Written over the course of the years between the late 1960's and 2011, this collection of poems is about the author's evocative responses to a variety of experiences - such as his response to the announcement of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the sacred cows destroyed as a clergy person experiencing marital separation and divorce and the effort to fill that hole by an act of imagination, responses in the idiom of black folk culture to some expressions of the black consciousness movement in the decades of the 60's and 70's, stirrings awakened by teachers and classmates, relational responses to love and affection in spite of pre-defined cultural or religious boxes aiming to restrict its expression, and relational responses attesting to the author's own faith journey.



Organized in four parts, the poems of the first part point back in time "Before Blackness" captured the attention of the public and would be revolutionaries, a time when there were teachers/Teaching in the tribes/Teaching on the ships/Teaching without the books and degrees/Teaching in spite of the books and degree/of slavery, segregation, and racism. Teachers, /Teaching the fine arts and sciences of staying intact/In an untidy-world/For the sake of the one/Our grit and grace could make. The poems of the second part, "In Rabbitude," are shaped by the folkloric tradition of talking animals like Brer Rabbit, the trickster-hero, the neighborhood oldster who told tales of ghosts and rabbits, and the preacher-man as a character. I am in RABBITUDE! / (Not Negritude!)/It sounds good, damn good! /But there is no such thing! / I am too busy being a rabbit. / (An anglicized proper Afro rabbit!). The poems of the third part, "Because They Wanted To," are about love and marriage and related connections of the heart without regard to race or gender. It isn't anybody's business/But those who found the other/Because they wanted to. /Each in loving found/Because wanting to in the fullness of their desires. /And they shacked up. Married, or inhabited an arrangement./ The poems of the fourth part, "Lying After Truth," touch on the religious and philosophical stuff of an upside-down world intent on righting itself as in "Raped By A Woman: " He said he was raped by a woman. /Impossible in law, said the lawyers. /Unthinkable in ethics, said the moralists. /Unheard of in custom, said society. / Or as in "April's Repetition: "Ted! Ted! / They've shot Martin Luther King Junior! /They've killed him dead!"/Well I'll be damned./ I'll be goddamn!/ Another man done gone!/Another man done in!/Another man done!/Another Black Man!/Lord, Another Hell!/ Awake! Awake! Wake up everybody! /Throw up a New World! / Cause this one is on fire! /