Gratitude Is My New Favorite Word

As an artist, no matter how hard you work or suffer or bleed… and no matter how earnest your attempts might be… all you can ask or hope for is that people will pay attention.

From the bottom of my heart, I wish to say THANK YOU for those cool, beautiful people and sweet supportive souls who have paid attention.

"What happens to men, to married fathers who beat their children senselessly...and then storm off into the restless Harlem night?

Do they grieve or lament their terrible actions? Do they hold long conversations with God? Do they think themselves sane and their actions as essential in building the spines of strong Black men?

What happens to them when they walk away from the pain and the ache and the madness they've made? Perhaps some find a soft young distraction that sighs in just the right key, or moans as if on cue, and she or he pretends to understand them...and then that pretty young distraction makes quietly eloquent love to another raging Black man."

From Like Litter in The Wind a novel By L.M. Ross

One Love.

LMR

“I Have a Dream Today…” 50 Years Ago In a Land of Struggle, Progress, and Struggle

“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to climb up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father's died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!"

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that, let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi and every mountainside.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last." –

(Excerpt) By Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr… Given on the steps of The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC-- August 28, 1963

One Love.

DISCONNECTEDNESS

Have you ever felt completely and utterly disconnected from the rest of the world?

I do not mean in some desperate, aggressively sociopathic-serial-killer way that people should hurriedly cross the street whenever they see you approaching…

No. I mean have you ever felt so relentlessly unusual and so blatantly different… that no one else, not another soul ever truly GETS The Real You?

I do. I feel that way most of the time. In fact, I’ve felt that way since time was a child.

It’s this quiet sense of deep inner stillness and it reminds me that no matter where I am, or who I’m with... I am always ALONE.

Freak!

Although there are and have been instances where that lone voice of my freakiness didn’t always hurt or bleed or scream so loudly and I was/am or have been able to blend in with the prosaic rest. However, it was such a part-time phenom that it felt like an almost bogus existence.

Freak!

Have you ever thought that if someone else, anyone else at all truly KNEW you, your card hand would be peeped, the jig would be up… and you would have to forever relinquish each and every one of your Cool Creds?

I do. In fact, any Cool Creds I've collected or amassed would have to be erroneous at best.

I am only me: a freak just beneath my skin.

I don’t think or feel there is anything remotely wrong with this condition---at least not anymore. We can chalk that up to The Riddle of Humanity, the march of maturity and the rules of human evolution.

We are EXACTLY who we're supposed to be.

And what we are supposed to be is different, unique… singular. That is the way God meant for each of us to be.

So this state of disconnectedness, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing, a wicked thing or a source for hidden shame.

FREAK!

But damn it, sometimes it gets sooooooooooooooooooo freakin’ LONELY.

Smell me?

One.

Ten Recent Things That Give Me Pause… Make Me Ask WTF…(?) Or Just Cause Me To Ponder…

One: How three people from my childhood all just died within a week of each other. WTH???

Two: How certain laws are so deviously designed to keep large segments of this population down... permanently.

Three: How it always falls to us to keep those tedious folks who procrastinate— honest and to remind them to live up to their word.

Four: How some friends take these extended sabbaticals and then you never hear from them again.

Five. How doing someone a favor, being in someone’s corner, or a constant source of support doesn’t necessarily manifest in any form of reciprocation.

Six: How several years of making a concerted effort can render absolutely no positive result.

Seven: How people can deny and lie continuously and somehow arrogantly believe they won’t be discovered. Right, A-Rod?

Eight: How willpower isn’t a sometime concept, but a perpetual muscle to be tested and flexed incessantly.

Nine: How people have taken and perhaps always will take kindness for weakness, and how loyalty seems to have gone the way of the dinosaur, the Edsel… and good ole B&W TV.

Ten: How snatching JOY becomes very much necessary, because the bastards and mofos of this world will always try their level best to steal your JOY away from you (& yo quasi-happy azz).

Just sayin’, yo.

One.

Happy Birthday To My Da

Dear Da,

Today, on this July 28th, I feel this need to tell you everything inside me… roll call all my successes, failures, joys fears… and my heartbreaks. I feel as if I should name them all, one by one, for each day, each month, each year you’ve been gone.

Instead, I’ll simply say: Happy Birthday, Da…

Your brown and brooding essence is now a Spirit that possesses my older face. Beneath its surface, some claim to see this trace of Implicit sadness. Still, Da,

I need to tell you this:

I’m so glad you were my father. Blessed, that you stayed when other fools ran, strayed or escaped to places free of their sons and daughter’s cries. Each day in my mind, I thank you for being the person you were: A Man, a Husband, my Dad… and not some Houdini version of manhood.

You managed to form the words: “I love you, son.” And you said them more than once. You spoke them in a voice that even today carries me through this world of uncertainty, untruths, disappointment and ruthlessness.

Thank you for showing and giving me lessons in loyalty. Thank you for that voice which still lingers here like the singer in my brain of this song I call My Life. Thank you for being strong and standing for The Real Things, like hard work and honesty; a steadfast belief in God, and humility.

Thank you for the gifts of laughter; for those golden seasons of summers, and even the winters. Thank you for loving my mother in a way she always deserved to be Loved.

Though you weren’t very tall, I walk in your stalwart shadow now. Yes, I am a small thing made larger by your presence. Some say I am your ‘spit,’ your son, your mirror reflection. and yet, in some lone way, I am different.

