Marilyn Buck on September 11, 2001: ‘Incommunicado’

“This poem by Marilyn Buck was written in the wake of 9/11 when Marilyn and other political prisoners on mainlines were put into lockup (solitary confinement) in prisons across the country. It’s very moving and so pertinent and timely.” – Kiilu Nyasha, friend and supporter of Marilyn Buck and all political prisoners

About Marilyn Buck

Assata-and-Marilyn-by-Kiilu-2002-web2, Marilyn Buck on September 11, 2001: 'Incommunicado', Abolition Now! On Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2010, long-time political prisoner and acclaimed poet and translator Marilyn Buck, 62, passed peacefully at her home in Brooklyn, New York. Near the end of 2009, she had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. Despite surgery and chemotherapy, treatment came too late to save her life. A few short weeks earlier, on July 15, Marilyn had been released from the federal Bureau of Prisons medical facility in Carswell, Texas, and paroled to New York City.

Marilyn served a total of 33 years of an 80-year prison sentence for procuring firearms for the Black Liberation Army, helping Assata Shakur escape from prison (Assata has lived in exile in Cuba since then), and conspiracy to protest the invasion of Grenada and military intervention in Central America – all politically motivated actions undertaken in support of self-determination and national liberation and in opposition to racial injustice and U.S. imperialism. Throughout her years in prison, Marilyn remained a steadfast supporter of fellow political prisoners and an advocate for the women with whom she was imprisoned.

Learn more about Marilyn at http://www.marilynbuck.com. Marilyn’s intricate formatting of this poem cannot be reproduced here. To see it as she wrote it, go to http://www.marilynbuck.com/incommunicado.html.

Memorials for Marilyn in Oakland and New York City

Marilyn-Buck-0810-by-Kiilu-Nyasha1, Marilyn Buck on September 11, 2001: 'Incommunicado', Abolition Now! The Bay Area Memorial Celebration is Sunday, Nov. 7, 4-7 p.m., at the First Unitarian Church on 14th Street in Oakland.

The New York Memorial and Freedom Dance will be held on Saturday, Nov. 13, 4:30–7:00 p.m., at the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Center, 3949 Broadway, Manhattan, followed by dinner and a Freedom Dance for political prisoners.

Donations in Marilyn’s memory are being collected by the Committee for Defense of Human Rights (CDHR) for a memorial booklet to be distributed at the two memorial celebrations. At Marilyn’s request, the funds will go to political prisoners still behind bars. Go to http://marilynbuck.com/donations.html to learn how you can participate.

Tribute and interviews

Marilyn-Buck-Soffiyah-Elijah-her-atty, Marilyn Buck on September 11, 2001: 'Incommunicado', Abolition Now! Following Marilyn’s poem are two interviews broadcast on KPFA’s Africa Today by host Walter Turner – one with Marilyn shortly before she died and the other with her friend and attorney Soffiyah Elijah aired June 7, 2010 – and “For the Martyr Marilyn Buck,” a poem in tribute by political prisoner Russell Maroon Shoats/z.

Incommunicado: Dispatches from a Political Prisoner

by Marilyn Buck

September 11, 2001

before
morning-slow
I move
Julan hollers
come come see
the world trade center’s
exploding

she’s not serious
no one would make that up
would they?
maybe
live on TV
video mantra
replay: plane crash
replay: collapse
slow motion, dying morning

no not a made-for-TV movie
not a disaster film
not Hollywood special effects
one tower falls
the other follows

do chickens come home to roost?
enormity crashes
dazed disbelief
(chickens won’t roost here again
pigeons either)

I, a political prisoner, can
conceive why
but comprehension is not complicity
I look around me
I know nothing
I know too much
there is no answer in death
nor in dying

I know
soon others will die
dark smoke spreads
cinders of wrath rise
the eagle’s talons flex
hungry for revenge

(eyes locked on the shocking scene
a Muslim sister whispers
they will blame the Muslims)

I know
many will feed the eagle
the Palestinians?
(Palestinians are always suspect)
Muslims? Arabs?
many will die red upon the land

I can’t comprehend
men who commit suicide
taking civilians with them
(a u.s. postal worker
Columbine high school boys
a man at McDonalds
all-American suicide killers)

Marilyn-Buck-Kwame-Ture-former-PPs-Ida-McCray-Linda-Evans-Carmen-Valentin-Dylcia-Pagan-Laura-Whitehorn-family, Marilyn Buck on September 11, 2001: 'Incommunicado', Abolition Now! civilians
used as warheads
I shudder and walk away
from death
to my cell
Bich Kim runs in
if there’s a world war three
they will shoot all the prisoners, won’t they?

