We Grew Up...

 

 © April 4, 2021, the Griot Poet

Fifty-three years ago,

We lost Martin,

Marching with Memphis sanitation workers,

Despite having approval numbers

Underwater,

At thirty percent,

 

Somewhere between his last sermon,

“I have been to the mountaintop.”

He slept with two women,

Not Coretta Scott,

Though disappointed in an icon,

I don’t fault him,

Because I don’t know how I would process it,

Death threats daily,

It’s easy on the sidelines to pontificate

“He should have prayed about it.”

 

The self-hating,

Closeted man,

And, overt racist

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover,

Had everywhere King went,

Bugged and under surveillance,

COINTELPRO,

The FBI’s counterintelligence program had one mission:

Ensure there wasn’t the rise,

Of a black messiah,

The focal point that led to the murders of:

Medgar Evers,

Malcolm X,

Martin Luther King,

And, Fred Hampton,

Not knowing the irony,

White supremacy’s

Ignorance,

Of the ethnography,

Of first century Palestinians,

 

Because

For an ideal,

Only so far

Seen on Star Trek,

He was willing to die a martyr’s death,

 

Bethlehem Community Center,

Part of the Wesleyan Methodists Ministries,

Was our kindergarten

On the East side of Winston,

Browner, with older equipment,

Wesleyan Community Center,

More spacious, better equipped,

Not quite as diverse,

On the West,

 

My parents already knew,

And, couldn’t break the news

To me,

Instead,

They left that grim task,

To the preschool and kindergarten teachers,

April fifth,

 

5-year-old children wept until noon,

Three, and four-year-olds joined the chorus,

The solace of our tears turned

To screams of horror,

As the Klan rode by,

The treasonous stars, and bars,

On pickup trucks,

The sound of gunshots,

The drunken shouts:

“I’m glad that n-word is dead!”

Meant to grind a boot,

Into a salted, stabbed wound,

 

The cowards counted on

Our forced compliance,

Terror always the tool of

Fascists, and cowards,

I’m sure the toothless wonders

Have mostly died,

Despite their earnest wishes:

We grew up.

 

One of us, living in Hawaii, not the south,

Became president,

A woman of South Asian and Jamaican descent,

Is our Vice President,

Our Transportation Secretary,

Is in a committed same-sex marriage,

The Secretary of Defense,

Is African American,

The first Native American cabinet member,

Women, Asians,

The current cabinet,

Shaping up to resemble [the] coming diverse America,

That doesn’t require superluminous propulsion starships,

 

Not the clown actor sycophants

In a narcissist’s self-centered

Reality show,

Where he played the role of president,

Without showrunners to clean up his mess.

 

53 years ago,

April 4, 1968,

We lost Martin to a coward’s bullet.

My kindergarten class the next day got the news.

5-year-old children wept until noon,

Three, and four-year-olds joined the chorus,

After the tears were over,

We remembered what Martin said:

“You can’t ride a man or woman if their backs are straight,”

 

It is bizarre,

That their grandchildren,

Stuck on stupid,

Still, try this tactic,

Stormed the Capitol,

Restricted voter access,

Always guaranteeing,

The opposite effect,

 

Riding past,

Bethlehem Community Center,

Stirred the hornets’ nest,

We are resolved,

Our backs are not bent,

Our ancestors died for this,

We grew up!

And, we will vote!