January 16, 2014 #772
Dear Subscriber:
This week’s poem of the week is a poem for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday.
You can hear me read the poem and listen to the music for it at my site by going to http://www.poemsforfree.com/week.html.
Yours,
Nick Gordon
Make of me a hero, but I was
A failure in what mattered most to me.
Remember well the ill that sainthood does,
Taking holiness for victory.
I think we are as far away as ever,
Not from equal laws but equal lives.
Little has been done to make life better,
Unless you like the shift to guns from knives.
The icon of my face is now a mask
Hiding the destruction of the poor.
Each day is worse for millions than the last.
Raging unregarded is a war.
Know, then, though our president is black,
I would march again, could I come back,
No icon, but a loving, peaceful scourge,
Gathering strength where race and class converge.
© by Nicholas Gordon.
Watch me recite the poem on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1VN22Sbs5M .
Dear Subscriber:
This week’s poem of the week is a poem for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday.
You can hear me read the poem and listen to the music for it at my site by going to http://www.poemsforfree.com/week.html.
Yours,
Nick Gordon
Make of me a hero, but I was
A failure in what mattered most to me.
Remember well the ill that sainthood does,
Taking holiness for victory.
I think we are as far away as ever,
Not from equal laws but equal lives.
Little has been done to make life better,
Unless you like the shift to guns from knives.
The icon of my face is now a mask
Hiding the destruction of the poor.
Each day is worse for millions than the last.
Raging unregarded is a war.
Know, then, though our president is black,
I would march again, could I come back,
No icon, but a loving, peaceful scourge,
Gathering strength where race and class converge.
© by Nicholas Gordon.
Watch me recite the poem on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1VN22Sbs5M .