Amiri Baraka
Black Dada Nihilismus
. Against what light


is false what breath
sucked, for deadness.
Murder, the cleansed


purpose, frail, against
God, if they bring him
bleeding, I would not


forgive, or even call him
black dada nihilismus.


The protestant love, wide windows,
color blocked to Mondrian, and the
ugly silent deaths of jews under

the surgeon’s knife. (To awake on
69th street with money and a hip
nose. Black dada nihilismus, for

the umbrella’d jesus. Trillby intrigue
movie house presidents sticky on the floor.
B.D.N., for the secret men, Hermes, the
blacker art. Thievery (ahh, they return
those secret gold killers. Inquisitors
of the cocktail hour. Trismegistus, have

them, in their transmutation, from stone
to bleeding pearl, from lead to burning
looting, dead Moctezuma, find the West

a grey hideous space.



2

From Sartre, a white man, it gave
the last breath. And we beg him die,
before he is killed. Plastique, we

do not have, only thin heroic blades.
The razor. Our flail against them, why
you carry knives? Or brutaled lumps of

heart? Why you stay, where they can
reach? Why you sit, or stand, or walk
in this place, a window on a dark
warehouse. Where the minds packed in
straw. New homes, these towers, for those
lacking money or art. A cult of death

need of the simple striking arm under
the streetlamp. The cutters, from under
their rented earth. Come up, black dada

nihilismus. Rape the white girls. Rape
their fathers. Cut the mothers’ throats.

Black dada nihilismus, choke my friends

in their bedrooms with their drinks spilling
and restless for tilting hips or dark liver
lips sucking splinters from the master’s thigh.

Black scream
and chant, scream,
and dull, un
earthly
hollering. Dada, bilious
what ugliness, learned
in the dome, colored holy
shit (i call them sinned
or lost
burned masters
of the lost
nihil German killers
all our learned


art, ’member
what you said
money, God, power,
a moral code, so cruel
it destroyed Byzantium, Tenochtitlan, Commanch
(got it, Baby!

For tambo, willie best, dubois, patrice, mantan, the
bronze buckaroos.


For Jack Johnson, asbestos, tonto, buckwheat,
billie holiday.

For tom russ, l’overture, vesey, beau jack,

(may a lost god damballah, rest or save us
against the murders we intend
against his lost white children
black dada nihilismus