I write my poems for the prisoners
living out their lives in concrete closets,
in rows of chicken-coop cells,
dreams locked behind steel bars;
they traded their lives
for liquor store cash,
and now they pay the price
as the years blend together
and disappear like dirty water
down a shower drain.
The March on Washington, 1963
By Tim Hall
Twenty-four
years have passed
since my heart first pulsed with hope
for a
better world
when I saw those black youth marching,
arm-in-arm,
their faces bold and clear in purpose,
under the trees beside the
pool
at the Lincoln Memorial.
I didn't really listen
to the
melodic words of Martin Luther King;
they seemed to be a little
rhetorical,
not quite down-to-earth enough
compared to the
vibrant, rebelling
life on the march, the young people
arm-in-arm,
under the trees,
chanting, singing -- militant choirs,
their
voices welling up from the long years of black
resistance
and bursting forth into the air that day
in a pure
joy at seeing
half a million faces
dedicated to burying racism.
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