ALSO BY MAYA ANGELOU

And Still I Rise

Gather Together in My Name

The Heart of a Woman

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water fore I Diiie

Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well

Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry hike Christmas

Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?

All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes

I Shall Not Be Moved

On the Pulse of Morning

Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

This book is dedicated

to the great love of my life.

Contents

Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water fore I Diiie

PART ONE: WHERE LOVE IS A SCREAM OF ANGUISH

They Went Home

The Gamut

A Zono Man

To a Man

Late October

No Loser, No Weeper

When You Come to Me

Remembering

In a Time

Tears

The Detached

To a Husband

Accident

Let's Majeste

After

The Mothering Blackness

On Diverse Deviations

Mourning Grace

How I Can Lie to You

Sounds Like Pearls

PART TWO: JUST BEFORE THE WORLD ENDS

When I Think About Myself

On a Bright Day, Next Week

Letter to. an Aspiring Junkie

Miss Scarlett, Mr. Rhett and Other Latter-Day Saints

Times-Square-Shoeshine-Composition

Faces

To a Freedom Fighter

Riot: 60's

We Saw Beyond Our Seeming

Black Ode

No No No No

My Guilt

The Calling of Names

On Working White Liberals

Sepia Fashion Show

The Thirteens (Black)

The Thirteens (White)

Harlem Hopscotch

Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well

PART ONE

Pickin Em Up and Layin Em Down

Here[y]s to Adhering

On Reaching Forty

The Telephone

PART TWO

Passing Time

Now Long Ago

Greyday

Poor Girl

Come. And Be My Baby

Senses of Insecurity

Alone

Communication I

Communication II

Wonder

A Conceit

PART THREE

Request

Africa

America

For Us, Who Dare Not Dare

Lord, in My Heart

Artful Pose

PART FOUR

The Couple

The Pusher

Chicken-Licken

PART FIVE

I Almost Remember

Prisoner

Woman Me

JohnJ.

Southeast Arkanasia

Song for the Old Ones

Child Dead in Old Seas

Take Time Out

Elegy

Reverses

Little Girl Speakings

This Winter Day

And Still I Rise

PART ONE: TOUCH ME, LIFE, NOT SOFTLY

A Kind of Love, Some Say

Country Lover

Remembrance

Where We Belong, A Duet

Phenomenal Woman

Men

Refusal

Just for a Time

PART TWO: TRAVELING

Junkie Monkey Reel

The Lesson

California Prodigal

My Arkansas

Through the Inner City to the Suburbs

Lady Luncheon Club

Momma Welfare Roll

The Singer Will Not Sing

Willie

To Beat the Child Was Bad Enough

Woman Work

One More Round

The Traveler

Kin

The Memory

PART THREE: AND STILL I RISE

Still I Rise

Ain't That Bad?

Life Doesn't Frighten Me

Bump d'Bump

On Aging

In Retrospect

Just Like Job

Call Letters: Mrs. V. B.

Thank You, Lord

Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?

Awaking in New York

A Good Woman Feeling Bad

The Health-Food Diner

A Georgia Song

Unmeasured Tempo

Amoebaeanfor Daddy

Recovery

Impeccable Conception

Caged Bird

Avec Merciy Mother

Arrival

A Plagued Journey

Starvation

Contemporary Announcement

Prelude to a Parting

Martial Choreograph

To a Suitor

Insomniac

Weekend Glory

The Lie

Prescience

Family Affairs

Changes

Brief Innocence

The Last Decision

Slave Coffle

Shaker; Why Don't You Sing?

My Life Has Turned to Blue

I Shall Not Be Moved

Worker's Song

Human Family

Man Bigot

Old Folks Laugh

Is Love

Forgive

Insignificant

Love Letter

Equality

Coleridge Jackson

Why Are They Happy People?

Son to Mother

Known to Eve and Me

These Yet to Be United States

Me and My Work

Changing

Born That Way

Televised

Nothing Much

Glory Falls

London

Savior

Many ama More

The New House

Our Grandmothers

Preacher, Doni Send Me

Fightin'Was Natural

Loss of Love

Seven Women's Blessed Assurance

In My Missouri

They Ask Why

When Great Trees Fall

On the Pulse of Morning

To AMBER SAM and the ZORROMAN

They Went Home

They went home and told their wives,

that never once in all their lives,

had they known a girl like me,

But … They went home.

They said my house was licking clean,

no word I spoke was ever mean,

I had an air of mystery,

But … They went home.

My praises were on all men's lips,

they liked my smile, my wit, my hips,

they'd spend one night, or two or three.

But …

The Gamut

Soft you day, be velvet soft,

My true love approaches,

Look you bright, you dusty sun,

Array your golden coaches.

Soft you wind, be soft as silk,

My true love is speaking.

Hold you birds, your silver throats,

His golden voice I'm seeking.

Come you death, in haste, do come,

My shroud of black be weaving,

Quiet my heart, be deathly quiet,

My true love is leaving.

A Zorro Man

Here

in the wombed room

silk purple drapes

flash a light as subtle

as your hands before

love-making

Here

in the covered lens

I catch a

clitoral image of

your general inhabitation

long and like a

late dawn in winter

Here

this clean mirror

traps me unwilling

in a gone time

when I was love

and you were booted and brave

and trembling for me.

To a Man

My man is

Black Golden Amber

Changing.

Warm mouths of Brandy Fine

Cautious sunlight on a patterned rug

Coughing laughter, rocked on a whorl of French tobacco

Graceful turns on woolen stilts

Secretive?

A cat's eye.

Southern. Plump and tender with navy-bean sullenness

And did I say “Tender”?

The gentleness

A big cat stalks through stubborn bush

And did I mention “Amber”?

The heatless fire consuming itself.

Again. Anew. Into ever neverlessness.

My man is Amber

Changing

Always into itself

New. Now New.

Still itself.

Still.

Late October

Carefully

the leaves of autumn

sprinkle down the tinny

sound of little dyings

and skies sated

of ruddy sunsets

of roseate dawns

roil ceaselessly in

cobweb greys and turn

to black

for comfort.

Only lovers

see the fall

a signal end to endings

a gruffish gesture alerting

those who will not be alarmed

that we begin to stop

in order simply

to begin

again.

No Loser, No Weeper

“I hate to lose something,”

then she bent her head,

“even a dime, I wish I was dead.

I can't explain it. No more to be said.

‘Cept I hate to lose something.

“I lost a doll once and cried for a week.

She could open her eyes, and do all but speak.

I believe she was took, by some doll-snatching sneak.

I tell you, I hate to lose something.

“A watch of mine once, got up and walked away.

It had twelve numbers on it and for the time of day.

I'll never forget it and all I can say

Is I really hate to lose something.

“Now if I felt that way ‘bout a watch and a toy,

What you think I feel ‘bout my lover-boy?

I ain't threatening you, madam, but he is my evening's joy.

And I mean I really hate to lose something.”

When You Come to Me

When you come to me, unbidden,

Beckoning me

To long-ago rooms,

Where memories lie.

Offering me, as to a child, an attic,

Gatherings of days too few,

Baubles of stolen kisses,

Trinkets of borrowed loves,

Trunks of secret words,

I CRY.

Remembering

Soft grey ghosts crawl up my sleeve

to peer into my eyes

while I within deny their threats

and answer them with lies.

Mushlike memories perform

a ritual on my lips

I lie in stolid hopelessness

and they lay my soul in strips.

In a Time

In a time of secret wooing

Today prepares tomorrow's ruin

Left knows not what right is doing

My heart is torn asunder.

In a time of furtive sighs

Sweet hellos and sad goodbyes

Half-truths told and entire lies

My conscience echoes thunder.

In a time when kingdoms come

Joy is brief as summer's fun

Happiness its race has run

Then pain stalks in to plunder.

Tears

Tears

The crystal rags

Viscous tatters

of a worn-through soul.

Moans

Deep swan song

Blue farewell

of a dying dream.

The Detached

We die,

Welcoming Bluebeards to our darkening closets,

Stranglers to our outstretched necks,

Stranglers, who neither care nor

care to know that

DEATH IS INTERNAL.

We pray,

Savoring sweet the teethed lies,

Bellying the grounds before alien gods,

Gods, who neither know nor

wish to know that

HELL IS INTERNAL.

We love,

Rubbing the nakednesses with gloved hands,

Inverting our mouths in tongued kisses,

Kisses that neither touch nor

care to touch if

LOVE IS INTERNAL.

To a Husband

Your voice at times a fist

Tight in your throat

Jabs ceaselessly at phantoms

In the room,

Your hand a carved and

Skimming boat

Goes down the Nile

To point out Pharaoh's tomb.

You're Africa to me

At brightest dawn.

The Congo's green and

Copper's brackish hue,

A continent to build

With Black Man's brawn.

I sit at home and see it all

Through you.

Accident

Tonight

when you spread your pallet

of magic,

I escaped.

Sitting apart,

I saw you grim and unkempt.

Your vulgarness

not of living,

your demands

not from need.

Tonight

as you sprinkled your brain-dust

of rainbows,

I had no eyes.

Seeing all

I saw the colors fade

and change.

The blood, red dulled

through the dyes,

and the naked

Black-White truth.

Let's Majeste

I sit a throne upon the times

when Kings are rare and

Consorts

slide into the grease of scullery maids.

So gaily wave a crown of light

(astride the royal chair) that blinds

the commoners who genuflect and cross their fingers.

The years will lie beside me

on the queenly bed.

And coupled we'll await

the ages’ dust to cake my lids again.

And when the rousing kiss is given,

why must it always be a fairy, and

only just a Prince?

After

No sound falls

from the moaning sky

No scowl wrinkles

the evening pool

The stars lean down

A stony brilliance

While birds fly.

The market leers

its empty shelves

Streets bare bosoms

to scanty cars

This bed yawns

beneath the weight

of our absent selves.

The Mothering Blackness

She came home running

back to the mothering blackness

deep in the smothering blackness

white tears icicle gold plains of her face

She came home running

She came down creeping

here to the black arms waiting

now to the warm heart waiting

rime of alien dreams befrosts her rich brown face

She came down creeping

She came home blameless

black yet as Hagar's daughter

tall as was Sheba's daughter

threats of northern winds die on the desert's face

She came home blameless

On Diverse Deviations

When love is a shimmering curtain

Before a door of chance

That leads to a world in question

Wherein the macabrous dance

Of bones that rattle in silence

Of blinded eyes and rolls

Of thick lips thin, denying

A thousand powdered moles,

Where touch to touch is feel

And life a weary whore

I would be carried off, not gently

To a shore,

Where love is the scream of anguish

And no curtain drapes the door.

Mourning Grace

If today I follow death,

go down its trackless wastes,

salt my tongue on hardened tears

for my precious dear time's waste

race

along that promised cave in a headlong

deadlong

haste,

Will you

have

the

grace

to mourn for

me?

How I Can Lie to You

now thread my voice

with lies

of lightness

force within

my mirror eyes

the cold disguise

of sad and wise

decisions.

Sounds Like Pearls

Sounds

Like pearls

Roll off your tongue

To grace this eager ebon ear.

Doubt and fear,

Ungainly things,

With blushings

Disappear.

When I Think About Myself

When I think about myself,

I almost laugh myself to death,

My life has been one great big joke,

A dance that's walked,

A song that's spoke,

I laugh so hard I almost choke,

When I think about myself.

Sixty years in these folks’ world,

The child I works for calls me girl,

I say “Yes ma'am” for working's sake.

Too proud to bend,

Too poor to break,

I laugh until my stomach ache,

When I think about myself.

My folks can make me split my side,

I laughed so hard I nearly died,

The tales they tell sound just like lying,

They grow the fruit,

But eat the rind,

I laugh until I start to crying,

When I think about my folks.

On a Bright Day, Next Week

On a bright day, next week

Just before the bomb falls

Just before the world

Just before I die

All my tears will powder

Black in dust like ashes

Black like Buddha's belly

Black and hot and dry

Then will mercy tumble

Falling down in godheads

Falling on the children

Falling from the sky

Letter to an Aspiring Junkie

Let me hip you to the streets,

Jim,

Ain't nothing happening.

Maybe some tomorrows gone up in smoke,

raggedy preachers, telling a joke

to lonely, son-less old ladies’ maids.

Nothing happening,

Nothing shakin', Jim.

A slough of young cats riding that

cold, white horse,

a grey old monkey on their back, of course,

does rodeo tricks.

No haps, man.

No haps.

A worn-out pimp, with a space-age conk,

setting up some fool for a game of tonk,

or poker or

get ‘em dead and alive.

