Author: Ernie McCray

by Ernie McCray

I’ve lived a life
trying to keep the spirit
of the Harlem Renaissance,
the Golden Age
of Black intellectual
and ethnic revival,
alive,motivated by parents who were infused
with the likes of Richard Wright
and Langston Hughes
and their world views,
growing up in a home
in tune with Black culture,

by Ernie McCray

My goodness.
Evil people slaughter
our children
and all we do is pray
and send loving thoughts
the survivors’ way
and TV punditry
airs it out
this way and that way
and the folks
we vote in
to protect us from such tragedies
suck up to the NRA

by Ernie McCray

Duke Ellington wrote
the melody to
and Ella Fitzgerald sang
the words to
“It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.”
And that has always
been my thing,
giving in to
the swing of things.
Like the other day
while my family

by Ernie McCray

Oh, what a world.
A world, that, too often,
seems like a nightmarish dream.
Makes me want to scream.
But there came a moment
when I turned my television on
and there, before me, stood Nanci Griffith
|singing “From a Distance,”
forever one of my favorite songs.

by Ernie McCray

I sat
the other day
as a dancer,
a Black woman,
moved her body and feet
to African rhythms and beats,
giving honor
to how Black arts
have enriched humanity
since near the dawning
of our species.

As she danced
a young aspiring White supremacist,

by Ernie McCray

It sometimes seems like our country is overwhelmed by lies, a mixture of little white lies and innocent lies, all the way up to the infamous “Big Lie!”

Now the Supreme Court has joined in, acting as though their plot to deprive women of the right to terminate a pregnancy, is protecting children, children yet born, by the way.

The lie here, another big one, is the implication that we, as a society, hold children dear while millions of them live among us in despair:

by Ernie McCray

I don’t know if there is anything like the joy of being on stage.

Such were my thoughts after the last time I was on one, doing “Still, We Rise,” a Poetry and Jazz Show, at the Conrad Prebys Music Center at UC San Diego, with some amazingly talented people the world should know.

Cecil Lytle, a concert jazz pianist of renown and professor emeritus at UCSD, produced and performed in the show. The Rob Thorsen Quartet and jazz vocalist, Steph Johnson, did most of the music for the show.

by Ernie McCray

A friend,
Mary Castleberry,
a desert being,
a Sonoran, like me,
celebrates
her 75th birthday
and I would be remiss
if I didn’t say
she’s one of the most
down to earth people
I know.

by Ernie McCray

I appeared on the scene
on April 18
in 1938,
and when I reflect
on my 84 years
of aging
I can plainly see
a world today
that’s very much like yesterday.

By Ernie McCray

Days away
from my
84th birthday
I still dream
a fantasy
where people
join hands
to bring hopeful changes
to a troubled land.

This wish has persisted
|because we’ve
come a long way
as a nation
in the spirit of this mission,
but too often it’s been
in a one step forward
two steps backwards fashion

by Ernie McCray

Oh, I hope
that the image
of seeing a Black-on-Black Crime
that came out of nowhere
right in front of me
on my big screen TV
will someday escape my mind.

It was such an ugly sight to see,
the vision of a man,
Will Smith,
whom I associate with laughter and glee,

by Ernie McCray

I can’t remember who the player was
in all the March Madness
the other day
but he
grabbed a rebound
with such power and grace
it etched a “Wow” in the expression on my face
and he had a look on his face
that I used to have when I played,