Dance Away My Dream

In the seventy sixth year of my cosmic youth
I sit with aching bones, joints cracking like the report
of small pistol shots aimed at the heart of my failing mortality.
From the deepest realm of my soulful bowel,
barely within the boundary of my sentient reality,
I feel, I hear, I see the sign: "It is good."
I am at peace.

Settled now, I notice the dancing figures on the TV.
Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, with poetic grace, gliding across the screen.
That peace, briefly mine, now attempting escape back into the nothingness from which it came.
Struggling desperately to restrain it, I seek solace from the poetry before my eyes.
The whirling, graceful movement slowly becomes a dark menacing collage
of frightening childhood memories, each piercing my soul with palpable pricks:

That little boy, occupying a nigger seat in the balcony, watched the dance of the devil.
The ostentatious ambiance, the glamour, the assumption of well-being
reinforced the rising rage within him.
Their dance joyfully ground his dream into the dust of history.
The innocence of his youth did not dull the sharp edge of his perception of dignity.
What must it be like to dance and cavort before the eyes of the world, carrying,
in utter bliss, the sweet taste upon the tongue, the flowery smell within the nostril,
the never-ending melodic sound within the ear, the safe, reassuring beat in the heart
of freedom?

His fellows, his little gang of lovable cohorts, displayed their maturity by ignoring this deceit.
It's the way it is. It's "The Man's" world, their actions stated. Let's play some ball.
But this outrage gnawed at his soul, relentlessly permeating every fiber of his being
like some virus voraciously consuming his spirit.

There was no safe haven beyond the arms of his mother and the sounds of his father's music.
The little gang was his sanctuary as long as it stayed within its boundaries.
Go north and the Pollocks would throw rocks to drive you away.
Go east and the Micks would beat the living shit out of you.
Go west and the Jews would have you arrested.
South was the railroad tracks, over which was the vacant lot where we roasted potatoes,
built bunks and challenged one another to pissing contests. This was our territory.

Up on the hill beyond, stood a large brick building for white kids.
They played games. They made things. They had plays. They had books and teachers.
We had a little ram-shackled building that had a basketball court in the basement.
The walls around the court were the boundaries. Any ball hitting a wall was out of bounds.
We too had teachers. We learned to steal, shoot crap, drink wine, hunt pun tang and fight.

Where was the humanity? Where was the secret portal to dignity?
Cops extorting anyone they thought had money, taking out their rage on innocent bystanders.
Black Hand (Mafia) blowing up small Italian store owners, blowing out windows of our homes.
The sight of our mentor dying with his throat slit from ear to ear on the pavement.
The father of one of our gang lying on a car seat bleeding to death from bullet wounds. The constant spoken and implicit refrain: “You white, you right; you black, get back.” By what cognitive mechanism can these deeply rooted psychic wounds be exorcised? Where was the humanity?

Fred and Ginger, can you dance to the sorrowful song of our despair?
Must we go on enduring the incivility barely obscured by your poetic grace?
No sweet smell of freedom here.
Just the rancid smell of evil.
In our nose.
In our clothes.
Not a rose to be seen
except when we're clean
in our coffins.

Strange, how time and the good will of a searching spirit
bring comfort to a tortured past.
How early visions of the victim's lot, blown in diminishing volume
before the gentle breezes of thoughtful fellowship,
transform vengeance into reason and dejection into triumph.
To rail against the evil acts of the barbarous, profane souls of history
is to desecrate the sublime legacy of those from whom we've sprung.
The past is not to be forgotten. For in the remembering lies faith and hope
that our search beyond the flesh shall prevail. On us the job now falls.
Bring meaning to the suffering of the chained, the flogged; the humiliated, the murdered,
Bring affirmation to the snuffed aspirations of the gassed, the starved, the butchered.
Reclaim the purity of their spirit. Cut the chains of the oppressed who bought our freedom.
Tear the blasphemous yellow stars from the ragged coverings of the wrongfully damned.
The deed is done. Let not vengeance preclude the reincarnation of the sublime.