Harbored dreams

We found a place called U-street; hidden in the bosom of time.

Within these labyrinths, happiness momentarily dwells. Happiness is a coy mistress, who visits in the deep of the night.

O! How we anxiously await the setting of the sun.

We beckon the darkness to shield our eyes from the torment outside. We want a place for our dreams to reside.

A place where our dream can swell, pompous and proud, walk about with its chest jutted out. We yearn for a place where our dreams can dine, with fine porcelain china and distinguished company.

Our dreams want to fox-trot in the grandeur of the Whitelaw Hotel ballroom. Let the sweet sultry sounds of Duke Ellington seep out of the Howard Theatre and into the streets. Let ‘Sophisticated Lady’ travel unbound and spill into our homes. Let it marry our ears and entertain us for a bit.

Let the music entice us, distract us, entertain us! Play for us the sounds our dreams long to hear.

‘Til the police gather and the people scatter and the music croaks and our dreams choke.

But the repressed cannot be contained indefinitely.

A dream-deferred is not lost. It will fester and fume.

It will slowly seep from pregnant pores or unexpectedly explode.

It will not be discarded, it cannot be ignored.

Suffocate our dreams no more …