Big Easy in Me

Just finished eating two day old

okra gumbo (after the seasonings have settled)

so good it, takes me back to

St. Charles Avenue streetcar rides…

Magazine St., to the end of the line

to Audubon Park, on the Riverfront

…crawfish boils with WYLD

weekends…picnics and holding hands

on riverboat cruises and stolen kisses

beneath broad magnolias and

a sweeping elm’s shady cool…

while families enjoyed the day

Good gumbo can cause nostalgia when

…you’re homesick and longing

for back in the days when

life was the way we lived

…70’s house parties and

slow-dragging under a black bulb

New Orleans summer times and

falling in love with a pretty girl

good fun, good food…and times

The late night walks in the Quarter

…Canal St., lit up like Vegas or

“second-line Sundays” on Claiborne Avenue

and buck-jumpin with…

Rebirth Brass Band and people yellin out

“Le sez le bon temps roulette!”

(Let the good times roll!)…happy

…free and how we love…living

There’s no place

…like where I’m from*      

Jon` B. Crenshaw

Big Easy in Me

© copyright 2011 - All Rights Reserved

Slow Death

Culture in crisis…wasting away

within derivatives of various victimizations and

historic plunderings…societally bereft

and weakened by degrees of

deep seeded fears of/and bigotry’s slights

Slavery of our cultural synchronicity causing

backward flowing vices of senselessness by the

criminalization and color-classification…of our skin

Though we struggle and fight…no way to win

this battle…we can’t win for freedom’s sake

Can’t win; humane justice and equality’s favor

…we are not allowed freedom’s acceptance

to smile…to feel that kiss of America’s blend

Passages through time have hardened the eyes of

the stony eyed stares of the blinded masses as

many revel freely in genocidal eccentricities…unaware

uncaring, in a battle with egocentrics and filtered genetics

beleaguered by poverty’s vice grip and degeneration into

ghetto mentalities of ignorance, degradation and shame…

the victim victimizing all senses of moral code and ethical worth

dying deaths of wasted births…

Cry the lonely mothers of wayward and abandoned children

…sages of wanting and receivers of heartache and familial loss

drowning in stale, waterless pools of despair that

chastises their fates and cripples with the weight of their pains

They see the compromised manhood of their men who’ve

lost their true countenance…

as they wane in unrealistic glows of damning cruelties

…and unrealized potentials

Those sons of sons, who’ve never quite understood

their true identity…their rightful place

Centuries of never knowing their father’s strengths and

being guided by the nuances of self-hate…the pulses

of unrelenting doubts of their fragile worthiness…

pride-less and shamed by constant failings…

with hearts darkened by the bruising shackles

placed by history’s brutal slap to their faces

…the constant challenges to their manly stature

Owning no “pissing pot” and feeling…

a “Black man’s worth”

…will be forgotten and dismissed

just as monarch butterflies emerging from cocoons…

born to die…a wasted birth*

Jon` B. Crenshaw

Slow Death

© copyright 2011 - All Rights Reserved

Mother's Time

The world teeters on a precipice

a global transition is imminent

they label them “natural disaster”

more likely, the washers of our sins

We have not taken great care

we’ve not been patient…responsible

we have lost our precious connection

to the earth we no longer honor

Man has raped her of resources

battered her lands and forests

polluted her waters and skies

and marvel as she heals her scars

There should be no surprise as she

up-heaves with earth quakes and

cleanses with salted waves of balm

the things that need to be done

Mother-earth must undo man’s lusts

must renew the landscapes he’s shred

to provide all the things of life

that life may continue in harmony

It’s apparent, man no longer understands

that all life is a part of…all life

every rock, tree, raindrop, fish, leaf

every bird, beast and grain of sand

Every baby born is our relative

a member of our human family

every life is precious…meaningful

but our love has wavered…gone silent

Different cultures and skin tones

offer mankind blessed diversity

yet we have chosen to separate instead

because of fear, jealousy, greed and ego…

the planet now groans in anger

she can stand it no more

the world teeters on a precipice

man’s evils will meet an end

It is a time of renewal…replenishment

and…the hour is long overdue*

Jon` B. Crenshaw

Mother’s Time

© copyright 2011 - All Rights Reserved

Mellow Mood

Never had the pleasure

to dance with Sammy Davis Jr.

never blew trumpets with Satchmo

but…I did laugh, with Curly, Larry and Moe

never met Malcolm or M.L.K., but

their still both heroes of mine

Langston, Maya and Nikki…my favorite poets

they guided me through my prime

listen to Jazz, when I need to relax

has that effect…smooth like that

loved it when my kids were small

those memories mean the most of all*

Jon` B. Crenshaw

Mellow Mood

© copyright 2011 - All Rights Reserved

Loss of Life

We are no longer shocked…

when we are witness to cruelty and

though we are victim of its whims

we chose to turn the other cheek

As chaos swims the waters of fate

mayhem and havoc walk the land

man stares deeper into the black void

and still understands most of nothing

Purposeful liars deceive the masses

absorbed within their dens of greed

shame the names of their forefathers

as things have become their gods

The future of mankind lies in wait

for sin, our tally must be weighed

to pay the pipers of righteousness

the sum of prophecy offers no profits

The thought of brotherly love…

rendered to merely thus…a thought

the forgotten day-dreams of romantics

we no longer cherish the blessed earth

…nor do we care…of each other*

Jon` B. Crenshaw

Loss of Life

© copyright 2011 - All Rights Reserved

Human Parts

Looking in the mirror of a still pond

my reflection staring up into my soul

see my younger version of yesterdays

see the maybes…of my life yet lived

eyes that have witnessed beautiful things

flights of eagles and robins…a peacock’s flare

the dances of children’s first baby-steps

felt the power of a woman’s smile

been moved to tears by injustice

known anger for man’s inhumanities

shared heartbreaks and felt harsh pain

experienced the harm that words can bare

these eyes have watched many lifetimes and

read the histories of long passed scribes

looked at the faces of fallen Angels

but…never peered into their darkness

a reflection…an unrecorded picture

an open window of one’s interpretations

an image of a self…looking back

what I’ve seen…

whispers of the inner me…and memories*

Jon` B. Crenshaw

Human Parts

© copyright 2011 - All Rights Reserved