Younger Person’s Clothes

The dreams and hopes of youth  
may change as one ages  
the function of life experiences  
and also the loss of naivety  
 
A lad in junior and senior high  
wanted to shape government  
be the first male African American  
US Senator of the most populated state  
 
Head heroes, some who were politicians  
others who critiqued society with songs  
poems and dramatic parts  
a strong sense of connectivity  
 
Working my way through under graduate  
and volunteering on campaigns
I relished actively engaging people  
in politics but eschewed the role of money  
 
Discovered that being a political candidate  
in this climate is attached to soliciting  
others for contributions and telling  
people what they want to hear  
 
Entertainment not information  
much like what has happened to news
which is function of what sales  
and ratings not stimulating the IQ
 
A discovery that I was bipolar further  
resigned me away from any candidacy
and an awareness that the closer to  
federal government the more deplorable  
 
The facade of holding and maintaining  
political positions  
the friends at the local level and state
remained people I could believe in  
 
The realization that people I drew courage  
from, the Bobby Kennedy, the Malcom X,
the Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger
Randall Robinson and Shirley Chisholm  
 
Paid for their convictions sometimes with  
their lives or other sacrifices  
the bright eyed youth privy  
to the game politics has become  
 
Even as an educator my perspective  
changed, no longer buying the rhetoric  
of “doing it all for the students”
which has twisted well meaning reform  
 
My dreams and aspirations no longer  
the stuff of being a cog in  
organizational change but rather  
about a return to recognizing  
 
Human worth and dignity in all
not confined to race, gender,
sexual orientation or wealth  
but rather as Doctor King said,
 
“The Content Of Character”