Give me America

Give me America anyday because

I hear America bringing

politics gone mad

into process.

Just give it to me:

America.

Give me America anyday because

I see America clinging

to an old notion

of liberty.

Give me America anyday because

I still feel America flinging

the deadends of malice

into arcs of goodwill.

Give me America anyday because

I know America’s still singing

an old song, just with

a new beat.

You can’t beat

America.

Give me America anyday because

I can sight America winging

its way o’er terrains of pain

and strife.

It’s just life, y’all

to have to put up with

this stuff.

This stuff that’s goin’ down now:

them with their their guns and butter

vs. them with their lgbt muttering—

just give me America, you guys!

Give me America anyday because

I feel America clinging

to hope and justice

and even God

is still with us,

y’all.

King of Soul

Alabama. How 'bout you?

Alabama.
Alabama sticks in my mind, going way back.
To get from Louisiana to Georgia, you have to drive through that Sweet Home state of Alabama, the state where folks drive around with a license plate that says: Stars fell on . . .
Alabama, whatever that means.
I'll tell you what it means. it means crucible.
It means the place where America's deepest hopes and deepest fears about building a great nation and living out the ideal of all men and women being created equal by Creator God, the place where all those deepest hopes and deepest fears clashed in the thoroughfares of history on a highway between Selma and Montgomery,
and on the steps of the state capitol when President Kennedy sent soldiers in to compel George Wallace to do his job and allow the black folks of Sweet Home to vote and to go to school and to University.
And then later, years later, George Wallace issued a public apology for his former racist bullshit way of doing things. And I remember this video I saw online just a year or two or three ago of Wallace sitting in a wheelchair, his daughter by his side, telling the blacks folk and all of us, all the people of America that he was sorry.
I mean I saw this, so to speak, with my own eyes, (online.) It all happened in my lifetime.
This George Wallace who was speaking in my hometown, back in the day, 1968, when he went to the Louisiana legislature and spoke there and he said if they'd send him to Washington he'd take all their suitcases from all them bureaucrats in Washington and throw them suitcases in the Potomac River, and when he said that all the Louisianans who filled that legislative chamber laughed.
But such hyperbole was not a rhetorical stunt unknown to the folks of the bayou state, many of whom in that room that day could still remember what Huey Long had said back in the day, 1930's.
'Course we all know it didn't amount to a hill of beans. Dick Nixon went to the white house that year instead the Alabama governor. Hubert Humphrey was the one who lost big time that year because Wallace peeled off a bunch of them riled-up southern Democrats.
I mean, Hubert got a raw deal in Chicago, but we can't be crying in our beer forever. He was a nice guy. God bless him, Hubert. May he rest in peace; and, for that matter, may Richard Nixon rest in peace.
We all have our faults.
All of this has happened in my lifetime, y'all, which wasn't so long ago and it's still happening today.
We have seen serious changes during these 65 years. I'm not making this up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MhOZt5-Jl8
Maybe I'm just dreaming it, but if I am just dreaming it, well shut my mouth.
But as I was sayin'--I'm talking' 'bout Alabama now--the place where all of our darkest southern closets got blasted open to reveal them skeletons in them closets, them skeletons of racism that most Alabamans have now left in the dust of history but every now and then someone drags them old skeletons out of them closets.
Dogs sicced on freedom riders, four martyred girls in 16th Street Baptist church, Birmingham.
This blood was not shed in vain. The blood of the martyrs is the seeds of . . .
So these days, November 2016, y'all can rant in the streets all you want to, but I'm here to tell you that this new Attorney General appointee, Sen. Jeff Sessions, him about whom the Dems are so upset, while they be trying to affix the R-word to Senator Jeff's reputation just because he be from Alabama, and yet I see on Resurgent this morning these photos of Jeff Sessions holding hands with Rep. John Lewis
http://theresurgent.com/seriously-trump-the-pictures-of-jeff-sessions-they-dont-want-you-to-see/
as they were commemorating the stand taken back in the day, 1965, when Dr. King, Dr. Abernathy, young John Lewis and many others who, being with them all together of one accord and holding hands, marched across the Edmund Pettus bridge while trying to walked from Selma to Montgomery but then them Alabama troopers sent out by the old Wallace, not the later-repentent Wallace, stopped them civil rights marchers on the bridge and beat the hell out 'em.
http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/selma-montgomery-march/videos/bloody-sunday
But this blood was not shed in vain. The blood of the martyrs is the seeds of . . .
But then, as the poet said, and still says, the times they are a-changin'.
And so they did, and they still are.
Hence, just a year ago as I was cleaning a laundry room at work and listening on the radio to John Lewis' account of that infamous Bloody Sunday event, as he was recalling it to Terri Gross or Diane Rehm or someone like that, and I remember what Rep. Lewis said about being beat up and it was some bad shit going down but they lived to tell about it and ultimately they prevailed all the way to the steps of the Alabama state capitol and Dr. King spoke and it really stuck with me.
So now in November 2016 I'm seeing this jpg of Sessions and Lewis holding hands on the Edmund Pettus bridge and
this has all happened in my lifetime, y'all.
Please don't tell me it was a dream. Let me have my dream. I have the dream, all God's children. . . don't you have a dream?
I mean, this all happened in my lifetime y'all.
Alabama, please ya'll don't forget this excruciated crucible of our great American dream, where the blood of saints and sinners was shed for the liberty of us all. If you ever go there, remember you'll be treading on holy ground, ground made holy by the shedding of the blood of the Lamb,
http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/birmingham-church-bombing
but that was before the stars fell on Alabama. Now people there have seen the light, or at least I hope they have. I'm willing to give them a little grace, and a little space, to cross our next bridge.
How 'bout you?

