Lugar Comn

L I B R E R A

TALLE R LI T E R AT U R A
*CONTEMPORARY USA LITERATURE
2 de julio 6 de agosto 2016 / 3pm 5pm
Coordinador: Reygar Bernal

2da SESIN: THE BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT POEMS.

A SELECTION
1.- Amiri Baraka (LeRoi James)
Black Art

Poems are bullshit unless they are

teeth or trees or lemons piled
on a step. Or black ladies dying
of men leaving nickel hearts
beating them down. Fuck poems
and they are useful, wd they shoot
come at you, love what you are,
breathe like wrestlers, or shudder
strangely after pissing. We want live
words of the hip world live flesh &
coursing blood. Hearts Brains
Souls splintering fire. We want poems
like fists beating niggers out of Jocks
or dagger poems in the slimy bellies
of the owner-jews. Black poems to
smear on girdlemamma mulatto bitches
whose brains are red jelly stuck
between 'lizabeth taylor's toes. Stinking
Whores! we want "poems that kill."
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
with tongues pulled out and sent to Ireland. Knockoff
poems for dope selling wops or slick halfwhite
politicians Airplane poems, rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr . . . tuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuh
. . . rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr . . . Setting fire and death to
whities ass. Look at the Liberal
Spokesman for the jews clutch his throat
& puke himself into eternity . . . rrrrrrrr
There's a negroleader pinned to
a bar stool in Sardi's eyeballs melting
in hot flame Another negroleader
on the steps of the white house one
kneeling between the sheriff's thighs
negotiating coolly for his people.

Aggh . . . stumbles across the room . . .

Put it on him, poem. Strip him naked
to the world! Another bad poem cracking
steel knuckles in a jewlady's mouth
Poem scream poison gas on beasts in green berets
Clean out the world for virtue and love,
Let there be no love poems written
until love can exist freely and
cleanly. Let Black people understand
that they are the lovers and the sons
of warriors and sons of warriors Are poems & poets &
all the loveliness here in the world

We want a black poem. And a

Black World.
Let the world be a Black Poem
And Let All Black People Speak This Poem
Silently
or LOUD

SOS

Calling black people

Calling all black people, man woman child
Wherever you are, calling you, urgent, come in
Black People, come in, wherever you are, urgent, calling
you, calling all black people
calling all black people, come in, black people, come
on in.
 Ka'Ba

A closed window looks down

on a dirty courtyard, and black people
call across or scream across or walk across
defying physics in the stream of their will

Our world is full of sound

Our world is more lovely than anyone's
tho we suffer, and kill each other
and sometimes fail to walk the air

We are beautiful people

with african imaginations
full of masks and dances and swelling chants
with african eyes, and noses, and arms
tho we sprawl in gray chains in a place
full of winters, when what we want is sun.

We have been captured,

brothers. And we labor
to make our getaway, into
the ancient image, into a new

correspondence with ourselves

and our black family. We need magic
now we need the spells, to raise up
return, destroy, and create. What will be

the sacred words?

1969

Black Dada Nihilismus

Against what light

is false what breath
sucked, for deadlines.
Murder, the cleansed
purpose, frail, against
God, if they bring him
bleeding, I would not
forgive, or even call him
black dada nihilismus
The protestant love, wide windows,
color blocked to Mondrian, and the
ugly silent deaths of jews under
the surgeon's knife. (To awake on
69th street with money and a hip
nose. Black dada nihilismus, for
the umbrella'd jesus. Trilby intrigue
movie house presidents sticky the floor
B.D.N., for the secret men, Hermes, the
blacker art. Thievery (ahh, they return
those secret gold killers. Inquisitors
of the cocktail hour. Trismegistus, have
them, in their transmutation, from stone
to bleeding pearl, from lead to burning
looting, dead Moctezuma, find the West
a gray hideous space

