Poefusion--Friday 5

The five words for the week were:

clobber
encourage
scrawl
wail
hay

I've been thinking a lot of Saratoga racetrack lately. It opens this week. From the time I was 12 until just 5 years ago I always went with my dad, until his death. The last 7 years I got to work on it as a photographer. Memories of it are all bittersweet now, I long to go but my dad won't be there anymore.

One story I got to do was about the old timers on the track, mostly African American grooms and exersize riders. This peom is rough (very rough) but it's a tribute to them and the stories they told about growing up in the south.



All my life
I've been a fighter. Had
to be, a black man
in the south can't survive
otherwise. Can't show
it outside, But in me
is a cry, a wail
of pain.
An anger so deep
it'd feel good
to clobber that smug look
from those white folks'
faces. An act
of suicide, that.
Took a job as a groom, my
way out of the south,
the smell of horse
and hay, the rhythm
of hooves on track my
savoir, encouragement that life
wears a smart hat
and scraws art on walls;
it isn't hunched shoulders
or Nazi salutes or
a Southern bell's simpering smile.
A snort from my charge,
a nuzzle on cheek, I watch
her work 22 and change,
and dream our
future.

Friday 5 from Poefusion

Every friday at Poefusion there is a prompt of five words, for you to write a poem or story to. Last fri the words were:

grandfather
photo album
post office
broken window
folder

This poem is rough but I've no time to rewrite it (it's a bit hard to write whilst also entertaining a 3 month old), and as I said in the last post, if I think about it, I'll never write at all, so this is my way of trying to get creative again.

The boy with no ties
to family,
no mother to praise him,
no father to encourage, no
grandparents to spoil him; this
boy watches the social worker
with the folder
and wonders why
it isn't a photo album
for him.

If it was, what
would they look like, his family.
Would his mother be pretty, his
grandfather kind?
All he can see when he thinks of family is
a broken window where bullets came in,
a stained and dirty mattress to sleep on,
the t.v. that never was quiet.

The social worker glances at him;
the woman who can read minds.
She's seen it all before.
When she thinks of his family
all she can see is a rage
as red as the post office van
that passes the office.
Her thought to strike them down in vengeance.
Instead she offers this
boy a present,
a book instead of an album.

Knowledge instead of pain.
Love in place of indifference.