We Still Chasing Trim

We Still Chasing Trim

By Rudolph Lewis

In Baltimore peddlers sell

sweet melons from wagons

These merchants are A-RABS

This been since Amos ‘n’ Andy

was on radio & every Negro

boy wanted to be Joe Louis

Everyone my age remembers

a one-room school, standing

up on the bus, “For Colored”

signs, nigger jokes, bleaching

cream used on South Freemont

Whites weep still when Billie

sings about stars in Alabama

The rasp in Louie’s voice is

neither sad nor blue. In him

our music still lives. Sugar

Hill down the street is dead

All the dicty hi-yellas done

moved to Cecil County. There

a blue light flashes only when

the Reverend’s cutie pie calls

him a pimp who ain’t as rigid

as he used to be. She lifts her

head & closes her eyes. Blood

ain’t black & strong when its

roots not in the neighborhood

No one sweats on a plantation

No one speaks of rivers & fires

Luxury hotels in the Inner Harbor

are open to all who don’t write

novels about strikes & violence

Still in the back of the bus, we

can voice openly our fantasies

about fanfares, collection plates

making a million, large bosoms

& new ways of fucking America

30 January 2006

Responses

Sometimes you make me laugh sometimes I feel like I'm gonna cry. When a writer can do that to a reader, it means they're damn good! (You bad!) LOL! trim! I haven't heard that word in 30 years. -- Anita

nice imagery – Kam

BRAVO! --Jennifer Brown Banks Writer/Poet/Author/Consultant
http://www.writergazette.com/jenniferbrownbanks.shtml

That has to be one of my favorite of your poems. It swings and calls up so many memories, especially the "blue lights flashing"--reminds me of the Baptists preachers who used to screw the girls in the house across from the Baptist college where I taught. Turned me off of the church completely. Do the Arabs still peddle in the Baltimore streets? – Miriam

Rudy, Greetings! By now, you surely must have enough poems to make up a book! Am I right? Your poetry is full of heart, and there is a hard but warm truthfulness and sincerity to it, mostly because you care. Take care! --Rose Ure Mezu

posted 5 February 2006