would be crying more than we were. It was a good balance. We could play her all day and as soon it
became time for my father to come home we got on her side because we knew she’d
tell. We’d try to charm her.”
King’s first brush with death was when he was
two years old, in August of 1955, when Emmett Till was brutally murdered by Roy
Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam.
The two brothers kidnapped Till from his great-uncle’s home, and beat
him severely, gouging out one of his eyes, shot him through the head, wrapped a
70-pound cotton gin fan around his neck with barbed wire, and then disposed of
his body in the Tallahatchie. River.
Till’s body was retrieved from the river three days later.
Till’s mother insisted on having an open
casket viewing and funeral service for her son so they could see what injustice
had been done to him.
The King family learned of Till’s murder on the
radio. Sometime later, King viewed the
image of his body laid in the casket.
“It was like a peach on
the sill. The peach was on the window
sill for so long that it had withered.
When I saw the picture of him, his head was like that. It didn’t look like a human head. It had taken that many blows.
And I read about his mom
and I sympathized with her because she was a teacher trying to help other
children in Chicago. She sent her son
south who had not been rigidly educated according to the rules of the
south. She may have given him tips on
surviving.
Who is to say he did
what he did (making a flirtatious remark to Roy Bryant’s wife). He was like a child, like the children who
were marching.”
The Students Rose
(In
Memory of Emmett till)
Keith
High, southwest of Selma,
teeing
with teens ready to erase
the
old for a new history. I was in
8th
grade when the Freedom Riders
first
stood before our school asking
all
students to follow them as they
spoke
through megaphones. And,
cunningly,
teachers stepped aside,
in
assurance, not having to say in worlds:
It’s okay. One by one, the students rose
and
formed a beautiful, huge black wall
before
our principal who was calling:
Stay here!
You must not leave school!
his
eyes winking, Walk! Walk on!
Get
the hell out there! He had
to feign
authority,
opposition, known an
army
of poor whites stood protesting.
He
knew his people, like him, were
ready
for long, overdue pie while
on
earth, not just metaphorically in the sky,
even
if a few cherished children had to die.
“The Students Rose” from Autumn’s
Only
Blood
Blood
Page
6
Copyright
granted by Willie James King
Just like the Martin Luther King Jr. family, the
King family were reared in the Baptist church where Christianity was the most
important thing in one’s life. His
parents were both devout Christians with strong biblical principles and ethics.
Most of the religious upbringing was
left to his mom, while his father was working laboriously hard at the Miller
Lumber Company.
“My mother taught us
prayers and she would chasten our tongues and remind us: “You don’t say that.” I think we had to do those Easter speeches in
church and we had to interpret and actually tell what those little poems
meant. And we had to get up and
project.”
At the
age of 9, in 1962, King accepted Jesus Christ as his Personal Lord and Savior
and was saved. Even still, he liked to
read the dark side of literature, such as Edgar Allen Poe, and would constantly
scribble deep, dark and desperate passages in his journal.
Some of these dark passages he scribbled were
not only from the influences of Edgar Allen Poe but the witnessing of his
sister Viola’s struggles as an active participant in the Freedom Riders, where
she endured verbal insults from whites, being chased by whites’ horses and
dogs, and running through barbed wire fences and through riverbanks.
“They had to do it –
they had to usher in the new. The
parents had t work to keep their jobs and have a roof when those kids were
tired. Viola died of Rheumatic Heart
Fever two days after her son was born in 1973.
Her son is now a principal and almost done with his PhD. “
Our Father’s Field
for Viola
Oftentimes
it seemed
the
worm we called the
saddle-back
knew which
of
us feared it the most
and
a whole clan would
be
there just clinging to
my
scared sister’s sack
as
if they enjoyed their
efforts
as much as we
when
she ran screaming
through
those lacerating
rows
of cotton stalks. I
would often hold one up
to
her in my palm of my
bare
hand for her to see
how
harmless it was, but
still,
she hated it for it’s a-
moral
actions so much
that
she’d spend hours
observing
a boll to be
sure
that, once snatched,
there’s
only be what a boll
needs
to offer in her grasp.
