TALEQUAH

I am a darker son of the Pacific Northwest
born in Seattle’s Swedish hospital
baptized in glacier cooled Lake Washington
raised in the wild with mountain goat, cougar
deer, brown bear and marmot
home fed on the word made fish:
trout salmon and sturgeon

My Vision Quest began in the Olympic rain forest
and the misty Cascade mountain range
where I met my black grandfather, a sharecropper
from Mississippi, a Washington pioneer
meditating on the summit of Mt. Takhoma
with Chief Sealth, savior of white settlers seeking
a new life in the ancient woods of the Northwest
on the sacred waters of the Salish nation

I delight in sunlight dancing like diamonds
on rippling surface of Dalco Passage
where man meets his maker and makes amends

I witness the Blue Heron standing on one leg
in stunning silence in shallow water
then darting to spear a fish that slips down
her gracefully long flexible neck
into her feathery full tummy

At dusk the ferry crosses Puget Sound in twilight
as tides and currents pace the passage of sun and moon
tiny swallows swoop in from the sea nesting in nearby alders
At low tide clams squirt sea juice from beneath the barnacled
rocks and wet sand

At dusk honking Canadian geese cruise close by
marauding raccoons squealing on the hillside behind
the hot tube where Carlos smokes his Cohiba

I drink my Columbia River wine as black smoke rises
from the campfire drifting into gathering clouds

At sunrise the ferry idles between log pilings at the dock
where I sit on the bridge of Carlos’ ship sailing
into the wind as currents carry me away from land
and loved ones to the open sea

tomas

I open the door to
embers falling like snow

Sky is bleak & black
Sun is eerie red

Santa Ana winds sweep
ash & cinder

Cosmos collides
with karma

“In America if you have one drop of black blood you are black
In Cuba if you have one drop of white blood you are white”
Dr. Digna Castaneda, University of Havana, Cuba

As I reflect on my travels in the world and my life as an African American I am constantly reminded of the rigid role race plays in human affairs. In Brazil and the Dominican Republic I was told that I’m white, in Cape town I’m colored, in Cuba and Puerto Rico I’m mulatto, in Mexico I’m moreno or mestizo and in the U.S.A. I am proudly Black.
Race is not applied scientifically by societies but subjectively in order to maintain invidious social stratification and racial discrimination, with the darkest complexion at the bottom. I agree with Princeton professor and African-American activist, Cornel West, that Race Matters and I contend that in the world and at home race rules.
America is for me a lesson in coping with the crisis of color. Seattle, Washington was relatively serene in the maelstrom of civil strife and violence that characterized the Civil Rights Era of the sixties. However, even we in the far Northwest were impelled to struggle against the pernicious phenomenon of white skin privilege, class privilege and de facto “segregation with a smile.”
For one glorious decade in the sixties black America and progressive white America united in the struggle to defeat racial segregation and discrimination in the South. We defeated de jure segregation but have so far been stymied by de facto segregation ie. the resegregation of American society into black, brown and white.
Blacks, browns and whites still remain largely segregated in the USA today. Martin Luther King’s astute observation that the most segregated time in America is on Sunday morning, the time when people attend church is still true today.
De facto segregation is fueled by the growing economic divide between people of color and Anglo-America. The growing unequal distribution of economic opportunity between blacks, browns and whites is rooted in America’s ignoble history of genocide, slavery, Manifest Destiny, Jim Crow law and racially restrictive covenants.
Law & Order America has systematically incarcerated a generation of black and brown youth without a ripple of reaction from the body politic. Ironically, many African Americans lionize the one who put more blacks in prison than any previous president, Bill Clinton.
Notwithstanding the victories we have won in the Civil Rights struggle, socio-economic reality compels us to concede that we have a long way to go in alleviating the lingering legacy of racism in our society. If we fail to remedy the social evil of racism that festers like a sore in the womb of America the venom will spread and eventually destroy the body politic.
We as individuals and as a people descended from a common mother on Africa’s Serengeti Plain must commit ourselves to abolish racial discrimination in all its insidious forms. We must convince the people and our political leaders that by curing the cancer of racism in America and the world we can achieve social and economic justice for all. Only then, as Langston Hughes said, can America be America again.

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)

A nombre de los Afro-Americanos de las Americas quiero agradecer su reconocimento de la sangre africana
que corre en las venas de Mexico. Es importante notar que la historia de Mexico fue fortalecida por los Afro-Mexicanos.

Nuestro acto de hoy celebra un sector improtante y muy unico. Pero la verdadera celebracion se hara cuando todas las razas se unan para destruir muros de separacion que estan en las fronteras y los corazones.

paz y luz tomas

After a lifetime of fruitlessly pursuing Her form
Hafiz leads me to my open-armed friend
who renders even love’s arrhythmic heart even