MLK, Obama & James Brown: Get Ready To Dance Tonight

What a great holiday--so much to celebrate as we unite as Americans. I remember Jesse Jackson coming into my schoolroom and leading us to chant: conceive it, believe it, receive it. We are receiving.

I grew up at a time when there were disparate latino communities but the black community welcomed me with open arms and inclusive, generous hearts; I owe so much to many groups and why one of my book projects is to honor the village who helped a lost man child. Today, I'm a proud member of the Affrilachia Poets. I also honor the white culture that has been our helpmates and sometimes guardians, them. To quote Louis Armstrong, what a wonderful world. The potential is there.

I want to share a poem from my book-in-progress:

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James Brown As Prophet


I’d pray for James Brown to dance on American
Bandstand. He always offered me a new country:

someone not blond, blue-eyed, someone shaking
the walls of Jericho with his confident gyrations.

My prayers were translated by some distant power
who I needed to defy to gain muscle tone, earn

respectful scars and fete as my dearest enemy who
would become addicted to me. James was a sex

machine who was the opposite of a martyr. I’d dance
along with him in my living room—I was suddenly

fluent in the body’s truths, the ones hidden in my
bones. Soul music took the house apart, nail by

nail as I unlearned what school taught me about
the oversoul. To be possessed is to be un-owned.

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So get up in your rooms, kitchens, libtraries and dance, dance, dance. Hard work ahead means we must now enjoy our legs, the music, our hearts and ourselves with others who are like us and also those who different from us.