The streets?

Climb into the streets, man, like you climb

into the ass end of a lion.

Then it's fine.

It's a bug-a-loo and a shing-a-ling,

African dreams on a buck-and-a-wing and a prayer.

That's the streets, man,

Nothing happening.

Miss Scarlett, Mr. Rhett and Other Latter-Day Saints

Novitiates sing Ave

Before the whipping posts,

Crisscrossing their breasts and

tearstained robes

in the yielding dark.

Animated by the human sacrifice

(Golgotha in blackface)

Priests glow purely white on the

bas-relief of a plantation shrine.

(O Sing)

You are gone but not forgotten.

Hail, Scarlett. Requiescat in pace.

God-Makers smear brushes in

blood/gall

to etch frescoes on your

ceilinged tomb.

(O Sing)

Hosanna, King Kotton.

Shadowed couplings of infidels

tempt stigmata from the nipples

of your true believers.

(Chant Maternoster)

Hallowed Little Eva.

Ministers make novena with the

charred bones of four

very small

very black

very young children

(Intone DIXIE)

And guard the relics

of your intact hymen,

daily putting to death,

into eternity,

The stud, his seed,

His seed

His seed.

(O Sing)

Hallelujah, pure Scarlett,

Blessed Rhett, the Martyr.

Times-Square-Shoeshine-Composition

I'm the best that ever done it

(pow pow)

That's my title and I won it

(pow pow)

I ain't lying, I'm the best

(pow pow)

Come and put me to the test

(pow pow)

I'll clean ‘em till they squeak

(pow pow)

In the middle of next week

(pow pow)

I'll shine ‘em till they whine

(pow pow)

Till they call me master mine

(pow pow)

For a quarter and a dime

(pow pow)

You can get the dee-luxe shine

(pow pow)

Say you wanta pay a quarter?

(pow pow)

Then you give that to your daughter

(pow pow)

I ain't playing dozens, mister

(pow pow) You can give it to your sister

(pow pow)

Any way you want to read it

(pow pow)Maybe it's your momma need it

(pow pow)

Say I'm like a greedy bigot

(pow pow)

I'm a cap'talist, can you dig it?

(pow pow)

Faces

Faces and more remember

then reject

the brown caramel days of youth.

Reject the sun-sucked tit of

childhood mornings.

Poke a muzzle of war in the trust-frozen eyes of a favored doll.

Breathe, Brother,

and displace a moment's hate with organized love.

A poet screams “CHRIST WAITS AT THE SUBWAY!”

But who sees?

To a Freedom Fighter

You drink a bitter draught.

I sip the tears your eyes fight to hold,

A cup of lees, of henbane steeped in chaff.

Your breast is hot,

Your anger black and cold,

Through evening's rest, you dream,

I hear the moans, you die a thousands’ death.

When cane straps flog the body

dark and lean, you feel the blow.

I hear it in your breath.

Riot: 60's

Our

YOUR FRIEND CHARLIE pawnshop

was a glorious blaze

I heard the flames lick

then eat the trays

of zircons

mounted in red gold alloys

Easter clothes and stolen furs

burned in the attic

radios and teevees

crackled with static

plugged in

only to a racial outlet

Some

thought the FRIENDLY FINANCE FURNITURE CO.

burned higher

When a leopard-print sofa with gold legs

(which makes into a bed)

caught fire

an admiring groan from the waiting horde

“Absentee landlord

you got that shit”

Lighting: a hundred Watts

Detroit, Newark and New York

Screeching nerves, exploding minds

lives tied to a policeman's whistle

a welfare worker's doorbell

finger

Hospitality, southern-style

corn pone grits and you-all smile

whole blocks novae

brand-new stars

policemen caught in their

brand-new cars

Chugga chugga chigga

git me one nigga

lootin’ n burnin’

he won't git far

Watermelons, summer ripe

grey neckbones and boiling tripe

supermarket roastin’ like the

noonday sun

national guard nervous with his shiny gun

goose the motor quicker

here's my nigga picka

shoot him in the belly

shoot him while he run

We Saw Beyond Our Seeming

We saw beyond our seeming

These days of bloodied screaming

Of children dying bloated

Out where the lilies floated

Of men all noosed and dangling

Within the temples strangling

Our guilt grey fungus growing

We knew and lied our knowing

Deafened and unwilling

We aided in the killing

And now our souls lie broken

Dry tablets without token.

Black Ode

Your beauty is a thunder

And I am set a wandering—a wandering

Deafened

Down twilight tin-can alleys

And moist sounds

“OOo wee, Baby, look what you could get if your name

was Willie”

Oh, to dip your words like snuff.

A laughter, black and streaming

And I am come a being—a being

Rounded

Up Baptist aisles, so moaning

And moist sounds

“Bless her heart. Take your bed and walk.

You been heavy burdened”

Oh, to lick your love like tears.

No No No No

No

the two-legg'd beasts

that walk like men

play stink finger in their crusty asses

while crackling babies

in napalm coats

stretch mouths to receive

burning tears

on splitting tongues

JUST GIVE ME A COOL DRINK OF WATER ‘FORE I DIIIE

No

the gap-legg'd whore

of the eastern shore

enticing Europe to COME

in her

and turns her pigeon-shit back to me

to me

who stoked the coal that drove the ships

which brought her over the sinuous cemetery

of my many brothers

No

the cocktailed afternoons

of what can I do.

In my white layered pink world

I've let your men cram my mouth

with their black throbbing hate

and I swallowed after I've let your mammies

steal from my kitchens

(I was always half-amused)

I've chuckled the chins of

your topsy-haired pickaninnies.

What more can I do?

I'll never be black like you.

(HALLELUJAH)

No

the red-shoed priests riding

palanquined

in barefoot children country

the plastered saints gazing down

beneficently

on kneeling mothers

picking undigested beans

from yesterday's shit.

I have waited

toes curled, hat rolled

heart and genitals

in hand

on the back porches

of forever

in the kitchens and fields

of rejections

on the cold marble steps

of America's White Out-House

in the drop seats of buses

and the open flies of war

No more

the dream that you

will cease haunting me

down in fetid swamps of fear and will turn to embrace your own

humanity

which I AM

No more

the hope that

the razored insults

which mercury-slide over your tongue

will be forgotten

and you will learn the words of love

Mother Brother Father Sister Lover Friend

My hopes

dying slowly

rose petals falling

beneath an autumn red moon

will not adorn your unmarked graves

My dreams

lying quietly

a dark pool under the trees

will not carry your name

to a forgetful shore

And what a pity

What a pity

that pity has folded in upon itself

an old man's mouth

whose teeth are gone

and I have no pity.

My Guilt

My guilt is “slavery's chains,” too long

the clang of iron falls down the years.

This brother's sold, this sister's gone,

is bitter wax, lining my ears.

My guilt made music with the tears.

My crime is “heroes, dead and gone,”

dead Vesey, Turner, Gabriel,

dead Malcolm, Marcus, Martin King.

They fought too hard, they loved too well.

My crime is I'm alive to tell.

My sin is “hanging from a tree,”

I do not scream, it makes me proud.

I take to dying like a man.

I do it to impress the crowd.

My sin lies in not screaming loud.

The Calling of Names

He went to being called a colored man

after answering to “hey, nigger.”

Now that's a big jump,

anyway you figger.

Hey, Baby, watch my smoke.

From colored man to Negro,

With the N in caps,

was like saying Japanese

instead of saying Japs.

I mean, during the war.

The next big step

was a change for true,

From Negro in caps

to being a Jew.

Now, Sing, Yiddish Mama.

Light, Yellow, Brown

and Dark-brown skin,

were okay colors to

describe him then.

He was a Bouquet of Roses.

He changed his seasons

like an almanac.

Now you'll get hurt

if you don't call him “Black.”

Nigguh, I ain't playin’ this time.

On Working White Liberals

I don't ask the Foreign Legion

Or anyone to win my freedom

Or to fight my battle better than I can,

Though there's one thing that I cry for

I believe enough to die for

That is every man's responsibility to man.

I'm afraid they'll have to prove first

That they'll watch the Black man move first

Then follow him with faith to kingdom come.

This rocky road is not paved for us,

So, I'll believe in Liberals’ aid for us

When I see a white man load a Black man's gun.

Sepia Fashion Show

Their hair, pomaded, faces jaded

bones protruding, hip-wise,

the models strutted, backed and butted,

then stuck their mouths out, lip-wise.

They'd nasty manners, held like banners,

while they looked down their nose-wise.

I'd see ‘em in hell, before they'd sell

me one thing they're wearing, clothes-wise.

The Black Bourgeois, who all say “yah”

when yeah is what they're meaning,

should look around, both up and down,

before they set out preening.

“Indeed,” they swear, “that's what I'll wear

when I go country-clubbing.”

I'd remind them please, look at those knees,

you got at Miss Ann's scrubbing.

The Thirteens (Black)

Your Momma took to shouting,

Your Poppa's gone to war,

Your sister's in the streets,

Your brother's in the bar,

The thirteens. Right On.

Your cousin's taking smack,

Your uncle's in the joint,

Your buddy's in the gutter,

Shooting for his point,

The thirteens. Right On.

And you, you make me sorry,

You out here by yourself,

I'd call you something dirty,

But there just ain't nothing left,

‘cept

The thirteens. Right On.

The Thirteens (White)

Your Momma kissed the chauffeur,

Your Poppa balled the cook,

Your sister did the dirty,

in the middle of the book,

The thirteens. Right On.

Your daughter wears a jock strap,

Your son he wears a bra,

Your brother jonesed your cousin

in the back seat of the car.

The thirteens. Right On.

Your money thinks you're something,

But if I'd learned to curse,

I'd tell you what your name is,

But there just ain't nothing worse

than

The thirteens. Right On.

Harlem Hopscotch

One foot down, then hop! It's hot.

Good things for the ones that's got.

Another jump, now to the left.

Everybody for hisself.

In the air, now both feet down.

Since you black, don't stick around.

Food is gone, the rent is due,

Curse and cry and then jump two.

All the people out of work,

Hold for three, then twist and jerk.

Cross the line, they count you out.

That's what hopping's all about.

Both feet flat, the game is done.

They think I lost. I think I won.

To PAUL

Pickin Em Up and Layin Em Down

There's a long-legged girl

in San Francisco

by the Golden Gate.

She said she'd give me all I wanted

but I just couldn't wait.

I started to

Pickin em up

and layin em down, Pickin em up

and layin em down, Pickin em up

and layin em down, gettin to the next town Baby.

There's a pretty brown

in Birmingham.

Boys, she little and cute

but when she like to tied me down

I had to grab my suit and started to

Pickin em up

and layin em down,

Pickin em up

and layin em down,

Pickin em up

and layin em down,

gettin to the next town

Baby.

I met that lovely Detroit lady

and thought my time had come

But just before I said “I do”

I said “I got to run” and started to

Pickin em up and layin em down,

Pickin em up and layin em down,

Pickin em up and layin em down,

gettin to the next town

Baby.

There ain't no words for what I feel

about a pretty face

But if I stay I just might miss

a prettier one some place

I started to

Pickin em up and layin em down,

Pickin em up and layin em down,

Pickin em up and layin em down,

gettin to the next town

Baby.

Here's to Adhering

I went to a party

out in Hollywood,

The atmosphere was shoddy

but the drinks were good,

and that's where I heard you laugh.

I then went cruising

on an old Greek ship,

The crew was amusing

but the guests weren't hip,

that's where I found your hands.

On to the Sahara

in a caravan,

The sun struck like an arrow

but the nights were grand,

and that's how I found your chest.

An evening in the Congo

where the Congo ends,

I found myself alone, oh

but I made some friends,

that's where I saw your face.

I have been devoting

all my time to get

Parts of you out floating

still unglued as yet.

Won't you pull yourself together

For

Me

ONCE

On Reaching Forty

Other acquainted years

sidle

with modest

decorum

across the scrim of toughened

tears and to a stage

planked with laughter boards

and waxed with rueful loss.

But forty

with the authorized

brazenness of a uniformed

cop stomps

no-knocking

into the script

bumps a funky grind on the

shabby curtain of youth

and delays the action.

Unless you have the inborn

wisdom

and grace

and are clever enough

to die at

thirty-nine.

The Telephone

It comes in black

and blue, indecisive

beige. In red and chaperons my life.

Sitting like a strict

and spinstered aunt

spiked between my needs and need.

