Reflections on a Past

(November 1992)
At this time my father did not have a relationship with God (that I knew of). He was going from wife to wife, dream to dream, doing his own thing. He finally remarried my mother (25 years after their divorce), renewed his relationship with Jesus, and is now ministering through music to the elderly. Go God!


Sat down to a meal
          of kidney beans and rice—
                    cornbread on the side.
Handed down from daddy.
          Certain he got it from his.
                    Where’d he get his direction?

God, don’t let me go that way.

Lookin’ at 30 Years of TIME—
          photos of history—60’s through 80’s:
                    a lifetime.

                    Erection of walls’
                    torn down again—
                              still there.

                    Massive achievements
                              (token really)
                    amidst naked foreign children
                    and half-naked American women.

                    Erections of men’s lusts—
                              for greed—
                              for power—
                              for a snapshot in the history book.

                    Powerful men—
                              some died;
                              all dead.

                    Anger in the eyes
                    of those who don’t
                    know their cause;
                    passionate appeals
                    from voices that dreamed;
                    desirous glee
                    from the apathetic.

                    Fires in souls,
                    fires in Watts,
                    souls in fire.
                    Napalm replaces brimstone.

A glossy, two-dimensional world.
          Pick it up; put it down.

Turned back to the fixin’s on the plate—
          the beans were cold.

                    God, don’t let me go that way.