Courtesy JoeSam. and Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco Examiner
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR’s poet-in-residence, pays homage to San Francisco’s shipyard artist JoeSam who died peacefully on June 1, 2024, surrounded by his family. He was 85 years old. When JoeSam first rented his studio in 1986, he was one of only two Black artists at the shipyard. Besides pursuing his own art, he tirelessly worked to increase access for Black artists to the shipyard studios. He also publicly criticized local museums for not including the work of artists of color, particularly Black artists. After a career running San Francisco’s Head Start program and participating on other City boards and commissions, JoeSam decided to devote the rest of his life to his art. His first major body of work, the acclaimed Black West series, won him an NEA grant in 1986. These works celebrated Black cowboys and other significant Black figures in the West.
“See with your ears,
and hear with your eyes …"
—Charlie Parker
I.
Happy hour colors are hummingbirds
hovering— Singing in 4 part harmony
At 3D jam sessions. His ebullient brushes are
Joysticks— conjuring Cool— after the Birth ...
Big! Bold! Proud! Loud! Resplendent rooster
Colors appear, reappear— disappear—
and allow us to be … Not shrink … fold …
Cowering in corners beneath white hot gaze
Resplendent rooster colors call … Call us
Woke! Call us alert! Call us courageous! Spur
Improvisation— Make something from
Something else— disguised as ... Nothing ...
Dissonant colors imagine Monk’s “Bright Mississippi!”
Did I ever tell you MrJoeSam once lived high on Mississippi
Street smuggling medicine music onto canvases? Even Stevie
saw it … stopped his driver and bought brushstrokes of love!
Did I ever tell you goog-ley eye implants appear, reappear, disappear,
Warning: Beware-beware-beware of eagle-eyed poles? Beware of
elephant-eared walls redacting 1st, 4th, 13th, 14th Amendments
for the 2nd Amendment and laws of war … on power to The People?
Did I tell you goog-ley eye implants appear, reappear— disappear,
Warning: Beware-beware-beware of childlike belief in bipartisan
butchery? Death culture cruelty? … Orange buoy, saw blade, razor
wire welcomes in the Rio Grande?… Mass murder marathons in Gaza?
II.
I'm tryin, I’m Tranein … to make my pen mix and sing
Colors his brushes splash crimson awfulness on canvas with.
I'm tryin, I’m Tranein … to fling wildflowers from shoulders of the
Long and winding road to
My friend, mentor, big brother figure—Son of Harlem—
neither Super Storm Sandy, nor swollen Connecticut River
could wash away
I'm tryin, I’m Tranein … to fling wildflowers MrJoeSam might
catch. Maybe be pricked by their thorns? Maybe hear their colors
Pop Lady Day-like gardenia notes …
I'm tryin, I’m Tranein … to fling fresh wildflowers— to this
Already colorful, fully saturated, Son of Harlem— baaad as hell!\
© 2024. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; BAR's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC. You can Vote for his work at GoFundMe and PayPal .
Trump the straw man has finally been knocked down, giving the Democrats a victory that costs their corporate masters nothing.
Pan-Africanism and Black Radicalism are key pillars in the ongoing stru
The worse the political and economic crisis becomes, the more lethargic the US left behaves – as if generations of collaboration with corporate Democrats has sucked the life out of the left.
By what stretch of the imagination can the US be a democracy when ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does?
Ugandan pop star turned presidential candidate Bobi Wine is not Sankara or Lumumba, but he has risked his life to mount a fierce challenge to the 36-year dictatorship of President Yoweri Museveni.
