If Looks Could Kill...

In Glances
Written By Larry J. Knight, Jr.

She pretends not to care,
though there’s truth
in her eyelashes;
they revel too much,
communicate in code
her heart’s intent;
indifference overpowered
by tiny wisps of hair
that bat when her eyes
are strangely fixed upon me;
the rawness of her restrained smile,
the language of her silence,
the verbiage defined within her
stare, speaking a million words
resonating without a syllable;
she’s quiet,
I’m cool,
she resists,
I decipher her look;
translate the message
hidden in her reluctance to speak;
transcribe the cryptogram
that’s her expression:
a tiny curl of the mouth
becomes discontent;
wandering eyes
become avoidance;
a tilted neck,
a search for comprehension;
she looks, curiously,
eyes seeking some shred of reason,
I translate:
her heart beckoning her to love,
her brain, diluting want with logic;
she’s quiet,
I’m cool,
she resists,
I decipher her looks;
she knows that tomorrow
is nothing more than mythology,
fantasies promised to those
willing to embrace the sanctity of chance;
realizes more than anything
love’s a chemical,
that it poisons
if taken too much;
she’s always consumed mine in moderation,
taking only as much is needed;
she pretends, if only for now,
that she doesn’t care,
doesn’t feel,
doesn’t want to love me;
she’s quiet,
I’m cool,
she resists,
I decipher her looks;
study the concealed lexis
existing beneath the surface
of her faint, vacant expression;
needing some answer,
some insight
to quench my curiosity,
and know what truth she hides
yearning to break free.

Copyright 2005 Larry J. Knight, Jr.

Memories

An Elegy
Written By Larry J. Knight, Jr.

I’ll miss your innocence;
the way you danced
by moonlight,
without a song,
down St. Charles Avenue,
carelessly,
whispering into the night,
tracing your fingertips
on the trunks of trees
as you moved pass them,
your arms outstretched,
like wings,
balancing you,
giving you flight;

I’ll dream of your baptism,
when you were immersed
within transient waves of jazz;
the way you floated
down the River Walk
on its notes,
effortlessly;
how you, and the waves
of the Mississippi,
moved synchronously
in that spring air;

I’ll miss the glow
of your white satin dress
at midnight,
the curve of your figure
and your smile in a seamless tandem,
your eyes reflecting
the moon;
how your Southern gentility
charmed new souls
with just a glance,
they fell in love with you,
as did I.

Copyright 2005 by Larry J. Knight, Jr.

Finding the Right Words

What Matters Most
By Larry J. Knight, Jr.

As most of you know, Rosa Parks, an icon of the Southern Protest Movement, died last night. She was 92. All day today, I thought about what I could say that would encapsulate how I felt about this woman. It just seemed as if no words would suffice; that was however before I read the tribute postings on The Detroit Free Press' website.

As I read each of the poignant and intimately written postings, I found my words. Sure, I can be verbose at times, but in light of everything that Rosa Parks stood for, I felt that simplicity was best. In this case, minimalism would win. It is a widely known fact that Mrs. Parks was humble in her greatness; that she felt that what she did way back in 1955 was not some grand gesture, but more of something that just had to be done. As I considered the sad truth that we, not just African-Americans, but the entire world population, had lost a revered, loved, and honored citizen of the human race; a person who single-handedly changed our world, not to mention the world's perception of African-American women, I found my words, and I began to type...

"Thank you, Mrs. Parks...from an entire generation."

As I stated, simplicity was required.

Catharsis...

photo by the Associated Press (copyright 2005)

South of Paradise, Home of the Dispossessed
Written by Larry J. Knight, Jr.

-for the children of New Orleans

Remember the summer exodus
of southern heartbreak and diasporas
moving across the nation;
fleeing from rotting corpses, left to decay
in sewage and oil,
beneath a merciless Louisiana sun;
will families once solidified by community,
now split like breached levees
continue to be embraced with open arms
when the collective flood of evacuees
reach an impasse,
when America, forgets;

New Orleans,
will TV record your fate,
will AP photos document your future,
will the winds of change
blow cold, once altruism
is replaced with indifference-
the skeletal hand of charity
and humanism, methodically drawn in retreat;

Will hunger pangs and dehydration,
and shrieks for help
receive any remembrance
as the bones of drowned children
lost in the tidal surge of a swollen lake
crumble to dust;
will memorials for the dispossessed
be erected when the migration
marks an anniversary;
who’ll honor the disaster,
will scores of visitors flock
to the convention center,
to stand, or genuflect
where the poor were left to die;

