Atticus - Regular
Mindless - Itallics


Under that black top hat
Stitched within its barers
Cause rests Uncle Tom,
And a delightful game
Of ring around the rosy
Meets the ashes of
What's to come while
All the kids fall back,
As they watch Rosa
Run in circles looking
For the head of the pack.

Then he stood, a foot in the grave
as they gave the tipping point
a blunt wrapped in those ashes.
I smoked the bones of the land
and braved to go on the brim,
as niggers splintered the thin
lumber and Black Jack Johnson
turned limbs towards the kids;
calling "timber!" until white men
went limp, in the heat of summer.

Coreta's in the corner,
Making Martin's death bed,
As the sheets get caught
In that stubborn old birch tree,
While the willows trembled
And their passionate tears
Burn two holes through
These thin covers of purity,
Before they go opaque
And twist their corners in
To hug her screaming throat.

We came engraved on stumps
from the cherry tree that was
chopped down, which became
our coffin as drops of resin
incased our tasteless eye.
The golden apple was stolen
from the hands holding time.
Washington watched them
enter the garden and pick
leaves from the money tree,
that brought dead presidents
crumbling to their knees.
So sit at the head of my table
and tell me of the minorities
who's basket came back empty.
Then reach for the blood sun
with the rope between the dirty
leaves where poverty is hung.

Monotony sowed it's seed
when stores showed how deep
we breath into hollow roots.
We wore shirts that spoke volumes
to listeners that were mute.
They clothed our hatred and
naked, undressed resentment,
that loathed complacent truth.
We all followed suit, soon enough.
We all supported it, sporting outfits
from innocent fists of infants
gone missing under wheel barrows;
carrying deals scandals materialized
to hide narrow wrists peeling proof.

Mississippi state of mind;
Paths are being blazed,
As Fredrick Douglas
Leads a train of thought
Underground, directly
Through the grave.
Meet at the safe house,
But mind the barbed wire.
The plantation stands
As the sun's eclipsed
And each step leaves
An asphalt highway.

Roads are overgrown hospitals
since we sold peace by the kilo
to those homes in the ghetto;
knowing young ones loved fame,
wanting to snort the light, but it
distorted the bright faced horizon
into sporadic afternoons, where the
moon shine quietly made life frightful
of black men that had broken bottles,
but their guns cast no shadows.

Hear the dogs bleed
Their hungering screams
Into the dense air,
As Jesus yanks the collar
So hard that a spark
Is born in dry atmosphere,
While the darkness
Watches from between
Gaps in the forrest's fingers,
Before the flame
Dances up the arms
Of a quivering evergreen.

The two thick trunks burn
Steady until all their limbs
Have been singed off
And all that remains
Is a charred may pole,
As Jesus starts dancing
Hand in hand with ignorance,
Before the polls falter;
Land crossed on the ground,
As embers light their pride.
And as all these new
Constellations fall from
The rippling skies,
Jesus opens his eyes;
Falls upon God's lost cross,
Into his transfixed crucifixion
And begins to cry.

... And there, Betsy Ross
Sits on her colonial porch
Watching it all happen.
Gazing threw the spaces
Of the railing she watches
Every black man there
Trapped between the bars
Of that white picket fence;
Then tilts her heavy head
Down and continues sewing.
As the needle of that syringe
Cracks her ivory thimble,
As all seven red stripes
Began to bleed away,
Leaving a clean white
Page To fly at half mast.

This past is nobody's flag that is
flown over the rags of epitaphs.
Our plague is on parade and we
walk with crooked swags that
are gladly bound and gagged.
Who will praise this symbol if
it's raised with simple prejudice
for the thimble and the thread
as we dragged our feet with bliss?
They proclaim to wave proud
and brag about names mentioned,
being ashamed of the attention
willing to make them a famous
nation, over a king worth killing.

Continue to pace crab
Grass and broken shards
Of that stained glass
Window that decided to
Kiss the blarney stone.
As the windows opened,
The fog ran in, then
Tiptoed over every note
And began to dance...
Hand in hand, toe to toe;
Jesus was romanced.

The music led; fog followed;
As the choir stood in awe
And watched the swallows.
They just stood there,
Providing the soundtrack
To the last site of equality...
Before the fog became
Tangled in threads of sanity.
Faster the two twirled about;
Thread growing titer around
The Minister's cold throat
As the two continue to dance;
Following the orchestrators
Hands before he raises them...
As the noose tightens,
And Malcolm wears an "X"
Over each eye lid...
As he dies on a high note.

Likewise, when Martin Luther
realized how steep the steps
where inside each steeple,
he cried, "When I die...
I'll scribe my Alibi in metal.
Tell me if there's life above
what we call good and evil!
Why should people fight while
time passes away our rights?"

I've tried to turn the knob,
I've tried to knock on the doors
with the force of praying hands.
But this neutral lock the Smiths
picked to hold the broken pieces
of people's complete soul can't
fit through the key-whole...

The church clears,
The screaming spectators
Disperse through the
Various halls to find an exit,
While with ever ear piercing
Screech Malcolm lifts
Farther into the darkness
Of the cathedral rafters.

Join us here, after the
dead letters are opened
again, and the spine of
the Bible breaks under
the devil's pen.
He's drawn blood,
while we've foregone awe
to wonder if dawn will come.
All it spawned was sons,
that our daughters saw shunned
to fields dreamed in cotton.

But, there's a straggler.
Harriet has lost her way;
Stumbling through the halls.
It seams the walls have eyes,
They see all, and judge more.
She stop dead, reached a fork
In the cavernous hallways,

To the right she gazed
Into the light at the end of
The tunnel, before she turned...
Looked quick then ran left
As she disappeared........
............ Into the darkness.

The silence: deafening.
As the walls began to cry led;
Lifted brick fingers and pointed
Chanting "Death... Death...

Death went out to the sinner’s house,
Come and go with me
Sinner cried out, I’m not ready to go,
Ain’t got no travellin’ shoes.
Got no travellin’ shoes, got no travellin’ shoes
Sinner cried out, I’m not ready to go
I ain’t got no travellin’ shoes

Death went out to the gambler’s house,
Come and go with me
The gambler cried out, I’m not ready to go,
Ain’t got no travellin’ shoes.
Got no travellin’ shoes, got no travellin’ shoes
Sinner cried out, I’m not ready to go
I ain’t got no travellin’ shoes

Death went out to the preacher’s house,
Come and go with me
The preacher cried out, I’m not ready to go,
Ain’t got no travellin’ shoes"


"Travellin' Shoes" By Vera Hall Ward (1950)


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