Poem inspired by Langston Hughes's "Dream Deferred" from The Panther & The Lash. This is wholesale thievery from the original poem. Same structure (though I added a couplet), same rhyme scheme and similar language. Here's the original. Rainbow Flag, Half Mast
Adam Stone What happens to a massacre replaced by a constantly tragic news cycle? Does it get washed away like blame in a hurricaned city? Or dry up like a well of unsupervised pity? Do its victims finally find peace with their names role called on a press release? Does it get filed as notes for the survivors' therapists when the media changes the word homophobe to terrorist? Maybe it just frays like a rainbow flag made of cotton until it's just another mass shooting forgotten
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Justin finally tracked down a copy of Langston Hughes's The Panther & The Lash, (take that public library!) and has his second interaction, this time with the actual text. My Privilege Has Nothing To Say But It Will Speak Anyway
Justin Strock My privilege has nothing to say, but it will speak anyway - it's wont and whatnot My privilege has nothing to say, but its ignorance does My choice of your text, based solely on lyrics by rapper turned actor In the grand tradition of fake gangstas playing faker detectives The real crime of their acting, unsolved reparations of vaudeville My privilege has nothing to say about the way your verse seems plain Stark as if the anger in your soul Stripped adjectives allusions like acetone the varnish coming off in patches The hues removed from pale wood not lost on me I have (and yes I am looking for your mocking approval) Marched in traffic spewed forth on social media Stood up against admittedly uncomfortable abercronies to defend a muslim kid at prayer A marine at my side Mecca's position shifting parallel to the view of huddled masses' avatar I consume mindfulcinos daily to stay woke Can I get a gold-star back-pat cookie now? My privilege has nothing to say about gentrification Except that I have an excuse for moving to Bed Stuy about how little has changed Since Leontyne belted out of darkness My privilege has grown weary of the echo in my skull First assumed as chorus Justin Strock had trouble finding a copy of The Panther & The Lash, which was the opposite of my problem. I accidentally bought the book twice but failed to science a copy into his hands. He persevered, though, and wrote an interaction about Not reading the book. Truly, he went above and beyond the expectations for this project. Oh, Langston.
How is it that your pantheon is not sold at The Strand, nor able to be retrieved (except in eBook format) - blech at the Central Brooklyn Public Library? it's ceilings vaulted, it's escalators slow, it's cafe and business center teeming: Hassids, West Indians, Hipsterati, the bored, and elderly and adolescently-afflicted. it's stacks sagging, not from the weight of books, but from their rapid obsolescence... What hath become of this once venerable seething city? Where may we still snap our applause unironically? Is this Nunu York now? |
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