You will not be able to stay home, brother.
Didn’t want to
get roped into the march.
Heard early this morning—
five shot by white supremacists in North Minneapolis Precinct 4
a block from the police station.
Assailants escaped (a couple of them may now have been apprehended—
MPR helping establish a self-defense plea by immediately announcing that the Black Lives Matter people chased them).
Drove a block up kitty corner from Maeve’s coffee shop in Nordeast and parked,
just above the yellow-brick Bavarian-style old Grain Belt Brewery castle.
Checked out Eat My Words—lovely little bookstore with an in-tune spinet piano in a reading room in back.
Wanted to have fish and chips at the Anchor, but it was closed,
a passerby telling me about Mayslack’s Pub just a few blocks away—
great old polka bar—
so I ordered the original beef sandwich to go,
huge Styrofoam bowl full of sliced beef, onions, au jus, cole slaw, yellow pepper slices—
pumpernickel bun on the side
(the plumpish, sexy, sandy-haired waitress even bringing me a jar of good horseradish)—
I had to take half of the sandwich back to the car.
Then I set out past the castle to the Broadway bridge.
Not sure of the direction, I cross
to North Washington. More bridge beyond,
seeming to go to the familiar Kromarcek’s area near the U of M,
so I turn right—realizing my mistake after less than half a mile and walking
back across Broadway towards downtown.
I know for sure I’m on track when I see helicopters a mile and a half ahead, on the other side
of what I now realize must be the Plymouth bridge.
The 94 freeway makes it nearly impossible to walk from Nordeast to North on foot,
but I head for the bridge,
which swings east, making my walk even longer—
the helicopters telescoping my destination.
(Can’t be a coincidence that when you google “North Minneapolis 4th Precinct map” you get five crime statistics sites published by minneapolismn.gov
before you can select the map you asked for.)
Big crowd massed near Plymouth and Penn.
A friendly young woman asks me if I’m going to join the march—
she can’t because she has to pick up her kids.
I don’t think I can march to downtown Minneapolis, with my car two miles away in the opposite direction,
but I do step in,
seeing Erica Mauter whom I sang with this summer in Dameun Strange’s Resonant Frequencies cantata
(partly based on the Gil Scott-Heron rap, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”),
in which the two of us sang:
five shot by white supremacists in North Minneapolis Precinct 4
a block from the police station.
Assailants escaped (a couple of them may now have been apprehended—
MPR helping establish a self-defense plea by immediately announcing that the Black Lives Matter people chased them).
Drove a block up kitty corner from Maeve’s coffee shop in Nordeast and parked,
just above the yellow-brick Bavarian-style old Grain Belt Brewery castle.
Checked out Eat My Words—lovely little bookstore with an in-tune spinet piano in a reading room in back.
Wanted to have fish and chips at the Anchor, but it was closed,
a passerby telling me about Mayslack’s Pub just a few blocks away—
great old polka bar—
so I ordered the original beef sandwich to go,
huge Styrofoam bowl full of sliced beef, onions, au jus, cole slaw, yellow pepper slices—
pumpernickel bun on the side
(the plumpish, sexy, sandy-haired waitress even bringing me a jar of good horseradish)—
I had to take half of the sandwich back to the car.
Then I set out past the castle to the Broadway bridge.
Not sure of the direction, I cross
to North Washington. More bridge beyond,
seeming to go to the familiar Kromarcek’s area near the U of M,
so I turn right—realizing my mistake after less than half a mile and walking
back across Broadway towards downtown.
I know for sure I’m on track when I see helicopters a mile and a half ahead, on the other side
of what I now realize must be the Plymouth bridge.
The 94 freeway makes it nearly impossible to walk from Nordeast to North on foot,
but I head for the bridge,
which swings east, making my walk even longer—
the helicopters telescoping my destination.
(Can’t be a coincidence that when you google “North Minneapolis 4th Precinct map” you get five crime statistics sites published by minneapolismn.gov
before you can select the map you asked for.)
Big crowd massed near Plymouth and Penn.
A friendly young woman asks me if I’m going to join the march—
she can’t because she has to pick up her kids.
I don’t think I can march to downtown Minneapolis, with my car two miles away in the opposite direction,
but I do step in,
seeing Erica Mauter whom I sang with this summer in Dameun Strange’s Resonant Frequencies cantata
(partly based on the Gil Scott-Heron rap, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”),
in which the two of us sang:
REVOLUTION REVOLUTION
!
REVOLUTION REVOLUTION
!
RE - VO - LU - TION WI -
ILL BE - E LIVE !
the crowd
immediately beginning to move—
disciplined, pleasant-spirited,
sardonically chanting
disciplined, pleasant-spirited,
sardonically chanting
Put your hands up. Don’t shoot.
Put your hands up. Don’t shoot.
So for a few minutes I joined the community of the heroes who took the
bullets last night.Put your hands up. Don’t shoot.
Then I detached myself,
put my brown hood over my head,
and walked back east and north to the yellow castle
and Maeve’s.
