Columns

By Ernie McCray

I read somewhere that
“A salary is the amount your employer
pays you to forget your dreams.”
And my take on the idea is
are you kidding me,
with some of the poorly paying jobs I had early in my life,
sweeping and mopping
and buffing and dusting
in between
wiping tears from my eyes
and cussing?

By Ernie McCray

What if the slogan,
“Make America Great Again,”
was replaced
with a more hopeful
and promising acronym
such as
“Make America Governable Again”
like the time
when the powers that be
set, although rather unenthusiastically,
its slaves free
or when they laid down highways
allowing motorists
to travel the country
more easily and economically
or gave birth to voting rights
for all of our citizenry.

by Ernie McCray

We seem to be a country
that looks at its most pressing
social and political problems
with mystified eyes
and shoulder shrugs
that say
“Oh well.”
Like we dismiss
the nation’s propensity
for mass murders
that break hearts in two
with a prayer or two
and get right back
to whatever it is we do.

by Ernie McCray

I look at a picture of me at a mic
and my son, Guy,
playing the guitar at my right
and I think,
“Man, I’ve had a great life”
because that moment, in the photo,
captured me having the time of my life,
giving a graduation speech,
via a song,
to people I dearly loved
as sure as I was born,
students at Muir,
a K-12 alternative school,

by Ernie McCray

Hey,
Maria Ester Nieto.
I was just thinking
how many years ago
we used to refer to our girlfriends
as our “old lady,”
with no thought
that a day might come
when your squeeze is just that,”
an old lady,
a beauty like you
turning eighty,
rocking it,

by Ernie McCray

Sometimes when
I need to momentarily free
myself from humanity
and all its insanity,
I’ll listen to my man, Ahmad Jamal,
tickle the ivories
as only he can,
captivated
with the way|
he can finger the keys
in a tinkling fashion

by Ernie McCray

I was
listening to Supersax,
superbly relaxed,
scatting along with the brilliantly constructed tones
they blow through their saxophones,
like I was Lambert Hendricks and Ross
and the Manhattan Transfer
all wrapped up in one,
their songs
ferrying me
deep into a 1940’s
state-of-mind,

by Ernie McCray

An ex-president
getting a portion
of his due
through an indictment
and now an arraignment
that are about as overdue
as a book checked out of the library
in 1892,
makes me want to dance a jig,
bad back and all.
And the claim
that the charges against him,
amongst other things,
have been
a witch-hunt, from the get-go,
makes me want to chuckle

by Ernie McCray

Amanda Gorman
gifted us with
“The Hill We Climb”
at an
inaugural celebration,
a poem inspiring hope
which hangs on weakly
by a thread
in our nation,
a poem a parent had
removed from a school
because in her narrowed way
of looking at things

by Ernie McCray

I was moving
my old bones
to the music of San Diego’s
Hoover High School Mariachi Band
which put me in a deeply responsive mood
for what was next
that afternoon,
a premiere of
“A Chicano Love Story,”
a documentary
featuring Linda and Carlos LeGerrette,
two of Cesar Chavez’s
most valued right-hand
woman and man.

by Ernie McCray

Two of my grandchildren,
Lyric and Marley,
Lyric almost ten,
Marley, eight,
slept over
the other night
and things went great.