what I’ve been told
AMEN and the trouble I’ve seen.
THE OLD AVAILABLES HAVE
the old availables have locked the door.
goodby to friday open house
nobody enters friday anymore
the old availables have locked the door
goodby to chocolate open house
nobody enters friday anymore.
some of us are tired
and all of us a
all of us are tired
and some of us are mad
CHAN’S DREAM
When I was born
the red baby lions were asleep.
When I was born
they were dreaming in my body bed
and then the American Cowboy
saw where I was borning
and shot me
and the little red lions ran growling
kill the cowboy
kill the cowboy
kill the cowboy
from Dark Nursery Rhymes for a Dark Daughter
I
Flesh-colored bandage
and other schemes
will slippery into
all your dreams
and make you grumble
in the night,
wanting the world to be
pink and light.
Wherever you go,
whatever you do,
flesh-colored bandage
is after you.
III
Beware the terrible tricky three;
Blondy and Beauty and Fantasy.
Together they capture little girls
and push them into little worlds.
They might have had fun
if they had run
the first time that they heard them hiss
“Promises promises promissesss.”
IV
Ten feet tall
or giant arm,
nobody has
your sunshine charm.
5/23/67
R.I.P.
The house that is on fire
pieces all across the sky
make the moon look like
a yellow man in a veil
watching the troubled people
running and crying
Oh who gone remember now like it was,
Langston gone.
ONLY TOO HIGH IS HIGH ENOUGH
for Charlie Parker
probably even Icarus, plummeting from
an impossible height
was proud
a man beset by feathers
wearing bird colors
hearing bird conversations plain
sharing bird ambitions
flying above the possibilities
pursuing with immortals
the pride of wings
THE COMING OF X
Disillusioned by bad dreams
and a country bent on evening
the dusky girls and brothers have
noticed the prevalence of black
bark bird berry and
raised their feral shadows till
they walk like men to the slaughterhouse.
Conversation Overheard in a Graveyard
Harriet:
This place has made us heroines
not wives
and kept us from its sparkles and
its paints
and made us dull in natural disguise.
Sojourner:
We’ve lost our ladyhood
but saved our lives.
Harriet:
What mirror will remember you and me
suckling strangers and sons?
Sojourner:
History.
SUNDAY DINNER
One wants
in a fantastic time
the certainty of
chicken popping in grease
the truth of potatoes
steaming the panes and
butter
gold and predictable as
heroes in history
melting over all.
MY FRIEND MARY STONE FROM OXFORD MISSISSIPPI
We know we ought to be enemies,
her voice perhaps,
thirty three years off the Delta and
still caked in mud or
my hair perhaps,
bushed for the warrior women of Dahomey,
we know we ought to be enemies, only
Oh Mr. Faulkner
to prevail is such an awe full responsibility
to “have a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and
endurance”
is an awe full responsibility but
we know we have to try it and
we are both trying to try it
we
red as the clay hills and blacker than loam
friends.
SPRING THOUGHT FOR THELMA
Someone who had her fingers
set for growing,
settles into garden.
If old desires linger
she will be going
flower soon. Pardon
her little blooms
whose blossoming was stunted
by rooms.
my mother teached me
and my father preached me
what is love.
there is no more to know.
except
as I lay quiet
cold as a rained on sidewalk
after my daughter’s father
has teached me
and preached me
I can hear off in the nigger streets
laughing and cursing and
something like a cry
To Mama too late
The lady who is gone
had forgot all about
I love you.
If I had fastened it someplace
on to her midnight pillow
I might be able to say goodnight
and she might not be asleep.
Dear Mama,
here are the poems
you never wrote
here are the plants
you never grew,
all that i am
i am for him
all that i do
i do for you.
Dear
I have sent you your box
as promised
and hope you like it all
I put in tuna fish because
you like it keep
your room clean (smile) and
we are all alright only
I misses you so much
my baby
don’t fall in love with no
stranger
write when you have time and
be a good girl for your
Mama
Dear
it was a nice day today
Hills is pretty this time of year
though maybe not like D.C.
Everybody been so nice to me
since you been gone
Everybody say they will pray for you
to get good grades and
everything
I will close now as I am tired
write when you get time we
buried your uncle this morning
and
be a good girl
Mama
plain as a baby
my Mama would sit
in the chair by the window
(where she started dying)
and watch the weekends
awe full as China
and hum
Take my hand
Take my hand.
Oh Precious Lord
my Mama sang
Everytime i talk about
the old folks
tomming and easying their way
happy with their nothing and
grateful for their sometime
i run up against my old black
Mama
and i shut up and stand there
shamed.
satchmo
he di
sremembers why he started grinning
this old great one
standing behind his cornet.
something to do with
new orleans as a girl
and the old men following death down rampart street.
he disremembers why, only now
always he comes with music
and with grinning
and we are glad
we swing with this old great one
who has something to do with life
grinning at love and death.
