The new standard

     Years ago I heard Julian Bond give a speech, talking a lot about Martin Luther King Jr. At one point to illustrate that King was the epitome and the world shouldn't expect every black person who comes along to live up to the standard, he recited a poem he'd written to illustrate the thought.

Look at that girl

Shake that thing

We can't all be

Martin Luther King

    Well, I saw this meme about Paul Newman today, most of which I had known, and had a similar thought. That certainly is a standard we should reach for, but most of us are human, too. It is an ideal, one that few of us can hope to live up to, so I wrote my own poem It goes like this:

Drink that beer

Look at that woman

we can't all be

Paul fuckin' Newman

But we can try.