New | Poetry | Marc Isaac Potter

 

Rotary Dial, One to Zero - v01

 

Every circle is

incomplete,

broken,

out of touch.

 

The myth of a complete circle

is like all myths,

made out of nothing.

 

I lived through the

1930’s - even though

I was born in November of 1950.

 

That’s because Ohio

…  is  …

 

always 20’s behind

everyone else.

 

Case in point:

in 2015, people in Ohio

are still using the word “Negro” and the

phrase “colored people”.

 

In high school, 1969,

I wrote a report for school

about the shooting of Fred Hampton

and Mark Clark, 2 Chicago members of

The Black Panthers.

 

My teacher was totally upset and

… “reamed me a new one” - they sent me off to the principal’s office,

who in turn disciplined me as well.  “How dare I !”

 

Previously, days before, my mother had accused me of staying up so late working on the initial paper because I was “wired up on marijuana.”

 

At 18, I had never before

heard the word “marijuana”.

 

At college, I volunteered for the Black Panthers - and really what I did was just hang out with the man who distributed the Inter-communal News Service.

 

I was invited to go to a meeting at the Black Panther Center on Dorr Street in Toledo.

 

Happily, I was also studying Gandhi’s Satyagraha and I decided nonviolence is longer lasting - and that I was not willing to use violence for social change.

 

Every circle is

broken.

 

Every myth is

tomato soup.

 

An Animal in the Darkness

 

There was, but it

Is turning over,

Belly exposed.

 

Is it sick?

Papa said do not shoot an animal that

Does not run, it might be sick.

 

The only wisdom,

A distant streetlight,

Yawning from loneliness

Went black.

 

Now I cannot see

The belly-bursting animal.

 

Did it slip away when

I was breathing

Life

Into my courage?

 

The leaves of the Oak Trees,

Thicken themselves,

Turn black,

As still as a frozen Panther.

 

There is nothing left for

Me to do but go home

Empty-handed

And empty.

 

Was it a raccoon?  … Was it a large squirrel?