I have  a Dream.  Had it last night. Woke up to the darkness, the ancient art and static of auto tuned white noise repeating, “Why are we talking about race? . . . Why are we talking about race?” 

The DJ promises a mix of good time and travel, to let us “be,” 

IF we’ll be colored, inside powdery lines drawn ‘round dark undead bodies, 

invisible, gerrymandered, hairline cracks 

two-stepping back to the swing era when ripe berries swung hard from trees and 

blue-eyed mothers, hands entwined in their wide-eyed children’s like poisoned vines,

decanted vintage whines while intoxicated with the cold blood of past times, 

lamented the dusty presence of dreams apprehended  –  canned misdeeds of their own and stolen labors of others. Sticky, bittersweet secrets, fabrications 

glazed over and candied, 

shelved and set aside  for rainy days of their lush lives, heat and sugar generously applied, 

some tightly sealed since 1955 when Roy’s Bryant’s wife, Carolyn stole and withheld the innocence of Emmett

‘til she all but died.  

Roy, acquitted, subsequently confessed, insisting, “Emmett Till is dead. I don’t know why he just can’t stay dead.”

When shall we overcome?  

For thinking aloud, I’m shushed by the DJ, who screams at and over me, “Let us pray!”

I’m nearly drowned by the feedback as gospel wades in on the next track. 

But how do you dance to a beat applied to John Lewis’ head and passed down to your shoulders, the sting of it a present day holdover?

A rhythm familiar, insistent, semi-automatically relentless, has the feel of reprise. I hear “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.”  Then there’s a breakdown, foretelling transition. 

Suddenly, Mamie, at a loss for words, throws open the casket.

Rosa, tired into action, secures her seat in history from Montgomery

And the beat goes on, 

colored by numbers

9 face the yells in Little Rock

1 brave girl named Ruby, aged 6 steps into William Frantz Elementary,

stares down The Problem We All [still] Live In

Then, in a nasty bit of addition. . .  

19 sticks of death in a Birmingham basement

disperse the magic of girls, little and fatally black — Addie Mae, Carole , Cynthia , and Denise, to be exact.

4 loving spoonfuls of browned sugar consumed and crystallized on Youth Day.

A young King marches toward Selma one step ahead of a bullet,

the heel-to-toe cadence of footfalls, a drumline, 

persistent and beaten to Bloody like Sunday.

Light years later, America, the beautiful dreamer, quantum leaps backward

In Charleston, South of the ruptured bowels of Carolina

9  – Bibles studied, are kind to a fallen angel and die equally, doubly, for their faith and their trouble . “I would like to make it crystal clear.  I do not regret what I did,” Dylann Roof protests. “I am not sorry. I have not shed a tear for the innocent people I killed,” he wrote at the station.

Was it before or after the meal from Burger King, this up-sized murder with fries, revelation?  

The record spins dizzying, hard turns counter to clockwise  

then, scratched and flipped over, 

skips to the beat – never the heart – of a burgeoning nation

with thumbs and forefingers fresh from threading the triangular needle now dropped at its edges,

stitching away in sly moments of silence, quiet as thoughts and prayers offered by church mice 

who gingerly bite through the rotting apples of America’s half- baked, half-eaten, thinly sliced pie.

The scariest part of my dream?

When the mood shifts from new music

to old karaoke

with words packaged, pre-written and chosen. 

At the last of it, sobered, I realize

this is all being played

by request

the DJ not live but 

a Memorex of ancient bequests

with big, rotating holes in the middle,

right to move forward, a careful left back

unless you’re looking from another side

either way, this land 

stolen for freedom 

is one turn, one deep breath 

away 

from history making or repeating

This half-broken morning 

I stir and I mumble, “I had a dream. “

“I HAVE a dream,” the DJ corrects, though distorted and muffled

Convinced, I awake fully,

rewound, thrown back toward a future of

incessant turns without revolutions

familiar pops and clicks that lack the warmth or nostalgia of vinyl

to the time-worn  grooves and chambered rounds

of a warped, over-amplified, 

h-uuge and fully-loaded,

half-cocked

45.