I –
After forty years of benign neglect, after he
who always believed he knew white folks better
that they knew themselves, helped them
rationalize their hypocrisies and contradictions, after
all the murders of the sixties, when the best and most
courageous Black men whoever walked upon this land
were killed, he simply declared “I am not your Negro,”
no longer interested in helping you through your
befuddlement about what to do with Black people,
equality under the law or kill us,
you seem to have chosen
complicity
in the deaths of Martin, Malcolm and Medgar, for whom
I would have surrendered my own life.
And he nearly did.
II
When I first met Jimmy and read his words on the mountain top
I felt a kinship loner outsider observer
of a world about which I knew so little save I was
not their
white boy
embarking on a decades-long quest for who
what I was
where I belonged in this world and I knew it was not
as an entitled white man playing the zero-sum game
that defines American life.
As the fascists are poised to come tramping in, Jimmy, I
reminisce about you trouncing Bill Buckley in Cambridge
telling presumptuous liberals that they couldn’t see
white supremacy for the trees
couldn’t get out of their own way
and better stay out of yours, Jimmy of the fierce
convictions, brilliant, in your face, uncompromising
model for all I’ve tried to be.
III
I could wish you were here now but you’ve taught us
what we need to know and do –
reminding ourselves and those who would
strip us of who we are, independent women and free men
warning we will not countenance
a collection of contemptible clowns controlling us and
dictating our destinies
Yes, defiance in the face of injustice and oppression
joining together to fight back, no mourning
organize.