"If I Were Chubby Checker,
How I Would Change the World"
Dateline: 5/12/98
Our Main Man, Mr. Modern, William Carlos Williams, said that "It's hard to find the news in poetry" and we concur. If only poets did write the newspapers, if we weren't locked out of the media! Thus we urge our mining mindful audience to check in regularly for our Headline Rhymes.
This week we honor the writer and revolutionary and jeans merchant Eldridge Cleaver, who passed last week, in Steve Greenberg's meditation on a passage from Cleaver's world-cracking Soul on Ice.* Here art and politics, poetry and pop-pop-populism make a mad mix.
--Bob Holman
If I Were Chubby Checker,Backstage Chubby Checker
How I Would Change the World--for Eldridge Cleaver
“. . . then, as if a signal had been given, as if the Mind had shouted to the Body, ‘I’m ready!’ -- the Twist. . . burst upon the scene like a nuclear explosion, sending its fallout of rhythm into the Minds and Bodies of the people. . . The Twist was a guided missile launched from the ghetto into the very heart of suburbia. . . The Twist was a form of energy for a convalescing nation.”--Eldridge Cleaver
Feeling tired and black and blue
Playing poker with the Panthers
Playing joker to the Jews
Sick of watching Belafonte
Shucking with the minstrel show
He decides the mindless coons
and spineless honkies
Got to go
With his hips his manifesto
He prepares his power move
“I wanna make the black man sanctified
And make the white man groove!
But not through switchblade revolution
That the brothers can’t survive
Not with soapbox elocution
All of that’s just shuck and jive
And I’m not Josephine Baker
I ain’t moving to France
I’ll just be moving my body
See, I’ve been working on this dance. . . .”
Now the Panthers were restless
This was not quite their plan
“Where’s the Molotov cocktails?
Slip that glove on my hand”
But Mr. Checker countered
“You don’t seem to understand
Charley just needs the rhythm
So strike up the band
'Cause if the white man could somehow
For one moment feel
What it’s like inside my body
Then my soul can be healed
Taking life on the knife never cuts us free
We should make the white man think he’s Stagger Lee
Yes! Let's cause a distraction
And put a shake in their behinds
While Mr. Brown down in Topeka
Steals us all back our minds”
Panthers laughed:
“Can’t be done”
Chubby growled: “Wanna bet?
We’ll grease the wheels of upheaval
With the white man’s own sweat
Clyde, I've seen the other side of the upraised fist
Just shake your booty
C'mon let's everybody Twist!”
Now since your bones just end up broken
If you’re bent on throwing bombs
And you wind up someone’s token
If you make like Uncle Tom
And if you rule out doing nothing
Cause you can’t just sit and stew
Well then if I were Chubby Checker
Hell, I guess that I'd twist, too
--Steve Greenberg
- Remember the time when Soul on Ice and the Twist were both new with AltAQuest's great 60's timeline list.
- AFRO-Americ@'s Black History Museum has a brief bio of Eldridge Cleaver in their Black Panthers section.
- There's a fairly recent interview with Eldridge Cleaver at Magical Blend's online site & an account of his 1996 lecture with Bobby Seale at the University of Washington in The Online Daily student newspaper.
- Chubby Checker is still touring -- 300 gigs a year! There's a good bio at the Dottie West Music Fest site.
*As a result of a commercial relationship between About.com, its Guides and Amazon.com online booksellers, this title can be purchased directly from Amazon.com by following the link above. (Note: Amazon.com is solely responsible for fulfillment of book orders placed through this link.)