It tats the day, crocheting

other people's lives

in neat arrangements,

ignoring me,

busy with the hemming

of strangers’ overlong affairs or

the darning of my

neighbors’ worn-out dreams.

From Monday, the morning of the week,

through mid-times

noon and Sunday's dying

light. It sits silent.

Its needle sound

does not transfix my ear

or draw my longing to a close.

Ring. Damn you!

Passing Time

Your skin like dawn

Mine like dusk.

One paints the beginning

of a certain end.

The other, the end of a

sure beginning.

Now Long Ago

One innocent spring

your voice meant to me

less than tires turning

on a distant street.

Your name, perhaps spoken,

led no chorus of

batons

unrehearsed

to crush against my

empty chest.

That cool spring

was shortened by

your summer, bold, impatient

and all forgotten

except when silence

turns the key

into my midnight bedroom

and comes to sleep upon your

pillow.

Greyday

The day hangs heavy

loose and grey

when you're away.

A crown of thorns

a shirt of hair

is what I wear.

No one knows

my lonely heart

when we're apart.

Poor Girl

You've got another love

and I know it

Someone who adores you

just like me

Hanging on your words

like they were gold

Thinking that she understands

your soul Poor Girl

Just like me.

You're breaking another heart

and I know it And there's nothing

I can do

If I try to tell her

what I know

She'll misunderstand

and make me go

Poor Girl

Just like me.

You're going to leave her too

and I know it She'll never know

what made you go

She'll cry and wonder

what went wrong Then she'll begin

to sing this song

Poor Girl

Just like me.

Come. And Be My Baby

The highway is full of big cars

going nowhere fast

And folks is smoking anything that'll burn

Some people wrap their lives around a cocktail glass

And you sit wondering

where you're going to turn.

I got it.

Come. And be my baby.

Some prophets say the world is gonna end tomorrow

But others say we've got a week or two

The paper is full of every kind of blooming horror

And you sit wondering

What you're gonna do.

I got it.

Come. And be my baby.

Senses of Insecurity

I couldn't tell fact from fiction

or if my dream was true,

The only sure prediction

in this whole world was you.

I'd touched your features inchly,

heard love and dared the cost.

The scented spiel reeled me unreal

and found my senses lost.

Alone

Lying, thinking

Last night

How to find my soul a home

Where water is not thirsty

And bread loaf is not stone

I came up with one thing

And I don't believe I'm wrong

That nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires

With money they can't use

Their wives run round like banshees

Their children sing the blues

They've got expensive doctors

To cure their hearts of stone.

But nobody

No, nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.Now if you listen closely

I'll tell you what I know

Storm clouds are gathering

The wind is gonna blow

The race of man is suffering

And I can hear the moan,

‘Cause nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Communication I

She wished of him a lover's kiss and

nights of coupled twining.

They laced themselves

between the trees

and to the water's edge.

Reminding her

the cratered moon lay light-years away,

he spoke of Greece, the Parthenon

and Cleopatra's barge.

She splayed her foot

up to the shin

within the ocean brine.

He quoted Pope and Bernard Shaw

and Catcher in the Rye.

Her sandal lost,

she dried her toe

and then she mopped her brow.

Dry-eyed

she walked into her room

and frankly told her mother,

“Of all he said, I understood

he said he loved another.”

Communication II

FOR ADELE

The Student

The dust of ancient pages

had never touched his face,

and fountains black and comely

were mummied in a place

beyond

his young un-knowing.

The Teacher

She shared the lettered strivings

of etched Pharaonic walls

and Reconstruction's anguish

resounded down the halls

of all her

dry dreams.

Wonder

A day

drunk with the nectar of

nowness

weaves its way between

the years

to find itself at the flophouse

of night

to sleep and be seen

no more.

Will I be less

dead because I wrote this

poem or you more because

you read it

long years hence.

A Conceit

Give me your hand.

Make room for me

to lead and follow

you

beyond this rage of poetry.

Let others have

the privacy of

touching words

and love of loss

of love.

For me

Give me your hand.

Request

If this country is a bastard

will the lowdown mother user

who ran off

and left the woman

moaning in her

green delivery

please come back and claim

his love child.

Give a legal name to beg from

for the first

time of its life.

Africa

Thus she had lain

sugarcane sweet

deserts her hair

golden her feet

mountains her breasts

two Niles her tears.

Thus she has lain

Black through the years.

Over the white seas

rime white and cold

brigands ungentled

icicle bold

took her young daughters

sold her strong sons

churched her with Jesus

bled her with guns.

Thus she has lain.

Now she is rising

remember her pain

remember the losses

her screams loud and vain

remember her riches

her history slain

now she is striding

although she had lain.

America

The gold of her promise

has never been mined

Her borders of justice

not clearly defined

Her crops of abundance

the fruit and the grain

Have not fed the hungry

nor eased that deep pain

Her proud declarations

are leaves on the wind

Her southern exposure

black death did befriend

Discover this country

dead centuries cry

Erect noble tablets

where none can decry

“She kills her bright future

and rapes for a sou

Then entraps her children

with legends untrue”

I beg you

Discover this country.

For Us, Who Dare Not Dare

Be me a Pharaoh

Build me high pyramids of stone and question

See me the Nile

at twilight

and jaguars moving to

the slow cool draught.

Swim me Congo

Hear me the tails of alligators

flapping waves that reach

a yester shore.

Swing me vines, beyond that baobab tree,

and talk me chief

Sing me birds

flash color lightening through bright green leaves.

Taste me fruit

its juice free-falling from

a mother tree.

Know me

Africa.

Lord, in My Heart

FOR COUNTEE CULLEN

Holy haloes

Ring me round

Spirit waves on

Spirit sound

Meshach and

Abednego

Golden chariot

Swinging low

I recite them

in my sleep

Jordan's cold

and briny deep

Bible lessons

Sunday school

Bow before the

Golden Rule

Now I wonder

If I tried

Could I turn my

cheek aside

Marvelling with

afterthought

Let the blow fall

saying naught

Of my true Christlike

control

And the nature

of my soul

Would I strike with

rage divine

Till the culprit

fell supine

Hit out broad all

fury red

Till my foes are

fallen dead

Teachers of my

early youth

Taught forgiveness

stressed the truth

Here then is my

Christian lack:

If I'm struck then

I'll strike back.

Artful Pose

Of falling leaves and melting

snows, of birds

in their delights

Some poets sing

their melodies

tendering my nights

sweetly.

My pencil halts

and will not go

along that quiet path.

I need to write

of lovers false

and hate

and hateful wrath

quickly.

The Couple

Discard the fear and what

was she? Of rag and bones

a mimicry of woman's

fairy-ness

Archaic at its birth.

Discharge the hate and when

was he? Disheveled moans

a mimesis of man's

estate

deceited for its worth.

Dissolve the greed and why

were they? Enfeebled thrones

a memory of mortal

kindliness

exiled from this earth.

The Pusher

He bad

O he bad

He make a honky

poot. Make a honky's

blue eyes squint

anus tight, when

my man look in

the light blue eyes.

He thinks

He don't play

His Afro crown raises

eyes. Raises eyebrows

of wonder and dark

envy when he, combed

out, hits the street.

He sleek

Dashiki

Wax-printed on his skin

remembrances of Congo dawns

laced across his chest.

Red Blood Red and Black.

He bought

O he got

Malcolm's paper

back. Checked out the

photo, caught a few godly lines. Then wondered how

many wives/daughters of

Honky (miscalled The Man)

bird snake

caught, dug them both.

(Him, Fro-ed Dashiki-ed

and the book.)

He stashed

He stands stashed

Near, too near the MLK

Library. P.S. naught

naught naught. Breathing

slaughter on the Malcolm X

Institute. Whole fist

balled, fingers pressing

palm. Shooting up through

Honky's blue-eyed sky.

“BLACK IS!”

“NATION TIME!”

“TOMORROW'S GLORY HERE TODAY”

Pry free the hand

Observe our Black present.

There lie soft on that

copper palm, a death of

coke. A kill of horse

eternal night's barbiturates.

One hundred youths

sped down to

Speed.

He right

O he bad He badder than death

yet gives no sweet

release.

Chicken-Licken

She was afraid of men,

sin and the humors

of the night.

When she saw a bed

locks clicked

in her brain.

She screwed a frown

around and plugged

it in the keyhole.

Put a chain across

her door and closed

her mind.

Her bones were found

round thirty years later

when they razed

her building to

put up a parking lot.

Autopsy read:

dead of acute peoplelessness.

I Almost Remember

I almost remember

smiling some years past

even combing the ceiling

with the teeth of a laugh

(longer ago than the

smile).

Open night news-eyed I watch

channels of hunger

written on children's faces

bursting bellies balloon

in the air of my day room.

There was a smile, I recall

now jelled in

a never yester glow. Even a laugh

that tickled the tits of

heaven

(older than the smile).

In graphs, afraid, I see the black

brown hands and

white thin yellowed fingers

Slip slipping from the

ledge of life. Forgotten by

all but hatred.

Ignored

by all but disdain.

On late evenings when

quiet inhabits my garden

when grass sleeps and

streets are only paths for silent

mist

I seem to remember

Smiling.

Prisoner

Even sunlight dares

and trembles through

my bars

to shimmer

dances on

the floor.

A clang of

lock and

keys and heels

and blood-dried

guns.

Even sunshine

dares.

It's jail

and bail

then rails to run.

Guard grey men

serve plates of rattle

noise and concrete

death and beans.

Then pale sun stumbles

through the poles of

iron to warm the horror

of grey guard men.

It's jail

and bail

then rails to run.

Black night. The me

myself of me sleeks

in the folds and history

of fear. To secret hold

me deep and close my

ears of lulls and clangs

and memory of hate.

Then night and sleep

and dreams.

It's jail

and bail

then rails to run.

Woman Me

Your smile, delicate

rumor of peace.

Deafening revolutions nestle in the

cleavage of

your breasts.

Beggar-Kings and red-ringed Priests

seek glory at the meeting

of your thighs.

A grasp of Lions. A lap of Lambs.

Your tears, jeweled

strewn a diadem

caused Pharaohs to ride

deep in the bosom of the

Nile. Southern spas lash fast

their doors upon the night when

winds of death blow down your name

A bride of hurricanes. A swarm of summer wind.

Your laughter, pealing tall

above the bells of ruined cathedrals.

Children reach between your teeth

for charts to live their lives.

A stomp of feet. A bevy of swift hands.

John J

His soul curdled

standing milk

childhood's right gone wrong.

Plum-blue skin brown dusted

eyes black shining.

(His momma didn't want him.)

The round head slick silk

Turn-around, fall-down curls.

Old ladies smelling of flour

and talcum powder, Cashmere Bouquet, said

“This child is pretty enough to be a girl.”

(But his momma didn't want him.)

John J. grinned a “How can you resist me?”

and danced to conjure lightning from

a morning's summer sky.

Gave the teacher an apple kiss.

(But his momma didn't want him.)

His nerves stretched two thousand miles

found a flinging singing lady,

breasting a bar

calling straights on the dice,

gin over ice,

and the 30's version of

everybody in the

pool.

(She didn't want him.)

Southeast Arkanasia

After Eli Whitney's gin

brought to generations’ end

bartered flesh and broken bones

Did it cleanse you of your sin

Did you ponder?

Now, when farmers bury wheat

and the cow men dump the sweet

butter down on Davy Jones

Does it sanctify your street

Do you wonder?

Or is guilt your nightly mare

bucking wake your evenings’ share

of the stilled repair of groans

and the absence of despair

over yonder?

Song for the Old Ones

My Fathers sit on benches

their flesh counts every plank

the slats leave dents of darkness

deep in their withered flanks.

They nod like broken candles

all waxed and burnt profound

they say “It's understanding

that makes the world go round.”

There in those pleated faces

I see the auction block

the chains and slavery's coffles

the whip and lash and stock.

My Fathers speak in voices

that shred my fact and sound

they say “It's our submission

that makes the world go round.”

They used the finest cunning

their naked wits and wiles

the lowly Uncle Tomming

and Aunt Jemimas’ smiles.

They've laughed to shield their crying

then shuffled through their dreams and

stepped ‘n’ fetched a country

to write the blues with screams.

I understand their meaning

it could and did derive

from living on the edge of death

They kept my race alive.

Child Dead in Old Seas

Father,

I wait for you in oceans

tides washing pyramids high

above my head.

Waves, undulating

corn rows around my

black feet.

The heavens shift and

stars find holes set

new in dark infirmity.

My search goes on.

Dainty shells on ash-like wrists

of debutantes remember you.