Glass half-Full

In Capitolletes' Orchard

A scene from from the new play, now being composed, Barromeo and JulioCare,

from Act II. Scene II.

The scene: before dawn, in Capitolettes' orchard

Enter Barromeo.

Barromeo. But whattheheck? what entitlement through yonder Congress breaks?

It is the east, and JulioCare is the sun!

Arise fair sun, and burn off the fatted corporates,

who are already plump with capitalism's excess.

Oh, How shall I fund thee, JulioCare?

Let me count the ways.

One, two, three, what are we pushin' for?

Ask me again and I'll tell you the same--

next phase gottta be an affordable game.

But hey! what Act through yonder Congress creeps,

shepherded by my Dhemmi peeps

It is my plan; O! it is my .gov!

Ob! that (s)he knew he/she were.

She/he speaks, yet spouts legal-speak, what of that?

Her/his eye discourses; I will pander to it.

See how he/she leans his/her cheek upon her/his hand;

oh that I were an MJ glove upon that hand,

that I might touch them little cheeks.

JulioCare (on hill portico above): Pshaw! woe is me.

Barromeo (aside): (S)he speaks: O! speak again bright angels in America,

for thou art as amorphous to this night

as some winged messenger of left-equality

unto the white-winged Right.

JulioCare: O Barromeo, Barromeo, wherefore art thou Barromeo?

Deny thy privilege, and ante up their game;

Or, if thou wilt not, be butt torn my love,

and I'll no longer be a Capitolette.

Barromeo: (aside) Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?

JulioCare: ' Tis but thy game that is my enemy;

thou art, thyself, not a politician bought-and-sold-for.

What's a politician? it is not Dhemmi, nor Prublican,

nor ding, nor dong, nor any other part

belonging to a man. Ob! be ye some other name:

What's in a frickin' name anyway? that which we call a rose

by any other name would smell as sweet;

So Barromeo would, were he not El Prezzo called,

retain that dear election by which he shows

his coolness.

Barromeo: Listen up, girl! By a name,

I know not how to tell thee who I am, except

I am, you know, El Prezzidente, and tell your

Capitolette Prublican patriarchs don't you forget it!

JulioCare: My funds have not yet drunk! a thousand pages of thy remedy,

yet I'll tell my maid Nancy to have them read the damn thing

after it is passed by yonder congressional hacks

so its passage will be sure before yonder sun arises

to cast dread light upon our desperate plan

for the candyman can the candy man can.

