Madea's Wisdom

© 2 May 2011, The Griot Poet

Mildred Dean Goodwin: sunrise 15 September 1925, sunset 7 May 2009


My mother hung
a sign on my
bedroom wall
which read:
"It isn't smart
to argue with a fool:
listeners can't tell
which is which."


I wish Lawrence O'Donnell read
this
before expecting maturity
and lucidity
from the mother
of birthers: Orly Tate.

Who avoided any
notion of apology
by berating the president
on supposedly falsifying
not only
his short and long form
birth certificates,
but his social security number
and selective service papers.

Hate
has no logic,
but it has many fathers.

Who don't bother
with facts or data;
fairness or balance:

because Hermann Goering's chancellor
said

“Make the lie big,
make it simple,
keep saying it,
and eventually
they will believe it”

(and Goering said: "Education is dangerous - Every educated person is a future enemy.")


So,
I wasn't miffed
or defensive when
a hair's breadth
after the news
a man named Obama
ordered the kill of
a man named Osama
(ironic and poetic)

that the same
fringe element
demanding long form
birth certificates
(now in the public sphere)

strove mightily
to credit
exclusively
the previous
president

(or, the statement
this one wasn't
"enthusiastic enough"
about the announcement
or the grim duty
of putting special
forces soldiers
in harms way)!

I smiled,
remembering
my mother's
wisdom;

Tom Joyner
& Jay Anthony
Brown's

humorous
rejoinders,

knowing truth,
and the knowledge
that sometimes
doing a good job
is ITS own reward,

God only
promotes
and restores.

I smiled:
in full strength
of my mother's
wisdom...

stood tall,
straightened my back,

and

walked...

away!