Of the almost dead
And the quiet march of Lice
Gave cadence to this concert of sacrifice
For
Freedom
THE GOLDEN SHOVEL POEM
they eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair
—From “The Bean Eaters” by Gwendolyn Brooks
At the Evening of Life
I wonder if they
See the evening of life as a treat to eat
Or as a staple like beans
With corn bread mostly
A good warming meal this
Daily day old
Bread pudding love capped sunshine yellow
By an honest upstanding pair
MORGANTOWN, WVA
(Haiku for Ethel and Lucy)
Pinto Beans Fried Corn Bread
Clean Spring Water Rocking Chair
Your Smile Home Peace
FOR SONIA SANCHEZ
In the name of those incredibly Brave men and women
who made the Trek from Freedom in Africa to Enslavement in America
and maintained their humanity
through unspeakable acts
In the precious name of Phillis Wheatley
who was put on Academic Trial
forcing her to prove she wrote her own Poems
to the confident Paul Laurence Dunbar
who kept the plantation tongue alive
In the Brave name of W. E. B. DuBois
who studied The Atlantic Slave Trade
to Jessie Fauset
who wrote children’s stories
In the name of the incomparable Langston Hughes
who taught us
The tom-tom cries and
the tom-tom laughs
to the anger of Richard Wright
In the name of the Honesty of James Baldwin
In the fearlessness of Margaret Walker
to the beautiful poems of Gwendolyn Brooks
In the name of the awesome Toni Morrison
And the truly wonderful spirit of Rita Dove
In the names of those whom we silently call
and in the names of those whose names will call us
in the future
This is for
Sonia Sanchez
FOR HAKI MADHUBUTI
Words are the lifeblood of writers. Though I must admit I don’t know if we dream in words or if we word our dreams.
Words are like quilts. You have to put a bunch together to make something warm and comforting or patch together something that will prick and scratch the spirit. No matter how we weave this experience, we sculpt an idea and shape a phrase.
A phrase. Usually we find phrases to describe whatever it is. No word is sufficient to stand alone. Not even strong words like FREEDOM or soft words like LOVE. They all are better when added to . . . for example FOR ALL . . . or Je t’aime. Love phrases work in all languages.
The human experiment has turned on many important phrases WE THE PEOPLE, taxation without representation and even things like REMEMBER THE MAINE. There are other political phrases like LIBERTÉ, ÉGALITÉ, FRATERNITÉ. I especially like WE SHALL OVERCOME. There are personal phrases like Yes. Which may be the only one-word phrase we ever use. No requires a bit more. There are personal phrases such as You Look Beautiful and I am so proud of you but maybe that’s a sentence not a phrase.
The human imagination is the engine that has carried us from caves in Europe, from the rain forests of South America, from the lush and mineral-rich lands of Africa, from the beautiful amber waves of North America, from the roaring seas and the frozen tundra to this meeting with these artists here at Virginia Tech and, in fact, to wherever humans gather.
There are philosophical phrases, theological phrases, scientific phrases, economic phrases, political phrases, phrases to explain and express. BUT
there is one phrase that, if a phrase could be said to jump-start the human heart, we all know and love. Writers took up this phrase from the griots and soothsayers of old. As we began this journey with words, which is yet ever expanding our emotional and physical universe, we still find in our darkest hours and our most joyful moments the need to gather ’round the fire, or circle the wagons, or tuck into bed the young and the old with the enchantment of that magical phrase “Once Upon A Time . . . ” We know the storyteller has arrived. We comfort our spirits to think and dream. We know those other magical words will follow: In A Land Far Away . . . and our imaginations can soar safe within the hopes and sometimes the prayers.
OUR JOB SAFETY IS YOUR PRIORITY WITH COFFEE
I have written the essay below to help explain how I edit my poetry. I am more inclined to say I create a path through which I hope to take the reader rather than finding a perfect word to make the reader follow my thought. I have chosen a new poem: COFFEE because I actually did make a new pathway once I gave it a second or third look. I think the second version is an easier walk. I wrote to share my feelings about the edit.
Job (Y)
(Y)our Job Safety Is Our Priority: A Path for Poetry
(should read “our job safety is your priority”
but I cannot make my computer cross things out)
A poem is not so much read as navigated. We go from point to point discovering a new horizon, a shift of light or laughter, an exhilaration of newness that we had missed before. Even familiar, or perhaps especially familiar, poems bring the excitement of first nighters, first encounters, first love . . . when viewed and reviewed.
