We made it or did WE? 

If for nothing better than a dream By MARINA STANKOV-HODGE I finally want to come…home After 2 years away physically and 28 spiritually I don’t mind coming home Because of the dreams of less than 40 years ago that were somehow unachievable then

These are the dreams that make me look forward to home

The dreams that translated to fears and kept my father’s hand quivering back and forth in the primaries finally acting on fear, dashing my image…letting go of the dream

Because these are the dreams of a man well equipped for change

The dreams of a man “up to the task”

The dreams of a man who poured everything in at the end, left no stone unturned because he to had a father who also had a dream

And so home starts to look a lot more like it 

But as the months went by I began to see in my dreams personified a little less spine

I cringed as the honey coated voice spoke words my activist spirit would equate to sacrilidge.

And I wondered if these dreams were really anywhere close to home

I began to realize that the minds of men frequently fail their souls

That the collective dream of us all for peace could not be pasted on a poster

That the dream, the home I was looking for must be found first inside 

I realized that yes the superficial dreams of Jackson, King, and X may have been realized

But that the realization of this dream would make every African American man plagued by the ghosts of past masters painfully aware that home does not come from a color

That the masters of todays world manipulate minds regardless of melanin and Mobutu and Savimbi were far from…home 

I sat there that morning looking at the screen “America’s first black president” and wondered. Would the job get done? Would we go home? 

Or were these the dreams even my father may hate to admit were his.