For Muhammad Ali

[Listen to a performance by the poet below]
 

American Apartheid kept the greatest   
Boxer who ever lived from eating downtown in our hometown  
Cause he was colored,    
Despite his being   
Endowed with the Gold   
For fighting for his country and their star-spangled    
God just days before.  

He, even so, kept his gloves up, loudly
Intoned that black lives matter, 
Jettisoned the 
Kentucky Clay from which he sprang, was  
Loaned a famed 
Muslim  
Name,  
Owing to the Ottoman lord—that well-known 
Pasha of old. 

Questions abounded.   
Racism resounded. The   
Supreme Court astounded by 
Taking his side in the fight against their nation’s 
Unfounded war against   
Vietnam.  

We any better today? Aren’t we just as  
Xenophobic and bigoted as our forebears of   
Yesteryear, just as self-righteous   
             &  
Zealous for what isn’t even ours?

______________          

July 22, 2020