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Let it tremble, let it shift
Like rain snaking down the window,
Like the quick beat of a dove’s wings as it leaps from a wire,
Like a midnight prayer, like an early morning fuck,
Let it move.
Let it vibrate and jerk.
Jumping and slashing and throwing wild punches blindly
At the quaking neon nights, let it run.
Bend it,
Bend it until it begins to crack and leak.
Take it to the top of a mountain,
Hold it above your head and feel your chest swell
As the people of the valley
Stare
And
Point
At the man with his heart in hand.

DTR

I could hear pecans, still wrapped in hard green,
Falling with purpose onto the carport,
As I sat glassy eyed on the couch
Listening to your words dropping crazy
Like ever so many kamikaze.

I listened though the buzzing of the beer,
Which was slowly sliding off of my brain,
And when I spoke, I spoke to let you know
That which I know you already knew:
I try too hard, I drink too much, I cry.

But I will never let you forget me,
So kiss me by the corner of the car,
Or come in lay gingerly in bed,
And we can write our own goddamn story
While watching the night fall beautifully
Into an early morning sun.

A Poem to You on Your Birthday

They say that life is a journey,
A path cleared with dreams and ambitions
And recollected with memories and scars.

They say that everyone’s course is unique,
The most personal and lonely of treks into the unknown,
But we all are marked with the intersections
Where our voyages cross.

They say we are our experiences.
We embody the knowledge we have learned.
We take on some shape of the people we have loved.
We hold in the front of our minds,
The spot where they are the most easily reachable,
The things we have seen that we treasure.

Of all that I‘ve seen:
Flowering desert mountain cacti,
Stars falling across the Mississippi,
Or the sun setting smooth and quiet over the Gulf—
It is you, standing in the early evening light
Of late autumn, that I cherish the most.

Paper

There are moments when I am flimsy
As a piece of paper—
Ghost white, disregarded, and smeared with the ink
Of past mistakes.
In these instances, I blow crazy in the breeze
And dance unfettered of bone and heart and muscle,
Until I land in a pothole, filled with yesterday’s rain,
And soak in it like a grimy baptismal.
Then the moment is over,
And days come like they always do:
Wake, shower, check the weather and fill the day
With tiny crises to make the enormity of the normality bearable.
But stuck between all the humdrum,
Squeezed in with all the bullshit and broken glass,
There is always the chance I will see you,
And remember the time, standing in the front yard,
You looked up and asked,
“So, are you going to kiss me now?”
Then you leave and once again
I turn into a piece of paper.

Thinking of You

There have been days, when all throughout my duties,
I do nothing but think of you.

It happens while I’m driving or brushing my teeth,
Or when I notice how the sun catches a falling leaf
And it makes the yellow and burnt orange flash like a siren of autumn.

On days like these, I wish I could paint.
I would place you on a canvas next to the
Notre Dame de Paris at midnight, with me
In your arms and the ghosts of Josephine and Napoleon
Dancing in love’s reunion,

But I cannot paint.
I cannot run 6 miles like you.
I cannot fly a jet, bench press twice my bodyweight, or
Take away your reservations about men.

I can only offer you a poem and promise:
That for all my shortcomings,
In everything that drives you away,
I promise to take yours with the patience of Job,
And have the jealousy of God—
Because like Him, I know that it would do you no good
To go looking for love in another,
Because ours would swallow an ocean before we let you drown.

They are only words, I know,
But often they are all I have on days like this,
When I can do nothing but think of you.

I Wouldn't Trade a Tree

At the corner of the yard,
Moss hangs off the skeleton of an oak tree
Like the long stringy hair of an elderly woman.
It doesn’t afford a shade in the summer,
And the winds of spring
And the snows of winter
Ravage limbs from its hollow body.
I know I should cut it down.
I curse its existence the morning after a storm
As I pick up its pieces off the lawn—
A betrayal of beauty and a crime of circumstance
Because I remember that tree in its glory,
When two young squirrels rested in its branches.

