Middle Passage Child: (A Saga of Collected Poems)

By Millard Lowe

It has been said that the poet is the conscience and voice of the poet’s people. In this collection the griot-style poet renders a wide range of poems employing the imaging of metaphoric inspirational and allegorical messaging poetry of the survival story of African American generations. Theme focus is on those generations who survived the Middle Passage of the triangular slave trade; the nearly 5 centuries of slavery itself; post- emancipation Jim Crow America with its centuries of lynch-style oppression; the Civil Rights Movement; and those who are still here surviving present-day American racisms that still remain, despite the generational gains that have been made. As in the words of the poet himself, “This collection is indeed a poetic saga of ourstory in American history; designed to enlighten and inspire actions to bring reality to those ideals the founding fathers penned in the preamble and constitution of the American nation.”

Come and journey with the poet over the many “middle passages” of the wrinkled historical ocean of “navel” people sojourning to the shores of complete liberation in an America whose founding ideal was that of being a nation in which all of God’s people were created equal and deserving of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781664120754

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 by Millard Lowe.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 07/30/2020

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

816488

CONTENTS

A Griot’s Wandering Tale to the Children

A Ballad to the Ancestors

Tell-Tale Reality—This Be…

Of Storied Memories

Like a Tree Planted by the Waters…

Sea Shore Memories…

Middle Passage Child…

over and beyond the middle passage…

Juxtaposed Middle Passage Doors

Traveling On

Notes for a Short History Lesson

Least Ourstory Fades…

On Tending Great Ancestral Fires…

Standing On The Rock

To An Indigenous Beloved Mother

Exodus Children and the Dream

From Past to Contemporary Times

Of Fruits Hanging in the Winds of Time

And this too Shall Pass…If We Do the Right Thing…

A Love Poem for the Children

children of the water…

With Eyes Stayed On The Prize…

To The Children Running Above The Ground

Black Madonnas…

With Watered Truths

Anchored Souls

Whether by the Sun of Day Or The Moon of Night, Justice Waits

Born Again

In the Beehive of Struggle

Caged…

Cry the Beloved Continent…

Of Romantic Life and Emancipation

On the Evolution of Justice

In the Famine of Justice

To A Wordless Blind Goddess

Seeds of Strange Fruits

For Bloody but Unbowed Heads

Standing at The Crossing…

Shattering the Shackles…

Those We’ve Been Waiting For…

Clanging Echoes…

Still No Forty Acres…

Claiming Our Birthright Here…

And We are Still Here…

I Shall No Longer Be Your Tragedy

Confessions of a Journeyman…

Smiling with the Ancestors

Fillers of Ancestral Spaces

In The Season of Truth

Chartering Freedom

Beaching

Terrible Storm…Precious Hand

Bridge Over Troubled Waters

Lynching Live; So What? Trumped-Up Normality Reins!

Pandemic Lynching Echoes…

Fear Not These Testing Times…

Ventilating Truth—Breathing…

Stageless Reality: A Poetic Essay

Live Streaming Oppression

R²: Raping Racism

To Pandemic Lack Of Concern

With Hope And Faith In The Promise

Since The Middle Passage

Pictured Strange Fruits Today

As A Matter Of Fact

‘Knowing that Black Lives also Matter’

rooted…

New America…Coming

Be Aware Mandingo Man

Black Man Walking: Part 2

Celebration Time: Coming…

DEDICATED TO MY TWO SETS OF BLESSED PARENTS

Millard and Nettie Lowe

Uncle Bo and Sister Ruth

A Griot’s Wandering Tale

to the Children

Hello my children. Come travel with me

as I reflect upon the journey.

The recall may not be easy—the sojourn

often seeming not to go in a direct path—

sometimes going back and forth

before getting back on track.

Bottom line; it’s a Griot’s tale.

I

Continuous documents of life lived and gone lay buried

beneath earth’s various layers: documents more precious

than petrified bone and gold; save the questioning words

that gave birth to the U.S.A. Declaration of Independence.

Cannot dead evidence give life to truth?

is there reason that Noah’s Ark must be fantasy?

Should we question the story of Ruth?

What religion teaches, science often questions;

in the end, truth is served in spiritual belief.

Faith is nourished on belief in both seen and unseen;

both relying on what is revealed of the beginning scene.

What a daunting challenge to pillars of intellectual tiers.

Is not the revelations unearthed by the faithful pursuit

of paleontology the resurrected evidence of that which has

given rise to our religiosity.

II

See-sawing along the shores of life, gazing the reflecting light,

we grasp keloids of memories…Running. And like fishermen

of food, we web together the broken pieces of history and

cast our nets into the sea—the sea of perseverance—catching

hope, harnessing redemption. In the final analysis, the word

remains mightier than the sword; spirited into the space

that gave birth to time; manifesting circadian rhythms of life.

Man, cocooned in the Garden of Eden, sought light,

and the serpent showed a flash; a streak of insufficient

false power—a Pompeii spark—and all hell broke loose.

But ashes have a kind of Phoenix entity that teases

with spiraling smoke of resurrection: smoke puffed seeds

germinate and grow into new beginnings.

III

Out of the chaos of inequality, serfdom, and royalty,

ships sailed upon the wrinkles of the oceans’ waves;

ironing out creases of a Middle Passage overture

of an American