Salem-News.com Poetry articles Page 14

A Seat On The Bus For Rosa (In Memorial)

Can't have a fire without a spark.

(CLEVELAND) - I keep getting email's seeking donations for the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial which is almost completed. I certainly have nothing against MLK but, if it was not for Rosa Parks who started the movement, not MLK, where would Black America be today?

Stop and think about how many men gave up their seat on the bus.

Missing You Big Luke

"if you could clone him and bring him back, you'd have the greatest power hitter in baseball today, if not ever." - Baseball writer and statistician Bill James

(CLEVELAND) - Reading the history of the famous African-American baseball player Luke Easter, I keep finding major league connections between this legendary man who was a baseball pioneer in America, and our writer Luke Easter, who knew this famous man simply as 'dad'.

It is a tough thing to lose a parent when you are young, and it has to be far worse when you lose your treasured father to a criminal's gun.

The Lost Tomb Of Jesus

We live in an age of revisionist history.

(CLEVELAND) - Sometimes you have to wonder where the idea of Christianity and modern divisive politics met, where was the scene of that crash?

Tea Party

What is this all about anyway?

(CLEVELAND) - Is it a gathering where people drink tea, or what? Isn't that the real meaning of a tea party?

Comparing the actions of disgruntled conservative white Americans to a historical event integral in the formation of the U.S. seems like a real stretch. For some reason, the advent of this times out with the election of the nation's first African-American President.

Drug Dealers & COSTCO?

Some American drug stores would rob you blind; Costco isn't one of them.

(CLEVELAND) - Last July, an investigative reporter named Steve Wilson with channel 7 News in Detroit, covered a story about generic drug price gouging by pharmacies.

Wilson's report revealed that some generic drugs were marked up as much as 3,000% or more. Snopes reports, "Yes, that's not a typo . . . three thousand percent!"

AK-47 and the M-16

Peasants and villagers fighting in Vietnam in 1967, according to tactics articulated by Mao, were killing eight hundred Americans a month. How?

(CLEVELAND) - When the M-16 was introduced to the war effort in Vietnam, it largely failed. What fired well in the Southern California desert did not endure the tropics of Vietnam. An AK-47 can be immersed in water and it will still fire.

Kalashnikov later stated that he wishes he'd designed a refrigerator, instead of the world's most widely manufactured combat rifle.

Adolph Hitler And 17 Of His Children Are Alive & Well

“Sadly, those victims were themselves victimized..." - Manhattan District Attorney Preet Bharara

(CLEVELAND) - Claims Conference employees are among 17 people who have been charged by the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York with participating in a $42.5 million fraud at the organization.

The Claims Conference distributes more than $400 million per year from the German government to victims of Nazism.

Wake up and Dream

(LONDON) - Our latest poetry by Mamoon Alabbasi is a thoughtful look at this life and the world around us; life and death intermingled with technological advancement so intense that it threatens the world's very existence.

Mamoon grew up in Iraq and he knows what it is like to feat what the next moment will bring, yet it isn't generally the feared Dictator that men like this fear, all too often it is the deathly threat of the U.S. military...

Shannon Tavares (In Memorial) The Lion King

Shannon's contributions in this lifetime were amazing.

(CLEVELAND) - Broadway Actress Shannon Tavares, who performed in “The Lion King”, who was 11-years old, died Monday after losing a battle with leukemia. The news was confirmed by her family Monday.

After experiencing lower back and leg pain, Shannon was diagnosed last April with acute myeloid leukemia, which is also known as AML.

Black History Month (Don Imus now Dr. Laura & Buffalo NY?)

There is a huge outrage and a cry of racism when used by Whites, however, Blacks describe their women with this and it is all right?

(CLEVELAND) - We tend to minimize the suffering of previous generations in this nation. After all, those things didn't happen to us specifically, right?

But pain has a tendency to linger through the generations and the realization that your ancestors had to suffer is powerful.