2.
From Sartre, a white man, it gave
the last breath. And we beg him die,
before he is killed. Plastique, we
do not have, only thin heroic blades.
The razor. Our flail against them, why
you carry knives? Or brutalized lumps of
heart? Why you stay, where they can
reach? Why you sit, or stand, or walk
in this place, a window on a dark
warehouse. Where the minds packed in
straw. New homes, these towers, for those
lacking money or art. A cult of death,
need of the simple striking arm under
the streetlamp. The cutters, from under
their rented earth. Come up, black dada
nihilismus. Rape the white girls. Rape
their fathers. Cut the mothers' throats.
Black dada nihilismus, choke my friends
in their bedrooms with their drinks spilling
and restless for tilting hips or dark liver
lips sucking splinters from the master's thigh
Black scream
and chant, scream,
and dull, un
earthly
hollering. Dada, bilious
what ugliness, learned
in the dome, colored holy
shit (i call them sinned
or lost
 burned masters
of the lost
nihil German killers
all our learned
art, 'member
what you said
money, God, power,
a moral code, so cruel
it destroyed Byzantium, Tenochtitlan, Commanch
(got it, Baby!
For tambo, willie best, dubois, patrice, mantan, the
bronze buckaroos.
for Jack Johnson, asbestos, tonto, buckwheat,
billie holiday
For tom russ, l'ouverture, vesey, beau jack,
(may a lost god damballah, rest or save us
against the murders we intend
against his lost white children
black dada nihilismus

Notes for a Speech

African blues
does not know me. Their steps, in sands
of their own
land. A country
in black & white, newspapers
blown down pavements
of the world. Does
not feel
what I am.

Strength

in the dream, an oblique

suckling of nerve, the wind
throws up sand, eyes
are something locked in
hate, of hate, of hate, to
walk abroad, they conduct
their deaths apart
from my own. Those
heads, I call
my "people."
(And who are they. People. To concern

myself, ugly man. Who

you, to concern
the white flat stomachs
of maidens, inside houses
dying. Black. Peeled moon
light on my fingers
move under
her clothes. Where
is her husband. Black
words throw up sand
to eyes, fingers of
their private dead. Whose
soul, eyes, in sand. My color
is not theirs. Lighter, white man
talk. They shy away. My own
dead souls, my, so called
people. Africa
is a foreign place. You are
as any other sad man here
american.

Leroy

I wanted to know my mother when she sat

looking sad across the campus in the late 20s
into the future of the soul, there were black angels
straining above her head, carrying life from our ancestors,
and knowledge, and the strong nigger feeling. She sat
(in that photo in the yearbook I showed Vashti) getting into
new blues, from the old ones, the trips and passions
showered on her by her own. Hypnotizing me, from so far
ago, from that vantage of knowledge passed on to her passed on
to me and all the other black people of our time.
When I die, the consciousness I carry I will not
black people. May they pick me apart and take the
useful parts, the sweet meat of my feelings. And leave
the bitter bullshit rotten white parts
alone,
1969
 Monday in B-Flat

I can pray
all day
& God
wont come.

But if I call
911
The Devil
Be here
in a minute!

A Poem Some People Will Have to Understand

Dull unwashed windows of eyes

and buildings of industry. What
industry do I practice? A slick
colored boy, 12 miles from his
home. I practice no industry.
I am no longer a credit
to my race. I read a little,
scratch against silence slow spring
afternoons.
I had thought, before, some years ago
that Id come to the end of my life
Watercolor ego. Without the preciseness
a violent man could propose.
But the wheel, and the wheels,
wont let us alone. All the fantasy
and justice, and dry charcoal winters
all the pitifully intelligent citizens
Ive forced myself to love.

We have awaited the coming of a natural

phenomenon. Mystics and romantics, knowledgeable
workers
of the land.
But none has come.
(Repeat)
but none has come.
Will the machinegunners please step forward?
 Wise I

WHYS (Nobody Knows

The Trouble I Seen)
Traditional

If you ever find

yourself, some where
lost and surrounded
by enemies
who won't let you
speak in your own language
who destroy your statues
& instruments, who ban
your omm bomm ba boom
then you are in trouble
deep trouble
they ban your
own boom ba boom
you in deep deep
trouble

humph!

probably take you several hundred years

to get
out!

A Poem for Black Hearts

For Malcoms eyes, when they broke

the face of some dumb white man. For
Malcoms hands raised to bless us
all black and strong in his image
of ourselves. For Malcoms words
fire darts, the victors tireless
thrusts, words hung above the world
change as it may, he said it, and
for this he was killed, for saying,
and feeling, and being/ change, all
collected hot in his heart. For Malcoms
heart, raising us above our filthy cities,
for his stride, and his beat, and his address
to the grey monsters of the world. For Malcoms
pleas for your dignity, black men, for your life,
black man, for the filling of your minds
with righteousness. For all of him dead and
gone and vanished from us, and all of him which
clings to our speech black god of our time.
For all of him, and all of yourself, look up,
black man, quit stuttering and shuffling, look up,
black man, quit whining and stooping, for all of him,
For Great Malcom a prince of the earth, let nothing in us rest
until we avenge ourselves for his death, stupid animals
that killed him, let us never breathe a pure breath if
we fail, and white men call us faggots till the end of
the earth.

