Thomas Who!

Who are you Thomas Flood

Thomas Floyd

Thomas Fludd

who sired three kids

with Sophie Stuart

Native-Black

mother-shunned

loved or used?

Where did you hide

that you could rise

to sire a child

when sex was desired?

Did your fam'ly know your underside

or had you learned from their wiles?

Irish they say you were.

Did you speak in brogue?

I'll never know.

Did you jump ship

to buy a slave

or is your hist'ry fixed

in Virginia's armament?

Your grandchildren

never saw your face

sat on your lap

play at your place.

You never visited

their alley shacks

their Georgetown flats

their burial plats.

You disappeared Thomas Flood

fled to heavens that kept you hid

but ever on their minds.

Your children hardly knew you

though they bore your name.

I've searched for you

but found no trace

though it was your red

that covered my head

when I was born

your seed that lightened my flesh

turned me yellow at my birth

bringing Mendel's law full-bloom.

Thanks great-great-great grandpa

your legacy has stretched far.

Your hide and seek has birthed a freak

a burden of my being.

*Reflections of Jean Sulivan:

  -As in most revolutions, opposition groups generally aim only to redistribute wealth, without raising more basic questions about relations between humanity and the earth.

  -We live in a state of darkness because contemporary societies understand salvation as simply the satisfaction of desires.  If our lives have no spiritual foundation, why question its satisfaction?  But the excess of desire, whether satisfied or frustrated, opens the way to sadness and inhumanity.

  -Everything is taking place as if the repression of eternity and hope was leading to a frenetic search for security in an effort locate eternity in time.

  -It's hardly surprising that one of the most significant phenomena of our time is the denial of death.  It's a menace that comes from elsewhere, a catastrophe that falls on us.  Everything is done, to an absurd degree, to prolong life.  We talk about respect for life while ignoring the fact that in many areas of the world the average life span is only thirty years.