Brewed Fresh Daily

J. Scott Franklin was one of the poet/performers yesterday at the Dan Kane Gardens. One of the pieces he did struck a chord with me, maybe it will with you too:

five of us pull ourselves to a table in the center of the city. each day we pass with smiles and irrelevant speech, how was your weekend, you go to that club on 27th street? someone makes fun of the old bat working down the hall, how she's Ethel, from Lucy and we all laugh cause on Tuesday and Wednesday and any other weekday people pass here and throw their smiles through an array of hellos they pull themselves together, then go home to the east side west side north side outside don't mix them up, they say; this is my block, that's your's; we meet at work, but go our own ways. and some of us wonder, why we can't take it further, and you bring your neighborhood to mine, I'll bring mine to yours we'll bring it across all lines instead of me wondering about you and you wondering about me and everyone wondering about each others' hangups and hitches and imagining that they're there, when they might not be and this is just another one of those glitches that rots our chances and keeps our conversations down to minimal glances and tosses smiles and short lived imaginary romances and all the while Bobby Sanchez and Maria Petrocini and Rudy Jackson and Chris Marcusky are all fractions, minorities, that add up to a majority who wonder about each other fear each other, talk, but don't stop to hear each other. we stare and hide, go to church and sing deep and wide and one day, we'll all pass over to the other side and be soaked in the same shade of formaldehyde. We Shall Overcome... and how 'bout; we shall come on over at night, we speak on the phone together but rarely go home together. we shy away and doubt each other hardly ever finding out about each other. five of us pull ourselves to a table in the center of the city, you pass an age... ©2003 J. Scott Franklin

It's even more powerful when you hear him perform it. I think it's that simple we shall overcome, when we shall come on over. Maybe it's as simple as asking, "Shall we come on over"? I'm sure J had We Shall Overcome in mind when he wrote it.