Long Selma Poems

Where was I on "Bull" Conner's day,
When the world saw white-hate on display?
Attack dogs, hoses, and lawmen's feet,
Blacks felled like timber on a southern street.
As fists and batons flayed the air,
Hate left the wounded laying...

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American Pies and Porkies

I’m not American though I spent a year in California the land of beaches Hollywood 
‘flower power’ ‘Big Sur’ with dopey dreams and have walked ‘bear’-foot in Yosemite
thus I followed the elections...

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Abe Lincoln As A democrat
© Ben Burton 8-25-2014

The evil of men being sold
Long past, since Mr. Lincoln's fight
Still, dark suspicion blooms and grows
And loots the cause of civil rights

The North designed a whipping horse
Down in...

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Lord, I hear Selma
And I see them coming one by one
Your dusky children with their dusty seat
Walking until they can get a seat
At the front of your glory
Lord, I know the trumpet don't sound the...

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My ears hath heard the sweet music Of a New Orleans jug band, 
Whose sound can only compete with that of a sonorous slave spiritual
I hear one now 

I hear people now 
I hear people...

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As worshippers in Australia lift holy hands to Heaven
I recall promises to pray for the ill, the aged, the convalescent

Praise-worthy voices dance exquisitely, inside a church called Hillsong
You and I must intercede for friends, foes,for...

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Again another MRI, the clacking sounds -- the injection of dye
It’s been awhile with covid on the rise
And vaccines found and given now inside and outdoors
The radiologist sent me to 7 pm and changed it...

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My family marched peacefully in Selma that day,
Hoping Martin’s spirit would lift us far away
From prejudice and violence that perpetrators
Had cast on us for centuries in the USA.

“Land of the free,” a misnomer of limitation,
For...

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Before “The March on Selma”, before it all began
James Orange was arrested; he was a giant of a man
It was Rumored they would lynch him
So the church gathered and they prayed
But once outside the temple,...

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Got wrinkles on my hands
Been there then that
Got nowhere else to go
And nothing less to show
Got bunion on my feet
Been walking them there streets
Corns rubbing gainst my shoes
I've done paid my dues
Went from Selma to...

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Have you ever been to Slave City
Ever on my mind,
And it really is a grave pity
For all those friends of mine.

A visit back to another time,
With massah and the whip
But this is now a modern...

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Chewing the Fat

John Lewis said that we should never be afraid
To participate in a created Civil Rights Parade
But does refuse with so much consternation
To be part of Trump's impotent inauguration.

Selma must become completely immortalized
Which by...

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Selma started out with a little pup when she was nine.
He was a darling fellow, and best of all “all mine”.
Her parents thought the couple was sublime.
They let her get a new puppy all the...

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He walks among us in Atlanta
though he be gone so long
He lives with them at Morehouse
voice echoes like a song

How ’bout Ebenezer 
where his words still ring today
Martin spoke there many times 
urged blacks and...

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It's late at night and I am yawning.
Not a good time for a poem to be spawning.
But never the less, I'm going to try.
No matter how much I ask myself why.

DVR timer just switched off...

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I’d never really worried about meeting someone,
But the day that I met Selma, I understood why.
Everything about her told me that she was the one,
So I wasn’t about to let the chance pass me by.

No...

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Spirits of the living mingle with the dead
Nightly, joining hands to march through Selma
Dr. King, their leader, the first called home
Returns to preach peace through understanding
On streets where emotions refuse to rest

Brother John’s soul, the...

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