'60s Dream Revival

Martin Luther King Day 2022 Poem

I had a dream we were seeded in sidewalks

and politicians peeped it'd make us easier

to walk on than water was for their Jesus

left open for enchanted enclosement in time capsules

till the last part human falls from the beast

there are reasons for sleep

                         until you've been condemned to it

          ...or it stops bringing an end closer at all

I just wanted my god back

                        now I prefer they bring their serpent here

I got a few fruits to pick with him

heard he can pluck fear from the nation it planted itself in

and fix a politic whose repairs take longer than the build

while in my chamber, a cliché’s echo screeches louder

than from irony's hiding place in the Liberty Bell

"good help isn't hard to find," says the broke man,

"it's hard to pay for"

                   "good help," says the rich man,

                   "shouldn't dent entitlement so deep"

     dignity declared them both wrong

and once upon a ski mask, a diploma rolled into a barrel

and my conscience knew the only person who died in this tale

was the one behind the bullet

sometimes living life to the fullest spills over

and even the best beds drown in the thrills

       sometimes a city's garden

                               is its prison

 some days if you listen

                 you can feel the parts of its song that go livid

and I got some gestures hanging on my intentions for more civic times;

in the meantime, single-finger tributes and freeze frame snarls are my instruments

for a rebellion's a capella

                      two-stepping on 1800s comparisons

dreaming along as Louis Armstrong sings

in spite of living the screams escaping Orwell's pen

believe me

some of my most meaningful dialogues

happened through two doors in sign language

some of my deepest wisdoms

were learned living through Proverbs for sinners

so while most given a shot at a talk with the afterlife

would choose a friendship or relative

                                  I'd just want a convo with Hendrix

ask him if my recipe is ripe

                        for making a righteous rebel from a menace

if take no distance

                 and panhandle no penance

                                           are worth commitment

if muted

         is a synonym for minority

                                 how people can make noise again

how I can get his riffs

                     out of my head

                                   and into reforms

I have dreams

of people in prison free

and people free in prison

                       and I wonder

                       if freedom is more subjective than it seems

                       and I wonder if maybe

                                   MLK dreamed the same things