With the start of NFL football yesterday, I must salute those brave and patriotic players and teams who take a stand against police brutality of black people. I must share this poem and video that my Miami Dolphins shared.  I stand in complete solidarity with the Dolphins on this issue.  

https://twitter.com/i/status/1304186433054420992

It is authentic? That’s the mystery.

Or is it just another symbolic victory?

Now there’s two anthems. Do we kneel do we stand.

If we could just right our wrongs we wouldn’t need two songs.

We don’t need another publicity parade.

So we’ll just stay inside until it’s time to play the game.

Whatever happened to the funds that were promised. All of a sudden we got a collapsed pocket?

The bottom line should not be the net profit. You can’t open your heart when it’s controlled by your wallet.

Decals and patches. Fireworks and trumpets. We’re not puppets. Don’t publicize false budgets.

Ask the pundits and we shouldn’t have a say. If you speak up for change, then I’ll shut up and play.

If we remain silent, that would just be selfish. Since they don’t have a voice, we’re speaking up for the helpless.

It’s not enough to act like you care for the troops. Millions for pregame patriotism. You get paid to salute.

Lift every voice and sing? It’s just a way to save face. Lose the mask and stop hiding the real game face.

So if my dad was a soldier, but the cops killed my brother, do I stand for one anthem, and then kneel for the other?

This attempt to unify only creates more divide. So we’ll skip the song and dance. And as a team we’ll stay inside.

We need changed hearts. Not just a response to pressure. Enough. No more fluff and empty gestures.

We need owners with influence and pockets bigger than ours. To call up officials and flex political power.

When education is not determined by where we reside. And we have the means to purchase what the doctor prescribed.

And you fight for prison reform and innocent lives.

And you repair the communities that were tossed to the side.

And you admit you gain from it, and swallow your pride. And when greed is not the compass, but love is the guide.

And when the courts don’t punish skin color, but punish the crime.

Until then, we’ll just skip the long production and stay inside.

For centuries, we’ve been trying to make you aware.

Either you’re in denial, or just simply don’t really care.

It’s not a black/white thing. Or a left/right thing. Let’s clean the whole bird, and stop arguing about which wing.

Then, Flores faced the camera, and concluded:

Before the media starts wondering and guessing, they just answered all your questions. We’ll just stay inside.

Smash the glass if you must, yet
do it gently using soft hammers.
Catch the fury in your breath and
release its image on the pane.

The goal is not destruction but creation,
to leave behind something cracked
yet still whole, hanging precariously together,
a reminder that we are all shards about to fall.

Tap and if it forms a line tap again,
until a lip forms a mouth, maybe yours,
a tear- an eye like your mother’s,
again, your father’s shattered brow.

Leave enough of you behind
for them to complete.
Gentrify the other glasses with
the genealogy of all your pain.

Make everything a museum of
all the world’s shattered glass
that none dare destroy  lest
even they fall apart

The Little Bessy  molts its white chipped,
dull letters out to waves it cannot use.

Capsized on the rocky Maine beach, where  
it once fished for lobster in richer anchors,
the peapod displays its tattered nets on its hull
while the Man O War, filled with a haul of tourists,
bruises the gentle waves of Penobscot Bay.

Its oars are mounted on the lobster shack wall,
its sails framed in the nautical museum.
Abandoned are the days it was pulled
from its moorings on the wharf and sailed
through Penobscot air or spilled weighted circles,

days that were longer than any of its old parts,
times when old hands  hoped for better ways
never knowing they’ve come and gone.

Its broken, rusty anchor once met the spent waves,
the hands holding and releasing it down
to mate firmly with the mount, the moment
when the old lobsterer father firmly grounds
The Little Bessy’s wanton desire to push out to sea.  

Betrayed and exposed every day, run by no one,
Bessy drifts into beauty she never desired:
the pretty postcard in the wharf gift shop,
photos  taken by others rushing by in other boats.
when she was always meant to be the secret  
memory of the lobsterer hauling up his lonely pots.

Abandoned in the middle of the blasted field,
its arms shredded, legs battered,
the chair exists in broken splendor
catching the best of the speckled light
dancing in the quivering shadows.
Lines of the seated father stain the backrest,
motherly molds are left behind in the seat foam,
the relentless kicks, tattoos of children’s feet
bruise the red velvet of the front rail.

At dawn, pulses of light run along its rails
dispersing all shadows to the wet ground.
At the speed of forgetfulness
two robins alight on this storm orphan,
widow, widower, this sole survivor,
with twigs to build a new stick home.

The clean church Christ
hangs on rusty nails,
dozen-fold years
denied a resurrection,
tied to everlasting
pain and death,
heaven denied,
mortal redemption denied
because the flesh,
existing between hope and despair,
refuses the soul’s release.

The congregation
is dead to peace,
only knowing the scrapping
of their knuckles on the smooth stone-
dead to the light,
seeing only the night,
dead to divine comprehension,
dead to the angels hiding
in their coarse crosses
of common wood.

Outside the lamb
bleats in the snow
wandering unheard
in the wilderness,
fearing slaughter
more than charity,
wandering far from
their muffled mouths,
wandering far from
their questioning,
wandering far from
their sense of things.

The bus driver sees people as they really are:
survivors & corpses going for regular treatment,
shadows & lights moving in a tunnel,
loved & loveless reflections in a rear view mirror,
like him, the sufferers of whole-body vibrations
of the potholes & uneven pavements of the road,
the sedentary motion breaking their backs
until everything is saturated in grief, anger & pain.

In the swing room among the crack of eight *****
and the other drivers sullenly chewing their lunch
he writes a history of the young father struggling
with a stroller who slips on without paying,
the obituary of the white ghost with the
5 o’clock shadow who boards at the hospital,
all notes for the melodic line for his sax solo
at Johnny’s that night.

His fingers touch the imaginary valves
& before the movement is over
the road chants for his return.
He puts on his blue cap,
tucks in his shirt & straighten his pants.
The abuse is almost immediate,
starting before he can sit and close the door.
The engine revs with the  melodies of the city
& in the harsh notes, he hears the smooth variations
that will drive him through the long night ahead & home.

Let me swap your window view with mine.
Better yet, let me open a new window
anywhere in the world:

Swap my clouds with the widow Lotta
that delights in the sight of six boys skipping
on the edge of an Amsterdam canal

who then furtively disappear into
the dark wide open doors of the
*** Palace Peep show across the street.

Swap my lonely rainy sky with Bess the
matronly Cotswold poet courting Badgers
to fight over tossed scraps of Savory Pie.

Swap my lulling dark with Akhenaten
gazing at the sacred African ibis as they
chant and soar over the Pyramids of Giza.

Exchange my blue with Jean Paul
watching yellow turn red to gray night
in time-lapse from his Cassis maison.

Barter my coffee for Rakesh’s tea
and his Hindi copy of the Yajur Veda like
a still life posed on a blue  window ledge.

Ransom unbargained Chiara’s Roman tableau
in red clay tiles surrounding a blood bell tower
beautiful enough for a young Da Vinci’s pastels.

Exchange breaths with Kiko as she panics
when a Tokyo bullet train convulses through,
a reminder of both our unstable lives,

Until memories of Mary dancing in the  
downpour of a Manhattan summer shower
fall through the hospitals, the last goodbyes—

until there I am, a scared little boy
starring out my bedroom window
awaiting dawn for another chance

to splash in the blue blue kiddie pool,
walk in the un-paned grass, shouting
to the white sky that follows me always.