Welcome to this week's Poetically Yours. Poetically Yours showcases poems by northern Illinois poets. This week's episode features Christopher D. Sims.
Sims is from the West Side of Rockford and first shared his poetic gifts onstage at Haskell Elementary School thanks to Dorothy Paige-Turner.
Rooted in Black joy and celebration, his poems wind through the landscapes of this country's past and present. He hopes they will inform, engage and entertain. Sims, who originally wrote rap and hip-hop lyrics, said his poetry has a bebop cadence. His poem "Thinking About King: A Thesis-Poem On Leadership" reflects on the years since Martin Luther King Jr.'s passing.
Year, after year, after year
We celebrate King in January;
We honor his memory; we share
how thankful we are for what
he did for this country.
When January arrives,
when King Day becomes
present, clear
the energy of justice
of equality, of equity
becomes proximate
to the future
of the United States -
as if the United States,
has never needed it!
What can we
do different this year?
How can communities
of activists, of organizers,
of leaders
change the trajectory
of the inequity, of the
poverty of this country?
Can we pause
to think about
that for a moment?
Service is good.
Feeding the homeless,
excellent.
Cleaning up
a dirty neighborhood
is awesome.
But how about
something new,
something different,
something significant,
something game changing,
something impactful?!
King would be proud
if we could get past
the mediocrity of
the same actions,
the nonchalant
attention, the
less involved
activities we
give to the
work he did
in order to
get us all
the way
here, here,
here.
We are
The ones
We’ve been
waiting for
change, change,
change, change,
justice, justice,
justice, justice,
equity, equity,
equity, equity
is needed more now
than ever before!
- Yvonne Boose is a current corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project. It's a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms like WNIJ. You can learn more about Report for America at wnij.org.