She
could be female and
fidgety
as she wanted, it
was
her father’s field
in
which she labored.
“Our Father’s Field” from Autumn’s
Only
Blood
Blood
Page
57
Copyright
by Willie James King
King always knew had had the propensity for
poetry and that it would ultimately be something he would do. His appreciation for poetry only grew hen he
heard Maya Angelou speak for the first time when he was in the ninth grade.
“Her voice captivated
me. Who is this lady? She talked about her favorite sonnet, “29th
Sonnet” by William Shakespeare. I
listened to that and I rushed in and got my anthology and I sat and wrote that
poem and I know what she meant. It’s
like he wrote this poem for me. That
hunger! I read the whole anthology after
that. And I listened to the sounds and
how the poets made their assonances and consonance. How could you do that? It was just awesome. Then (I read) William Taylor Coleridge’s “The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and Walt Whitman taught me how more alike we are
than different. Walt Whitman had a
rebellious spirit and so did Christ.”
“I
would always scribble something and I wanted to write like Edger Allen Poe and
I would write things that would scare my sisters and they would lock themselves
in the house until somebody came over.”
King
remembers listening to Martin Luther King Jr. on the radio, when he would give
inspiring speeches and sermons that he and his family would listen to every
chance they could.
“We never knew when he
would come to Selma. He had to be
careful how he got there. He could be in
a car. It was said sometimes he could
come in a coffin. He had
bodyguards. I listened to him like a
surrogate father and I heard him talk about injustice. I never met him and I
wished I had and so many people ask , “Are you related to him?” and I refuse to
answer that.”
One day before his fifteenth birthday, on April
4, 1968, the family was listening to the radio and it was announced that Martin
Luther King Jr. had been assassinated.
“The neighbors gathered and started singing
church hymns and crying. It was a sad
time. That’s when I saw my mom’s broken
heart for the very first time. There was
something about the magnitude of this man that really made her just cry those
animalistic tears. Why this man? What could he have done? Well, why did they crucify Christ? And Christ had done no wrong.”
It Amazed Them That No Matter How Hard
It amazed them that no matter
how hard
they tried, they couldn’t keep
King out of Selma.
God knows the sheriff strove
with all his heart,
by bribing Tom, Dick, Harry,
or Thelma.
No
one knew King would come in a coffin;
or guised, knowing all black
men look alike.
He came in tattered clothes,
common-looking
as a battered string from a
broken kite.
They
tried all prevention one could employ,
searching
every bus, tractor, truck or car
in
Selma, but King would be in Beloit,
baffling
them as to how he’d gone so far.
None
ever gave thought than an ambulance
driver
would have taken that deadly chance.
“It Amazed Them That No Matter How Hard”
from Autumn’s Only Blood
Page 24
Copyright
by Willie James King
While in high school, King played the trumpet and
was dubbed the greatest trumpet player on this side of the Mississippi, and was
considered a high school celebrity because he played so well.
“Being a musician helps me be to be a better poet and I
think every child should have that start.
Most fabulous writers have that background because music is a
language. It was easy for me to hear
music and put the music on the page.
Music is the only thing that uses all parts of the brain at the same
time.”
In 1971, King graduated from high school and
immediately enlisted in the army for one reason: to go to college. There was a high chance he would be sent
overseas to serve in Vietnam, but college was a dream that he had to make come
true- rather he lived or died.
And there was a part of him that died the first
day he took his vaccine shots, which he believes is the reason he developed
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which he continues to fight on a daily basis.
“The day after I took
all of those shots I felt something die in me – that shiny thing that I had
inside. I felt it – the day after I took
them – I sat on the grass and everybody had to sit. We had one particular place on the arm that
bled. Some of them passed out and some
of them didn’t. I have never been the
same since then. A certain shadow of
sadness came over me. And it wouldn’t
go. It wouldn’t leave me.”