At least that's what Uncle Sammy said back in the day.

Barromeo: Hey, fair maideno, we got it covered. Not to worry. We can slide it past your Prublicans duds quicker than you can say Taxonomy, according to Chief Justy Roberto. You just go back in there and get some rest

and I'll take care of the rest, cuz I'm the best

thing since sliced bread

to come outa Chicago since Dick Daley was the head. . .

JulioCare: Wait! (looking down at her cell) Pshaw! Pshit! My maid just texted--she said beware the ides of March and the

Big Banquos and the

Risk Corridors and whatever obfuscations my esteemed Prublicans bury in there before the whole damned spot gets out of the House of the Capitolettes.

Barromeo: Not to worry, babe. By yonder bleepin' moon I swear--

JulioCare: Oh! swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, which is, bi- and by, darkened by its dark side and--pshaw! pshit!--there's the lark, the herald of the morn, with harsh chirps and unpleasant sharps--'tis no nightingale that now soothes the forest of this night. Bi hence, be gone away! before reconciliation faileth to befuffuddle my forebears.

Barromeo: But hey, babe, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?

JulioCare: What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?

Barromeo: the exchange of, um, thy love's faithful vow for mine.

JulioCare: That's a great idea; tell 'em to go the Exchange. No big deal.

Barromeo: You got it, babe, but hey, parting is such sweet sorrow, 'till we meet again. . .

JulioCare: Oh, 'tis twenty years 'til then!

Barromeo: Whoa, whoa, don't get bent out of shape. We needeth not such hyperbole.

JulioCare: Oh! when will we meet again! 'til then will I be but shapeshifting and forlorn.

Borromeo: In your dreams, baby; in your dreams. 'Til then, this thing will come together when Prublican wood doth move against Dhemmo games.

Maid (from within): JulioCare, get yo' assets back in here before the light of day changes everything!

JulioCare: Oh! pshaw! pshit! gotta go, Barromeo, but 'til we meet again in better circumstances . . . ; -)

Borromeo: Farewell, fair maideno, until we meet again! stay thee away from the risk corridors, lest they fall upon thee with unbearable rate-hikes. 'Tis a dangerous game. So fair and foul a game I have not seen, nor have most other folks. Hey, What's in the game, anyway? a dollar by any other special drawing rights-- 'tis nuttin' butt a tweet. I'll see ya when I see ya. I'll see your beloved currency and raise you an SDR. Fare thee well; my love for thee runs as deep as the Fed.

Exit Barromeo.

Glass Chimera

Demo Dems and Repo Reps

Dems do.

The streets are filled with a cry of distress

and joyful shouting nonetheless,

with tribal stomps in perfect time,

and fervent movement, hiphop rhyme.

Plus The other side of this Demmie greenback:

it shows woodstock gentsia and academic hack

media egos, celebrity stars, and the freakish fringe;

their redistributionist binges make Repubos cringe.



Repubs don't.

Out in the field we see a church picnic

with measured grace, and mortared brick;

we hear careful words that divide the time

with calculated results and holy rhyme.

Plus the other side of their grand old meeting:

country club set, with scripted greeting,

credit swappers, debit daubers, practice productivity,

while Demmies make jokes about their activity.



Americans will.

Meanwhile back at the ranch

above the streets and below the tranche,

what's that I hear rising from the ground?

a suite of swelling symphonic sound?

a veritable rhapsody of virtual agreement

with taxes deducted and fiscal appeasement!

What if Washington's cadres just crossed the cold Delaware,

while the King's drowsy troops weren't aware?



I have a dream; I know you do too.

Surely there's resource for me, and for you.

Let's keep our dream dreaming, but tweak it more functional,

making work our policy, and kindness more unctual;

'cause the river we're crossing is deep and its wide,

with estuarial currents and roaring riptide.

As we stand here unsure, squinting out at the brink,

let's bale out the flood, so our damned ship don't sink.

Glass half-Full