Poem for HalfWhite College Student

Who are you, listening to me, who are you

listening to yourself? Are you white or
black, or does that have anything to do
with it? Can you pop your fingers to no
music, except those wild monkeys go on
in your head, can you jerk, to no melody,
except finger poppers get it together
when you turn from starchecking to checking
yourself. How do you sound, your words, are they
yours? The ghost you see in the mirror, is it really
you, can you swear you are not an imitation greyboy.
can you look right next to you in that chair, and swear,
that the sister you have your hand on is not really
so full of Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton is
coming out of her ears. You may even have to be Richard
with a white shirt and face, and four million negroes
think you cute, you may have to be Elizabeth Taylor, old lady,
if you want to sit up in your crazy spot dreaming about dresses.
and the sway of certain porters hips. Check yourself, learn who it is
speaking, when you make some ultrasophisticated point, check yourself,
when you find yourself gesturing like Steve McQueen, check it out, ask
in your black heart who it is you are, and is that image black or white.

you might be surprised right out the window, whistling dixie on the way in.

An Agony. As Now.

I am inside someone
who hates me. I look
out from his eyes. Smell
what fouled tunes come in
to his breath. Love his
wretched women.

Slits in the metal, for the sun. Where

my eyes sit turning, at the cool air
the glance of light, or hard flesh
rubbed against me, a woman, a man,
without shadow, or voice, or meaning.

This is the enclosure (flesh,

where innocence is a weapon. An
abstraction. Touch. (Not mine,
Or yours, if you are the soul I had
and abandoned when I was blind and had
my enemies carry me as a dead man
(if he is beautiful, or pitied.

It can be pain. (As now, as all his

flesh hurts me.) It can be that. Or
pain. As when she ran from me into
that forest.
Or pain, the mind
silver spiraled whirled against the
sun, higher than even old men thought
God would be. Or pain. And the other. The
yes. (Inside his books, his fingers. They
are withered yellow flowers and were never
beautiful.) The yes. You will, lost soul, say
beauty. Beauty, practiced, as the tree. The
slow river. A white sun in its wet sentences.

Or, the cold men in their gale. Ecstasy. Flesh

or soul. The eyes. (Their robes blown. Their bowls
empty. They chant at my heels, not at yours.) Flesh
or soul, as corrupt. Where the answer moves too quickly.
Where the God is a self, after all.)

Cold air blown through narrow blind eyes. Flesh,

white hot metal. Glows as the day with its sun.
It is a human love, I live inside. A bony skeleton
you recognize as words or simple feeling.

But it has no feeling. As the metal, is hot, it is not,

given to love.
It burns the thing
inside it. And that thing
screams.
1964
2.- Ishmael Reed
The Reactionary Poet

If you are a revolutionary

Then I must be a reactionary
For if you stand for the future
I have no choice but to
Be with the past

Bring back suspender!

Bring back Mom!
Homemade ice cream
Picnics in the park
Flagpole sitting
Straw hats
Rent parties
Corn liquor
The banjo
Georgia quilts
Krazy Kat
Restock

The syncopation of
Fletcher Henderson
The Kiplingesque lines
Of James Weldon Johnson
Black Eagle
Mickey Mouse
The Bach Family
Sunday School
Even Mayor La Guardia
Who read the comics
Is more appealing than
Your version of
What Lies Ahead

In your world of
Tomorrow Humor
Will be locked up and
The key thrown away
The public address system
Will pound out headaches
All day
Everybody will wear the same
Funny caps
And the same funny jackets
Enchantment will be found
Expendable, charm, a
Luxury
Love and kisses
A crime against the state
Duke Ellington will be
Ordered to write more marches
For the people, naturally

If you are whats coming

I must be whats going

Make it by steamboat
I likes to take it real slow.

