New Perspectives
For Martin Luther King, Jr. Jagged edges. Broken echoes. dream shards of holy war assault senses in fitful sleep. Chaotic visions run arpeggios down passage streams of days. I remember Martin, strident prophesying song weathered dim and distant in nebulous rust of years. Dream fragments resuscitate voices/ broken echoes from mausoleums of long time gone. they rise, singing songs of […]
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another journey of green and deep blue Mother around sun. everything is a journey. through black spaces black matter black veins of universe womb. and tomb. and womb again. I pray she forgives our sins and refuses to die to us. but does forgiveness come without repentance. i hate my suv drinking dinosaur residue/ shitting death to the air we […]
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I don’t think Democrats can box. They follow the Queensbury rules, have good conventional form and style. But when the boxing intensifies into a fight, and things get down and dirty, the focus is trained more towards appealing to norms of boxing than punching their way off the ropes. Like “Iron Mike” said: “Everybody has a plan until they get […]
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Dad to diaper- Daughter death Hug drowned in America. The decline From Hell pit to Shit hole. What Was that last hug Like Rushing Rio Grande? Was it The final bye like Terminal expiration In hospital without The pause to grieve. Or was there time: Grinding slowly, tears And river, screams stifled Burbling speech silenced Muted by lungs filling. Like […]
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A Fish Market Easter Revelation Normally the 71st street Fish Market runs with astonishing efficiency, which has been the case in all the years I’ve come here. My dad would bring me here on Saturday mornings as a child. They’ve been here a long time. Not too many community gathering spots like this still exist. I still make the trek […]
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Legendary singer Gladys Knight’s decision to sing the national anthem for the Super Bowl has sparked much controversy. Seemingly every A-list performer in the nation has rejected the NFL’s desperate attempt to have the type of half-time extravaganza we Super Bowl viewers have come to expect. This boycott has been in support of Colin Kaepernick “taking the knee” to protest […]
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Post Obama Traumatic Stress in rear view: “Folks didn’t think about … white supremacy any more than a fish thinks about the wetness of water. But when you step out of a system that people have told you is the only way, and then you look around and there are these people in the world working under a different set of […]
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P.O.T.S.: The Diagnosis, Part 1 These are perplexing times in the USA. Especially for people of color, thinking women, immigrants seeking legal asylum, and decent human beings. A man who embodies practically everything we teach our children to be wrong, sinful, and stupid…actions and verbiage that would definitely lead my wife to impeach my child and sentence him to time […]
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Tiger and the Old Man It’s first Sunday late night in the church basement. Congregation members have long gone home. The Old Man is holding court with a group of neighborhood church pastors and ministers. He lives at the church. He offers this space and time for highly stressed ministers to unburden and unwind. Books and ancient manuscripts of every […]
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Dear Old Dunbar Dad’s High School Song Both my parents, Clarence and Joetta Powell (Oglesby) were born and raised in Earle, Arkansas (although they didn’t come to know each other and marry until many years later after Dad finished his military duty and Mom migrated north to Chicago, where they met one morning on the El train). They grew up […]
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