Blues Jeans

A shadow of disappointment

Settled around their earnest campaign

Like ominous clouds 

The debonair Martin who emerged

From his Gaston Hotel room

Dressed in a denim shirt over his dress shirt

And new blue(s) jeans folded at the cuff

Ready to march as a one-man campaign

If needed past a police blockade

And to boycott Easter

Caught everybody by surprise

It was do or die in Birmingham

Time to go to jail

Write a letter from jail

Cheat Golgotha again defy grim predictions

Good Friday April 12th 1963

New clothes for Holy Ghosts 

New consequences from praying over

Black coffee at midnight

How you like us now Bull Connor

White clergy, George Wallace, Ku Klux Klan and

Downtown department stores of Bombingham

We Shall Overcome is unfinished business

Blues jeans and resistance and singing

And marching and boycotting and occupying 

Remain necessary in the 21st Century

Necessary as Easter

Blue Jean Sunday a day of infamy

A day of irony

Years before Memphis ML

Carried the slogan I am a man

Like his calling card

I can’t forget

A history of genocide

From where the buffalo roamed

To where ancestors were slaughtered

(From New Orleans to New York

From Birmingham to Boston to

The Caribbean to Hiroshima 

Nagasaki to Saigon

Then Korea

Vietnam 

Iraq

Afghanistan…) 

Freedom ain’t ringing yet but

Moon Glow and Honeysuckle hippies

Cut off hair put on business suits

Returned to mainstream

Reclaimed white privilege

I

Still marginalized

Still bamboozled

Grow hair even longer

Wear suit jackets with

Faded blues jeans

And forgot how to pray

Displaced and sort of homeless

Resistance became my residence

Blues in genes

An inheritance of ill fate and disease

Blues in DNA go undetected

By body scanners and amnesiacs

But causes elevated blood pressure

Diabetes

Schizophrenia

Heartache

Organ failure

Chronic dysfunction

Dissatisfaction

Discomfort and death

Blues in passed on genes make dancing

A way of life

Music unforgettable

And faux pas a family value

Strange fruit and bruised fruit 

Is epidemic worldwide  

Exported like hamburgers

French fries

And carbonated cola

Infectious like Arab Spring