Our featured poem...
How Richard Pryor Saved My Life in 1980
by
Buddah Moskowitz
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back in the late '70's
before it was the “OC”
stuck in a high school
of blonde born again Christians
I was the Mexican outsider
every June I sighed relief
which lasted all summer
until I returned in the fall
feeling very Mexican
until the summer of 1980
in a used record store
I found a stack of
Richard Pryor albums
for 25 cents apiece
something about those album covers
that face
brown, comical and dangerous
"Bicentennial Nigger"
"That Nigger's Crazy" and others
I didn't know what I was looking for
but it damn sure felt right
and I immersed myself
in these sacred texts
He taught me
that brown had its own feel
its own soul
and it was good
he was my supercool prophet
rarely bowing to authority
dismantling hatred with ridicule
especially my own self-hatred
and he made me laugh
so much and so hard
so, wherever you are
thanks, Richard
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