About a dream: a poem.
Dr. King, blisters, and anti-racism
“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”
–Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Letter from Birmingham Jail
Annually around his January 15th birthday, I reread Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s "Letter from Birmingham Jail", written in 1963 from his Alabama jail cell, addressed to clergymen and Church leaders on scrap paper. I have read it many times, and each time I revisit it, I find new parts to hook onto and to take forward as I grow along. As a person of privilege, I’m always grateful and never sorry to learn and examine more to serve my lifelong, daily peacemaking and anti-racism journey. There is so much unlearning we have to do.
I don’t normally preamble my poetry like this, but I wanted you to know where this one came from. A few weeks ago when I was in a poetry workshop with Ross Gay and the brilliant creators of Rise Writers (Jen Pastiloff and Kristen McGuiness), Ross gave us a writing drill and said, write about a dream and write about something that flies and Dr. King’s words flew to the forefront of my mind and to the tip of my pen as I recalled my 2016 visit to the MLK and Lincoln Memorials in Washington D.C. I wrote parts of this poem in the workshop and built on it later. I revisited it recently with the words from “Letter” and “I Have a Dream” reminding me, again, what I want to embody in the art I make – in my writing, design, photography, or community building – and in every other way that I show up in the world. And in light of the recent brutal killing of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police officers, I offer these words alongside my outrage, lament, and ongoing commitment to dismantling racist systems that rob humanity and joy and breath from Black people in America.
I hope to be found striving for proactivity over reactivity, and, in Dr. King’s own words, making a career out of humanity.
About a dream
Dr. King stood up
below Abe and said
I Have a Dream, and
I saw where it's etched
in the stone when wet.
I'd crossed the District
wearing blisters raw
on my feet to see history,
which was more like
allowing history to see me.
So, I'm thinking about
the miles which King
marched and the bridges
he crossed and he built
and the letters he penned to
ministers looking like me who
had the keys but chose
white moderation and confederation
over durable peace.
No hot spots on their backs
from shouldering the
weight of the dream
he spoke for each and all of us.
No blisters on their
hands born of the
unending labor
of positive peacemaking.
Just callouses from rubbing that key
smooth like a worry stone.
Justice is molasses progress
and how time does fly
if you can fully inhale.
Dust has collected on these
great stumbled blocks
who are deciding, still,
to be or not to be
the irradical Order Devotees –
there lies the difference between
being history and making it.
What have we done to
shed some sin and some real skin
so his dream can be
real and held and felt?
Not simply quoted on Monday
but lived on Tuesday
and categorically on Sunday.
I speak not from above you
but among you.
Find us with palms raw and
backs hot from reordering and
loosening the binds we see,
promising too: no justice, no peace,
making careers of humanity,
love rippling out from our
inescapable mutuality.
And see,
and see,
it is more than his dream.
Until justice rolls down like waters
and righteousness like a mighty stream,
