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[from August, 1999, workshop:]
Elections are Coming
The Democrats have come to Life
They smell elections coming
They fear the quick onset of strife
As duels for place start thrumming
I always vote for Democrats
(but that is by default)
If I could only have some chats
with them, I'd bring a halt
To stereotypes and sour pipes
And drams of gain for nothing
that sends these "Gimme" office types
to dreaming of work-sloughing
I want officials, even sages,
willing to use muscle
to work -- and not take wages
conveying news -- to hustle.
To put their minds and hearts to work
by noting our short-ages
It's time we stopped the needless hirk
That keeps us in low wages.
* * * *
[from July 21, 1999:]
For some weeks, I shared my two-room place
With someone suddenly made homeless from
an irreversible fight
I took him in, with every good intention
But realities around us in the mundane world
Made me a fool and him a soul lost in a
rotten childhood
It’s not the brain that rules when lives entwine
Nor is it heart, nor soul, nor habit nor
Those social mores
The ruler of the curren scene has been
enthroed for eons
And will never yield to Hope, to Wishes, nor
to “Oughts” or “Musts”;
It’s practice and Experience we have to learn
to master for joint lives.
* * * *
[from January 20, 1999:]
This Key
Here is the key I have been waiting for
I need it because
I know a place that wants me
but needs release.
I have been walking blindly
And then someone asked me
If I'd care to share
The place he pointed out
And then I recognized it
I knew it
It had been in place
since long before I once
Foiled, I turned away
again began my travels o my salesman's route
gathering artefacts
that quickly fell apart
And suddenly I understand:
That room had been there all the time
Waiting—the key was a decoy and I
had bitten
How many times I'd passed it by
Wandering—still homeless
I was almost at my destination
This key lying lonely in my seeking hand
Why did I wait so long?
Is there still some way home?
Will the key still fit and let me in?
* * * *
[from December 16, 1998:]
Nia stands for the purpose to maintain the dignity of the African-American ancestors.
Such dignity contains thepathway to a
meaningful future
Thumbing its nose at the pursuit of money
Shouting it down to a heavy silence
alone offering asylum
to that very dignity which was born
in Africa
but then was rudely, painfully and thoroughly
stripped from its varriers
demeaning
destroying historic memories
slamming doors in faces
rednering broken their smiles with lies and other indignities.
All the while, the African-American ancestors were learning
that, while they could not omit to make this fight
The ones who needed it most, so far can visualize it only as "the African-American fight for dignity"
Many African-Americans mingled with those the ignorant whites
called Indians
who had lived in dignity for eons
on sacred soil the white invaders stripped of meaning
I call upon the ignorant whites to opt for humility
to study the histories of the darker peoples
to whom we owe a soul-debt we have yet to realize
as a debt in blood.
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