I shake my head
I don’t think so
but you, political prisoners
like you, won’t they?

I hope not
(question marks
the corners of my mouth:
what do I know
about the fine-print)

I turn to sweep the floor
find rhythms of the ordinary

The Order: 9 AM PDT

a tap
I turn
a guard
come with me

I won’t return today

I stand before the captain
we must lock you up
for your own safety

(not for my safety)
you’re intelligent you know why

I speculate, no
not for my safety
you must be locked up
just for your safety

I am
stripped naked
ID card confiscated
everything taken
I need my glasses!
keep the glasses

I keep a neutral face
handcuffed behind the back
clad in bile yellow for isolation
and flip-flops

I keep outrage
wrapped within my fists
I swallow anger
metal clangs swallow sound
the concrete cocoon swallows me

The ‘SHU’: Special Housing Unit

“there was an old woman
she lived in a shoe”
what did she do?

9/11 no prisoner may speak to you
you may not speak to any prisoner

9/12 overheard voices
there are terrorists here
who are the terrorists?

silence, everyone behind her door listens
9/14 a legal call
small relief: it’s political – Washington –
not something i did
9/17 no more calls
no visits
no mail
until further notice

incommunicado
i hang from a winding string
winding in this cocoon
i breathe deep
the air isn’t good here

(from outside the walls Susan yells
you are not alone)
i breathe deeper

Sunday i get a radio: KPFA lifeline
Sikhs dead, detainees disappeared
political prisoners buried deeper
incommunicado

i remember another September 11: Chile ‘73
more than 3,000 dead
tortured assassinated disappeared
a CIA-supported coup
(the WTC bombers not-yet-born)
many people there still mourn
let us mourn all the dead
and the soon-to-die

i worry about the prisoners
isolation sucks at the spirit

i am furious: inferred association
held hostage in place of men
with u.s. weapons and CIA training
an infernal joke
the puppet masters laugh

i laugh to stay sane
before i explode in irony’s flame

we are hostages
to blood-thirsty oil men
ready to splatter deserts
with daisy-cutters
their collateral damage
dead mothers and children
dead mother earth
dead daisies

(hasn’t this happened before?
u.s. cavalry and smallpox blankets
special forces and blanket bombing)

(Susan is back
she taps on the wall: you are not alone)

i walk around the edges
how many walk on edges?
what edges do the Palestinians walk?

cold radiates whitewashed
walls press against my edges
suspend animation
no butterflies to break out
no silken thread to weave sweet dreams

panic rises in my throat
thick white choking cold
so cold
i swing hope on a thread
a transparent sliver it crashes
against the cinderblocks
i drop
frozen chrysalis
cold into a coffin box

Night

i lay down on suspect blankets
a Cyclops light pins me
onto the metal cot
an altar for vengeful gods
metal restraints for hands and feet
“just in case”

the suicide cell has ghosts
desperate women
have lain here chained four-pointed
to command composure
sacrificed to voyeur visions
through the glass starkly
through a burqa window

i don’t want to think of i
i meditate
i think of other politicals
behind wires and walls
i remember the assaulted
the accidental
the collaterally damaged
killed, corrected, coerced
i remember: the u.s. funds the fundamentalists
Muslims Christians Zionists
self-righteous missiles
of mayhem and retribution

i remember Afghani women held hostage
inside indigo cocoons
cells smaller than a confessional box

my veil is this cell
i will put on no other
except the veil of sleep

the light, damn the light
the Cyclops spies
i toss between the tomb-thick walls
how long will this go on?
will my bones break
into ice shards or will they desiccate
stranded in this cell

at last i doze
till dawn the Cyclops watches
clanging keys, slamming metal traps
shift change
daylight creeps inside
i rise: i must seek cycles
inside
without clocks or mirrors
without all but i