He was visiting doctors and in Fort Hood, Texas,
he was walking from his doctor’s office when he heard the Second Armor Band
play for the first time. He was tempted
to stop and venture into the building where they were playing but for some
reason decided not to, until sometime later he heard them singing again and
decided to venture inside.
“Iggy Big,
Elvis Presley’s band manager, asked me, “Do you play?” I told him I played the trumpet. He said, “Bring him a horn and a sheet of
music!” He put it on the chair and I
took the trumpet and looked at the music and I wanted to say, “Thank You
Jesus!” It was John Philip Sousa’s “The
Washington Post March” and I knew this.
I could play it backwards. And I
said, “this is so difficult and I’ll try it.”
And I tore that song up and in two weeks I had orders out on me. They were getting ready to send me to Germany
but I ended up in the band!”
As a result, King was never sent overseas to
serve in Vietnam and remained stateside as the band’s trumpet player. He continued to experience PSTD spells and
started missing numerous days from his army job, to the point where the doctor
wanted to send him to a psychiatrist.
“I said no because I
didn’t want to be labeled. He didn’t
send me to a psychiatrist and I got out of the army and I realized I was shut
down, I was shut down, I was shut down.
But I wanted to teach and I think I did a fabulous job.”
He earned his bachelor’s in English
with a minor in French, a Master’s in English from Alabama State University,
and a Master’s in Education. He was the
first French teacher for the magnet school Booker T Washington Magnet School in
Montgomery, Alabama. He also taught
drama at Sydney Lanier High School in Montgomery, Alabama and was an English
adjunct teacher at Auburn University in Montgomery.
“I
taught my students to “appreciate” each of their classes. They tell me, “I took French.” Yes, but we all know you did but you sat in
class a whole semester and you didn’t learn anything. Maybe that wasn’t your major but you might
need something from that class someday.”
Amidst
the early stages of his teaching career his mother went in for gall bladder
surgery in November of 1978, only to discover that her body was riddled with
cancer and she had only six months to live.
“If we hurt our finger we went to the
doctor. She was working then and she
would always procrastinate taking care of herself the way she should have. She never let us see her cry. She was very stoic She wanted to cook for us. We had to let her because it disappointed her
if she didn’t do it. She wanted to do
more for us.
My imagination can be
very vivid and I imagine her waking up in the morning and it hits her: “You are dying.” Nobody could tell me what I needed to hear
and I had to talk to someone and maybe I didn’t want anyone to talk back to
me. I got dialogue with God. I wrote five poems pertaining to her and I
kept those and I started writing more right after her death. She died on Mother’s Day 1979. She also made me what I am – she made me a
poet.
Mother
Cold, late-winter days I sat
alone, bent above slack lines
knowing a stopper often bobs
before it suddenly goes down,
sinks beneath the brown floe
of Dusty Branch. I sat in deep
quiet peace, contemplating
what death is, needing
departure,
somewhat daunted by all
those taken by its grim grasp.
That was before it took You,
Dad; there had been many
others. So, I took those quiet
moments needed to be tough,
not really caring if I caught
a fish, eel, turtle, or trunk.
See, no matter whatever else
I was doing, at any given time
supposedly mine, there had
almost always been an umber
of icy musings, not only of
me.
“Mother” from Autumn’s Only Blood
Page
19
Copyright by
Willie James King
King taught for nineteen years, the
whole time fighting his PSTD, and by this time, a severe case of diabetes. In addition, he was dealing with a principal
who was overbearing, which only added the stress.
“The
principal prior was nice., and had a
drawer in his office dedicated to all kinds of diabetic goods. He had diabetes so he understood. I didn’t realize I had diabetes at the
time. And diabetes has a way that can
make one look really mean and not humane because it’s what the body is going
through. It’s like going on a Ferris
wheel you are going up and down your blood sugar is running up and down. It’s not a good feeling. I just decided I would leave and I told her
to get a sub and she though that I would come back in a couple of weeks and I
said I’ll either live or I’ll die. What
could have turned out to be something bad seemed like a set up by God. It became a blessing.”
