Griot for Rudy

Griot

(for Rudy)

By Vince Rogers

It is a heavy burden, the power to read the bones

Few others share this solemn gift

So you carry the burden alone

The ancestors placed upon you, this weighty charge to keep

To faithfully guard the sacred scrolls

In loss of precious sleep

The apocryphal confuses the seminal

The didactic supplants the sublime

All dogma must be chastened, to illuminate the rites of the lines

And so to revive the canon, to Jerusalem land you retreat

You seek the comfort of old Virginia plain

Wrestling ignorance to its ultimate defeat

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posted 23 August 2006

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Vince Rogers was raised in Atlanta's Bowen Homes housing projects and went on to attend Morehouse College as an academic scholar. Although he is a widely published writer of essays, poetry, short fiction, and scholarly papers, he is most proud of being Editor of his high school newspaper, the Frederick Douglass North Star.

His works were among the Official Inaugural Selections of "I've Known Rivers" The Museum of the African Diaspora Story Project: Reproduction of the New Breed Leaders & Black Mecca for the Sold Brother. He was the TimBookTu Featured Writer for December of 2006. His scholarly paper The Evolution of Shawntae Harris was presented at the Hip Hop's Defiant Divas Conference at Vanderbilt University.

His monthly fiction column Pulp Fiction appears in Pulp Magazine and his film Reviews are featured in the Southern Screen Report.

He contributes to Clean Sheets Magazine; TimBookTu; Taj Mahal Review: An International Journal; Chicken Bones: A Journal; Thereby Hangs a Tale; Catalyst Magazine; Southern Screen Report; Pulp Magazine; Nghosi Books Anthology: Longing Lust and Love ; 3 Lights Gallery (UK) The Launch Exhibition; Black Arts Quarterly (Stanford University).

You can read selected works at his Blogs: vincevision.blogspot.com, waxvainglorious.blogspot.com and visit his Website: www.vincevision.com. / vincevision@yahoo.com or vince@vincevision.com

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update 4 October 2008