Poets' Corner

Also in this section:
Photography, José Ponce's urban scenes
Panama Jazz Festival schedule
Sparky the Wonder Dog
Poets' Corner
More muñeco photos
Music videos, An online inauguration concert

Soul Searching

My shadow,
a constant and unconditional Sancho Panza,
knows its place,
but not the other very well

My soul seems like a spy
facing judgments
for what I do

I can never find it when I need it
because of bickering
between the two
of us
I am presently seeking a replacement

it must be in there somewhere
among the boxes in my garage
hiding from the threats of rotting and burning
in a darker place
not in sunshine
not at prayer time

perhaps at the New York Yankee games
where they eat hot dawgs
and listen to Kate Smith

You don’t get that fat
on hawg jaw and greens
or that bad
with moves from James Brown and Chuck Berry

alas, the Canadian, Celine Dion
What is she doing with it?

Diego Santiago 28/12/08

Abe Saperstein and the
Harlem Globetrotters

Newsreels of a way to be
came newer than the Beatles
slip siding
past our guardians,
at the point of an afternoon movie
for what was coming
and we were touched and gotten to

We saw this band of brothers
from right up close
and how they offered up the ball to spin
as does the world
and all upon a finger tip

Would the referee be splashed with water
or would the pail shower him with bits of paper?
Can they do what they are doing
combining skill and anarchic farce
bringing color to a time of black and white?

Their joy and chatter
an open door
have taunted us with the game itself

somewhere they play their games
somehow it would never be the same

for this I laughed and waited

Author notes
Abe Saperstein was one of the most important men of the 20th century because of the influence of the Harlem Globetrotters (originally created by Saperstein as the Savoy 5) on the way we live and interact. Of course the team is always a part of this. I write from my own first glimpse of them in a newsreel in the late 1940s. The impact of this group was profound and still does not get credit for its part in spreading the way that we all can be.

Diego Santiago

Also in this section:
Photography, José Ponce's urban scenes
Panama Jazz Festival schedule
Sparky the Wonder Dog
Poets' Corner
More muñeco photos
Music videos, An online inauguration concert

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