Beware: Do Not Read this Poem

Tonite, thriller was

about an old woman, so vain she
surrounded herself with

many mirrors

it got so bad that finally she

locked herself indoors & her
whole life became the

mirrors

one day the villagers broke

into her house, but she was too
swift for them. she disappeared

into a mirror

each tenant who bought the house

after that, lost a loved one to
the old woman in the mirror:

first a little girl

then a young woman
then the young woman's husband
the hunger of this poem is legendary
it has taken in many victims
back off from this poem
it has drawn in your feet
back off from this poem
it has drawn in your legs

back off from this poem

it is a greedy mirror
you are into this poem. from

the waist down

nobody can hear you can they?
this poem has had you up to here

belch

this poem aint got no manners

you cant call out from this poem
relax now & go with this poem

move & roll on to this poem

do not resist this poem
this poem has your eyes
this poem has his head
this poem has his arms
this poem has his fingers
this poem has his fingertips

this poem is the reader & the

reader the poem

statistic: the US bureau of missing persons reports

that in 1968 over 100,000 people
disappeared leaving no solid clues

nor trace only

a space in the lives of their friends

this poetry anthology Im reading

this poetry anthology

im reading reminds me
of washington d.c.
every page some marbled
trash, old adjctives stand
next to flagcovered coffins
murderers mumbling in
their sleep.

in the rose garden the

madman strolls alone, the
grin on his face just
wont quit

3.- Nikki Giovanni

Ego Tripping (There May Be a Reason Why)

I was born in the Congo

I walked to the fertile crescent and built the Sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
that only glows every one hundred years falls into
the center giving divine perfect light

I AM BAD

I sat on the throne

drinking nectar with Allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to Europe
to cool my thirst.
My oldest daughter is Nefertiti
the tears from my birth pains created the Nile

I am a beautiful woman

I gazed on the forest and burned out the

Sahara Desert
with a packet of goat's meat
and a change of clothes -
I crossed it in two hours

I am a gazelle so swift -
so swift - you can't catch me

For a birthday present when he was three

I gave my son Hannibal an elephant -
He gave me Rome for Mother's Day
My strength flows ever on
My son Noah built new/ark and
I stood proudly at the helm
as we sailed on a soft summer day

I turned myself into myself

and was Jesus!
Men intone my loving name
All praises - All praises
I am the one who would save

I sowed diamonds in my backyard

My bowels deliver uranium
the filings from my fingernails are
semi-precious jewels

On a trip north I caught a cold and blew my nose

giving oil to the Arab world

I am so hip - even my errors are correct

I sailed west to reach east - and had to round off

the earth as I went
The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid
across three continents

I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal

I cannot be comprehended except by my permission

I mean...I...can fly
like a bird in the sky...

The True Import of Present Dialogue: Black vs. Negro (For Peppe, Who Will
Ultimately Judge Our Efforts)

Nigger
Can you kill
Can you kill
Can a nigger kill
Can a nigger kill a honkie
Can a nigger kill the Man
Can you kill nigger
Huh? nigger can you
kill
Do you know how to draw blood
Can you poison
Can you stab-a-Jew
Can you kill huh? nigger
Can you kill
Can you run a protestant down with your
'68 El Dorado
(that's all they're good for anyway)
Can you kill
Can you piss on a blond head
Can you cut it off
Can you kill
A nigger can die
We ain't got to prove we can die
We got to prove we can kill
They sent us to kill
Japan and Africa
We policed Europe
Can you kill
Can you kill a white man
Can you kill the nigger
in you
Can you make your nigger mind
die
Can you kill your nigger mind
And free your black hands to
strangle
Can you kill
Can a nigger kill
Can you shoot straight and
Fire for good measure
Can you splatter their brains in the street
Can you kill them
Can you lure them to bed to kill them
We kill in Viet Nam
for them
We kill for UN & NATO & SEATO & US
And everywhere for all alphabet but
BLACK
Can we learn to kill WHITE for BLACK
Learn to kill niggers
Learn to be Black men
 Beautiful Black Men

(with compliments and apologies to all not mentioned by name)

i wanta say just gotta say something

bout those beautiful beautiful beautiful outasight
black men
with they afros
walking down the street
is the same ol danger
but a brand new pleasure

sitting on stoops, in bars, going to offices

running numbers, watching for their whores
preaching in churches, driving their hogs
walking their dogs, winking at me
in their fire red, lime green, burnt orange
royal blue tight tight pants that hug
what i like to hug

jerry butler, wilson pickett, the impressions

temptations, mighty mighty sly1
dont have to do anything but walk
on stage
and i scream and stamp and shout
see new breed men in breed alls
dashiki suits with shirts that match
the lining that compliments the ties
that smile at the sandals
where dirty toes peek at me
and i scream and stamp and shout
for more beautiful beautiful beautiful
black men with outasight afros
1968