Our Doppelgangers

It looks like we won’t be going to Georgia
For my birthday, and I understand why.
Because you are Edna,
Lighting your candle at both ends,
Taking life by the balls (or twat),
Pulling it towards you and giving it
The greatest thrill its ever known,
For just a moment.
And I will be Edmund,
Always searching for a poet
And a perfect set of legs,
But never again finding you.
It is this fate which is inevitable,
Just as is knowing you is to fall in love with you.
All I ask of you is this:
Please be careful around the stairs.

Winn-Dixie

I couldn’t help myself--
Standing in the grocery
Behind a balloon of a man,
I rasped a heavy sigh at his
Lethargic attempt to unload his cart.
Then, as he slowly lifted his eyes toward me,
With his jowls swaying like limp flags,
He told me to go fuck off,
And in that moment I thought of you.
I shall be home in fifteen minutes,
And after I put the ice cream in the freezer,
I’d like you to help me make one man’s wish
Come true.

If I Were Brave

If I were brave, I’d tell you that
You terrify me.
I would stand with a strong chest
And a steady voice, and
Explain that within your 5’4”
Lives a being that knocks me breathless,
But every time I gather enough courage,
You smile wide, look me in the eye,
And I lose myself all over again.

When You're Eighty

I think you’ll be beautiful when you’re 80:

When you’ve been transfigured by decades of
Breathing the aroma of love and pain and the
Small melodramas of life,

When your hair has been washed white
And your delicate hands curl, exhausted from
Seizing the moment,

When your grey eyes deepen,
When your voice softens,
When your heart and brain reconcile,

And when I stoop with reverence
To place a warm kiss upon your wrinkled brow.

You are lovely now,
But I think you’ll be beautiful when you’re 80.

Envy

Laying across a plump scarlet couch,
I watched auburn hair move pendulum-like
Over a milky shoulder.
The walls rolled like waves,
Crashing and bending with
Each snap of her hips.
The room, lit by a television,
Danced and flickered a dull
Pulsing blue.
I traced the outline of her
Tattoo with an outstretched finger,
Wishing I could be that
Permanent.

Doubting Thomas Confesses to a Lover

She told me
she has
serious
doubts
About her
ability
to love.
I told her
I felt the
same way
whenI read
Scripture.

Your Last Bottle of Perfume

In the side drawer of your desk
Under a silk handkerchief,
I found your last bottle of perfume.

A sliver of sunlight though the blinds
Radiated off the gentle curve of the bottle,
And it looked like a diamond earring.

I held the bottle in my open palms
As if it were a child
And the last spray within was you,
Sleeping tenderly in the hammock
At the edge of the garden
The day before your trip home.

I held the nozzle to my nose
And felt your skinny fingers
Squeeze my shoulders
And did not relent to the desire
To join you.

Christmas Poem

In July, when the air hangs like a
Dense sheet of plastic smoke,
Children hope for today.
They pray for the death of leaves
And would gladly sacrifice summer’s
Freedom for a glimpse of a
Rotting tree in the living room.

In July, children with dirt caked
On their cheeks and small streams
Of sweat carving clear paths through the grime
Make lists in hope of today.
They browse catalogs and furiously scribble
1-800 numbers from television commercials
In anticipation of today’s perfection.

And tomorrow, when garbage bags of
Glittered paper and bows with intricate loops
Sit disheveled on a frozen curb,
Children with sweaters they hate
Will plead with the Christ-child to hurry July,
So they can play with their new football.

Juke Joint, Memphis 2007

The sound of the slide of the glass
Over the steel and wood,
Buzzing and moaning and reliving
Decades of stomping sun-cooked cottonseed
Into red Alabama dirt,
Soaked into the walls.
The smoke from cigars—
Cylinder signs of cool—
Drifted and swirled underneath the ceiling fans.

When the song broke,
Just that half beat of forbearance,
He sang.
He sang like a tractor,
Full of grease, grit and smoke,
Tearing through the hard soil
Of a drought laden past.

