Obama jetted
back to Africa
soaring aloft on
gulf stream swank

a posse of
oil company execs
in tow, intent on liberating
Dark Continent
fossil fuels from unjust
underground prisons

American
entrepreneurs
angling to get the
upper hand in the
high stakes global
resource poker game
pulled a big time race card
to trump China’s
full house

On Goree Island,
political paparazzi
popped and clicked
a perfect image
of the neocolonial
white clad President
framed in a doorway filled
with dark shadows and
heinous memory of the
unspeakable horrors
of global trade

leering from
the portal at the
Gate of No Return
Obama welled with
meditative epiphanies
of personal seachange,
and the vicissitudes of life,
pondering his meteoric rise
from a Land of Lincoln
State Senator to
American President
in the span of
one golden
9/11 decade

At a
South African University
Town Hall Summit,
the fist bumpin,
mike droppin  Prez
telepromted the
star struck folks with
solemn universal civil rights
pronouncements,
wrapped in the riddle of
the pursuit of peace,
hidden in the enigma of  
the reverence for
human dignity

Later in the day
Mr. Obama sat at the
feet of a comatose Mandela;
whispering into his ear
why an Afghan peace
eludes him, why his
drone strikes rain
death upon innocents
and why his democratic
republic defiles
the civil liberties of its
citizens to ransom
a daily diet of fear

But Madiba does not hear
Mr. Obama’s feverish
confessions; his
ears are closed,
he dreams only
of the paradise of
liberation he earned
for his life's hard wages

Music Selection:
Gil Scott Heron
Western Sunrise

Oakland
070213
jbm