Asante Moran
forcibly embarked
on The Jesus
at Cape Coast
and landed
on an Irish
plantation
down the Carolinas
three months later
as Toby Johnson…
actually
it was
his grandfather
who had been
kidnapped
and dumped
in the stuffy
and fetid
hold of
a slaver –
The Jesus –
preaching
the one-sided
gospel of
economic
expediency…
branded
by middle-passage
brass-knuckles
and
jackboots –
it is a
devil-may-care
world when
prison records
are passed down
from father
to son
and teen
pregnancy
from grandma
to mama
and
daughter –
public schools
that are no
public schools
at all,
but holding pens
of rigid
social control,
till tired walls
of deliberate
neglect crash
and crumble
and give in
to chaos…
rock salt
as solid
coke and
crack,
talcum coke
and the glazed
eyes of
suburban
blond kids –
poised
on the ledge
of ruination,
savaged with
a curricular diet
of ethnic
self-alienation
and racial
hatred –
for us,
somehow,
the past remains
an open sore,
however far
we may have come
as a clan…
Santa Maria,
rust of memory
wickedly blots
the Stygian expanse
of crimes
conceived
and hatched
in luxury suites
of those who claim
to possess
vintage mantles
of divine
beneficence –
vehicular songs
of survival,
freedom
and hope,
rethread myths
mixed with ancient
songs which are
not ancient
at all, save
for their ancient
themes which,
of course, are no
ancient themes
at all
but tinder
twigs of
the here
and now…
11/20/10
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr.
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