Nikki-Rosa

childhood remembrances are always a drag

if youre Black

1 Musical artists and groups popular in the 1960s. Butler (b. 1939), rhythm and blues singer.
Pickett (b. 1941) soul singer. The Impressions was a soul group. The Temptations was a Motown
group. Sly Stone (b. 1944), lead singer of the soul, funk, and rock group Sly and the Family
Stone.
you always remember things like living in Woodlawn2
with no inside toilet
and if you become famous or something
they never talk about how happy you were to have your mother
all to yourself and
how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those
big tubs that folks in chicago barbecue in
and somehow when you talk about home
it never gets across how much you
understood their feelings
as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale
and even though you remember
your biographers never understand
your fathers pain as he sells his stock
and another dream goes
and though youre poor it isnt poverty that
concerns you
and though they fought a lot
it isnt your fathers drinking that makes any difference
but only that everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays and very good christmasses
and I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me
because they never understand Black love is Black wealth and theyll
probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy
1968

4.- Sonia Sanchez

homecoming

i have been a
way so long
once after college
i returned tourist
style to watch all
the niggers killing
themselves with
3 for oners3

2 Black suburb of Cincinnati.

3 A method of selling heroin to new users; the discount offering is a means of expanding the
market by creating new addicts.
with
needles
that
cd
not support
their
stutters.
now woman
i have returned
leaving behind me
all those hide and
seek faces peeling
with freudian dreams.
this is for real.
black
niggers
my beauty.
baby.
i have learned it
aint like they say
in the newspapers.
1969

Summer Words of a Sistuh Addict

the first day i shot dope

was on a sunday.
i had just come
home from church
got mad at my motha
cuz she got mad at me. u dig?
went out. shot up
behind a feelen against her.
it felt good.
gooder than doing it. yeah.
it was nice.
i did it. uh huh. i did it. uh. huh.
i want to do it again. it felt so gooooood.
and as the sistuh
sits in her silent /
remembered / high
someone leans for
ward gently asks her:
sistuh.
did u
 finally
learn how to hold yo / mother?
and the music of the day
drifts in the room
to mingle with the sistuhs young tears.
and we all sing.

blk/rhetoric

who's gonna make all

that beautiful blk/rhetoric
mean something.
like
I mean
who's gonna take
words
blk/beautiful
and make more of it
than blk/capitalism.
u dig?
i mean
like who's gonna
take all the young/long/haired/
natural/brothers and sisters
and let them
grow till
all that is
imp't is them
selves
moving in straight/
revolutionary/lines/toward the enemy
(and we know who that is)
like. man.
who's gonna give our young
blk people new heros
[. . . .]
( instead of quick/fucks
in the hall/way of
white/america's
mind)
like. this. is an S.0.S.
me. calling. . . .
calling. . . .
some/one.
pleasereplysoon.
 Blues

in the night
in my half hour
negro dreams
i hear voices knocking at the door
i see walls dripping screams up
and down the halls
won't someone open
the door for me? won't some
one schedule my sleep
and don't ask no questions?
noise.
like when he took me to his
home away from home place
and i died the long sought after
death he'd planned for me.
Yeah, bessie he put in the bacon
and it overflowed the pot.
and two days later
when i was talking
i started to grin.
as everyone knows
i am still grinning,

We a BaddDDD People (excerpt)

i mean
we bees real
bad.
we gots bad songs
sung on every station
we gots some bad NATURALS
on our heads
and brothers gots
some bad loud (fo real)
dashiki threads
on them.
i mean when
we dance u know we be doooen it
when we talk
we be doooen it
when we wrap
we be doooen it
and
when we love.well.yeh. u be knowen
bout that too. (un-huh!)
we got some BAAADDD
thots and actions
like off those white mothafuckers
and rip if off if it aint nailed
down and surround those wite/
knee/grow/pigs &dont let them
live to come back again into
our neighborhoods (in Mullen, 2001: 62).

poem at thirty

it is midnight
no magical bewitching
hour for me
i know only that
i am here waiting
remembering that
once as a child
desert patterns,
this woman, wet with wandering,
reviving the beauty of forests and winds
is telling you secrets
gather up your odors and listen
as she sings the mold from memory.