Tonight when we leave,
I’ll go to Midtown down Cooper Ave.
And sleep with my windows open.
He’ll be on the Westside remembering
The road from the Blackbelt to Clarksdale,
But hell, at least he’s close to Beale.

"This is the Last Poem I Will Ever Write"

Because my voice can’t handle it,
It just doesn’t have the vocabulary.

I dream of black oaks mingling with pines
And a forest floor covered in women.
I lust after Whitman’s breadth,
And vision Elise’s great breast
Sagging toward a yearning platonic earth
And leave with dry hands.

I am not a poet, but poems are only this:

The back of a pearl earring

Generation

I am no longer bronzed in youthful craze.
I am a faux-intellectual WASP.
I am a consumer.
I speak slow and drink heavily.
I have broken the shell of my dreams and turned them into a job.

I am part of us.
We: raised by MTV and URLs.
We: unwired and tethered to technology,
Bitten apples and blue.
Disciples of Rand! Pugilist for Pollock!

I am a fax machine.
I am an amplifier.
I am a bright shining red.

I am a silent vowel.

James Wright

I will never be James Wright,
Lying in a hammock, casually
Observing horse shit and taking a
Sledgehammer to my soul.

No, I will find myself
Thirty years from now
Walking a dog with a plastic bag
In my back pocket,
Worrying about profit margins and
Next week’s bonus.

I will pursue life and find
I have wasted it as well.

Amber

Sitting at the corner table just off the main stage,
I watched as a girl danced like a mosquito larvae
In a bucket of water:
Twitching and tumbling to the rapid beat
Of bass drums and her body bathed in
Dollar bills and red lights.

Every woman walking by was the same--
A hint of lust and sadness drowned by
Perfume and cheap tequila,
Roared out of their bodies as they paraded
In platform shoes and panties—
And I thought of them like one of those
Mosquitoes trapped in amber.

Witnessing Domestic Violence on a Delightful Friday Afternoon

The wind shook the frail limbs
Of the young white oak.
The leaves spinning in gyrations,
Flashing the almost translucent green
Of their veined bottom,
Looked like photographers cameras
Pulsing light at the swing of a bat.

My neighbor’s truck pulled in the lot
Popping small pearl pebbles beneath
His gratuitously large tires.
He never took his sunglasses off
As he opened the door,
Drug his wife into the yard
And slapped the shit out of her,
For all the neighbors and leaves to see.

A Sunday Afternoon in Loachapoka

The crisp click of boot against porch
Followed by a steady slide of grinding grit and dust
Blown from the road to settle underneath
His foot
Signaled another downswing in the chair

The talk turned to grass clippings and
Moving a mound of dirt from one side of the yard
To the other
While the wind blew Old Glory against the
First National

More than five minutes passed
And we sat stone faced as
The trees cut the sunlight into
Parallelograms on the grass and the air felt light
As September began to show her age.

Poem

The noodle lay limp over the brim of the bowl.
It looked tired and forsaken, soaked with soy.
Erica realeased a sigh from deep inside her chest,
Crispy and barbecued from the city.
Nudging the noodle, still staring at me with eyeless yearning,
Until it stuck to the pepper steak held in her twenty-five cent
Chop-sticks, she lifted it, looked at it with aversion,
Then bit down and
Chewed
And
Chewed
And
Chewed.
Then pushing away from the table,
Wiping the noodles black soy tears from the corner of her mouth,
She spoke about the terrible things happening in
Darfur.

The Oldest Trick in the Book

I sat paralyzed with terror. My hands tingled as if I had been pushing a lawnmower for hours. I could feel the muscles in my throat tighten to a close; you couldn’t fit a frog’s hair between them. Why couldn’t they have done this earlier? Where was my body’s natural instinct to protect itself before, when I was tearing into the red meat of the watermelon, not giving any regard to the mortal danger that was imbedded within.
I slowly sat down what was left of the melon, barely a half inch of soft pink rising above the rind, and walked from the porch to the edge of the chicken coop. My cousin, who delivered to me the warning about the black seeds far too late, followed. I watched a rooster peck the back of a hen’s head, and as I was letting down the latch to compartment where my grandfather had laid straw to give the eggs a nice place to lay, she spoke.

