and some food for thought....

If you have HBO, check out the Def Poetry episode with Common, which includes the following (and I guess last tv performance) of Oscar Brown Jr. a Def Laureate if you will. If you don't, get the new season when it comes out on dvd and watch. Every person should see this performance.

This Beach

And now I’ve landed on this beach

It takes sixty-five years to reach

As this generation of mine

Is ordered onto life’s front line

The targets of a fusillade

That forces us to think of God

Reluctantly we storm this beach

Advancing to fill up the breach

Created by that fallen corps

Of elders who charged here before

While we enjoyed our middle age

Removed from the fire we now engage

A withering barrage rakes this beach

Its bullets bear the names of each

Of those who set foot on these sands

Old General Calendar commands

Advancing to a sure defeat

Without the option of retreat

We knew before we hit this beach

The enemy that we besiege

Has ammunition for us all

Who as casualties must fall

Not one will manage to survive

Nobody leaves this beach alive

For those arriving on this beach

There is no prayer to pray nor preach

To beg us off in any tongue

Since we have outlived dying young

And for surviving in exchange

Now face the fire at point blank range

The witness we bear on this beach

Has only one lesson to teach

That here the carnage never stops

As every day another drops

Some classmate, relative or friend

Whose attack comes to an abrupt end

So on into the breach my peers

Who knows how many weeks or years

Remain till you and I are hit

As we inch onward, bit by bit

We only know our lives will bleach

Eternally out on this beach

- Oscar Brown Jr.
10/10/1926 - 05/29/2005