An ode to Doughtry ‘Doc’ Long

Ode to Doc Long

A poet, whose lips have been silenced by the ills of his years ... even his pen questions the spelling of S.O.S., intuitively... not the meaning. Because his soul still shouts literary command for yesterday, today, tomorrow! I saw him when indeed he was that tree

planted by the water, determined not to be removed from a voice sculptured from the blues in jazz, a crow’s caw and a black cat’s screech — while mules rest

and plows detest opening another

fertile furrow because protesters

must sit-in, step up to counter encounters, exclaim revolution on the streets — to transform humanity beyond the beauty of blackened art ... in Harlem’s Renaissance —- never to be forgotten. You believed in chronicle... a flourish of pens,

pecking typewriters, headlining sin ... again — from afro heads,

do rags, braids, beards, dashikis, kufi, Georgia, Africa, Middle East, an International view. Reefer haze, brain painted days of creative red eyed alcoholic

substinence, to lift and whisper

In abstracts of profundity— you ate and filled, being the responder who parades at a podium, on a stage, most certainly, a class room — Inner you, inner me, inner all. Shouting spirits from ancestors’ caves of dark residue about white collar rejoice, contoured on ebony veneer — Those Sunday Hallelujahs— you release guttural barks of freedom, in red, black & green.

A love you have for words, with grit, while minds-eye torrent from the poet’s collage ... of your emblazon emotions. (From you—Doc, To you, Doc!)