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Malcolm’s Landing: A Labor Day Lament, 2006
By Mackie Blanton It’s
not that we abandon Malcolm’s moment
of
anger or ever even learn a lesson or two
from
it. We hardly recall or remember it is
the
problem,
the
cause,
the
reason,
the
endless
blinding,
binding,
wounding:
But what else are you but
ex slaves? You pretend you
just traipsed ashore from The
Mayflower! But we are all
black people! Ex slaves! In
chains from a slave ship, like
a horse or a cow or a chicken!
But you don’t like being told
that, do you?
There
we were once again: evacuees
from
the moored Superdome, lake
water
gnawing its jiving and shucking
struts
and bones; fourth-class citizens,
third-class ex slaves; disrespected,
despised, still chained one to another,
tripping your way out toward, into, the
uninviting, policing white light around
rotting dark, darkening, pale stale bodies,
sloshing in menstrual flow, feces, urine,
more
death; hauled off to other states,
the
unwanted prize in silent auctions!
The
sigh of death on the bridges, along
flooded streets, in homes soaked asunder;
the
cough of stench from stagnant lake,
river,
and swamp water!
But
one year later, nothing has changed:
VIOLENT LABOR DAY
• Stray bullet kills
Central City man
• Jefferson Hwy incident
ends in shooting
• Stray shot wounds
Algiers man
• Man hiding in bedroom
closet shot
• Man found shot in
Warehouse District
• 4 shot, 2 dead in
shooting
• Tropical depression
forms over Atlantic
And there you were once
again, black
and white together, at the
half time
of your lives, homeless from
the
Superdome, shipping out into
the
unknown, unwanted lights. As
each
of you crawled, stumbled,
fell across
the threshold, your pain
momentarily
electrified the power-outted
exit archways,
each of you a suffering,
short-circuited
tribe. Those words, his
words, your pain
again, your unwanted, chosen
wisdom.
The contradiction, the
destiny, the decision,
the responsibility, the
conquest of self!
What have we not done for
this country?
All of us have orated.
All of us have died.
How does grief die?
How does a moment die?
How does
a gun die? *
* * * *
posted 7 September 2006 |