Childhood's absence has

not stilled your

voice. My ear

listens. You whisper

on the watery passage.

Deep dirges moan

from the

belly of the sea

and your song

floats to me

of lost savannahs

green and

drums. Of palm trees bending

woman-like swaying

grape-blue children laugh on beaches

of sand as

white as your bones

clean

on the foot of

long-ago waters.

Father.

I wait for you

wrapped in

the entrails of

whales. Your

blood now

blues

spume

over

the rippled

surface of our

grave.

Take Time Out

When you see them

on a freeway hitching rides

wearing beads

with packs by their sides

you ought to ask

What's all the

warring and the jarring

and the

killing and

the thrilling

all about.

Take Time Out.

When you see him

with a band around his head

and an army surplus bunk

that makes his bed

you'd better ask

What's all the

beating and

the cheating and

the bleeding and

the needing

all about.

Take Time Out.

When you see her walking

barefoot in the rain

and you know she's tripping

on a one-way train

you need to ask

What's all the

lying and the

dying and

the running and

the gunning

all about.

Take Time Out.

Use a minute

feel some sorrow

for the folks

who think tomorrow

is a place that they

can call up

on the phone.

Take a month

and show some kindness

for the folks

who thought that blindness

was an illness that

affected eyes alone.

If you know that youth

is dying on the run

and my daughter trades

dope stories with your son

we'd better see

what all our

fearing and our jeering and our

crying and

our lying

brought about.

Take Time Out.

Elegy

FOR HARRIET TUBMAN & FREDRICK DOUGLASS

I lie down in my grave

and watch my children

grow

Proud blooms

above the weeds of death.

Their petals wave

and still nobody

knows the soft black

dirt that is my winding

sheet. The worms, my friends,

yet tunnel holes in

bones and through those

apertures I see the rain.

The sunfelt warmth

now jabs

within my space and

brings me roots of my

children born.

Their seeds must fall

and press beneath

this earth,

and find me where

I wait. My only need to

fertilize their birth.

I lie down in my grave

and watch my children

grow.

Reverses

How often must we

butt to head

Mind to ass

flank to nuts

cock to elbow

hip to toe

soul to shoulder

confront ourselves

in our past.

Little Girl Speakings

Ain't nobody better'n my Daddy,

you keep yo’ quauter,

I ain't yo’ daughter,

Ain't nobody better'n my Daddy.

Ain't nothing prettier'n my dollie,

heard what I said,

don't pat her head,

Ain't nothing prettier'n my dollie.

No lady cookinger than my Mommy,

smell that pie,

see I don't lie,

No lady cookinger than my Mommy.

This Winter Day

The kitchen is its readiness

white green and orange things

leak their blood selves in the soup.

Ritual sacrifice that snaps

an odor at my nose and starts

my tongue to march

slipping in the liquid of its drip.

The day, silver striped

in rain, is balked against

my window and the soup.

This book is dedicated

to a few

oj the Good Guys

You to laugh with

You to cry to

I can just about make

it over

JESSICA MITFORD

GERARD W. PURCELL

JAY ALLEN

A Kind of Love, Some Say

Is it true the ribs can tell

The kick of a beast from a

Lover's fist? The bruised

Bones recorded well

The sudden shock, the

Hard impact. Then swollen lids,

Sorry eyes, spoke not

Of lost romance, but hurt.

Hate often is confused. Its

Limits are in zones beyond itself. And

Sadists will not learn that

Love, by nature, exacts a pain

Unequalled on the rack.

Country Lover

Funky blues

Keen toed shoes

High water pants

Saddy night dance

Red soda water

and anybody's daughter

Remembrance

FOR PAUL

Your hands easy

weight, teasing the bees

hived in my hair, your smile at the

slope of my cheek. On the

occasion, you press

above me, glowing, spouting

readiness, mystery rapes

my reason.

When you have withdrawn

your self and the magic, when

only the smell of your

love lingers between

my breasts, then, only

then, can I greedily consume

your presence.

Where We Belong, A Duet

In every town and village,

In every city square,

In crowded places

I searched the faces

Hoping to find Someone to care.

I read mysterious meanings

In the distant stars,

Then I went to schoolrooms

And poolrooms

And half-lighted cocktail bars.

Braving dangers,

Going with strangers,

I don't even remember their names.

I was quick and breezy

And always easy

Playing romantic games.

I wined and dined a thousand exotic Joans and Janes

In dusty dance halls, at debutante balls,

On lonely country lanes.

I fell in love forever,

Twice every year or so.

I wooed them sweetly, was theirs completely,

But they always let me go.

Saying bye now, no need to try now,

You don't have the proper charms. Too sentimental and much too gentle

I don't tremble in your arms.

Then you rose into my life

Like a promised sunrise.

Brightening my days with the light in your eyes.

I've never been so strong,

Now I'm where I belong.

Phenomenal Woman

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size

But when I start to tell them,

They think I'm telling lies.

I say,

It's in the reach of my arms,

The span of my hips,

The stride of my step,

The curl of my lips.

I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

I walk into a room

Just as cool as you please,

And to a man,

The fellows stand or

Fall down on their knees.

Then they swarm around me,

A hive of honey bees.

I say,

It's the fire in my eyes,

And the flash of my teeth,

The swing in my waist,

And the joy in my feet.

I'm a woman

Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

Men themselves have wondered

What they see in me.

They try so much

But they can't touch

My inner mystery.

When I try to show them,

They say they still can't see.

I say,

It's in the arch of my back,

The sun of my smile,

The ride of my breasts,

The grace of my style.

I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

Now you understand

Just why my head's not bowed.

I don't shout or jump about

Or have to talk real loud.

When you see me passing,

It ought to make you proud.

I say,

It's in the click of my heels,

The bend of my hair,

the palm of my hand,

The need for my care.

‘Cause I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

Men

When I was young, I used to

Watch behind the curtains

As men walked up and down

The street. Wino men, old men.

Young men sharp as mustard.

See them. Men are always

Going somewhere.

They knew I was there. Fifteen

Years old and starving for them.

Under my window, they would pause,

Their shoulders high like the

Breasts of a young girl,

Jacket tails slapping over

Those behinds,

Men.

One day they hold you in the

Palms of their hands, gentle, as if you

Were the last raw egg in the world. Then

They tighten up. Just a little. The

First squeeze is nice. A quick hug.

Soft into your defenselessness. A little

More. The hurt begins. Wrench out a

Smile that slides around the fear. When the

Air disappears,

Your mind pops, exploding fiercely, briefly,

Like the head of a kitchen match. Shattered.

It is your juice

That runs down their legs. Staining their shoes.

When the earth rights itself again, And taste tries to return to the tongue,

Your body has slammed shut. Forever.

No keys exist.

Then the window draws full upon

Your mind. There, just beyond

The sway of curtains, men walk.

Knowing something.

Going someplace.

But this time, you will simply

Stand and watch.

Maybe.

Refusal

Beloved,

In what other lives or lands

Have I known your lips

Your hands

Your laughter brave

Irreverent.

Those sweet excesses that

I do adore.

What surety is there

That we will meet again,

On other worlds some

Future time undated.

I defy my body's haste.

Without the Promise

Of one more sweet encounter

I will not deign to die.

Just for a Time

Oh how you used to walk

With that insouciant smile

I liked to hear you talk

And your style

Pleased me for a while.

You were my early love

New as a day breaking in Spring

You were the image of

Everything

That caused me to sing.

I don't like reminiscing

Nostalgia is not my forte

I don't spill tears

On yesterday's years

But honesty makes me say,

You were a precious pearl

How I loved to see you shine,

You were the perfect girl.

And you were mine.

For a time.

For a time.

Just for a time.

Junkie Monkey Reel

Shoulders sag,

The pull of weighted needling.

Arms drag, smacking wet in soft bone

Sockets.

Knees thaw,

Their familiar magic lost. Old bend and

Lock and bend forgot.

Teeth rock in fetid gums.

Eyes dart, die, then float in

Simian juice.

Brains reel,

Master charts of old ideas erased. The

Routes are gone beneath the tracks

Of desert caravans, pre-slavery

Years ago.

Dreams fail,

Unguarded fears on homeward streets

Embrace. Throttling in a dark revenge

Murder is its sweet romance.

How long will

This monkey dance?

The Lesson

I keep on dying again.

Veins collapse, opening like the

Small fists of sleeping

Children.

Memory of old tombs,

Rotting flesh and worms do

Not convince me against

The challenge. The years

And cold defeat live deep in

Lines along my face.

They dull my eyes, yet

I keep on dying,

Because I love to live.

California Prodigal

FOR DAVID P-B

The eye follows, the land

Slips upward, creases down, forms

The gentle buttocks of a young

Giant. In the nestle,

Old adobe bricks, washed of

Whiteness, paled to umber,

Await another century.

Star Jasmine and old vines

Lay claim upon the ghosted land,

Then quiet pools whisper

Private childhood secrets.

Flush on inner cottage walls

Antiquitous faces,

Used to the gelid breath

Of old manors, glare disdainfully

Over breached time.

Around and through these

Cold phantasmatalities,

He walks, insisting

To the languid air,

Activity, music,

A generosity of graces.

His lupin fields spurn old

Deceit and agile poppies dance

In golden riot. Each day is Fulminant, exploding brightly

Under the gaze of his exquisite

Sires, frozen in the famed paint

Of dead masters. Audacious

Sunlight casts defiance

At their feet.

My Arkansas

There is a deep brooding

in Arkansas.

Old crimes like moss pend

from poplar trees.

The sullen earth

is much too

red for comfort.

Sunrise seems to hesitate

and in that second

lose its

incandescent aim, and

dusk no more shadows

than the noon.

The past is brighter yet.

Old hates and

ante-bellum lace are rent

but not discarded.

Today is yet to come

in Arkansas.

It writhes. It writhes in awful

waves of brooding.

Through the Inner City to the Suburbs

Secured by sooted windows

And amazement, it is

Delicious. Frosting filched

From a company cake.

People. Black and fast. Scattered

Watermelon seeds on

A summer street. Grinning in

Ritual, sassy in pomp.

From a slow-moving train

They are precious. Stolen gems

Unsaleable and dear. Those

Dusky undulations sweat of forest

Nights, damp dancing, the juicy

Secrets of black thighs.

Images framed picture perfect

Do not move beyond the window

Siding.

Strong delectation:

Dirty stories in changing rooms

Accompany the slap of wet towels and

Toilet seats.

Poli-talk of politician

Parents: “They need shoes and

Cooze and a private Warm latrine. I had a colored Mammy …”

The train, bound for green lawns

Double garages and sullen women

In dreaded homes, settles down

On its habit track.

Leaving

The dark figures dancing

And grinning. Still

Grinning.

Lady Luncheon Club

Her counsel was accepted: the times are grave.

A man was needed who would make them think,

And pay him from the petty cash account.

Our woman checked her golden watch,

The speaker has a plane to catch.

Dessert is served (and just in time).

The lecturer leans, thrusts forth his head

And neck and chest, arms akimbo

On the lectern top. He summons up

Sincerity as one might call a favored

Pet.

He understands the female rage,

Why Eve was lustful and

Delilah's

Grim deceit.

Our woman thinks:

(This cake is much too sweet).

He sighs for youthful death

And rape at ten, and murder of

The soul stretched over long.

Our woman notes:

(This coffee's much too strong). The jobless streets of

Wine and wandering when

Mornings promise no bright relief.

She claps her hands and writes

Upon her pad: (Next time the

Speaker must be brief).

Momma Welfare Roll

Her arms semaphore fat triangles,

Pudgy hands bunched on layered hips

Where bones idle under years of fatback

And lima beans.

Her jowls shiver in accusation

Of crimes clichéd by

Repetition. Her children, strangers

To childhood's toys, play

Best the games of darkened doorways,

Rooftop tag, and know the slick feel of

Other people's property.

Too fat to whore,

Too mad to work,

Searches her dreams for the

Lucky sign and walks bare-handed

Into a den of bureaucrats for

Her portion.

“They don't give me welfare.

I take it.”

The Singer Will Not Sing

FOR A. L.

A benison given. Unused,

no angels promised,

wings fluttering banal lies

behind their sexlessness. No

trumpets gloried

prophecies of fabled fame.

Yet harmonies waited in

her stiff throat. New notes

lay expectant on her

stilled tongue.

Her lips are ridged and

fleshy. Purpled night birds

snuggled to rest.

The mouth seamed, voiceless.

Sounds do not lift beyond

those reddened walls.

