* written to commemorate my 4600th poem and to serve as a rally cry for school district U-46 in my local Elgin community *
U-4600
Through the squalor of segregators,
I’ve become a scholar and educator.
Despite intolerant hesitators – my mind’s been properly chartered.
In spite of cruel, dismissive and disorderly hicks,
My schooled district court has been fixed…
Like U-46, being a roughed up diamond in the cut
has only gotten me farther.
But even in school, not being cool
afforded me kicks from my peers –
Those who ignored me for the soaring scores
I eclipsed and cleared.
Through tears, I bore sticks, sneers and jeers
that hurt and tormented me.
But I persevered through the persecution.
My words have cleared such adverse nuisances…
As I’ve added verses in unison to subvert such
inhumanly formed entities.
So, as I’ve overcome external and internal demons –
Both versatile and personally uneven,
I haven’t worsened as a person beaten ‘cause I beat the odds!
I beat the odds of aristocratic racists.
I beat the odds of systematic complacence…
I beat the odds ‘til it simply added a cadence for me
to keep my feats un-paused!
All that for a mismatched education!
All that from riffraff’s dispatched desecration.
We’ve fought back from being kids held back from
desperation one-thousand fold!
But there are still hellcats scratchin’ for their turn at the posts
Seeking to blackmail and mail back His un-returnable post…
As if black learning’s a joke to be told under crowd control.
As if they allowed our goals to be reached.
As if they weren’t ousted in polls from a King’s speech.
As if their rowdy roles could control how
I was deemed to reach beyond the grasp of class disruptive oppression.
But like my Hero whose life wasn’t taken
as much as it was laid down,
My prime thesis as I strive for education
is ‘if the book’s thrown at me –
I’m not putting the pages down…’
I’m the only one who can delay where I’m bound –
as I set the stage now since Brown clashed with injustice’s presence.
