For Malcolm by Peterson Toscano
I am your younger, lighter brother.
You exited in a bloody burst of gunfired four days
after I
Endured my own bloody ordeal called birth.
You're buried,
Yet live.
You resound in my students,
Young, displaced Africans.
You are their shining prince;
A fortress of a Black Man.
But were you a man like I am a man?
Were you ever unsure?
Confused?
Did you ever speed recklessly down?
Riverside Drive in the summer with
the windows closed so tight no one
heard you screaming?
Did you cling to Sister Betty, a
climber grasping a jutting rock on
a barren mountain face?
Were you a man like a I am a man?
You drove truth daggers into weary, Black souls.
You proclaimed what silently festered within.
You diagnosed the sickness.
You grouped for a cure, then
You left us like the cheetah bounding into the
forest.
It is your fierce manhood we crave.
It is your proud manhood we miss.
It is your profound manhood we must have.
You are a shining prince;
A fortress of a Man.
Will we be men like you when you were just a man?
Peterson's literary metaphors resonate over and over for anyone who knows anything about Malcolm X, or who was alive when he was and remembers reading about him in the newspapers and hearing about him on the evening news. Malcolm was an intelligent, sophisticated and articulate individual and created crowds to gather around him to listen to what he felt was important for others to know about.
"My alma mater was books, a good library... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity." - Malcolm X
"Without education, you're not going anywhere in this world." - Malcolm X
2 comments:
Jen, I wrote this poem back in the early 90's when Spike Lee's Malcolm X film came out. At that time I worked in NYC with youth offenders in an alternative school. We would take a topic every month and dig deep into it. One month our topic was "Malcolm X"
We read the autobiography, every poem and play we could find about him, the recently released FBI files, newspaper clippings. We saw documentaries, heard recordings of him speaking, looked over photos. We visited important sites in NYC including the former site of the ballroom where he was killed. We met people who knew him including one of his bodyguards and one of his daughters.
It was an AMAZING class and in the end we felt we found (and lost) a dear friend.
AT that time I was struggling with my own issues of same-sex attractions, and although the struggle may seem very different, I received much hope from Malcolm's story, especially his evolution as a human. In his autobiography one sees him as a genuine seeker, striving for personal integrity in telling his story. This struck me.
After all the books, films, poems, photos, Malcolm emerged much more than an icon, rather an enlighted human.
Thanks for writing.
Peterson,
Thanks for sharing your extremely personal life story with me. We'll talk more at Yearly Meeting next month.
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