Semiquincentennial Blues
for Gil Scott-Heron
By Jesse Hagopian
I was wondering about our yesterdays,
and started digging
through the rubble.
What I found
was Gil Scott-Heron’s
Bicentennial Blues.
And he’d gone
to a hell of a lot of trouble
to tell us something
fifty years ago,
the country
wasn’t ready
to hear.
America had the blues,
he said,
because it
provided
the atmosphere.
From Watergate
to Gerald Ford.
To Henry Kiss-your-life-good-bye-inger,
he warned us what they had in store.
From Skippy Carter
to Ronald Ray-Gun.
He knew where the problem was.
But Too many thought
the struggle
was done.
He wasn’t
just naming names.
He was naming
the disease.
He told us
about the winter
in America.
Fifty years later,
we’re still
living through
the freeze.
Fifty years later,
America celebrates once more.
A semiquincentennial year.
But the nation
is still at war.
A war on Iran.
A war on Gaza.
A war on immigrants.
A war on teachers.
A war on trans—
—gender.
—formation.
—portation (that is free and fast).
A war on the right to choose.
Same atmosphere.
America
still got the blues.
The celebrations this time
are so far gone.
This time they built a cage
on the White House lawn.
So the emperor could watch
his gladiators bleed,
Insisting brutality
Is liberty’s creed.
Fighter jets.
Fireworks.
Fists.
Flags.
Fear.
Fascists.
Fortune 500
motherfuckers.
Freedom
was the only
F-word
missing.
Liberals called the event
crass.
But what better way
to party like it’s 1776
than by kicking
somebody’s ass?
That’s how
the nation
got its start.
The cage
wasn’t
the embarrassment.
It was
the honest part.
America was born from a womb
Of burning villages
And countless tombs.
Of stolen bodies,
And stolen land,
Of chains and muskets,
And bloodstained hands.
It’s a semiquincentennial year.
A year of national importance.
A year of white nationalist importance.
A year of patriotic pageantry and performance.
From Jefferson to Jeffrey,
America’s blues won’t let me be.
The nation acts shocked by Epstein’s list.
But fourteen-year-old Sally Hemings’ story should remind us this:
A man who prayed on a child helps found this nation
Jefferson didn’t need an island.
He had a plantation.
It’s a semiquincentennial year.
They call it “semi” because that’s all they could deliver.
Semi-life.
Semi-liberty.
Semi-happiness.
Semi-created equal.
While Freedom 250 mobile museum semi-trucks
roll 16 wheels right over the truth.
Honk if you love enforced forgetting!
It’s the 250th blues year.
It’s a blues year
for librarians.
Smuggling in books.
It’s a blues year
for teachers.
Practicing fugitive pedagogy
It’s a blues year
for students.
Walking out against ICE.
It’s a blues year for Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Still looking for justice behind prison walls.
It’s a blues year for Mahmoud Khalil.
Looking for the right to speak.
It’s a blues year for Rümeysa Öztürk.
Looking for the right to write.
It’s a blues year for babies
before their second birthdays.
Police came
for a shoplifting call.
But ended up shoplifting Kohen Wiley’s life
America’s been shoplifting
for two hundred and fifty years.
Shoplifting healthcare.
Shoplifting housing.
Shoplifting education.
Shoplifting yesterdays.
And shoplifting tomorrows.
It’s a blues year for Liam Conejo Ramos.
Looking for the right to wear bunny ears.
It’s a blues year.
To settle
for anything less
than honesty
about this
semiquincentennial year
would be to steer
the semi right over
the truth.
The truth got by Patrick Henry.
Shouted “Give me liberty
or give me death.”
Followed by “give me slaves or my morality”
Loved freedom so much
He kept it
for himself.
It got by Trump.
Spray-tanned Caesar.
MAGA Mussolini.
Every speech
another act
of white buffoonery,
Every time he opens his mouth
He disproves white supremacy
It got by Christopher.
He slipped history
a Rufo.
Now America
can’t remember
what happened
to Black people.
Or where the blues
came from.
It got by Elon Musty.
Smelling musty
as an old apartheid regime.
Whitey ain’t just on the moon.
Now he wants
to colonize Mars.
It’s a blues year
Fifty years later
the atmos-fear
is still
here.
Protecting power
by screaming
queer folks,
refugees,
and Black people
are to blame.
Divide an conquer
is how they keep
us tame.
But Gil taught us
That the blues remembers
everything
the country
tries
to forget.
And once
we start singing the blues
with one voice,
we’ll make the kind of freedom
ain’t
never been seen yet.