“You know, it ain’t all that bad.”
“What do you mean it ain’t all that bad?”
“Well, it probably ain’t any worse than one of the chickens layin’ an egg.”
“But I don’t wanna lay no egg the size of a dang watermelon!”
“You haven’t drank any water have you?”
“Well yeah!”
“Uh oh. Well, you ain’t ate any bread have you?”
“What’s bread got to do with anything?”
“Well, since you can’t have no dirt in your stomach, the seed sets into the bread and grows there. Have you ate any or what?”

Tears were now streaming single file from the edge of each eye.

“Yeah, I’ve ate some! Yesterday with lunch and with a ‘mater sandwitch this morning!”
“Hey stop cryin’! Alright?”
“I can’t! I don’t want no watermelon in me!”
“Listen, let’s go back up there and if nothing happens in a few minutes you’ll probably be okay. It don’t always work.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, Uncle Dewit eats ‘em all the time.”
“But Uncle Dewit says his stomach is made of iron. And he’s magic anyways!”
“Magic? What are you talking about?”
“Well, I used to have the warts on my fingers and mama took me to see him. Well he got out a tater and cut it in half and rubbed it all over my hands. He done some other stuff with it and said some stuff I didn’t know, then me and mama left. Well, come a few days later they were gone!”
“You lie!”
“I promise!”
“Well come on we gotta get back up there.”

We reclaimed our seats on the porch. I sat with my back to the old church pew, my head level with my father’s knee, watching ants snake toward the bucket of old sweaty rinds. I could feel every movement inside me: blood flowing through veins, the touch of air against the tiny blond hair on my legs, the watermelon expanding in my belly. I watched in awe as they spit the seeds effortlessly out onto the lawn. The sun started touching the tops of the trees and soon enough was fighting to punch through them. I was home free. I had fought off certain death. I knew I must have inherited an iron stomach from Uncle Dewhit, who cousin Luanne stared at with trepidation.

Sexy Poems

Here for you viewing pleasure are two sexy poems. Why you ask? Because it's Monday and Mondays are sexy days.
************************************************************

I saw her
Delicate and drawn,
Grasping and groping and
Hoping this time it was real.
And it was for an instant---

The light from the hallway
Shown perfectly across her.
The heavy exhale of quaking breath,
The rhythm of the cicadas,
Who climbed from the dirt,
Toward the heavens,
Put on their wings,
And sang us that song,
While the empty shell of their childhood
Sat deaf and mute.


******************************************************


The smooth sexuality of a poet
Runs through ink and charcoal and key.
It wraps its fingers around the hard edge
Of a book and straightens the spine.
It speaks in whispers and longings like a nun,
Huddled against the wall, gripping a rosary, with a pillow
Between her legs.

The Boy Who Had Fish, Part IV

Her plan had worked perfectly. Luke did exactly what she knew he would. It took her months of planning. Of course she knew Luke would call Sara. After she walked in on their almost kiss at the new years party last year, she knew their bond over fish was something real. So she planted the bass with the letters, none of which were actually sent, carefully left a picture taken at the new years party on the desk, just in case he needed reminding on who to call and left before he came home. She was supposed to be away on business, and she was, setting up a plan to rid her husband of his fish forever.

Luke trembled. There was his wife Jackie, standing over Sara with a crowbar. She stared at him with a face furious with love and disappointment. She dropped the crowbar and it made an empty thud as it bounced off of Sara’s chest, walked toward Luke, raised her arms and irately beat him with her fist. Luke’s heart collapsed with guilt. His all consuming love of fish had driven the only woman he really loved to the brink of murder. He stared at Sara’s body and the snaking line of blood coming from her wound and knew that she was nothing but a symbol of his fish. A life he wanted to leave, for Jackie.