She came too late and lonely

to this place.

Willie

Willie was a man without fame,

Hardly anybody knew his name.

Crippled and limping, always walking lame,

He said, “I keep on movin’

Movin’ just the same.”

Solitude was the climate in his head,

Emptiness was the partner in his bed,

Pain echoed in the steps of his tread,

He said, “I keep on followin’

Where the leaders led.

“I may cry and I will die,

But my spirit is the soul of every spring,

Watch for me and you will see

That I'm present in the songs that children sing.”

People called him “Uncle,” “Boy” and “Hey,”

Said, “You can't live through this another day.”

Then, they waited to hear what he would say.

He said, “I'm living

In the games that children play.

“You may enter my sleep, people my dreams,

Threaten my early morning's ease,

But I keep comin’ followin’ laughin’ cryin',

Sure as a summer breeze.

“Wait for me, watch for me.

My spirit is the surge of open seas.

Look for me, ask for me,

I'm the rustle in the autumn leaves.

“When the sun rises

I am the time.

When the children sing

I am the Rhyme.”

To Beat the Child Was Bad Enough

A young body, light

As winter sunshine, a new

Seed's bursting promise,

Hung from a string of silence

Above its future.

(The chance of choice was never known.)

Hunger, new hands, strange voices,

Its cry came natural, tearing.

Water boiled in innocence, gaily

In a cheap pot.

The child exchanged its

Curiosity for terror. The skin

Withdrew, the flesh submitted.

Now, cries make shards

Of broken air, beyond an unremembered

Hunger and the peace of strange hands.

A young body floats.

Silently.

Woman Work

I've got the children to tend

The clothes to mend

The floor to mop

The food to shop

Then the chicken to fry

The baby to dry

I got company to feed

The garden to weed

I've got the shirts to press

The tots to dress

The cane to be cut

I gotta clean up this hut

Then see about the sick

And the cotton to pick.

Shine on me, sunshine

Rain on me, rain

Fall softly, dewdrops

And cool my brow again.

Storm, blow me from here

With your fiercest wind

Let me float across the sky

Till I can rest again.

Fall gently, snowflakes

Cover me with white

Cold icy kisses and

Let me rest tonight. Sun, rain, curving sky

Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone

Star shine, moon glow

You're all that I can call my own.

One More Round

There ain't no pay beneath the sun

As sweet as rest when a job's well done.

I was born to work up to my grave

But I was not born

To be a slave.

One more round

And let's heave it down,

One more round

And let's heave it down.

Papa drove steel and Momma stood guard,

I never heard them holler ‘cause the work was hard.

They were born to work up to their graves

But they were not born

To be worked-out slaves.

One more round

And let's heave it down,

One more round

And let's heave it down.

Brothers and sisters know the daily grind,

It was not labor made them lose their minds.

They were born to work up to their graves

But they were not born

To be worked-out slaves.

One more round

And let's heave it down,

One more round

And let's heave it down.

And now I'll tell you my Golden Rule,

I was born to work but I ain't no mule.

I was born to work up to my grave

But I was not born

To be a slave.

One more round

And let's heave it down,

One more round

And let's heave it down.

The Traveler

Byways and bygone

And lone nights long

Sun rays and sea waves

And star and stone

Manless and friendless

No cave my home

This is my torture

My long nights, lone

Kin

FOR BAILEY

We were entwined in red rings

Of blood and loneliness before

The first snows fell

Before muddy rivers seeded clouds

Above a virgin forest, and

Men ran naked, blue and black

Skinned into the warm embraces

Of Sheba, Eve and Lilith.

I was your sister.

You left me to force strangers

Into brother molds, exacting

Taxations they never

Owed or could ever pay.

You fought to die, thinking

In destruction lies the seed

Of birth. You may be right.

I will remember silent walks in

Southern woods and long talks

In low voices

Shielding meaning from the big ears

Of overcurious adults.

You may be right.

Your slow return from

Regions of terror and bloody

Screams, races my heart.

I hear again the laughter

Of children and see fireflies

Bursting tiny explosions in

An Arkansas twilight.

The Memory

Cotton rows crisscross the world

And dead-tired nights of yearning

Thunderbolts on leather strops

And all my body burning

Sugar cane reach up to God

And every baby crying

Shame the blanket of my night

And all my days are dying

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

‘Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

‘Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame

I rise

Up from a past that's rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

Ain't That Bad?

Dancin’ the funky chicken

Eatin’ ribs and tips

Diggin’ all the latest sounds

And drinkin’ gin in sips.

Puttin’ down that do-rag

Tightenin’ up my ‘fro

Wrappin’ up in Blackness

Don't I shine and glow?

Hearin’ Stevie Wonder

Cookin’ beans and rice

Goin’ to the opera

Checkin’ out Leontyne Price.

Get down, Jesse Jackson

Dance on, Alvin Ailey

Talk, Miss Barbara Jordan

Groove, Miss Pearlie Bailey.

Now ain't they bad?

An’ ain't they Black?

An’ ain't they Black?

An’ ain't they bad?

An’ ain't they bad?

An’ ain't they Black?

An’ ain't they fine?

Black like the hour of the night

When your love turns and wriggles close to your side

Black as the earth which has given birth

To nations, and when all else is gone will abide.

Bad as the storm that leaps raging from the heavens

Bringing the welcome rain

Bad as the sun burning orange hot at midday

Lifting the waters again.

Arthur Ashe on the tennis court

Mohammed Ali in the ring

André Watts and Andrew Young

Black men doing their thing.

Dressing in purples and pinks and greens

Exotic as rum and Cokes

Living our lives with flash and style

Ain't we colorful folks?

Now ain't we bad?

An’ ain't we Black?

An’ ain't we Black?

An’ ain't we bad?

An’ ain't we bad?

An’ ain't we Black?

An’ ain't we fine?

Life Doesn't Frighten Me

Shadows on the wall

Noises down the hall

Life doesn't frighten me at all

Bad dogs barking loud

Big ghosts in a cloud

Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Mean old Mother Goose

Lions on the loose

They don't frighten me at all

Dragons breathing flame

On my counterpane

That doesn't frighten me at all.

I go boo

Make them shoo

I make funWay they run

I won't crySo they fly

I just smile

They go wild

Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Tough guys in a fight

All alone at night

Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Panthers in the park Strangers in the dark

No, they don't frighten me at all.

That new classroom where

Boys all pull my hair

(Kissy little girls

With their hair in curls)

They don't frighten me at all.

Don't show me frogs and snakes

And listen for my scream,

If I'm afraid at all

It's only in my dreams.

I've got a magic charm

That I keep up my sleeve,

I can walk the ocean floor

And never have to breathe.

Life doesn't frighten me at all

Not at all

Not at all.

Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Bump d'Bump

Play me a game like Blind Man's dance

And bind my eyes with ignorance

Bump d'bump bump d'bump.

Tell my life with a liquor sign

Or a cooking spoon from the five-and-dime

And a junkie reel in two/four time

Bump d'bump bump d'bump.

Call me a name from an ugly south

Like liver lips and satchel mouth

Bump d'bump bump d'bump.

I'll play possum and close my eyes

To your greater sins and my lesser lies

That way I share my nation's prize

Bump d'bump bump d'bump.

I may be last in the welfare line

Below the rim where the sun don't shine

But getting up stays on my mind

Bump d'bump bump d'bump.

On Aging

When you see me sitting quietly,

Like a sack left on the shelf,

Don't think I need your

chattering. I'm listening to myself.

Hold! Stop! Don't pity me!

Hold! Stop your sympathy!

Understanding if you got it,

Otherwise I'll do without it!

When my bones are stiff and aching,

And my feet won't climb the stair,

I will only ask one favor:

Don't bring me no rocking chair.

When you see me walking, stumbling,

Don't study and get it wrong.

‘Cause tired don't mean lazy

And every goodbye ain't gone.

I'm the same person I was back then,

A little less hair, a little less chin,

A lot less lungs and much less wind.

But ain't I lucky I can still breathe in.

In Retrospect

Last year changed its seasons

subtly, stripped its sultry winds

for the reds of dying leaves,

let gelid drips of winter ice melt onto

a warming earth and urged the dormant

bulbs to brave the

pain of spring.

We, loving, above the whim of

time, did not notice.

Alone. I remember now.

Just Like Job

My Lord, my Lord,

Long have I cried out to Thee

In the heat of the sun,

The cool of the moon,

My screams searched the heavens for Thee.

My God,

When my blanket was nothing but dew,

Rags and bones

Were all I owned,

I chanted Your name

Just like Job.

Father, Father,

My life give I gladly to Thee

Deep rivers ahead

High mountains above

My soul wants only Your love

But fears gather round like wolves in the dark.

Have You forgotten my name?

O Lord, come to Your child.

O Lord, forget me not.

You said to lean on Your arm

And I'm leaning

You said to trust in Your love

And I'm trusting

You said to call on Your name

And I'm calling

I'm stepping out on Your word. You said You'd be my protection,

My only and glorious saviour,

My beautiful Rose of Sharon,

And I'm stepping out on Your word.

Joy Joy

Your word.

Joy Joy

The wonderful word of the Son of God.

You said that You would take me to glory

To sit down at the welcome table

Rejoice with my mother in heaven

And I'm stepping out on Your word.

Into the alleys

Into the byways

Into the streets

And the roads

And the highways

Past rumor mongers

And midnight ramblers

Past the liars and the cheaters and the gamblers

On Your word

On Your word.

On the wonderful word of the Son of God.

I'm stepping out on Your word.

Call Letters: Mrs. V. B.

Ships?

Sure I'll sail them.

Show me the boat,

If it'll float,

I'll sail it.

Men?

Yes I'll love them.

If they've got the style,

To make me smile,

I'll love them.

Life?

‘Course I'll live it.

Let me have breath,

Just to my death,

And I'll live it.

Failure?

I'm not ashamed to tell it,

I never learned to spell it.

Not Failure.

Thank You, Lord

I see You

Brown-skinned,

Neat Afro,

Full lips,

A little goatee.

A Malcolm,

Martin,

Du Bois.

Sunday services become sweeter when You're Black,

Then I don't have to explain why

I was out balling the town down,

Saturday night.

Thank you, Lord.

I want to thank You, Lord,

For life and all that's in it.

Thank You for the day

And for the hour and for the minute.

I know many are gone,

I'm still living on,

I want to thank You.

I went to sleep last night

And I arose with the dawn,

I know that there are others

Who're still sleeping on,

They've gone away,

You've let me stay.

I want to thank You. Some thought because they'd seen sunrise

They'd see it rise again.

But death crept into their sleeping beds

And took them by the hand.

Because of Your mercy,

I have another day to live.

Let me humbly say,

Thank You for this day

I want to thank You.

I was once a sinner man,

Living unsaved and wild,

Taking my chances in a dangerous world,

Putting my soul on trial.

Because of Your mercy,

Falling down on me like rain,

Because of Your mercy,

When I die I'll live again,

Let me humbly say,

Thank You for this day.

I want to thank You.

Another book for

GUY JOHNSON

and

COLIN ASHANTI MURPHY JOHNSON

Thanks to

ELEANOR TRAYLOR

for her radiance

ELIZABETH PHILLIPS

for her art

RUTH BECKFORD

for her constancy

Awaking in New York

Curtains forcing their will

against the wind,

children sleep,

exchanging dreams with

seraphim. The city

drags itself awake on

subway straps; and

I, an alarm, awake as

a rumor of war,

lie stretching into dawn,

unasked and unheeded.

A Good Woman Feeling Bad

The blues may be the life you've led

Or midnight hours in

An empty bed. But persecuting

Blues I've known

Could stalk

Like tigers, break like bone,

Pend like rope in

A gallows tree,

Make me curse

My pedigree,

Bitterness thick on

A rankling tongue,

A psalm to love that's

Left unsung,

Rivers heading north

But ending South,

Funeral music

In a going-home mouth.

All riddles are blues,

And all blues are sad,

And I'm only mentioning

Some blues I've had.

The Health-Food Diner

No sprouted wheat and soya shoots

And brussels in a cake,

Carrot straw and spinach raw

(Today, I need a steak).

Not thick brown rice and rice pilau

Or mushrooms creamed on toast,

Turnips mashed and parsnips hashed

(I'm dreaming of a roast).

Health-food folks around the world

Are thinned by anxious zeal,

They look for help in seafood kelp

(I count on breaded veal).