I wish we had more days in the sun, more time to decipher and fix all our mutual complications. Yet, when I speak of love there is no mystery, no bitterness, nor distraught insensitivity.

I GET love now. You taught me this! Though the clouds have coalesced and swallowed your sun, you’ll always cast a giant’s shadow over this kid, this runt, this man I’ve become.

I need to tell you this:

I’m so glad you were my father. Blessed, that you stayed when other fools ran, strayed or escaped to places free of their sons and daughter’s cries. Each day in my mind, I thank You for being the kind of person you were: A Man, a Husband, My Da.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

One Love.

from Lin

Copyright© 2013 By L.M. Ross

For Your Listening Pleasure: Gregory Porter - "1960 What?"

Ain't It Strange How History Can Repeat Itself When We Don't Pay Attention?

One.

Reality Check...

By George! I think he's got it!

If only Florida lawmakers,

Judges and their juries

Did!

One.

Stevie Wonder Reacts to Zimmerman Trial Verdict

Stevie Wonder says he won't perform again in Florida until the state abolishes its Stand Your Ground gun law, which permits using deadly force against those who pose a risk of killing or seriously injuring someone. He made the announcement during a concert Sunday in Quebec City, a day after the acquittal of George Zimmerman.

Zimmerman was acquitted in the Feb. 26, 2012, shooting death of teen Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla. The outcome has sparked protests nationwide and an outpouring of outrage on social media. Wonder urged his fans to support his boycott.

"The truth is that — for those of you who've lost in the battle for justice, wherever that fits in any part of the world — we can't bring them back," he said. "What we can do is we can let our voices be heard. And we can vote in our various countries throughout the world for change and equality for everybody. That's what I know we can do."

You can watch Wonder's entire statement above.

One Love.

Trayvon's Scream

Everyday and every night some black or brown child will slip through the cracks of this world… disappear… meet with a violent event that

stops his heart…

that steals his breath

… that ends his life.

And there will be silence.

* * * * * *

Who really screamed that rainy Florida night?

I believe it was Trayvon Martin.

I believe it was his mother.

I believe it was another faceless,

Nameless victim of America’s

Injustice.

Who really screamed that rainy Florida evening…?

I believe it was a chorus of my ancestors. It was

Emmet Till’s scream…

And Abner Louima’s

And Yusef Hawkins’…and

Michael Griffith’s…

And Michael Stewart's

And Eleanor Bumpers’

And Oscar Grant’s…and

Ramarley Graham’s…

I believe it was Trayvon Martin’s scream

Knowing

His right to a life of Liberty was

A cause too small to hear

And too meaningless to process…

His Life was just

A scream to be ignored or

Crushed

Like a beetle upon concrete.

And now. . .

Who will scream for all of them?

And who will scream for him

If not us…

If not me, a lone poet who knows nothing

About the pain or velocity of a bullet

To the chest?

All I know for sure is this:

Justice is a blind bitch that doesn’t give a shit about us.

It just continuously breaks my heart that we must live like this!

It just continuously breaks my heart that we must die like this!

The saddest reality of all is this:

Justice is a blind, cold-hearted bitch, that doesn’t

Give a shit

About us.

One.

Copyright© 2013 By L.M. Ross

All Rights Reserved without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in or reintroduced in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission from the author, except brief quotes used in reviews.

For Father’s Day … a Kidhood Memory

I’d heard so many stories of my father... the elegant jazz vagabond, the fine pomaded dandy who dressed to the nines, and who had people lined up to see him play in every city, every town and every state.

He held court like royalty. He was far too important and much too busy, so he didn’t always attend to the needs of those tedious subjects who comprised his family.

Back then, I was just a kid. Between him and my mother, I didn’t know of their marital politics, and I couldn’t decipher the strange, algebraic equation that formed my parents’ private life. And so, in those first five years, I’d had no real or touchable memory of a life with my father, at least, not in the physical sense. And then there came that moment, when a boy sees, digests, and processes it all, and it’s then that he falls in love with his father.

I was six. I vividly remember it. He was stepping off the train from Cleveland, carrying a small brown reptilian suitcase and a larger, more elongated one that held his prized trumpet. He appeared to be very big to my small eyes. He was statuesque and more handsome than all those shiny-men emoting from our small, black and white TV set. This was my daddy, my Pops, damn it—looking like no one else I’d ever seen! It was as if he were from another planet, man… a planet called Cool.

You could hear the music in him when he walked. A sound like a snare drum’s beat with its own unique syncopation seemed to reside inside of him. It lived in the carefree sway of his shoulders and resounded in the bop of his stride. I remember thinking, this is what I come from... this is what I could be! He was an outstanding example of a man. He was... magnificent!

It was more than the stylish cut and taper of his blue, double-breasted, pinstriped suit. It was more than that mysterious fedora which shaded his face in a way that was dramatic and subdued; and it was more than those fancy spectator shoes he wore, which made that lively tapping noise.

There was a certain quality, a magical sheen to his rich copper skin, and it seemed a corona glowed all around him. He moved in the slowest motion towards us. Everyone else around him was rushing swiftly to those places strangers go, and yet, he was gliding. I’d never seen a colored man glide before.

Yes, I was falling in love with my father; falling in love with a flowing vision kissed by a corona of light. He appeared to represent some extension of myself. And thus my love affair began with a revelation in a natty-blue suit.

His love for me was always an enigma, shaded under a sly fedora.

From Like Litter In The Wind By L.M. Ross

One.