(08/21/2014) Poem—Ferguson, MO 2014

August 9th was my birthday, however, it also was a Sabbath.  I spent most of my celebration hours acknowledging the Creator, and being refreshed after his word, his will, and his way.  The difficult events in Ferguson, Missouri were not brought to my attention right away (my heart was being drawn to Hamas and Israel); and now that they are threatening greater ruin than men may manage without GOD, I’ve chosen to share some of my thoughts in a way that challenges a reader to stop, and think.  Those of us who carried out and endured the losses of earlier days are still willing to call for justice, only, not as a lynch mob, a street gang, suicidal thugs, or a pack of roaming marauders.  Having been taught by our being there, we understand, it is an unexplainable loss of all control.  Psychotic breaks (we say, nervous breakdowns) can be the sign of a broken heart and a broken spirit, and the beginning of a breakthrough from GOD.  For the broken all require what only GOD can do.  Because an unarmed teenager was shot in the back, and then gunned down while facing the police officer holding both hands up in surrender, many want to make this the longest and hottest summer of them all.  In memory of Michael Brown, we also say, let us do all we can to make it the very last of its kind in this our Nation.

THE LONG HOT SUMMER:  Ferguson, Missouri, 2014

The fireflies used to light up the night
Just like they’re spose to do come summer
The easy insect songs in darkness
Sparkling like rhinestones sprinkled
Cross the shirt of one of those
Country, western singers
The mosquitoes and the June bugs made no hollar
Yet, the katydids woke up and claimed
That all Creation now is theirs.

How can it be that those so long asleep
May now declare all season, wisdom
Life and blood at their own discretion
With alien sounds no longer outside
But spilling all over the house
Jubilee canceled, unfinished marches for rights
Or freedom, ignoring that justice and outrage
Are now aligned against themselves, the search for summer 
love, and they should be doused in ice water challenge.

The dead are not mourned as if loved or alive in their hearts
The living are not obeyed as if guides to a dream of safety
A jar of ice water, and a breeze from North to South
Unfiltered by the mesh screen, the TV by the window so’s you 
Can see and hear when you sit out on the porch
The steady sounds of rockin chair, or that old love seat
Swing from granddad’s day where, in spite of poverty
We grew up.  The memories of summer where the gas blown 
Up from down in the town now choke one with sorrow.

How can men be satisfied with no more than the knowledge
That their minds and hearts are right
That they have built their home without lies
Without murders, without failing and railing against GOD
How can a man believe himself of value without swearing
Against government, law, patience, and forgiveness
Or look into the face of those to whom his life is pledged
Having created nothing better than a Black Ku Klux Klan
Or a cesspool of godless and lawless liars?

The locust fill the night with plagues, and moans, and fear
Why is there judgment against our quiet days
Surely the burning past that now engulfs the concrete
And the blacktop will soon engulf our future fields
Like rockets launched by Hamas to alter GOD’s
Perpetual divine.  Sleepless, temporarily insane
The problem is some must embrace the problem
The long hot nightmare travels through the mind
The insomnia of riot follows rage.  Cherchez le femme

©Michael Andrew Williams, 2014.  All rights reserved.

There is far more to be said, correctly understood, and spiritually apprehended.  (For example, consider again Isaiah 3:  10-12, Isaiah 5:  13-24, Jeremiah 4:  13, Lamentations 5:  15-17, Luke 11:  52 and Luke 17:  1, KJV.)  Even so, I trust this fragment will be useful.  Be it unto you according to your faith.



THE BLACK PHOENIX
Washington, DC