FOR PRISSLY
girl
looking like a wild thing
if you keep on your loving way
if you don’t stop caring and fearing
and noticing things
and understanding things
people gone call you crazy
the last Seminole is black
and rolls his own in a john
bargaining with his brain
for a reef of peace
smoking his way across the reservations
into a high and splendid
land of grass
nodding and smiling to hear the drums begin
and all the mighty nations celebrating
the endless littlebighorns
in his mind
a poem written for many moynihans
ignoring me
you turn into blind alleys
follow them around
to your boyhouse
meet your mother
green in her garden
kiss what she holds out to you
her widowed arm and
this is betterness
ignoring me
you make a brother for you
she drops him in the pattern
you made when you were sonning
you name her wife to keep her
and this is betterness
ignoring me
your days slide into seasons
you build a hole to fall in
and send your brother running
following blind alleys
turning white as winter
and this is
betterness
the poet is thirty two
she has such knowledges as
rats have,
the sound of cat
the smell of cheese
where the holes are,
she is comfortable
hugging the walls
she trembles over herself
in the light
and she will leave disaster
when she can.
QUOTATIONS FROM AUNT MARGARET BROWN
Abraham Lincoln
just like my Daddy;
dead.
White men
just walking all on the moon,
he go where he want to go.
Talk about Columbus,
I tell you who discovered
America;
Martin Luther King
that’s who.
daddy
you whole old hoodoo man
you always knew everything
like when you said
them old white people
they don’t mean you no good
and even
the time the light-skinned jimmy came by
and you looked at his three-button roll
and said
here’s this nigger i don’t like
take somebody like me
who Daddy took to sunday school
and who was a member of the choir
and helped with the little kids at
the church picnic,
deep into Love thy Neighbor take
somebody like me
who cried at the March on Washington
and thought Pennsylvania was beautiful
let her read a lot
let her notice things
then
hit her with the Draft Riots and the
burning of the colored orphan asylum
and the children in the church and
the Lamar busses and
the assassinations and the
bombs and all the spittings on our
children and
these beasts were not niggers
these beasts were not niggers
she
will be too old to change and
she will not hate consistently or long
and she will know herself a coward and
a fool.
let them say
that she had going for her
a good ass and six children.
that she obeyed her daddy
and her husband
and looked just like her mama
more and more.
that she thought god was
a good idea.
that she cried when she saw
she wasn’t beautiful
good times
(1969)
for mama
in the inner city
or
like we call it
home
we think a lot about uptown
and the silent nights
and the houses straight as
dead men
and the pastel lights
and we hang on to our no place
happy to be alive
and in the inner city
or
like we call it
home
my mama moved among the days
like a dreamwalker in a field;
seemed like what she touched was hers
seemed like what touched her couldn’t hold,
she got us almost through the high grass
then seemed like she turned around and ran
right back in
right back on in
my daddy’s fingers move among the couplers
chipping steel and skin
and if the steel would break
my daddy’s fingers might be men again.
my daddy’s fingers wait
grotesque as monkey wrenches
wide and full of angles like the couplers
to chip away the mold’s imperfections.
but what do my daddy’s fingers
know about grace?
what do the couplers know
about being locked together?
lane is the pretty one
her veins run mogen david
and her mind just runs.
the best looking colored girl in town
whose eyes are real light brown
frowns into her glass;
I wish I’d stayed in class.
i wish those lovers
had not looked over
your crooked nose
your too wide mouth
dear sister
dear sister love
miss rosie
when i watch you
wrapped up like garbage
sitting, surrounded by the smell
of too old potato peels
or
when i watch you
in your old man’s shoes
with the little toe cut out
sitting, waiting for your mind
like next week’s grocery
i say
when i watch you
you wet brown bag of a woman
who used to be the best looking gal in georgia
used to be called the Georgia Rose
i stand up
through your destruction
i stand up
robert
was born obedient
without questions
did a dance called
picking grapes
sticking his butt out
for pennies
married a master
who whipped his mind
until he died
until he died
the color of his life
was nigger
the 1st
wh
at i remember about that day
is boxes stacked across the walk
and couch springs curling through the air
and drawers and tables balanced on the curb
and us, hollering,
leaping up and around
happy to have a playground;
nothing about the emptied rooms
nothing about the emptied family
running across to the lot
in the middle of the cement days
to watch the big boys trembling
as the dice made poets of them
if we remembered to despair
i forget
i forget
while the streetlights were blooming
and the sharp birdcall
of the iceman and his son
and the ointment of the ragman’s horse
sang spring
our fathers were dead and
our brothers were dying
still
it was nice
when the scissors man come round
running his wheel
rolling his wheel
and the sparks shooting