Friday, March 9, 2012

Jim Crow 2.0

JimCrow2.0 300x271 Jim Crow 2.0
Affirmative action has been part of our social and political landscape for over fifty years now, ever since JFK signed an executive order in 1961 that called for  "affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin." Four years later, President Johnson took it even further when he stated:
Nothing is more freighted with meaning for our own destiny than the revolution of the Negro American…In far too many ways American Negroes have been another nation: deprived of freedom, crippled by hatred, the doors of opportunity closed to hope…But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair…This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result…To this end equal opportunity is essential, but not enough, not enough.
So here we are, trudging through another presidential election cycle, and as always, Republicans have begun to talk about the inequality of affirmative action. They call it “preferential treatment.” They inspire students to sue colleges over it. They claim that it’s no longer necessary in an America willing to elect a black president. They say that the United States can never be a country based on equality as long as we continue to offer a leg up to a part of our population.They’re right!
Read the rest of the story on The Urban Twist.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

lunacy

Lovely Luna is waxing and nearly full. Here's one of my Lunar Cycle poems, this one published in Life in Me Like Grass on Fire. This one was inspired by being surprised by the moon being clearly visible one early afternoon in Reisterstown.














lunacy

I love to see
the moon,
at noon,
high
hanging
in cerulean
sky,
fighting
the bright Sun,
proving
Her own power
does not rely
on His
absence.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

I Promised You a Hate Poem








Final Letter to Maria
You think you're so fucking slick
with your adoring looks,
& your sly touches,
all the while pretending
you don't care.

You want to confuse me,

as if you hadn't hurt me enough,
and you hadn't let me fall
a million miles,
once you cut me from your web.

And I hit hard

you know I hit hard
shattered to a million pieces,
& now that I'm almost whole,
you want to try and rip me apart,
again?

Well, it's not going to work

because I'm being held together
by a force you could never understand
more complex than your jealousy,
stronger than the smell of your cunt.

So you can have the money

you think you deserve
I've met whores who deserve
more than you& you can have
my advice in times of utter despair
funny, you never wanted it
when I first offered
but I won't let you have my heart,
again.

Not so you can crush it

between your palms, 
again,
& smear it on the walls, 
again,
like some gory graffiti
for all to see
...besides, it's no longer mine
to give.



Embers
I sometimes find myself
combing through the ashes
of what we once had
digging, hoping to find something
salvageable amongst all the dead
embers.

I search deep and long, longing
too long, because once I find hope
I uncover burning, breathing coals,
blue-hot to the touch,
remnants of you
burning me, watching me
blister & boil
and catch
until I almost become
one of you,
one with you,
or whatever the fuck happens
when two flames
meet.

I know one day I'll accept that there is nothing but pain within the ashes.















Clean Rinse
I wash my hands,
I wash my hands of you
and everything about you,
the little burdens you try to pass off.

I wash my hands,

I wash my hands of you,
scrub beneath the nails
if only I could pluck them off
to be sure the residue,
the rest of you,
was rinsed deep clean.

I wash my hands of you,

scrub them to the bone,
and even then I scrub & scrub & scrub
until the bright white light of reflection
blinds me!


Is this all the brightness you could give?