Remember New Orleans;
its tree lined boulevards,
its putrid smell,
its pulsing jazz,
its people,
their joi d’ vivre,
their mulatto and Creole faces
contorted, in anguish,
forced from their homes;
who’ll remember their exodus,
mothered by hurricane,
inseminated by civic disparity,
the offspring is relocation,
people, moved from shelter to refuge,
sleeping for the first time
under unfamiliar skies
and unrecognizable stars,
Africans in Utah,
Nebraska,
Montana,
Oklahoma;
who’ll call them home,
remind them that red sunsets
never fell across their rooftops;
that the thick, grey looming shadow
of a chemical plant’s smoke trail,
cancerously rained down on them;
who’ll tell them that airborne carcinogens
aren’t tolerable as long as a government check
arrives at the end of the month,
discuss years of ecological ruin,
remind them, of the smell of poverty,
an inescapable odor trapped in memory’s grasp,
still, pungently, afflicting senses;

Remember New Orleans,
its orphaned children
scattered into the four winds,
lost in the wilderness,
adopted like human pets
only to be left behind
when they’re of no use,
when philanthropy withers,
when other children need bread and clothes,
who’ll champion their cause then;
will we still write songs about the bayou,
sing to the low moon over the Mississippi,
and dream, of the Crescent City
submerged under 20 feet of water;
what’ll become of compassion then,
when the attention is drawn elsewhere
and the city, is finally
and truly, left to fend for itself;

Where will the press conferences be held,
will we hear the sound bites
over the echoed screams of single mothers
who sift through the mud soaked remnants
of their lives;
when a son learns his daddy
was washed away with the flood;
when the ghastly sounds of the funeral dirge
rise, and hover above the city,
will we remember;

When empathy dries and tears subside,
will anybody count the hours
brown toxins spewed
into the poorest parts of the city;
who’ll speak of the death
that swept over them
as whispers of convenient resignation
and the guise of compassion
recount impoverished suffering;
who’ll worry about the affliction
fostered by the middle class, and sustained
by the continued poisoning of neighbors,
the slow extermination of strangers;
will they remember
that the rich and the poor
never intersected before this,
their lives too polarized;
abject poverty on the left,
needless excess on the right,
in-between them, a gulf that can’t be filled;
will they see this city,
New Orleans, as an oasis of corruption and greed,
proof of the lasting power of Jim Crow,
where the poor live deep in the barrel of shot gun homes,
cursed, like the wandering dead,
while in comparison, the affluent live like gods;
both divided by race, class, and education,
essential ingredients for the roux,
used to make a lethal gumbo of disproportion,
fed to the victims of gentrification
staining a nation when it boils over the top;
but who’s hands are marked,
who’ll clean up years of brewing antagonism;
a community displaced, or a society
that cares as long as the cameras are rolling;

Remember New Orleans,
its disease infested bowels,
its squalid ghettos,
its abandoned homes,
its deserted avenues, left to the dead,
will anybody recall the families, pulled apart,
stretched across a nation,
separated, given little, if any hope,
children and parents both
clinging to a myth of tomorrow;
will the fabric of the American dream
be ripped by society’s eventual indifference,
will the wounds on the feet of trekking masses
of dispossessed Southerners fester, and rot,
will their bodies succumb to the infection,
crippling them, for generations to come?

Who’ll remember?



Copyright 2005 by Larry J. Knight, Jr.

The Myth of Tomorrow?

photo by The Associated Press (copyright 2005)

The Myth of Tomorrow
Lyrics by Larry J. Knight, Jr.
Arrangement by L. J. Knight, Jr. and V. S. Major

Sleep precious children sleep,
our lives in the next world ain't far ahead,
Rest little children, rest your weary souls
for the Lord's a comin' soon
to take our spirits home.

Remember the land of our mother,
sweet land of our mother
take our spirits home

Remember the bend of the river,
to the bend of the river
take our spirits home

Dream precious children dream,
close your eyes and believe in sweet deliverance
Pray pretty children, kneel before the Lord
for salvations train's arrivin'
so climb on board.

Believe in the life everlasting
true life everlasting
take our spirits home

Believe in our life's redemption
our redemption is a coming
take our spirits home

Copyright 2005 by Larry J. Knight, Jr.