Among other things,
April is National Poetry Month and also Tax Day. At the same time, the recent ruling by the
Supreme Court, the highest court in the land that is supposed to ensure the
blessings of liberty for us all, passed legislation that equates in my mind the
idea that “if you want to play, you’ve got to pay”. And even more importantly, the voice of a
“Regular Joe Ella” like me gets shuffled to the shadows, and doesn’t even seem
to be heard. I feel like my voice is
being silenced, reduced, made to count only 3/5 as much, or perhaps not at all
(WHICH WILL NEVER, EVER HAPPEN AS LONG AS MY BODY HAS BREATH AND I AM IN MY
RIGHT MIND). But I have been feeling the
pain of the penchant by some to turn back the clock to a time when life was
made purposefully and strategically hard by sharecropping, by Jim Crow, by
disenfranchisement, by violence in the still of the night, and by the “eyes
blind to the ways” in stark daylight.
The resurrection of identified hate groups in the state of NC stands at
a whopping 33. There are those of the
upper crust clamoring for the poor and struggling to “kiss the ground that they
walk on” and give them a parade that pays homage to their wealth and the fact
that they throw us a couple of crumbs from their sumptuous tables. There are even cries for no minimum wage at
all, and that the peasants are “free” to work for $3-4 an hour (or did they
mean a day, as in the past that is longed for when life was good?). All of this regressive longing for nostalgic
days which were nightmares for others stirs and grinds in my mind as I wrestle
with the idea of our great democracy being quietly and systematically turned
into an oligarchy, also golden during a time long ago.
My mind flipped back
to a book I read in graduate school at NCSU, James Agee’s, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
The class, about the autobiography, was a graduate level English class,
taught by Dr. Lucinda McKeithan, an extraordinary, challenging professor from
whom I learned so very much. The class
was hard, but I really enjoyed it, and worked my tail off to get that A-, of
which I was sooooo proud of earning.
Most of the students in the class were writers and English majors, some
already with MFA degrees and published work, and I often felt inadequate and
small in comparison. I love to write,
and I read a lot, but I came to the class with an undergraduate degree in
Speech Communication, not English, and NCSU’s English department has the reputation
of a stellar faculty of literary juggernauts.
But I do think that my writing skills are strong, especially when I can
be expressive and pepper my thoughts with poetry in the form of free flowing
thoughts. The response to the chapter, “Money”,
is what I slaved over for many hours one weekend. It was three of the hardest paragraphs that I
have birthed, and I still was not sure if it was the kind of writing that Dr.
Mac wanted. I remember reading in class that
night; my voice was quiet but strong.
When I finished reading, the whole class clapped for me, the only person
they clapped for that night. Dr. Mac
asked for a copy to keep. I remember
sitting there for a few minutes, stunned.
“They really liked it!” I felt,
for a moment, like a writer.
In honor of National
Poetry Month and Tax Day (that necessary evil, I mean duty, that is just as
important as voting), I share that response with you. I hope you enjoy; it is a peeling back of one
of the many layers of my soul.
Gudger’s Final Thoughts
From dust I was born and to dust I return, kicking,
spitting, cursing, swearing all the way.
I am the dust, made from dust, my dreams too are dry and dusty--now
gone. No home, no land, no mule, no
money--nothing to show for my years of hard work. I was cheated, never even having enough extra
to buy my wife a pretty dress, even though she wouldn’t want it, doesn’t know
how to be pretty no more. Crying tears
of sand, silent, sobless, now she will toil even more the hard.
I paid you back (and then some) for
everything you gave me on credit--unfairly, begrudgingly, sneakily
benevolent--knowing while my family shivers and sags in the fierce January
winter, ground too hard even to scratch up a knobby root for an almost soup,
yours will be feasting on the meat and gravy of my family’s hard labor, of your
thumb pressed on the scale as I bought my seed on faith.
We lie on the floor, bodies pressed
together like a set of coarse wooden spoons, trying desperately to keep warm
beneath the snow that drifts into our sleep and upon our weary heads. I couldn’t go away, and try again, because I
owe and am now too tired to fight. I
rest. I am the dust, where cotton no
longer grows.
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