Memories To Forget Poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar

What has been done to do,
Has had its past.
Attempts to re-invent,
A vibrance that qualifies...
To bring an exhuberance back to life,
Is a wasted effort to endeavor it meant.
Walls made with bricks and cemented,
To paint with claims they've been renovated...
Does not change those remembering,
What took place within them.
Until minds aging ultimately fade away.
And no one has those memories to forget.
Although history rewritten seldom depicts,
A reality that had existed.

'That street which is 'now' called Temple,
Use to be known as Kinsley Street.
And that was before a theater gained notoriety,
To erase the fact Black folks had achieved that.
With a taking of a local play,
From where it sat to Broadway in 1973.'

~Where is that theater today? ~

'On a street called Church.
And near land where a theater known as The Strand,
That Ossie Davis and his wife Ruby Dee...
Premiered their movie called Kongi's Harvest.
To promote the efforts of a youth organization,
Called The Organization of Concerned Youth.
And mentored by Wilbur Smith.
A young and influential black man.
Other black folks 'then' could not stand.'