Jackie explained how she knew he would come here. The receipts from here tucked in the pockets of pants that she found doing laundry. He knew Sara would come, because even though she never really loved Luke, she loved his fish. She walked Luke over to the 18 wheeler she had rented and driven from Montgomery, opened the hatch and let Luke see his beloved fish that were stacked to ceiling. She told him that their baby would not live in a house where this was going on. A tear fell down Luke’s cheek as he thought about how he would never see them again, not because he didn’t want to, but because Jackie would most likely kill him if he said he wanted to keep them. They worked to rid the trailer of the fish, climbed in the cab of the truck, but in Born to Run and headed south.

Sara awoke with a raging headache. She placed her hand down to help herself get up and it slipped right out from underneath her. She looked down and realized she was laying on top of a 35 foot high pile of fish. The dockworkers were just arriving and she could hear police sirens heading that way, soon the reporters from the Times would be there and the head line would read:

Sara James: HAS ALL THE FISH IN NEW YORK!



The End.

The Boy Who Had Fish, Part III

As he stepped out of the cap, the click of his shoe echoed against the silent warehouse walls. Even for early April the air off the rivers sent a deep chill through him. He knew he was in the heart of the Bronx. Hunts Point was what you thought of when you thought Bronx: hookers, dealers, the sound of sirens. He had the cabbie wait. If Sara didn’t show he would need him there.

I’m writing this letter to inform you…Coward
…a disturbing and hidden history of fish. SPY!
He has been known to have dozens of fish…it effects every part of his life. Ruined.

He read the letters again and again. They were full of stone cold facts and his blood boiled. He began to wonder why he even though Sara would show up. Their last meeting was less than a happy memory. But exactly fifteen minutes late she arrived, her car splashing through potholes, carelessly unaware.

Behind the wheel, however, Sara knew exactly what was going on. She knew as soon as she hung up the phone with Luke just hours earlier. The address Luke gave her was to the Fulton Fish Market, one of the largest and most important fish markets on the East Coast. She also knew that for years it was run by the mob, and with Luke’s background, she knew he was in trouble. No way Luke would be caught dead in Hunts Point after dark, in daylight for that matter, without a very good reason.

As she walked toward Luke, she tossed a cigarette causally onto the slick concrete. Luke admired her unperturbed demeanor—he didn’t know that was her sixth one on the drive over. As they greeted each other with an embrace, Sara felt Luke’s stomach tighten as he drew in a sharp breath. She could feel his shoulders tightening as he gently pulled away. He stared past her left shoulder with eyes as wide as the bottom of Coke bottles for a split second.

Luke could not believe it. He stared into the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen and ever even glanced down at Sara’s cataleptic body.

The Boy Who Had Fish, Part II

The Macbook that had always provided him with warmth and security now cast a dead glow upon his face. The cursor of the word processor flashed in steady rhythm, a metronome for the melody of impending disaster. He thought of his daughter, yet unborn, and wondered aloud How will she know me?
He tried to keep a grasp on his mind, yet is slipped and turned figure eights into thoughts of marlin, snapper, tuna, grouper, and guppies. Even now, with the world about to know of his secret, he couldn’t help but think of the countless fish he had. Then it struck him in an instant, an epiphany of resolution, of absolution! A rush of air hit is stomach, inflating it with a vision of liberty. He moved with purpose from behind the laptop which now shown like a lighthouse to a sailor lost in the fog.
He gathered the letters. He read them. He made notes of times, dates, names. He quickly booked a flight. Then he called in a favor.
Sara James was beautiful. She was brilliantly smart. And she was wildly loud. But she was the only person right now who could help Luke. He knew her from college. Being that it was a very small liberal arts school, they knew each other well. Luke had always harbored a bit of jealously over Sara James’ love of another friend, Jonathan Tew. Jonathan was handsome, popular, and talented. However, this would be Luke’s ticket to acknowledgement. As the phone rang he wondered what he would say. What would she say? How could he tell her his situation? Then click..