The blessing was that he had time to
write, and, in 2005, moved to Charlotte,
North Carolina where he was finally able to find the time to earn his Masters
in Creative Writing with a focus on poetry from Queen’s University.
“I
didn’t realize how advanced I was. There
was a magic that occurred in those classes and I’m glad I got to experience
that. I was the first black to go into
the poetry section and to come out. I
made so many friends and they are still my friends.”
He was also able to seek and find help
for his health issues with PTSD and Diabetes at the Veteran’s Clinic. Despite these medications it still proved to
be a struggle and he found himself at the clinic waiting for his meds feeling
isolated and depressed on June 25, 2009.
During his wait, he heard the news that Michael Jackson had died.
“The young people who had followed him just
all sobbed and I don’t think it was so much that he was dead as much as they
thought about their own mortality, because this wasn’t supposed to happen to
Michael, and it scared them. And I
looked out and it was a good day but it looked like a dreary day. It looked like the world was weeping. And it dawned on me, you could not afford a
doctor but you bought Christ into your home and that made the difference and
that’s why you are still here. “
This Is Grief
Ah,
Michael, as a poet
I
suspect I am supposed
to
pen something about
you this morning. Here
in Montgomery, it’s rain-
ing; the win had lost its
will; there are no yellow
bolts of lightning, or any
loud thunder-claps, like
a brassy cymbal crash to
announce your absence.
That is for grandeur, this is
grief.
Yet, you left all of these
heartfelt songs that almost
on-
sole us, now that you’ve gone.
I can’t help but look back
on a fall day much like
this; it was on a Friday
friends goaded me toward
our gym’s auditorium, all
trying to prepare me for
what I was about to hear,
a boy’s voice soulful as
an angel’s wailing who’s
sad, sassy in the same,
all that ease with which you
hit those high notes, even
our teachers peered at those
squealers, nervous talkers
to her lips to kindly urge us
Please! Michael, yours was
the magic we needed man,
having just months before
been deprived of our good
prophet, Martin Luther
King.
I was also young, and I both
heard and knew at once, it
was tragic being black and
gifted, enormously packed
and rapt with ethereal talent
as so often you share with
all, on stage and in life; you
Tried to warn us in each song.
“This Is Grief” From Autumn’s Only Blood
Page 23 – 24
Copyright by Willie James King
“And I started reading
fervently the Bible and that helped to stabilize me, because it was something I
would procrastinate. I would listen to
pastor and would say, “I’ll read it.”
But I never did. In order to have
that personal relationship I had to ingest the word literally. I had to eat God’s word and that’s what I
did. “
Today King tends to his garden, helps his
friends and family, and finally has time to write. He has thus far published two books of
poetry, At The Forest’s Edge and his most recent Autumn’s Only Rain.
During the final stages of Autumn’s Only Rain, King
learned from television the case of Troy Davis, an African American who was
sent to death row for the August 1999 murder of police officer Mark MacPhail in
Savannah, Georgia.
“I don’t know if he was
innocent because at the time I was dealing with something very heartfelt. I was
hoping he would at least be allowed to live.
Because if the death penalty we are killing people but we are not giving
them a chance of salvation.”
Autumn’s Only Blood
the spider lilies
are spring up
all over now
blooming
as if they ought to be
this autumn’s
only blood.
for Troy Davis
1968 - 2011
“Autumn’s Only Blood” from Autumn’s
Only Blood
Prelude
Copyright by Willie
James King
Presently, King resides in his home in
Montgomery, Alabama and is enjoying the time he has to garden, to write, to
live joyfully with family and friends, and to appreciate all of life’s gifts, which
he insists are God’s blessings.
