Obama in Africa

Africa's favorite son returns

Obama jetted

back to Africa

soaring aloft on

gulf stream swank

a posse of

oil company execs in tow, 
intent on liberating

Dark Continent 

fossil fuels from unjust

underground prisons

American 

entrepreneurs

angling to get the

upper hand in the

high stakes global 

resource poker game

pulled a big time race card

to trump China’s

full house

On Goree Island,

political paparazzi

popped and clicked

a perfect image 

of the neocolonial

white clad President

framed in a doorway filled

with dark shadows and 

heinous memory of the

unspeakable horrors 

of global trade

leering from 

the portal at the 

Gate of No Return

Obama welled with

meditative epiphanies

of personal seachange,

and the vicissitudes of life,

pondering his meteoric rise

from a Land of Lincoln

State Senator to

American President

in the span of 

one golden 

9/11 decade

At a 

South African University 

Town Hall Summit,

the fist bumpin,

mike droppin  Prez

telepromted the

star struck folks with

solemn universal civil rights

pronouncements,

wrapped in the riddle of 

the pursuit of peace,

hidden in the enigma of  

the reverence for 

human dignity

Later in the day

Mr. Obama sat at the

feet of a comatose Mandela;

whispering into his ear

why an Afghan peace

eludes him, why his

drone strikes rain

death upon innocents

and why his democratic

republic defiles

the civil liberties of its

citizens to ransom

a daily diet of fear

But Madiba 

does not hear

the feverish

confessions; his

ears are closed,

he dreams only

of the paradise of

liberation he earned

for his life's wages

Music Selection:

Gil Scott Heron

Western Sunrise

Oakland

070213

jbm