Ain’t Nothing Changed
--- For Ben Carson
Ain’t nothing changed but you, Brother—
searchlights, night helicopters, hunting runaways:
shock & awe sameness. Satan still enlightens, still
passes along the apple of knowing in evening
news, a veil of innocence applauding how we change
faces, how Wall Street masks its account on islands.
Heads crowned with fresh hoarfrost yet rambling
in high-spun circles as the defenseless are dragged
from their moment, from their sunny yesterdays.
We grow apart as armies conquer & occupy.
Ain’t nothing changed but you, Brother—you no
longer call me with urgency, with hot words
like NationTime! / The Revolution Is On!
Tongues sniff the air for Italian patent leather
shoes grinding like jackboots—you whipped
into dark suits & red ties, broad denture grins
for PR cameras, mirrors of error dancing in eyes
of black athletes, trapped balling for billionaires
clawing through to the bone, crawling on floors.
But you, Brother, you’re playing golf at the club
with MJ & Tiger. For you, no gunship clouds skies
raining fire on head-holding dreams, no blackness.
Scavenging birds crowd into laboring landscapes
while success prophets celebrate suburban havens.
Ain’t nothing changed but you Brother—a retiring ceo,
daylight comes, daylight goes, leveraging pyramids,
staging annual bus trips to graves of Martin & Malcolm.
Nothing but blue vertigo, barbs of steel wire enclosures
& tanks—colloquiums, councils justifying war,
flying machines crushing Gaza & Baghdad . Nothing’s
changed, Brother—we won’t give up & we won’t let go.
--Rudolph Lewis