Blog no longer 'unsecured' whatever means dat! Poems: Halloween World - Birthing a Black Baby

My friend Iris alerted me that she couldn't get on my blog - wah! wah! wah! - due to the word 'unsecured.'

Finally, my son, Daniel Paul Deming, fixed it! Thanks a million, my blue-eyed son.

***
Verizon is driving me crazy. Just paid a humongous bill to both the RZD account and the ND account. Luckily I had the money. The bastards!

Still no caller ID comes up.

Can you see me gnashing my teeth like a huge dragon?

***
Have I told you I started to snack on baby carrots? Awfully good.

Bernie - of Freda and Bernie - gave me a container of home-made hummus - in which I dipped carrots, instead of carb-laden Triscuits.

***
Did you know that if my wrists drag on this keyboard, everything will be erased?
Gnashing of teeth.

***
The below poem, which is quite fine, was rejected by River Poets Journal.

BIRTHING ANOTHER BLACK BABY

Cicily Tyson
Frederick Douglass
Miles Dewey Davis
Zora Neale Hurston
Oprah Winfrey
Toni Morrison
Romare Beardon

Her screams could be heard
far outside the fifth-floor
walk-up on North Broad Street
as the Medical and Dental Schools
just readied their new classes
for fixing all the white folks' woes.

Her mama and her brother dabbed at her
sweaty forehead with clean white towels
as she cried, When! When! When can I bear
this child that's making mincemeat pie
out of me.

Yes, she remembered when they lived
in the big house back in Georgia,
pies, jellies, rum cakes, all went
into the clean, well-swept pantry
unlike this mouse-infested low-
ceilinged rat's nest, her boyfriend
stabbed in prison, fighting over the
price of Salems.

But, damn, this was his child, and
she, with her wide hips and bound-up
mounds of hair, came from royalty,
a tribe known for its subtlety of
song, "Go Down Moses."

Her five children waited in the
living room, listening through
the walls, playing dominoes and
craps, when they heard the loudest
scream ever, loud as the screams
and whips on the slave ship

Yes, little baby Daniel yelped
his way into the world, and one day
they were going to make it a free world,
and if not this time, then the next and
the next and the next

Hail there, Daniel, put on your walkin
shoes, we're gonna meet the preacher man
and he'll learn you some real
down-home prayers and teach you how to
play the organ for the glory of the
Lord or whoever is up there beyond
the stars, ole Jackie Robinson
or Ornette Coleman or Sweet Baby
Jesus hisself.

***

HALLOWEEN WORLD AND
THE CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT
OF THE STARS

Hear the howling of the wind?
As if all the hatred in the world
were swept up into a fungus of evil

Pitch black, Scott and I, wrapped
in warm clothes, walked down our
street, not a drop of light
to guide our way

"Halloween Row" like "synagogue row"
on Easton Road, was dressed in every
shade of orange imaginable

And what an imagination our neighbors
have! Who knew? Standing there
I was a child again. Daddy took us
for drives to see the lights. Back
then, only Christmas lights were up.

Tombstones, skeletons lying on the grass,
witches swinging from the trees, and eleven
are dead at Squirrel Hill Synagogue in
Florida.

Shot! Bullets pinging from the peaceful
chapel where a baby-naming ceremony
was going on.

One of the houses had vapor spewing
from some sort of machine, another
house had lights projected onto
their brick, this house, always has
its front door open, like I do.

Trick or treat. Judy is giving out
Sunmaid Raisins. I've got a Woolworth's
shelf filled with M&Ms and tiny
Hershey Bars, nothing like candy
my dear, hollared the wicked witch,
for the little beggars, as my -ex
used to call them.

Where are the winds of love?
Where are the winds of peace?
Where are the winds of all religions
proclaiming to the nations
God is love?

***
Stayed up till two a m last night watching Dick Cavett interview Groucho Marx (sex sex sex) and Alfred Hitchcock.