No Smoking signs, raw mustard greens,

Zucchini by the ton,

Uncooked kale and bodies frail

Are sure to make me run

to

Loins of pork and chicken thighs

And standing rib, so prime,

Pork chops brown and fresh ground round

(I crave them all the time). Irish stews and boiled corned beef

And hot dogs by the scores,

Or any place that saves a space

For smoking carnivores.

A Georgia Song

We swallow the odors of Southern cities,

Fatback boiled to submission,

Tender evening poignancies of

Magnolia and the great green

Smell of fresh sweat.

In Southern fields,

The sound of distant

Feet running, or dancing,

And the liquid notes of

Sorrow songs,

Waltzes, screams and

French quadrilles float over

The loam of Georgia.

Sing me to sleep, Savannah.

Clocks run down in Tara's halls and dusty

Flags droop their unbearable

Sadness.

Remember our days, Susannah.

Oh, the blood-red clay,

Wet still with ancient

Wrongs, and Abenaa

Singing her Creole airs to

Macon.

We long, dazed, for winter evenings And a whitened moon,

And the snap of controllable fires.

Cry for our souls, Augusta.

We need a wind to strike

Sharply, as the thought of love

Betrayed can stop the heart.

An absence of tactile

Romance, no lips offering

Succulence, nor eyes

Rolling, disconnected from

A Sambo face.

Dare us new dreams, Columbus.

A cool new moon, a

Winter's night, calm blood,

Sluggish, moving only

Out of habit, we need

Peace.

O Atlanta, O deep, and

Once-lost city,

Chant for us a new song. A song

Of Southern peace.

Unmeasured Tempo

The sun rises at midday.

Nubile breasts sag to waistlines while

young loins grow dull,

so late.

Dreams are petted, like

cherished lapdogs

misunderstood and loved

too well.

Much knowledge

wrinkles the cerebellum,

but little informs.

Leaps are

made into narrow mincings.

Great desires strain

into petty wishes.

You did arrive, smiling,

but too late.

Amoebaean for Daddy

I was a pretty baby.

White folks used to stop

My mother

Just to look at me.

(All black babies

Are Cute.) Mother called me

Bootsie and Daddy said …

(Nobody listened to him).

On the Union Pacific, a

Dining-car waiter, bowing and scraping,

Momma told him to

Stand up straight, he shamed her

In the big house

(Bought from tips) in front of her

Nice club ladies.

His short legs were always

Half bent. He could have posed as

The Black jockey Mother found

And put on the lawn.

He sat silent when

We ate from the good railroad china

And stolen silver spoons.

Furniture crowded our

Lonely house.

But I was young and played

In the evenings under a blanket of Licorice sky. When Daddy came home

(I might be forgiven) that last night,

I had been running in the

Big backyard and

Stood sweating above the tired old man,

Panting like a young horse,

Impatient with his lingering. He said

“All I ever asked, all I ever asked, all I ever—”

Daddy, you should have died

Long before I was a

Pretty baby, and white

Folks used to stop

Just to look at me.

Recovery

FOR DUGALD

A last love,

proper in conclusion,

should snip the wings,

forbidding further flight.

But I, now,

reft of that confusion,

am lifted up

and speeding toward the light.

Impeccable Conception

I met a Lady Poet

who took for inspiration

colored birds, and whispered words,

a lover's hesitation.

A falling leaf could stir her.

A wilting, dying rose

would make her write, both day and night,

the most rewarding prose.

She'd find a hidden meaning

in every pair of pants,

then hurry home to be alone

and write about romance.

Caged Bird

A free bird leaps

on the back of the wind

and floats downstream

till the current ends

and dips his wing

in the orange sun rays

and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks

down his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and

his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn

and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom.

Avec Merciy Mother

From her perch of beauty

posing lofty,

Sustained upon the plaudits

of the crowd,

She praises all who kneel and

whispers softly,

“A genuflection's better

with head bowed.”

Among the mass of people

who adore her

A solitary figure

holds her eyes.

His salty tears invoke

her sweet reaction,

“He's so much like his daddy

when he cries.”

Arrival

Angels gather.

The rush of mad air

cyclones through.

Wing tips brush the

hair, a million

strands

stand; waving black anemones.

Hosannahs crush the

shell's ear tender, and

tremble

down clattering

to the floor.

Harps sound,

undulate their

sensuous meanings.

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

You

beyond the door.

A Plagued Journey

There is no warning rattle at the door

nor heavy feet to stomp the foyer boards.

Safe in the dark prison, I know that

light slides over

the fingered work of a toothless

woman in Pakistan.

Happy prints of

an invisible time are illumined.

My mouth agape

rejects the solid air and

lungs hold. The invader takes

direction and

seeps through the plaster walls.

It is at my chamber, entering

the keyhole, pushing

through the padding of the door.

I cannot scream. A bone

of fear clogs my throat.

It is upon me. It is

sunrise, with Hope

its arrogant rider.

My mind, formerly quiescent

in its snug encasement, is strained

to look upon their rapturous visages,

to let them enter even into me.

I am forced

outside myself to

mount the light and ride joined with Hope. Through all the bright hours

I cling to expectation, until

darkness comes to reclaim me

as its own. Hope fades, day is gone

into its irredeemable place

and I am thrown back into the familiar

bonds of disconsolation.

Gloom crawls around

lapping lasciviously

between my toes, at my ankles,

and it sucks the strands of my

hair. It forgives my heady

fling with Hope. I am

joined again into its

greedy arms.

Starvation

Hurray! Hurry!

Come through the keyhole.

Don't mind the rotting

sashes, pass into the windows.

Come, good news.

I'm holding my apron

to catch your plumpness.

The largest pot shines

with happiness. The slack

walls of my purse, pulsing

pudenda, await you with

a new bride's longing.

The bread bin gapes and

the oven holds its cold

breath.

Hurry up! Hurry down!

Good tidings. Don't wait

out my misery. Do not play

coy with my longing.

Hunger has grown old and

ugly with me. We hate from

too much knowing. Come.

Press out this sour beast which

fills the bellies of my children

and laughs at each eviction notice.

Come!

Contemporary Announcement

Ring the big bells,

cook the cow,

put on your silver locket.

The landlord is knocking at the door

and I've got the rent in my pocket.

Douse the lights,

hold your breath,

take my heart in your hand.

I lost my job two weeks ago

and rent day's here again.

Prelude to a Parting

Beside you, prone,

my naked skin finds

fault in touching.

Yet it is you

who draws away.

The tacit fact is:

the awful fear of losing

is not enough to cause

a fleeing love

to stay.

Martial Choreograph

Hello, young sailor.

You are betrayed and

do not know the dance of death.

Dandy warrior, swaying to

Rick James on your

stereo, you do not hear the

bleat of triumphant war, its

roar is not in

your ears, filled with Stevie Wonder.

“Show me how to do like you.

Show me how to do it.”

You will be surprised that

trees grunt when torn from

their root sockets to fandango into dust,

and exploding bombs force a lively Lindy

on grasses and frail bodies.

Go galloping on, bopping,

in the airport, young sailor.

Your body, virgin

still, has not swung the bloody buck-and-wing.

Manhood is a newly delivered

message. Your eyes,

rampant as an open city,

have not yet seen life steal from

limbs outstretched and trembling

like the arms of dancers

and dying swans.

To a Suitor

If you are Black and for me,

press steady, as the weight

of night. And I will show

cascades of brilliance, astrally.

If you are Black and constant,

descend importantly,

as ritual, and I will arch

a crescent moon, naturally.

Insomniac

There are some nights when

sleep plays coy,

aloof and disdainful.

And all the wiles

that I employ to win

its service to my side

are useless as wounded pride,

and much more painful.

Weekend Glory

Some dichty folks

don't know the facts,

posin’ and preenin’

and puttin’ on acts,

stretchin’ their necks

and strainin’ their backs.

They move into condos

up over the ranks,

pawn their souls

to the local banks.

Buyin’ big cars

they can't afford,

ridin’ around town

actin’ bored.

If they want to learn how to live life right,

they ought to study me on Saturday night.

My job at the plant

ain't the biggest bet,

but I pay my bills

and stay out of debt.

I get my hair done

for my own self s sake,

so I don't have to pick

and I don't have to rake.

Take the church money out

and head cross town

to my friend girl's house

where we plan our round.

We meet our men and go to a joint

where the music is blues

and to the point.

Folks write about me.

They just can't see

how I work all week

at the factory.

Then get spruced up

and laugh and dance

and turn away from worry

with sassy glance.

They accuse me of livin

‘ from day to day,

but who are they kiddin'?

So are they.

My life ain't heaven

but it sure ain't hell.

I'm not on top

but I call it swell

if I'm able to work

and get paid right

and have the luck to be Black

on a Saturday night.

The Lie

Today, you threaten to leave me.

I hold curses, in my mouth,

which could flood your path, sear

bottomless chasms in your road.

I keep, behind my lips,

invectives capable of tearing

the septum from your

nostrils and the skin from your back.

Tears, copious as a spring rain,

are checked in ducts

and screams are crowded in a corner

of my throat.

You are leaving?

Aloud, I say:

I'll help you pack, but it's getting late,

I have to hurry or miss my date.

When I return, I know you'll be gone.

Do drop a line or telephone.

Prescience

Had I known that the heart

breaks slowly, dismantling itself

into unrecognizable plots of

misery,

Had I known the heart would leak,

slobbering its sap, with a vulgar

visibility, into the dressed-up

dining rooms of strangers,

Had I known that solitude could

stifle the breath, loosen the joint,

and force the tongue against the

palate,

Had I known that loneliness could

keloid, winding itself around

the body in an ominous and beautiful

cicatrix,

Had I known, yet I would have loved

you, your brash and insolent beauty,

your heavy comedic face

and knowledge of sweet

delights,

But from a distance.

I would have left you whole and wholly

for the delectation of those who

wanted more and cared less.

Family Affairs

You let down, from arched

Windows,

Over hand-cut stones of your

Cathedrals, seas of golden hair.

While I, pulled by dusty braids,

Left furrows in the

Sands of African beaches.

Princes and commoners

Climbed over waves to reach

Your vaulted boudoirs,

As the sun, capriciously,

Struck silver fire from waiting

Chains, where I was bound.

My screams never reached

The rare tower where you

Lay, birthing masters for

My sons, and for my

Daughters, a swarm of

Unclean badgers, to consume

Their history.

Tired now of pedestal existence

For fear of flying

And vertigo, you descend

And step lightly over My centuries of horror

And take my hand,

Smiling, call me

Sister.

Sister, accept

That I must wait a

While. Allow an age

Ofdusttofill

Ruts left on my

Beach in Africa.

Changes

Fickle comfort steals away

What it knows

It will not say

What it can

It will not do

It flies from me

To humor you.

Capricious peace will not bind

The severed nerves

The jagged mind

The shattered dream

The loveless sleep

It frolics now

Within your keep.

Confidence, that popinjay,

Is planning now

To slip away

Look fast

It's fading rapidly

Tomorrow it returns to me.

Brief Innocence

Dawn offers

innocence to a half-mad city.

The axe-keen

intent of all our

days for this brief

moment lies soft, nuzzling

the breast of morning,

crooning, still sleep-besotted,

of childish pranks with

angels.

The Last Decision

The print is too small, distressing me.

Wavering black things on the page.

Wriggling polliwogs all about.

I know it's my age.

I'll have to give up reading.

The food is too rich, revolting me.

I swallow it hot or force it down cold,

and wait all day as it sits in my throat.

Tired as I am, I know I've grown old.

I'll have to give up eating.

My children's concerns are tiring me.

They stand at my bed and move their lips,

and I cannot hear one single word.

I'd rather give up listening.

Life is too busy, wearying me.

Questions and answers and heavy thought.

I've subtracted and added and multiplied,

and all my figuring has come to naught.

Today I'll give up living.

Slave Cqffle

Just Beyond my reaching,

an itch away from fingers,

was the river bed

and the high road home.

Now Beneath my walking,

solid down to China,

all the earth is horror

and the dark night long.

Then Before the dawning,

bright as grinning demons,

came the fearful knowledge

that my life was gone.

Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?

Evicted from sleep's mute palace,

I wait in silence

for the bridal croon;

your legs rubbing insistent

rhythm against my thighs,

your breath moaning

a canticle in my hair.

But the solemn moments,

unuttering, pass in

unaccompanied procession.

You, whose chanteys hummed

my life alive, have withdrawn

your music and lean inaudibly

on the quiet slope of memory.

O Shaker, why don't you sing?