there is no place
for a soft/black/woman.
there is no smile green enough or
summertime words warm enough to allow my growth.
and in my head
i see my history
standing like a shy child
and i chant lullabies
as i ride my past on horseback
tasting the thirst of yesterday tribes
hearing the ancient / black / woman
me, singing hay-hay-hay-hay-ya-ya-ya
hay-hay-hay-hay-ya-ya-ya
like a slow scent
beneath the sun
and i dance my
creation and my grandmothers gathering
from my bones like great wooden birds
spread their wings
while their long / legged / laughter
stretches the night.
and i taste the
seasons of my birth. mangoes. papayas.
drink my woman / coconut / milks
stalk the ancient grandfathers
sipping on proud afternoons
walk with a song round my waist
tremble like a new / born / child troubled
with new breaths
and my singing
becomes the only sound of a
blue / black / magical / woman. walking.
womb ripe. walking. loud with mornings. walking
making pilgrimage to herself. walking.
1974

5.- Dudley Randall

Black Poet, White Critic

A critic advises
not to write on controversial subjects
like freedom or murder,
but to treat universal themes
and timeless symbols
like the white unicorn.

A white unicorn?

Ballad of Birmingham

'Mother dear, may I go downtown

Instead of out to play,
And march the streets of Birmingham
In a Freedom March today?'

'No, baby, no, you may not go,

For the dogs are fierce and wild,
And clubs and hoses, guns and jails
Aren't good for a little child.'
'But, mother, I won't be alone.
Other children will go with me,
And march the streets of Birmingham
To make our country free.'

'No baby, no, you may not go

For I fear those guns will fire.
But you may go to church instead
And sing in the children's choir.'

She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair,

And bathed rose petal sweet,
And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands,
And white shoes on her feet.

The mother smiled to know that her child

Was in the sacred place,
But that smile was the last smile
To come upon her face.

For when she heard the explosion,

Her eyes grew wet and wild.
She raced through the streets of Birmingham
Calling for her child.

She clawed through bits of glass and brick,

Then lifted out a shoe.
'O, here's the shoe my baby wore,
But, baby, where are you?'

Booker T. and W.E.B.

'It seems to me,' said Booker T.,

'It shows a mighty lot of cheek
To study chemistry and Greek
When Mister Charlie needs a hand
To hoe the cotton on his land,
And when Miss Ann looks for a cook,
Why stick your nose inside a book?'
'I don't agree,' said W.E.B.,
'If I should have the drive to seek
Knowledge of chemistry or Greek,
I'll do it. Charles and Miss can look
Another place for hand or cook.
Some men rejoice in skill of hand,
And some in cultivating land,
But there are others who maintain
The right to cultivate the brain.'
'It seems to me,' said Booker T.,
'That all you folks have missed the
boat
Who shout about the right to vote,
And spend vain days and sleepless
nights
In uproar over civil rights.
Just keep your mouths shut, do not
grouse,
But work, and save, and buy a house.'
'I don't agree,' said W.E.B.,
'For what can property avail
If dignity and justice fail.
Unless you help to make the laws,
They'll steal your house with
trumped-up clause.
A rope's as tight, a fire as hot,
No matter how much cash you've got.
Speak soft, and try your little plan,
But as for me, I'll be a man.'
'It seems to me,' said Booker T.
'I don't agree,'
Said W.E.B.

Langston Blues

Your lips were so laughing

Langston man
your lips were so singing
minstrel man
how death could touch them
hard to understand

Your lips that laughed

and sang so well
your lips that brought
laughter from hell
are silent now
no more to tell

So let us sing
a Langston Blues
sing a lost
Langston blues
long gone song
for Langston Hughes

A Poet Is Not a jukebox

A poet is not a jukebox, so dont tell me what to write.

I read a dear friend a poem about love, and she said,
Youre in to that bag now, for whatever its worth,
But why dont you write about the riot in Miami?

I didnt write about Miami because I didnt know about Miami.

Ive been so busy working for the Census, and listening to music all night,
and making new poems
That Ive broken my habit of watching TV and reading newspapers.
So it wasnt absence of Black Pride that caused me not to write about Miami,
But simple ignorance.

Telling a Black poet what he ought to write

Is like some Commissar of Culture in Russia telling a poet
Hed better write about the new steel furnaces in the Novobigorsk region,
Or the heroic feats of Soviet labor in digging the trans-Caucausus Canal,
Or the unprecedented achievement of workers in the sugar beet industry
who exceeded their quota by 400 percent (it was later discovered to
be a typists error).

