Poem: Ain't Nothing Changed by Rudolph Lewis

Ain’t Nothing Changed

                                  --- For Ben Carson

                          

Ain’t nothing changed but you, Brother—

searchlights, night helicopters, hunting runaways:

shock & awe sameness. Satan still enlightens, still

passes along the apple of knowing in evening

news, a veil of innocence applauding how we change

faces, how Wall Street masks its account on islands.

Heads crowned with fresh hoarfrost yet rambling

in high-spun circles as the defenseless are dragged

from their moment, from their sunny yesterdays.

We grow apart as armies conquer & occupy.

Ain’t nothing changed but you, Brother—you no

longer call me with urgency, with hot words

like NationTime! / The Revolution Is On!

Tongues sniff the air for Italian patent leather

shoes grinding like jackboots—you whipped

into dark suits & red ties, broad denture grins

for PR cameras, mirrors of error dancing in eyes

of black athletes, trapped balling for billionaires

clawing through to the bone, crawling on floors.

But you, Brother, you’re playing golf at the club

with MJ & Tiger. For you, no gunship clouds skies

raining fire on head-holding dreams, no blackness.

Scavenging birds crowd into laboring landscapes

while success prophets celebrate suburban havens.

Ain’t nothing changed but you Brother—a retiring ceo,

daylight comes, daylight goes, leveraging pyramids,

staging annual bus trips to graves of Martin & Malcolm.

Nothing but blue vertigo, barbs of steel wire enclosures

& tanks—colloquiums, councils justifying war,

flying machines crushing Gaza & Baghdad . Nothing’s

changed, Brother—we won’t give up & we won’t let go.

--Rudolph Lewis