but in the everywhere yesterday i must ask black fathers
if you could turn back time and attend to opportunities lost
would you have paid more attention
to those brother uncle cousin clan & neighborhood fathers
that left history stained by marks of dread & puzzle piece infernos of pain
would you have paid more attention and blocked those fathers
by offering alternative paths where pain didn’t interrupt growth
& keep children from languishing in a security of love & teddy bear dreams
In praise & remembrance of black fathers everywhere
who understood the beckoning call of creation’s heart beat
So embraced each poly-rhythmic tone
signaling from inside day & nights’ unfolding contents
that made a drum talk in magic aspirations of language
until even the trees understood
each salutation to the path of ancestor bones
embracing tradition passing down the knowledge of ages
with reverence to god & breath
In remembrance & praise of black fathers everywhere
that united the spark & spunk of gospel seeds
long before slavery chains & auction blocks
oppressed a blues people under brutalization & cracking lash
& there were always black fathers
who were never duplicitous directly or indirectly
in sending millions of black souls across the earth as slaves
to bring civilization to all corners of the world’s fruit again
giving pax whitie its’ gold standard
from a fast forward exploitation smothered by hatred’s
centuries of damaging wrongs
in praise & remembrance of black fathers everywhere
forced to juggle & carry revolutions’ vast entropy of change
as a break down burden of human flesh
& sent spinning toward the second coming of jesus
yet made a way out of no way
lumpen proletariat brothers
kicking down multiple closed doors to opportunity
where racism used skin color identification
to even bar black fathers from menial jobs
sweeping floors
living in “for whites only” places where fear ran rampant
& segregation roared