“Hello?”
“Sara?”
“What the fuck do you want Luke?”
“Nice to hear from you too.”
“What the fuck do you want Luke?”
“Could you meet me in Manhattan ?”
“New York?! Luke you live in Alabama! You stupid piece of shit.”
“Sara, please.”
“Where? Ass.”
“ The Bronx. Hunts Point. 800 Food Center Drive. Don’t tell anyone.”

The Fall

Now I always thought that in our fall from Eden, besides the strains of physicality and the bearing of earthly burdens, our real earthly task was that an unbridgeable gap, or a black hole was opened up in our ability to truly love one another. And so our job here on earth, the way we regain our divinity, our sacredness, and our general good-standing is by reconstructing love and creating love out of the broken pieces that we've been given. --Bruce Springsteen



I beat the rust off an old iron dream
And placed it on the mantle,
Just above the record player.
Every now and again I dust it off,
Stare at its possibility, and shake loose a
Resigned sigh over the dull orange flakes,
Scattered across a sunken floor.

Poem

Liz opened the stove and the smell of the casserole
Echoed off a memory deep inside my gut—

The pitch of forks rattling and being set on the counter
Beside spoons, butter knives, and red solo cups
Filled with cubes of ice &
Gallons of sweet tea—
A Southerner’s blood is 65% sugar
15% grease
10% Jesus
5% alcohol
5% chicken—
The click of high-heels, the slap of bare feet, and the thud of
Boots against linoleum,
And me, sitting in between men with giant shoulders,
As they used words like “next season”, “drought”, and “auction”.

As Liz covered the dish and laid it aside to cool,
I walked to the porch,
Opened the cooler,
Slid my hand beneath the ice and water,
Grabbed one more beer,
And tried to pretend it wasn’t Sunday.

Summer

Shade trees won’t do you any good. Well, they might for a minute—they’re more like sunspots than oases. A refreshing breeze? Sometimes car exhaust has more invigorating qualities. It’s a south Alabama summer. No, it doesn’t get 115 degrees here like the desert. No, in the desert you don’t sweat, or at least for very long. The sun just evaporates that right off of you. Sit in the shade and its 20 degrees cooler. Here, in Alabama, your bones sweat. Shades are just places where you can take your sunglasses off. It’s a 100 degrees and 90% humidity; the air is denser than plastic. Want proof that summers here are our reprimand for living in such a beautiful place? The two animals that come out to greet us this time of year: mosquitoes and snakes.

Here's the thing: it's hot as hell outside, it's only June, and it's starting to piss me off.

The Boy Who Had Fish

He stared just over the top of his new Mac book. His eyes cast a gaze over the unopened box of the brand new IPhone that came via USPS yesterday. All of his attention, every ounce of desire and determination in him was fixed entirely on the the largemouth bass resting on the bureau. For years he had horded dozens, sometimes hundreds, of fish throughout his house. His new young bride found the first two crappie under a towel in the corner of the closet. A plump bluegill in the false bottom of a desk drawer a few weeks later provided alarm. Now it was becoming clear, soon everyone would know, Luke Lucas has fish.
Luke married well, had a good job, and enough electronics so keep any computer geek happy for years, but he couldn't help but have every fish he saw. He knew that a few of his friends had found out about his obsession. In fact, Luke had stolen his first few fish from Bo Henderson, a trusted friend and band mate. The inevitability of his unveiling made it feel like ants were under his skin. His stomach turned like two cobia in mating ritual when he passed the seafood aisle in Publix.
And now, in the jaws of largemouth bass lying on his bureau, a letter detailing his concealed cardinal sin. A letter addressed to the conference, the newspaper, and the Steve Jobs.

