"MLK should be every day"
the sun'll come out tomorrow
and we won't have to think about those black folks
for another week
but then a whole month
oh good grief
who even knows how to pronounce
them crazy tribes anyway?
why would someone say such things
on this day of all days?
do they simply not realize
how insignificantly matched
are our annual innings?
those people, us people, I really don't see
as I stare into the horizon of a white man's history
where people like them or I fit in
and why all my pages of black ink were trimmed
why too did I not learn of Abbie or Rueben
why did it take almost my entire life to find
such simple yet revolutionary stories land mined
by the burdens of business as usual and patriarchal pantomime
write me a tale
spin a patchwork quilt
make it drip with new lives
newly beloved and blackened silks
weave in other colors and other races too
design a map to the truths of our hundreds of years of paying dues
menace my mercenary mind
push the sands of time over in their rhyme
play me the music of the suppressed
and dance my feet over their bones
infect my tainted culture
whittle me down to my last tome
I can hear them inhaling
those stories running near
I choose to sit in this circle
and let a true past bend my ready ear
Ellee 2002
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