I’m not a big fan of adjust this line, change this word, add a this subtract a that. The poem like the kitten, like the tadpole, like the moth is and with time will mature to become. Sometimes it gets consumed to make another poem better—sometimes it simply is out in the world too long and dries up—sometimes a friendly scout seeing the struggle of the butterfly to break free from the cocoon decides to make the struggle easier and cuts her loose . . . call it an MFA program workshopping a poem too much. She falls to the ground, unable to soar because a doer of good deeds didn’t want to see the pain. Though now all that is left is a tenure-track position and the bitterness of tears shed for dreams not unwon but unchased.
I like to think poems are maps—they don’t Google but rather guide us along the way. There is no destination on a country road. You see an old woman slightly bent moving through the field. A frisky calf frolicking. Sometimes a deer standing still. Why would there be a destination when life itself is a journey? You go not to get there but to be there.
On my good days I like to think a glass of blanc de blanc (as real champagne is for movie stars and presidents), a bit of sun through the clouds, my backyard birds singing, the koi contentedly lazing through the pool, and Alex, my little Yorkie friend, and I are a country road. We meander, we laugh, we would like to love. We are a journey—a poem. Open us. Explore. Inhale. Wonder.
COFFEE (original)
Vitamin C prevents
Colds
A and D do sunshine
Things
We need calcium
For strong bones
There must be something
For the eyes
Carrots, Cabbage, Lettuce
You never saw
A blind rabbit
And I have a friend
Who thinks Salmon
Will prevent
A loss of your mind
But I believe
In Coffee
Drip
Percolated
Pressed
Coffee
Black not sweet
No cream
Coffee
Which smells like morning
And feels like friendship
Coffee
While we laugh
And preview
Our day
COFFEE (edited)
Vitamin C prevents
Colds
A and D do sunshine
Things
We need Calcium
For strong bones
And
There must be something
For the eyes
Carrots, Cabbage, Lettuce
You never saw
A blind rabbit
And I have a friend
Who thinks Salmon
Will prevent
A loss of your mind
But I believe
In Coffee
Drip
Percolated
Pressed
Coffee
Black not sweet
No cream
Coffee
Which smells like morning
And feels like friendship
Coffee
While we laugh
And preview
Our day
THE BROWN BOOKSHELF
The Journey: The journey begins with the idea. It begins with a story. The journey is the step any writer takes to declare: I have something to say. I have a voice. I need to Use it. Since poetry is my vehicle on this journey, I chose to form my own publishing company and publish myself. I learned to set type, to bind, to cut. These skills are not necessary in the computer age, but they were then. Skills give us freedom. Freedom gives us wings.
The Inspiration: I am a lover of history. It was Malcolm X who said: “Of all our endeavors, history is the most qualified to reward all research.” That may not be a totally accurate quote, but I remember being enchanted with heroes, with quests, with the search for the difficult and the unknown. Human beings are worthy of our interest. I continue to be fascinated by who we are and of which greatness we are capable.
The Back Story: My latest book, Bicycles, evolved out of personal and professional sadness. A murder in the city in which I live and a massacre at the university at which I work formed the anchors of the book. But anchors are stationary and these two events kept spinning. It occurred to me that they were wheels. If that was the case then how could I connect them? Tragedy can only be calmed by love and laughter; I challenged myself to write love poems to connect the vents to the energy that was spinning. Once that journey was started, I realized if I put a handle on it I would have a Bicycle; hence my title. Love requires trust and balance. A perfect description of a bike.
The Buzz: It is a pleasure to report Bicycles was well received.
The State of the Industry: My very latest book is an anthology: The 100* Best African American Poems (*but I cheated). I cheated because I wanted to put more than just the 100 historical poems. That would take me from Phillis Wheatley to the Black Arts movement and maybe, if I pushed it, to Tupac, but I felt my obligation was to do more. So we numbered the book 1 to 100 but we stuffed poems into duets, and suites, communities, even. The book has 221 poems in all and I am very proud of that. I believe our job as both writers and editors is to keep pushing the envelope.
INTERIOR VISION
There has never been a time when human beings did not create art. We tend to say the Caveman painted the walls but that would be illogical: He was out either hunting or protecting the front of the cave. Cave woman drew on those walls to leave a record—some . . . one . . . was here. We began with the Egyptians to see representations of humans and to see drawings that could easily be explained as prayers for a benign God.
People have also always sung . . . made noises that were either warning of danger or offering courtship. There will always be a need for song.
But there will also always be a need for physical representation. For paintings, now photographs, soon only digital and maybe something else yet unknown but not so far away.