TO BE CONTINUED... (maybe)

Thanks JFK

I came across a quote the other day that I had never read. The words of this really made me feel proud:

"If by a 'Liberal' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal,' then I'm proud to say I'm a 'Liberal.

--John F. Kennedy

So, to all the conservative talking heads and fear mongers: Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Michael Savage, Hi, my name is J.T. and I'm proud to say "I'm a Liberal."

The State I Love

My home has deep roots. My street is lined with mansions bought with slave labor. My county is the home of governors, one of them being my state’s defining figure George Wallace. My family’s religion is the same as most everyone else’s in my South, college football on Saturdays and Southern Baptist on Sunday. The country in which I grew up breeds a love for one’s native land, while understanding the soil is thick with a rich and sometimes troubled past. My South isn’t all magnolias and dogwoods; it teems with the sting of the southern pine’s sharp needles, and it warns of snakes and haints. My South is a land of beauty, ease, affability, and contradiction. Fishing, front porch sitting, pickin’ & grinning, dancing on Saturday and praying on Sunday are common in my South. Bourbon, honeysuckles, rows of cotton, firm handshakes, straight talkers and bullshitters are all home in my South.
The State I love can be perplexing. We’ve stood in schoolhouse doors and challenged the authority of the President and perpetuated a stereotype. We’ve welcomed NASA, Mercedes-Benz, and established one of the best junior college systems in the nation. The State I love is belittled by outsiders as uncultured, uncouth, and uneducated. She has given us Nat “King” Cole, Harper Lee, Hank Williams, Hank Aaron, Jesse Owens, Lionel Hampton, and Helen Keller. We’ve introduced you to Mardi Gras, electric trolleys, open heart surgery, and the many uses of the wonderful peanut. We built the rocket that put the astronauts on the moon, issued the command “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead”, we taught Willie Mays to play baseball, and Joe Louis how to box. The State I love has gifts.
The State I love has seen many things. She’s witnessed the bare feet of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Mobile press silently against the carpet of her forest. She watched as de Soto marveled at her beauty, and the French, British, and Spanish fought over her lands. She was the cradle of the Confederacy and is still the Heart of Dixie. She bore the Civil Rights Movement, country music, and some of the most beautiful women on the planet. From Mt. Cheaha to Orange Beach, Horseshoe Bend to Muscle Shoals, and Lake Eufaula to Natural Bridge the State I love has aged well.
We are connected through our differences, in the State I love. Only here can a “Roll Tide” or a “War Eagle” send chills of elation or detestation though a soul, and only here is that language not considered hyperbole. We are rivals on gridirons across 67 counties on Friday evenings—and friends at the field party later that night. We change with the times, right our wrongs, and forgive our brothers, in our own due time. We cuss the government for telling us where not to pray. It is acceptable to wear team affiliated colors to church after the Iron Bowl, and a ticket to Talladega is a valid excuse for missing church this week.
We have shed blood over the color of a man’s skin. We’ve burnt crosses, burnt houses, and hung men for no less than a look toward a woman. We’ve also marched from Selma to Montgomery, sat down in buses and diners, and buried Jim Crow. We lived what you read about in the State I love.
We have monuments to Confederate heroes, but these are things of our past--a past that can not help but bleed into the present. These men were Scots-Irish, sons of German immigrants, and the descendants of fathers who died tossing off the crown of British tyranny and they would be damned if they would lose their rights. Slavery is a stain on all of America, a vile product of a culture that possessed so much beauty but refused to see how so much of that beauty was maintained. Many of the men who fought and died were too poor to own slaves. Many of the men who fought in the War Between the States were those who were fighting for homeland, for country.
That is what some don’t realize, we aren’t just from this place; this place, Alabama, is in us. She has protected us as infants and allowed us to roam as children. She lent us her trees to climb, rivers and lakes to swim, and mountains to scale. We’ve tilled her soil and she has fed us, fished her sea and she has provided a bounty. We’ve buried our loved ones in her and she protects them while they rest still.