“I felt
all my teaching years behind me and I knew something new was coming into my
life and I prayed all the years that I taught that God would give me time
before I left this life to write.
And he has given me plenty of time to write,
the resources in which to do it, a home in which to do it in, and I am so
pleased.”
Photo Description And
Copyright Information
1
Willie James King
Copyright granted by
Willie James King
2.
Jacket cover of Autumn’s
Only Blood
3
Maya Angelou reciting
her poem, "On the Pulse of Morning", at President Bill
Clinton's
inauguration in 1993.
Public Domain
4
Michael Brown’s graduating picture.
Public Domain
Public Domain
5
Troy
Davis
Georgia
Department of Corrections Mug Shot
6
Michael
Jackson
Michael
Jackson 2nd June 1988. "Wiener Stadion" venue in Vienna, Austria.
Zoran
Veselinovic
CC
BY SA
7
7
Martin
Luther King Jr
1964
Dick DeMarsico, World Telegram staff
photographer
Public Domian
8
Trayvon Martin in an undated photo.
Fair Use Under the United States Copyright Law
Fair Use Under the United States Copyright Law
9
Emmett Till
Public Domain
10
Open landscape with tree stumps remaining on
land cleared of virgin longleaf pine.
1947
11
Jacket
cover of Autumn’s Only Blood
12
Roy Bryant and J.W.
Milam at trial
Public Domain
13
Emmett Till’s mother
during his funeral
Public Domain
14
Three peaches on a
windowsill.
Copyright by Christal
Rice Cooper
15
Emmitt
Till’s body in the open casket during his funeral service.
Public
Domain
16
Emmitt
Till and his mother
Public
Domain
17
Roy
Bryant and his wife after the acquittal.
Public
Domain
18
Jacket
cover of Autumn’s Only Blood
19
Open landscape with tree stumps remaining on
land cleared of virgin longleaf pine.
1947
20
Painting of Jesus Christ
by Hoffman
Public Domain
21
Edgar
Allen Poe
MAY/JUNE
1849
Public
Domain
22
1960s image of the
Freedom Riders
Public Domain
23
Photomicrograph of Streptococcus pyogenes
bacteria, 900x Mag. A pus specimen, viewed using Pappenheim's stain. Last
century, infections by S. pyogenes claimed many lives especially since the
organism was the most important cause of puerperal fever and scarlet fever.
Streptococci
Public
Domain
24
Jacket cover of Autumn’s
Only Blood
25
James
Baldwin and Maya Angelou in the 1960s
Public
Domian
26
William
Shakespeare
Public
domain
27
William
Taylor Coleridge
Public
Domain
28
Walt
Whitman
Public
Domain
29
Edgar
Allen Poe in 1845
Portrait
by Samuel Osgood
Public
Domain
30
Hotel where Martin
Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
Public Domain
31
Jesus on the cross
Public Domain
32
Jacket cover of Autumn’s
Only Blood
33
Head art image symbolizing
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
34
Elmer
Chickering
Photo
of John Phillip Susa
Attributed
to Elmer Chickering
Public
Domain
35
Willie
James King, left, in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof at the Alabama
Shakespeare Festival.
Copyright
granted by Willie James King
36
Jacket cover of Autumn’s
Only Blood
37
Michael
Jackson
Michael
Jackson 2nd June 1988. "Wiener Stadion" venue in Vienna, Austria.
Zoran
Veselinovic
CCBYSA
38
Jacket cover of Autumn’s
Only Blood
39
Jacket
covers of The House In The Heart and At The Forest Edge
40
Jacket
cover of Autumn’s Only Blood
41
Troy
Davis
Georgia
Department of Corrections Mug Shot
42
Jacket cover of Autumn’s
Only Blood
43
Willie James King
Copyright granted by
Willie James King
44
Jacket
covers of The House In The Heart and At The Forest Edge
45
Willie
James King’s Montgomery home.
Copyright
granted by Willie James King
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