By: Cedric McClester

Despite some misconceptions
And attacks
Endure for centuries
By us blacks
Let me lay down
Some unknown facts
How ‘bout we start with
Henrietta Lacks

For most of us
After our death
Other than memories
What else is left?
For our survivors
The bereft
Yet her cells live on
It’s a matter of theft

From Henrietta’s
Cancerous cells
A bold idea
Suddenly jells
Spawning cures for cancer
As her biographer tells
And in vitro fertilization
Other things as well

Science took complete advantage
Of her cells
Which they still manage
Though she died of cervical cancer
Her cells provided them
With the answer
To scientific mystery
Check out her cells history











Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2017.  All rights reserved.

your heartbeat can pulse through your verse
pump steady and sure
time the weaving
and bleed all over the page
Yes you are not heartless
you care about many things
and some things break your heart.

Did you indeed perish
or just desirous thinking?
Has my mind wantonly provoked me
to believe it genuine?

Awakened by the echo of an uncertain scream
as my nightmare surrounds the darkness,
a menacing presence the terror is paralyzing;
is this a dream or actuality?

The panic is suffocating my ability to react;
my impulse is eager to vanish from sight.
Trapped in my nightmare without an escape,
melted into the shadows of a forgotten moment.

In my subconscious, why do you haunt?
With each visit, I flourish sharper.
You ripped the innocence from my soul,
but I held firmly to my spirit; of that you could not steal.

what is this
the sound of a voice
a faint crackle
over the line
burning icicle dipped
into ink of my dark
zipped in a fracture
           through space
woven in time
the sound of it
           penetrates
a heated
         arctic zing
of light
into the soul
and your words
caress places that
would not be reached
in life's daily hold

I would look into your eyes
my blues to yours
two vast oceans
never ending
This might express
the divinity
of the word "love"
This might express
a fraction of the feeling
                and this alone
could be all consuming
but the real expression
would be my mouth
devouring yours
      my tongue
exploring your lips
and all that's inside
my starlight
infusing your being
as we press into
the silken matter
as the levity of skin
that brushes like silk
as your actual saliva
and ***
are my nourishment,
like heaven's milk
and our cells
ignite in slow movement
as we gasp and sigh
the air around us
invisible velvet
I want beyond
internet
I want beyond
a small, mirrored screen
I need to drink your luster
as we inhale the soft, molten folds
as we break open
and drink deep
inner liquids
as we crack
and the flow of the
      electric river
slides
    through
and within,
intermingling
auras tingling

Just take me,
      already
let me feel the imprint
of your fingers
upon my wrists
let your kisses mark
my secret spaces
Rush into me
as a river
before we
  simultaneously
         combust
for if I have to hear your
vocal chords
one more time
I will
    explode
into
     fragments
of
     crystallized
                  dust

Woman at diner who knew Fugazi,
I wear all these pins
on my denim jacket
waiting for someone like you
because a t-shirt isn’t
loud enough.

Woman who knew Fugazi,
waitress at diner,
had “seen them twenty times,”
without exaggeration—

with cracking olive skin
and graying curly black
hair to her shoulders,

the light refracting off my pin
my friend bought at a record store
in Philly      reflecting her the image
of a slender, voluptuous youth
donned in fake leather
worn Levis and beat Vans

shaking her mop of jet-black curly hair
in a throng of like-minded dressed
individuals in a dingy club
          angsty Washingtonians
fleeing the Reagan Youth

mad at Capitalism
mad at Middle Class,
mad at Excess, Abuse, Malaise—
driven by the furious punk rhythms
of sweat-drenched Fugazi.

Woman who knew Fugazi,
friends with Ian MacKaye,
hadn’t seen him in years—

waitress at restaurant
where the scrambled eggs are dry
and the coffee is stale.

Waitress at diner,
Mother now,
wife, adult,

                 [[punk]]
at heart.