In the night noisy with

street cries and the triumph

of amorous insects, I focus beyond

those cacophonies for

the anthem of your hands and swelling chest,

for the perfect harmonies which are

your lips. Yet darkness brings

no syncopated promise. I rest somewhere

between the unsung notes of night.

Shaker, why don't you sing?

My Life Has Turned to Blue

Our summer's gone,

the golden days are through.

The rosy dawns I used to

wake with you

have turned to grey,

my life has turned to blue.

The once-green lawns

glisten now with dew.

Red robin's gone,

down to the South he flew.

Left here alone,

my life has turned to blue.

I've heard the news

that winter too will pass,

that spring's a sign

that summer's due at last.

But until I see you

lying in green grass,

my life has turned to blue.

VIVIAN BAXTER

MILDRED GARRIS TUTTLE

Worker's Song

Big ships shudder

down to the sea

because of me

Railroads run

on a twinness track

'cause of my back

Whoppa, Whoppa

Whoppa, Whoppa

Cars stretch to

a super length

'cause of my strength

Planes fly high

over seas and lands

'cause of my hands

Whoppa, Whoppa

Whoppa, Whoppa

I wake

start the factory humming

I work late

keep the whole world running

and I got something … something

coming … coming….

Whoppa

Whoppa

Whoppa

Human Family

I note the obvious differences

in the human family.

Some of us are serious,

some thrive on comedy.

Some declare their lives are lived

as true profundity,

and others claim they really live

the real reality.

The variety of our skin tones

can confuse, bemuse, delight,

brown and pink and beige and purple,

tan and blue and white.

I've sailed upon the seven seas

and stopped in every land,

I've seen the wonders of the world,

not yet one common man.

I know ten thousand women

called Jane and Mary Jane,

but I've not seen any two

who really were the same.

Mirror twins are different

although their features jibe,

and lovers think quite different thoughts

while lying side by side.

We love and lose in China,

we weep on England's moors,

and laugh and moan in Guinea,

and thrive on Spanish shores.

We seek success in Finland,

are born and die in Maine.

In minor ways we differ,

in major we're the same.

I note the obvious differences

between each sort and type,

but we are more alike, my friends,

than we are unalike.

We are more alike, my friends,

than we are unalike.

We are more alike, my friends,

than we are unalike.

Man Bigot

The man who is a bigot

is the worst thing God has got,

except his match, his woman,

who really is Ms. Begot.

Old Folks Laugh

They have spent their

content of simpering,

holding their lips this

and that way, winding

the lines between

their brows. Old folks

allow their bellies to jiggle like slow

tamborines.

The hollers

rise up and spill

over any way they want.

When old folks laugh, they free the world.

They turn slowly, slyly knowing

the best and worst

of remembering.

Saliva glistens in

the corners of their mouths,

their heads wobble

on brittle necks, but

their laps

are filled with memories.

When old folks laugh, they consider the promise

of dear painless death, and generously

forgive life for happening

to them.

Is Love

Midwives and winding sheets

know birthing is hard

and dying is mean

and living's a trial in between.

Why do we journey, muttering

like rumors among the stars?

Is a dimension lost?

Is it love?

Forgive

Take me, Virginia,

bind me close

with Jamestown memories

of camptown races and

ships pregnant

with certain cargo

and Richmond riding high on greed

and low on tedious tides

of guilt.

But take me on, Virginia,

loose your turban of flowers

that peach petals and

dogwood bloom may

form epaulettes of white

tenderness on my shoulders

and round my

head ringlets

of forgiveness, poignant

as rolled eyes, sad as summer

parasols in a hurricane.

Insignificant

A series of small, on

their own insignificant,

occurrences. Salt lost half

its savor. Two yellow-

striped bumblebees got

lost in my hair.

When I freed them they droned

away into the afternoon.

At the clinic the nurse's

face was half pity and part pride.

I was not glad for the news.

Then I thought I heard you

call, and I, running

like water, headed for

the railroad track. It was only

the Baltimore and the Atchison,

Topeka, and the Santa Fe.

Small insignificancies.

Love Letter

Listening winds

overhear my privacies

spoken aloud (in your

absence, but for your sake).

When you, mustachioed,

nutmeg-brown lotus,

sit beside the Oberlin shoji.

My thoughts are particular:

of your light lips and hungry

hands writing Tai Chi urgencies

into my body. I leap, float,

run

to spring cool springs into

your embrace. Then we match grace.

This girl, neither feather nor

fan, drifted and tossed.

Oh, but then I had power.

Power.

Equality

You declare you see me dimly

through a glass which will not shine,

though I stand before you boldly,

trim in rank and marking time.

You do own to hear me faintly

as a whisper out of range,

while my drums beat out the message

and the rhythms never change.

Equality, and I will be free.

Equality, and I will be free.

You announce my ways are wanton,

that I fly from man to man,

but if I'm just a shadow to you,

could you ever understand?

We have lived a painful history,

we know the shameful past,

but I keep on marching forward,

and you keep on coming last.

Equality, and I will be free.

Equality, and I will be free.

Take the blinders from your vision,

take the padding from your ears, and confess you've heard me crying,

and admit you've seen my tears.

Hear the tempo so compelling,

hear the blood throb in my veins.

Yes, my drums are beating nightly,

and the rhythms never change.

Equality, and I will be free.

Equality, and I will be free.

Coleridge Jackson

Coleridge Jackson had nothing

to fear. He weighed sixty pounds

more than his sons and one

hundred pounds more than his wife.

His neighbors knew he wouldn't

take tea for the fever.

The gents at the poolroom

walked gently in his presence.

So everyone used

to wonder why,

when his puny boss, a little

white bag of bones and

squinty eyes, when he frowned

at Coleridge, sneered at

the way Coleridge shifted

a ton of canned goods from

the east wall of the warehouse

all the way to the west,

when that skimpy piece of

man-meat called Coleridge

a sorry nigger,

Coleridge kept his lips closed,

sealed, jammed tight.

Wouldn't raise his eyes,

held his head at a slant,

looking way off somewhere

else.

Everybody in the neighborhood wondered

why Coleridge would come home,

pull off his jacket, take off

his shoes, and beat the

water and the will out of his puny

little family.

Everybody, even Coleridge, wondered

(the next day, or even later that

same night).

Everybody. But the weasly little

sack-of-bones boss with his

envious little eyes,

he knew. He always

knew. And

when people told him about

Coleridge's family, about the

black eyes and the bruised

faces, the broken bones,

Lord, how that scrawny man

grinned.

And the next

day, for a few hours, he treated

Coleridge nice. Like Coleridge

had just done him the biggest

old favor. Then, right

after lunch, he'd start on

Coleridge again.

“Here, Sambo, come here.

Can't you move any faster

than that? Who on earth

needs a lazy nigger?” And Coleridge would just

stand there. His eyes sliding

away, lurking at something else.

Why Are They Happy People?

Skin back your teeth, damn you,

wiggle your ears,

laugh while the years

race

down your face.

Pull up your cheeks, black boy,

wrinkle your nose,

grin as your toes

spade

up your grave.

Roll those big eyes, black gal,

rubber your knees,

smile when the trees

bend

with your kin.

Son to Mother

I start no

wars, raining poison

on cathedrals,

melting Stars of David

into golden faucets

to be lighted by lamps

shaded by human skin.

I set no

store on the strange lands,

send no

missionaries beyond my

borders,

to plunder secrets

and barter souls.

They

say you took my manhood,

Momma.

Come sit on my lap

and tell me,

what do you want me to say

to them, just

before I annihilate

their ignorance?

Known to Eve and Me

His tan and golden self,

coiled in a threadbare carapace,

beckoned to my sympathy.

I hoisted him, shoulders above

the crowded plaza, lifting

his cool, slick body toward the altar of

sunlight. He was guileless, and slid into my embrace.

We shared seeded rolls and breakfast on the mountaintop.

Love's warmth and Aton's sun

disc caressed

his skin, and once-dulled scales

became sugared ginger, amber

drops of beryl on the tongue.

His lidless eye slid sideways,

and he rose into my deepest

yearning, bringing

gifts of ready rhythms, and

hourly wound around

my chest,

holding me fast in taut

security.

Then, glistening like

diamonds strewn

upon a black girl's belly,

he left me. And nothing

remains. Beneath my left

breast, two perfect identical punctures,

through which I claim the air I breathe and

the slithering sound of my own skin

moving in the dark.

These Yet to Be United States

Tremors of your network

cause kings to disappear.

Your open mouth in anger

makes nations bow in fear.

Your bombs can change the seasons,

obliterate the spring.

What more do you long for?

Why are you suffering?

You control the human lives

in Rome and Timbuktu.

Lonely nomads wandering

owe Telstar to you.

Seas shift at your bidding,

your mushrooms fill the sky.

Why are you unhappy?

Why do your children cry?

They kneel alone in terror

with dread in every glance.

Their nights are threatened daily

by a grim inheritance.

You dwell in whitened castles

with deep and poisoned moats

and cannot hear the curses

which fill your children's throats.

Me and My Work

I got a piece of a job on the waterfront.

Three days ain't hardly a grind.

It buys some beans and collard greens

and pays the rent on time.

'Course the wife works too.

Got three big children to keep in school,

need clothes and shoes on their feet,

give them enough of the things they want

and keep them out of the street.

They've always been good.

My story ain't news and it ain't all sad.

There's plenty worse off than me.

Yet the only thing I really don't need

is strangers’ sympathy.

That's someone else's word for

caring.

Changing

It occurs to me now,

I never see you smiling

anymore. Friends

praise your

humor rich, your phrases

turning on a thin

dime. For me your wit is honed

to killing sharpness.

But I never catch

you simply smiling, anymore.

Born That Way

As far as possible, she strove

for them all. Arching her small

frame and grunting

prettily, her

fingers counting the roses

in the wallpaper.

Childhood whoring fitted her

for deceit. Daddy had been a

fondler. Soft lipped mouthings,

soft lapped rubbings.

A smile for pretty shoes,

a kiss could earn a dress.

And a private telephone

was worth the biggest old caress.

The neighbors and family friends

whispered she was seen

walking up and down the streets

when she was seventeen.

No one asked her reasons.

She couldn't even say.

She just took for granted

she was born that way.

As far as possible, she strove

for them all. Arching her small

frame and grunting prettily, her

fingers counting the roses

in the wallpaper.

Televised

Televised news turns

a half-used day into

a waste of desolation.

If nothing wondrous preceded

the catastrophic announcements,

certainly nothing will follow, save

the sad-eyed faces of

bony children,

distended bellies making

mock at their starvation.

Why are they always

Black?

Whom do they await?

The lamb-chop flesh

reeks and cannot be

eaten. Even the

green peas roll on my plate

unmolested. Their innocence

matched by the helpless

hope in the children's faces.

Why do Black children

hope? Who will bring

them peas and lamb chops

and one more morning?

Nothing Much

But of course you were

always nothing. No thing.

A red-hot rocket, patriotically

bursting in my

veins. Showers of stars—cascading stars

behind closed eyelids. A

searing brand across my

forehead. Nothing of importance.

A four-letter word stenciled

on the flesh of my inner

thigh.

Stomping through my brain's

mush valleys. Strewing a

halt of new loyalties.

My life, so I say

nothing much.

Glory Falls

Glory falls around us

as we sob

a dirge of

desolation on the Cross

and hatred is the ballast of

the rock

which lies upon our necks

and underfoot.

We have woven

robes of silk

and clothed our nakedness

with tapestry.

From crawling on this

murky planet's floor

we soar beyond the

birds and

through the clouds

and edge our way from hate

and blind despair and

bring honor

to our brothers, and to our sisters cheer.

We grow despite the

horror that we feed

upon our own

tomorrow.

We grow.

London

If I remember correctly,

London is a very queer place.

Mighty queer.

A million miles from

jungle, and the British

lion roars in the stone of

Trafalgar Square.

Mighty queer.

At least a condition

removed from Calcutta,

but old men in Islington and in

too-large sweaters dream

of the sunrise days

of the British Raj.

Awfully queer.

Centuries of hate divide St. George's

channel and the Gaels,

but plum-cheeked English boys drink

sweet tea and grow to fight

for their Queen.

Mighty queer.

Savior

Petulant priests, greedy

centurions, and one million

incensed gestures stand

between your love and me.

Your agape sacrifice

is reduced to colored glass,

vapid penance, and the

tedium of ritual.

Your footprints yet

mark the crest of

billowing seas but

your joy

fades upon the tablets

of ordained prophets.

Visit us again, Savior.

