doc312's blog: "poetry"

An All-American Bluesville Boy His touch was a winner's he'd launch pig- skin carrier pigeons for six points roll a curve off the table for a strike moonwalk for a fingertip hoop his touch was a touch too good for class, gave him professional ambitions made him Wal-Mart's first pick in the bag boy draft

(For Mildred Ellen Young, my Granny, who just passed one week shy of her 86th Birthday) Her name is Mildred Some still call her Middy/Aunt Middy Her children called/call her Momma Want something she’d be Mommy Back when she had a fondness for welt- painting switches and Daddy’s whipping machine belts, do something wrong and she’d become “No, Ma. Please, Momma, no.” Her children’s children call her Granny Grand Meir and Grand Ma Most often they call her “Can I have some?” Today we call her matriarch but to her oldest brother she’ll always be Lady West Point this woman who used to be so heavy at a hundred-two pounds who gave birth to six already placed one in the ground who used to go dancing at the USO trying to luck up and find a man trying to luck up and find the man trouble was, she lucked up and found her man Who is this woman Mildred Ellen Mullen-Young big sister to Mary still grieving for Nanny always praying for Stanford wondering about William still wishing James wasn’t so far away who is this woman and what has she got makes her so much that God’s already given her eighty when he told Moses that man’s limit was seven-o Reared in bluegrass daughter to a railroading man and literate mother raised with middle class sensibilities in a time when black folks were thought to be shiftless and dumb brought up Christian never left the righteous path even in migrating from mid-South to up-South her feet’s been planted in solid ground always stable, never one to wander or drift Much more than mere woman she is an anchor known as wife loyal like a deep moving river to its shore faithful as the horizon to the sun’s early light we come to honor this four-score plus woman to sing praises to her who deserves to be praised to memorialize her who is so memorable to offer love to her who has been our lover and love to celebrate a life of a woman whose days kept rolling on to appreciate her for being our strength when we’ve been down a light in the moments of our blindness the lifter of our most heaviest woes and healer of afflictions to heavy to bear We'll always love you Granny, and miss you.

On the West Side, no one complains about the heat: there isn't any; but folks do be trying to grab a little warmth People naturally don't want to freeze, but sometimes that's a little more than they can afford Sometimes, we light the oven those of us with gas or turn on an old 'lectric heater after running an extension cord next door we even burn old wooden chairs in the tub, or bring a garbage can in and let it be our fireplace We know not to relax in? to comfort in the winter of the night we might get drowsy and go to sleep Too often we are the burning story in the morning news

A lynchee, hung from a wild cypress my daddy burnt black flesh searing strung up not for biological difference but by white metaphors who didn’t want to be- come mixed I was an embryo more biology than person when it happened My daddy was a lynchee hung from a tree an element of blood and flesh in a ritual of communal cleansing a necessary sacrifice, toasted blacker than any vernacular strung over multi- colored flames not by bio- logical difference but by white hooded metaphors who couldn’t conceive of him in any kind of non-literal language in any kind of relative terms.

The text g n i t a o l f freely through the class dr. von doom grading my essay crazy glued to the ground

Little kids are a lot like Jesus, they often die of sins not their own; like the ones who die in Bluesville praying: "Father God, please save us cause Momma's gone" It's not them who fail to pay the heat, leaving out the house with the oven on; and they're not out there on their feet, hustling Disciples' blessings to carry on Maybe they die to save the mothers who walk cracked pavements on Friday nights trying to gather a little income with the only training street messiahs let them have Mercy be to little children who who often die of sins not their own Sometimes they suffer sacrifice of life, to be resurrected in holy smoke

Four a.m. I sleep uncomfortably dreaming of my cousin, Brother Kwame X, Afro-American militant, who burns his neighbors and shouts about a class struggle between the haves and the have-nots, the landlords and the landless.

Feeling mired in morning, I slide downtown, in search of celluloid dreams, but at 10:59, the previews are re-run, the feature’s half?class, and they charge an area-tax on your munchies On State Street the show's much more thrilling: street salesmen compete for new customers slum hustlers dangle 18-karat gold lines the last endangered specie claims "Jesus Saves" Midday els run in slow motion when they come, full of gangs of old ladies wearing last rite attire, and winos whispering sweet nothings into brown paper bags a box jams "I, I, I, I'm gonna miss you" Lena's is jumping by mid?afternoon 2?ton Bertha bumps hips with all comers Slim Greer sips suds on his trips to the john Mr. Drummond and his seeing?eye dog bet on the Cubs Get to the crib place your letter on the table decide to read it when I find time stretched on a pillow bored as death dishes are dirty mountains of trash bills piled up so high lying there nothing to do wondering what you might be up to

Little kids are a lot like Jesus, they often die of sins not their own; like the ones who die in Bluesville praying: "Father God, please save us cause Momma's gone" It's not them who fail to pay the heat, leaving out the house with the oven on; and they're not out there on their feet, hustling Disciples' blessings to carry on Maybe they die to save the mothers who walk cracked pavements on Friday nights trying to gather a little income with the only training street messiahs let them have Mercy be to little children who who often die of sins not their own Sometimes they suffer sacrifice of life, to be resurrected in holy smoke

I remember this colored girl who used to work at White Castle she was a colored girl, alright curse you out if you called her black she was fine as any woman I'd ever seen an ivory fox in those days at school ev'body's schedule was filled with lunch it seemed stupid to go to class when you'd school in the streets all night long at home, we'd stop to see when a colored was on t.v