I Don’t Need Your Watered-Down King: A Poem
I don’t need
Your watered down
King; the Dr. King
you make simple, the King
you only mention with subtleties
as if he was meek, minor, minute.
Of a champion’s truth,
Dr. King is more than
worthy.
Call him a lion.
His accomplishments should
roar loudly in history books,
on talk segments
where we are identifying,
describing, the man, the
humanitarian, the preacher,
the fighter, writer, speaker,
teacher, reacher, leader, word
warrior.
I need the revolutionary Dr. King
who was educated by various
religious truths, leanings; the
never afraid King who moved his
family into a housing project
in Chicago; the mighty King who
challenged economic inequity
years ago at the White House lawn
with the Poor People’s Campaign!
Don’t feed me the King who you
only credit for his I Have A Dream
Speech — he was much, much, much
more than that.
You want to tap dance
around his hardcore stance
on the Vietnam war, his biting
of capitalism, his scathing truths
of conservative AND liberal white racism
attempting to box him in
when King was always
moving in circles opposite
of your rectangular view
of him.
Please, I don’t need your
watering down
of the man who looked
death in the eye
and forced it to find
him.
