Haiku for the Season

A star shone brightly

Marking the place of your birth

Will your life matter?

I Am

I am a Black man. I wear this skin like armor, bequeathed to me by warriors who bade me keep the faith and fight the power. This nose, these lips, this jaw reflect the motherland I have never seen. I will not be cowed by lies, or threats, or scraps from the conqueror's table. In me burns the truth of King, the rage of Hannibal, and the wisdom of Solomon. My children are the seeds of the future. I will sacrifice all to see them grow, even as my ancestors did. Despots and demons may come and go. Monuments may fall and crumble to dust. Still, by the grace of God, I am a Black man.

The Crimson Spider

I am the Crimson Spider

I sit astride the earth

I’ve come to show the many

What a single life is worth

I migrated from east to west

In a single cursed day

No matter what your status

My power will hold sway

I am the scion of the angel

Who took the male firstborn

Of every Egyptian patriarch

Who mimicked Pharaoh’s scorn

Faith must marry science

To stay my deadly course

Wash your hands, wear your mask

And seek your higher source  

I am the Crimson Spider

My web is made of lies

Its purpose is to convince you

Not to trust your eyes

Sometimes

Sometimes we see what we were meant to be

Sometimes we grasp what we were meant to hold

Sometimes the Son pulls the veil from our eyes

And we can see His message in a single soul

Those times are precious, lucent and rare

Like the quiet space in the middle of prayer

If we can let go of “I” and “me”

Sometimes we see what we were meant to be

In memory of Chadwick Boseman, a true hero

Why Now?

What motivates a 73-year-old African American man to publish his first book? All my life I have fought an uphill battle against racism. In most of the educational and professional venues in which I have studied and worked I have been in the minority. I attended majority white schools and worked in majority white places of business. Since I was a child, reading and writing have been the palliative I have used to soothe myself against the daily injuries that a racialized society deals out to those of us who refuse to know our place.

Since I was a child, I have loved western novels and T.V. shows, because they were morality plays where good and evil were clearly defined often by the color of their hats.  In the western movies and books, however, often the only black things were the hats and the horses.  This led me to research the role of African Americans in the “taming of the west.”  What I discovered was that racism had deftly obliterated black people from the historical picture of the western frontier. In Walker’s Way I try to set the record straight through fiction based upon fact and at the same time remind my contemporaries, young and old, that we have a rich history of facing and defeating daunting odds.  The people of color in my book refuse to be defined as victims, supplicants or savages.  Instead, they carve dignity and self-respect out of the rock of oppression.

Writing Walker’s Way was therapy for me, a therapist. It is one way I have tried to seize this pivotal moment in history and add my voice to the chorus that insists that black lives matter, yesterday, today and tomorrow.