The Weekend

a glacier, daylight advances
imperceptibly
a plank of light teeters
on the edge of board-faced windows
travels obliquely across
then it’s gone
warmth fades fast

the food trap opens
cold eggs the color of our clothes
plunk – weekend brunch
i swallow in silence

silence flees before sudden cacophony
two women beat plastic bowls on metal doors
we want rec we want rec
the sun is out we want out

my head is wrapped in metallic clanger
bang bang bang
i stay silent
i bite my lip

hours pass: shift change 2:00
the sun drops fast behind the wall
finally: who wants recreation?
I do
me too
let me out first

voices reach through the metal doors
food traps clank
handcuffs click
one by one women are led
to wire cages
joy rings louder than the chains

i wait
no guard comes
i break silence
you didn’t ask me
disembodied denial echoes through the walls
you can’t go with the others
wait
not my decision

i will miss the sundrops

‘Perchance to Dream’

night comes
i fall exhausted into sleep
i dream of Dresden Hanoi Baghdad
whistles scream
walls fall apart
in waves
Dali deserts
watches tick
waterdrip

dream shift:
swords of steel glint against the sky
a swarm and puff
dark blood drops
bituminous birds bank
spread-eagled free fall
ashes ashes they all fall
down dark flashes
cherry splashes on concrete
Babel towers collapse in crying heaps
a curtain rises gray
covers gladiators draped across the stage

i wake cold-throated
what time is it?
my limbs locked
beneath a concrete rockslide
is this my tomb falling on me?

my chest is piled rock-heavy
bodies rise from the shallows of my breath
graze my eyes and flee
across the desert scape
shadow prints dissipate
am i awake?

the Cyclops stabs my eye
i must be awake
i wrap a scratchy towel
around my face
i escape electric night
into sightlessness

a ghost voice wails
what time is it?
A deep male boom
1:24, go to sleep
no, turn on the radio, talk to me

no! no! please no, my eyes blink
inside their blind
little Brueghel men dance
wooden-shoe notes
ruthless on my sleep
sound streams woman’s babble
pools beneath the door
i hunker under the winding sheet

does she stop talking
or do i descend?
i don’t remember

shift change
shift change
guards come and go
officials pass by peering
into our crypt-cages
taking notes, verifying

Monday, September 24

the captain appears
we may release you today after 2:00
2:00 comes and goes
the shift changes
i wait and wonder: will other politicals be released today
i wait
hope is the moment’s thief
don’t wait!

at last: Buck roll out
i leap a jack-in-the-box
ready
ready
the metal key clangs just before the 4:00 count
i gasp relief
and hurry through before the gates slam
shut and i am left below
Eurydice whom Orpheus glimpsed
a moment soon

i step out
a four o’clock unfolding, fuchsia in the shading light
back into the routine prisoner’s plight

This poem, written in December 2001, first appeared in “Imprisoned Intellectuals: America’s Political Prisoners Write on Life, Liberation, and Rebellion,” edited by Joy James, 2003. For the context of the poem, the extraordinary solitary confinement and “banning” of political prisoners in the federal system immediately following the attacks of 9/11, see “The Reality of Political Prisoners in the United States: What September 11 Taught Us about Defending Them,” an article by attorney Soffiyah Elijah from the “Harvard BlackLetter Law Journal,” August 2002.

Marilyn Buck’s last interview on KPFA’s Africa Today by Walter Turner broadcast July 19, 2010

Attorney Soffiyah Elijah interviewed about Marilyn Buck on Africa Today June 7, 2010


If the player fails to work, listen to the interview at http://www.marilynbuck.com/Soffiyah_Elijah_interview.html.

For the Martyr Marilyn Buck

by Russell Maroon Shoats/z

The oppressors say you were the only white in the Black Liberation Army
They seek to sow confusion and division
But you were more than that!
In Ireland you would have been in the Irish Republican Army
In Africa the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique,
or the Southwest People’s Organization
In Vietnam, the National Liberation Front
You were the Vietcong!
That’s why the oppressor hated and feared you:
You were the “Enemy of the State”
An oppressive state
But you were always on the side of the oppressed, a dependable ally and friend
Our Sister,
The “New Woman” that Che hoped for,
An Anti-Imperialist Freedom Fighter:
That’s why we ALL LOVED YOU!
Rest in peace my Sister
A job well done!

Send our brother some love and light. Write to Russell Shoats, AB3855, 175 Progress Dr., Waynesburg PA 15370.