Your children, burdened with

disbelief, blinded by a patina

of wisdom,

carom down this vale of

fear. We cry for you

although we have lost

your name.

Many and More

There are many and more

who would kiss my hand,

taste my lips,

to my loneliness lend

their bodies’ warmth.

I have want of a friend.

There are few, some few,

who would give their names

and fortunes rich

or send first sons

to my ailing bed.

I have need of a friend.

There is one and only one

who will give the air

from his failing lungs

for my body's mend.

And that one is my love.

The New House

What words

have smashed against

these walls,

crashed up and down these

halls,

lain mute and then drained

their meanings out and into

these floors?

What feelings, long since

dead,

streamed vague yearnings

below this ceiling

light?

In some dimension,

which I cannot know,

the shadows of

another still exist. I bring my

memories, held too long in check,

to let them here shoulder

space and place to be.

And when I leave to

find another house,

I wonder, what among

these shades will be

left of me.

Our Grandmothers

She lay, skin down on the moist dirt,

the canebrake rustling

with the whispers of leaves, and

loud longing of hounds and

the ransack of hunters crackling the near branches.

She muttered, lifting her head a nod toward freedom,

I shall not, I shall not be moved.

She gathered her babies,

their tears slick as oil on black faces,

their young eyes canvassing mornings of madness.

Momma, is Master going to sell you

from us tomorrow?

Yes.

Unless you keep walking more

and talking less.

Yes.

Unless the keeper of our lives

releases me from all commandments.

Yes.

And your lives,

never mine to live,

will be executed upon the killing floor of innocents.

Unless you match my heart and words,

saying with me,

I shall not be moved. In Virginia tobacco fields,

leaning into the curve

of Steinway

pianos, along Arkansas roads,

in the red hills of Georgia,

into the palms of her chained hands, she

cried against calamity,

You have tried to destroy me

and though I perish daily,

I shall not be moved.

Her universe, often

summarized into one black body

falling finally from the tree to her feet,

made her cry each time in a new voice,

All my past hastens to defeat,

and strangers claim the glory of my love,

Iniquity has bound me to his bed,

yet, I must not be moved.

She heard the names,

swirling ribbons in the wind of history:

igger, nigger bitch, heifer,

mammy, property, creature, ape, baboon,

whore, hot tail, thing, it.

She said, But my description cannot

fit your tongue, for

I have a certain way of being in this world,

and I shall not, I shall not be moved.

No angel stretched protecting wings

above the heads of her children,

fluttering and urging the winds of reason into the confusion of their lives.

They sprouted like young weeds,

but she could not shield their growth

from the grinding blades of ignorance, nor

shape them into symbolic topiaries.

She sent them away,

underground, overland, in coaches and

shoeless.

When you learn, teach.

When you get, give.

As for me,

I shall not be moved.

She stood in midocean, seeking dry land.

She searched God's face.

Assured,

she placed her fire of service

on the altar, and though

clothed in the finery of faith,

when she appeared at the temple door,

no sign welcomed

Black Grandmother. Enter here.

Into the crashing sound,

into wickedness, she cried,

No one, no, nor no one million

ones dare deny me God. I go forth

alone, and stand as ten thousand.

The Divine upon my right

impels me to pull forever

at the latch on Freedom's gate.

The Holy Spirit upon my left leads my

feet without ceasing into the camp of the

righteous and into the tents of the free.

These momma faces, lemon-yellow, plum-purple, honey-brown, have grimaced and twisted down a pyramid of years. She is Sheba and Sojourner, Harriet and Zora, Mary Bethune and Angela, Annie to Zenobia.

She stands

before the abortion clinic,

confounded by the lack of choices.

In the Welfare line,

reduced to the pity of handouts.

Ordained in the pulpit, shielded

by the mysteries.

In the operating room,

husbanding life.

In the choir loft,

holding God in her throat.

On lonely street corners,

hawking her body.

In the classroom, loving the

children to understanding.

Centered on the world's stage,

she sings to her loves and beloveds,

to her foes and detractors:

However I am perceived and deceived,

however my ignorance and conceits,

lay aside your fears that I will be undone,

for I shall not be moved.

Preacher, Don't Send Me

Preacher, don't send me

when I die

to some big ghetto

in the sky

where rats eat cats

of the leopard type

and Sunday brunch

is grits and tripe.

I've known those rats

I've seen them kill

and gritsI've had

would make a hill,

or maybe a mountain,

so what I need

from you on Sunday

is a different creed.

Preacher, please don't promise me streets of gold and milk for free.

I stopped all milk at four years old and once I'm dead I won't need gold.

I'd call a place

pure paradise

where families are loyal

and strangers are nice,

where the music is jazz

and the season is fall.

Promise me that

or nothing at all.

Fightin’ Was Natural

Fightin’ was natural,

hurtin’ was real,

and the leather like lead

on the end of my arm

was a ticket to ride

to the top of the hill.Fightin’ was real.

The sting of the ointment

and scream of the crowd

for blood in the ring,

and the clangin’ bell cuttin’

clean through the

cloud in my ears.

Boxin’ was real.

The rope at my back

and the pad on the floor,

the smack of four hammers,

new bones in my jaw,

the guard in my mouth,

my tongue startin’ to swell.

Fightin’ was livin'.

Boxin’ was real.

Fightin’ was real.

Livin’ was … hell.

Loss of Love

The loss of love and youth

and fire came raiding, riding,

a horde of plunderers

on one caparisoned steed,

sucking up the sun drops,

trampling the green shoots

of my carefully planted years.

The evidence: thickened waist and

leathery thighs, which triumph

over my fallen insouciance.

After fifty-five

the arena has changed.

I must enlist new warriors.

My resistance,

once natural as raised voices,

importunes in the dark.

Is this battle worth the candle?

Is this war worth the wage?

May I not greet age

without a grouse, allowing

the truly young to own

the stage?

Seven Women's Blessed Assurance

1

One thing about me,

I'm little and low,

find me a man

wherever I go.

2

They call me string bean

‘cause I'm so tall.

Men see me,

they ready to fall.

3

I'm young as morning

and fresh as dew.

Everybody loves me

and so do you.

4

I'm fat as butter

and sweet as cake.

Men start to tremble

each time I shake.

5

I'm little and lean,

sweet to the bone.

They like to pick me up

and carry me home.

6

When I passed forty

I dropped pretense,

‘cause men like women

who got some sense.

7

Fifty-five is perfect,

so is fifty-nine,

‘cause every man needs

to rest sometime.

In My Missouri

In my Missouri

I had known a mean man

A hard man

A cold man

Gutting me and killing me

Was an Ice man

A tough man

A man.

So I thought I'd never meet a sweet man

A kind man

A true man

One who in darkness you can feel secure man

A sure man

A man.

But Jackson, Mississippi, has some fine men

Some strong men

Some black men

Walking like an army were the sweet men

The brown men

The men.

In Oberlin, Ohio, there were nice men

Just men

And fair men

Reaching out and healing were the warm men

Were good men

The men.

Now I know that there are good and bad men

Some true men

Some rough men

Women, keep on searching for your own man

The best man

For you man

The man.

They Ask Why

A certain person wondered why

a big strong girl like me

wouldn't keep a job

which paid a normal salary.

I took my time to lead her

and to read her every page.

Even minimal people

can't survive on minimal wage.

A certain person wondered why

I wait all week for you.

I didn't have the words

to describe just what you do.

I said you had the motion

of the ocean in your walk,

and when you solve my riddles

you don't even have to talk.

When Great Trees Fall

When great trees fall,

rocks on distant hills shudder,

lions hunker down

in tall grasses,

and even elephants

lumber after safety.

When great trees fall

in forests,

small things recoil into silence,

their senses

eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,

the air around us becomes

light, rare, sterile.

We breathe, briefly.

Our eyes, briefly,

see withva hurtful clarity.

Our memory, suddenly sharpened,

examines,

gnaws on kind words

unsaid, vpromised walks

never taken.

Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us.

Our souls,

dependent upon their

nurture,

now shrink, wizened.

Our minds, formed

and informed by their

radiance,

fall away.

We are not so much maddened

as reduced to the unutterable ignorance

of dark, cold

caves.

And when great souls die,

after a period peace blooms,

slowly and always

irregularly. Spaces fill

with a kind of

soothing electric vibration.

Our senses, restored, never

to be the same, whisper to us.

They existed. They existed.

We can be. Be and be

better. For they existed.

A Rock, A River, A Tree

Hosts to species long since departed,

Marked the mastodon,

The dinosaur, who left dried tokens

Of their sojourn here

On our planet floor,

Any broad alarm of their hastening doom

Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,

Come, you may stand upon my

Back and face your distant destiny,

But seek no haven in my shadow,

I will give you no hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than

The angels, have crouched too long in

The bruising darkness

Have lain too long

Facedown in ignorance,

Your mouths spilling words

Armed for slaughter.

The Rock cries out to us today,

You may stand upon me,

But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,

A River sings a beautiful song. It says,

Come, rest here by my side.

Each of you, a bordered country,

Delicate and strangely made proud,

Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit

Have left collars of waste upon My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.

Yet today I call you to my riverside,

If you will study war no more.

Come, clad in peace,

And I will sing the songs

The Creator gave to me when I and the

Tree and the Rock were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow

And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.

The River sang and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to

The singing River and the wise Rock.

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,

The African, the Native American, the Sioux,

The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,

The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik,

The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,

The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.

They hear. They all hear

The speaking of the Tree.

They hear the first and last of every Tree

Speak to humankind today.

Come to me,

Here beside the River.

Plant yourself beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some passed-

On traveler, has been paid for.

You, who gave me my first name, you,

Pawnee, Apache, Seneca, you,

Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then

Forced on bloody feet,

Left me to the employment of Other seekers—desperate for gain,

Starving for gold.

You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede,

The German, the Eskimo, the Scot,

The Italian, the Hungarian, the Pole,

You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought,

Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare,

Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am that Tree planted by the River,

Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I, the River, I, the Tree,

I am yours—your passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need

For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,

Cannot be unlived, but if faced

With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes

Upon this day breaking for you.

Give birth again

To the dream.

Women, children, men,

Take it into the palms of your hands,

Mold it into the shape of your most

Private need. Sculpt it into

The image of your most public self.

Lift up your hearts.

Each new hour holds new chances

For a new beginning.

Do not be wedded forever To fear, yoked eternally

To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,

Offering you space

To place new steps of change.

Here, on the pulse of this fine day,

You may have the courage

To look up and out and upon me,

The Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here, on the pulse of this new day,

You may have the grace to look up and out

And into your sister's eyes,

And into your brother's face,

Your country,

And say simply

Very simply

With hope—

Good morning.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MAYA ANGELOU, author of the best-selling I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name, and The Heart of a Woman, has also written five collections of poetry: Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water fore I Diiie; Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well; And Still I Rise; Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?; and I Shall Not Be Moved; as well as On the Pulse of Morning, which was read by her at the inauguration of President William Jefferson Clinton on January 20, 1993. In theater, she produced, directed, and starred in Cabaret for Freedom in collaboration with Godfrey Cambridge at New York's Village Gate, starred in Genet's The Blacks at the St. Mark's Playhouse, and adapted Sophocles’ Ajax, which premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 1974. She wrote the original screenplay and musical score for the film Georgia, Georgia and wrote and produced a ten-part TV series on African traditions in American life. In the sixties, at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., she became the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and in 1975 she received the Ladies’ Home Journal Woman of the Year Award in communications. She has received numerous honorary degrees and was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year and by President Gerald R. Ford to the American Revolution Bicentennial Advisory Council. She is on the board of trustees of the American Film Institute. One of the few female members of the Directors Guild, Angelou is the author of the television screenplays I Know Wliy the Caged Bird Sings and The Sisters. Most recently, she wrote the lyrics for the musical King: Drum Major for Love and was both host and writer for the series of documentaries Maya Angelou's America: A Journey of the Heart, along with Guy Johnson. Angelou is currently Reynolds Professor at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

ABOUT THE TYPE

This book was set in Bembo, a typeface based on an old-style Roman face that was used for Cardinal Bembo's tract De Aetna in 1495. Bembo was cut by Francisco Griffo in the early sixteenth century. The Lanston Monotype Company of Philadelphia brought the well-proportioned letterforms of Bembo to the United States in the 1930s.

Copyright © 1994 by Maya Angelou

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Angelou, Maya.

[Poems]

The complete collected poems of Maya Angelou.—ist ed.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-307-55528-1

I. Title.

PS3551.N464A17 1994

8n′.54—dc20 94-14501

v30.