Football is art. Almost a ballet. Reaching for the ball twirling down. Sprinting for the goal. Basketball is an art. Taking off midcourt and flying for a dunk. Black men made an art of walking. That thrust of hips, that gangsta lean. Folk saw that and wanted to throw their cars away.
Black people are a work of art. In the deepest throes of slavery we found a tone to build upon that became The Negro Spiritual. They laughed. Nobody, they said, wanted to hear it. But we sang on. Sang to Gospel to make it jazz to make it rhythm and blues to have it stolen as rock to make it Rap. The only sound, besides jazz, that is heard all over this planet. Black Americans are wonderful. They laughed at Duke Ellington: called it Jungle Music. They said Marian Anderson couldn’t sing in the DAR building so she sang to the Heavens. They laughed at our poetry: said it was angry. They laughed at Rap: said it was dangerous.
They don’t know what to make of the representational art today. It can be called Graffiti which in some eyes diminishes that art. No matter what they call it today, tomorrow they will call it Genius. Tomorrow they will teach classes about it; write books about it; give lectures on it. Folk will be awarded tenure for explaining why this line goes that way though of course only you and I know why. The artist felt it. The artist was true to herself; true to himself.
There would be those who say you cannot do what you do; you need to please the masses. But for those of us outside The Magic Circle, the masses we serve, our ancestors, our communities, our prayers for a fairer future . . . we are pleasing. Good for us. Good for everybody who has stayed true to ourselves.
Hip Hop Lives. And this art will live on as a testament to the beginning of the 21st Century. Alain Locke was correct when he said The Harlem Renaissance would define a great people because no people are great without great art. We are a great people.
I GIVE EASILY
I give
easily
because I have
easily
taken It’s incredibly
difficult
to let people
give you what you need maybe
as difficult as
giving you what you want
interactions
with and between
humans can certainly be
complicated
PEOPLE WHO LIVE ALONE
People who live alone
Fart in cars
Pick their noses
Sleep naked
And never flush
In the middle of the night
Most people who live alone
Are compulsive
Things have to stay where
Things were put
People too
Like there is no room
In my heart for change
Or hamburger that I don’t grind
Or coffee that drips
Or tears because
People who live alone
Soon learn
It is all
right
BEFORE YOU JUMP OFF A BRIDGE OR HANG YOURSELF OR BE UNHAPPY PLEASE CONSIDER: LIVE FOR YOURSELF; THOSE WHO HATE YOU HAVE NO PURCHASE
I don’t think
There is
a definition
or
b definition
but only
the definition
when it comes to who you R
but then I don’t
Facebook or
Twitter or
YouTube or
Ask anyone’s permission
To fuck or not to fuck
That is not the question
To love or to be
Lonely:
No-brainer
Who you are
Is you
And no one can
Should
Or
Will
Touch
that
YOU GAVE HER SOMETHING
(for Big Nikky)
You said: My aunt owned
A building where she rented
Apartments
Like Macon Dead’s tenants sometimes
They couldn’t pay
Upstairs gave paintings
Instead of money
He said: Will you take this
Will you take that
For my staying in
Your place here on earth
And she said: Yes
You said: I visited and loved
Them both
My aunt told me the story of the paintings
They are extraordinary, I said to her
She said: Take them. I want you to have them
You carried these paintings
From coast to coast South to less South
To the walls of a warm and comforting home
You said to me: Do you know the painter
Do you know what they are now worth
If I had known their worth I would have
Should have given her something
For them
I said: You Did
You love her You love the paintings
If that’s not something
Then I know nothing
THIRST
At 2:30 or maybe 3:00 A.M. I have tossed
And turned all I can:
I’m thirsty
But if I get up to drink I’ll have to
Get up again
To go to the bathroom
Thirst wins
Stumbling into my house
Shoes
I go to the kitchen
To find the lemonade
My mother
Were she still here
Would complain:
You don’t drink enough water.
Adam’s Ale is the best thing
But I don’t like water
I, like most Americans,
Take my water
With sugar or fruit juices
Or any disguise I can find
Leaning over the sink
With a bit of real lemonade dripping down
My chin
I feel the coolness
Float into my lungs
And that blessed relief
That says Thirst
Has been satisfied
Feeling myself once again in bloom
I smile
Return to my bed
And await my next
Adventure.
THE SCARED AND THE VULNERABLE
On a foggy night
With that sort of misty rain
That is wonderful for sleeping
But nothing at all for driving
I traveled home
From a great dinner party
We were all so jolly
Driving my ninety-year-old aunt
Who was visiting from out of town