NOW THAT HE IS SAFELY DEAD

Photo courtesy of the National Park Service

 Several years ago I ran across a skinny little volume of poems and essays remembering the death of MLK. Ironicall while Drum Major for a Dream was edited by religious studies professor Ira Zepp and Del Martin who teaches literature, writes some poetry. Both were respeccted instructors at Western Maryland University. The volume was produced by the Writers Workshop - Indian Creative Writing in English headquartered in, wait for it, Calcutta. India. 

Now that he is safely dead

Let us praise him.

Build monuments to his glory

Sing hosannas to his name

 

Dead men make such safe,

Convenient heroes:

They cannot rise to challenge the images

We would fashion from their lives.

 

And besides,

It is easier to build monuments

Than to build a better world.

 

So, now that he is safely dead

We, with eased consciences

Will teach our children

That he was a great man…knowing

 

That the cause he lived for

Is still a cause. And that the dream

For which he died is still a dream.

A dead man’s dream.

 Carl Wendell Hines Jr. in Drum Major for a Dream

This piece was written in memory of MLK Jr. Screen shot from the Amazon Books website. The volume only has seventy or so pages. Bound in the cloth used for saris. Not the really nice, shimmery ones. the kind of cloth the village women wear. Poems, short essays, some very angry. I believe that only one edition was produced by this group. If there is an earlier version I haven't found one. The only copies avaiable are used and they are pricey. Very Very pricey. Believe I will do a little digging. Now if I can just solve the formatting issues in word.  Grrrr. 

 Actually this is an update of an earlier journal entry. This piece was written in memory of MLK Jr. However it could also describe the fate of the teachings of a certain footsore rabbi who came a cropper when he went against the combined power of Rome and the Jerusalem power structure. However unlike MLK who left his letters, speaches and sermons that footsore rabbi left no written record. We don’t know what HE taught. He didn’t write anything down. People with their own agendas did write things down and out of those writings at least one author has identified eight distinct theologies in the New Testament. And he believed that seven of those were wrong. Unfortunately that book didn't make the trip to Eastern Oregon and damn if I can remember the author or the title. 

 Now that He is safely out of the way we can make just about anything we want out of the scraps that were allowed into the accepted canon and proceed to beat each other over the head with them and build fences with safely locked gates. Above those gates are the words Keep Out.