Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
......
Still falls the Rain---
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss---
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.
Still falls the Rain
With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat
In the Potter's Field, and the sound of the impious feet
On the Tomb:
......
Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
......
My forest brave, my Red-skin love, farewell;
We may not meet to-morrow; who can tell
What mighty ills befall our little band,
Or what you'll suffer from the white man's hand?
Here is your knife! I thought 'twas sheathed for aye.
No roaming bison calls for it to-day;
No hide of prairie cattle will it maim;
The plains are bare, it seeks a nobler game:
'Twill drink the life-blood of a soldier host.
Go; rise and strike, no matter what the cost.
......
-- Morituri te salutamus.
Los Angeles Times, 1927
Maybe it's not the city you thought
it was. Maybe its flaws, like cracks
in freeway pylons, got bigger, caught
your eye, like swastikas on concrete stacks.
Maybe lately the dull astrologies of End,
Millennium-edge rant about world death
......
The night is cold; the world is old,
Time is running out; polluted and cold.
Greed as killed us all! stone cold,
So many People want, Gold! Gold!! Gold!!!
I want More! More!! More!!!
Fill my house till i can`t close the door,
Look at me, i should have more!
I hate those people who CAN`T close THEIR door.
......
Slobber on his shovel; this old man shits nothing.
Naked and shaking; his begging lips crack.
He swallows his honey, swinging his lanterns;
but piercing his darkness: two button eyes –
rimmed golden; reflections of want glazing his jowl.
His shadows birth those dregs swallowed.
Hounding sweet truth, his lanterns in hand.
Shine they do not, but gulp and lick that
waste remaining; unknown, still crunching.
......
Politics, a game of power and might
Where the rules are often bent and slighted
A world of deals and hidden agendas
Where truth is lost and ambition festered
......
In this human cult
There go sprinting rats
Chasing for the glittering bronze
Passing on the baton of grudge to their pups
Bearing on insecurities
With jaundiced eyes
Weeping miseries
Even as we still feel like a feeble pawn in a chess of gluttony, yet, You made us resist the temptation of greed deeply rooted in an aroma of enticing betrayal
Events of recent months affirmed that the scorching of these black skins is an incandescent reflection of the deep dark shades of some souls
Even as Ayi Kwei Armah’s ‘Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born’ continues to bolster our disgust with injustice and will ultimately sharpen the ingrained desire for justness
Events of these last hours also affirmed that the cleansing of the malodourous souls are never awashed by an ocean of tears
Eventually, I pray the seeds of forgiveness sprout as Your torrent comes, as I am tired of writing the book of good in this library of evil. He will lead His people as I am indeed lost!
......