Maybe the Russian poet is watching his mother die of cancer,

Or is bleeding from an unhappy love affair,
Or is bursting with happiness and wants to sing of wine, roses, and nightingales.

Ill bet that in a hundred years the poems the Russian people will read, sing and love
Will be the poems about his mothers death, his unfaithful mistress, or his
wine, roses and nightingales,
Not the poems about steel furnaces, the trans-Caucasus Canal, or the sugar
beet industry.
A poet writes about what he feels, what agitates his heart and sets his pen in motion.
Not what some apparatchnik dictates, to promote his own career or theories.

Yeah, maybe Ill write about Miami, as I wrote about Birmingham,

But itll be because I want to write about Miami, not because somebody
says I ought to.

Yeah, I write about love. Whats wrong with love?

If we had more loving, wed have more Black babies to become Black brothers and
sisters and build the Black family.

When people love, they bathe with sweet-smelling soap, splash their bodies
with perfume or cologne,
Shave, and comb their hair, and put on gleaming silken garments,
Speak softly and kindly and study their beloved to anticipate and satisfy her
every desire.
After loving theyre relaxed and happy and friends with all the world.
Whats wrong with love, beauty, joy and peace?

If Josephine had given Napoleon more loving, he wouldnt have sown the
meadows of Europe with skulls.
If Hitler had been happy in love, he wouldnt have baked people in ovens.
So dont tell me its trivial and a cop-out to write about love and not about
Miami.

A poet is not a jukebok.

A poet is not a jukebox.
I repeat, A poet is not a jukebox for someone to shove a quarter in his ear
and get the tune they want to hear,
Or to pat on the head and call a good little Revolutionary,
Or to give a Kuumba Liberation Award.

A poet is not a jukebox.

A poet is not a jukebox.
A poet is not a jukebox.

So dont tell me what to write.

1981

6.- Bob Kaufman

Jazz Chick

Music from her breast, vibrating

Soundseared into burnished velvet.
Silent hips deceiving fools.
Rivulets of trickling ecstacy
From the alabaster pools of Jazz
Where music cools hot souls.
Eyes more articulately silent
Than Medusa's thousand tongues.
A bridge of eyes, consenting smiles
reveal her presence singing
Of cool remembrance, happy balls
Wrapped in swinging
Jazz
Her music...
Jazz.

On

On yardbird corners of embryonic hopes, drowned in a heroin tear.

On yardbird corners of parkerflights to sound filled pockets in space.
On neuro-corners of striped brains & desperate electro-surgeons.
On alcohol corners of pointless discussion & historical hangovers.
On television corners of cornflakes & rockwells impotent America.
On university corners of tailored intellect & greek letter openers.
On military corners of megathon deaths & universal anesthesia.
On religious corners of theological limericks and
On radio corners of century-long records & static events.
On advertising corners of filter-tipped ice-cream & instant instants
On teen-age corners of comic book seduction and corrupted guitars,
On political corners of wamted candidates & ritual lies.
On motion picture corners of lassie & other symbols.
On intellectual corners of conversational therapy & analyzed fear.
On newspaper corners of sexy headlines & scholarly comics.
On love divided corners of die now pay later mortuaries.
On philosophical corners of semantic desperadoes & idea-mongers.
On middle class corners of private school puberty & anatomical revolts
On ultra-real corners of love on abandoned roller-coasters
On lonely poet corners of low lying leaves & moist prophet eyes.

7.- Gwendolyn Brooks

We Real Cool

We real cool.
We left school.
We lurk late.
We strike straight.
We sing sin.
We thin gin.
We jazz june.
We die soon.
8.- Ntozake Shange
For Colored Girls (excerpt)

tubes tables white washed windows

grime from age wiped over once
legs spread
anxious
eyes crawling up on me
eyes rollin in my thighs
metal horses gnawin my womb
dead mice fall from my mouth
i really didnt mean to
i really didnt think i cd
just one day off
get offa me alla this blood
bones shattered like soft ice-cream cones
i cdnt have people
lookin at me
pregnant
i cdnt have my friends see this
dyin danglin tween my legs
& i didnt say a thing
not a sigh
or a fast scream
to get
those eyes offa me
get them steel rods outta me
this hurts
this hurts me
& nobody came
cuz nobody knew
once i waz pregnant & shamed of myself
1977
9.- Mari Evans
Status Symbol

i
Have Arrived
i am the
New Negro
i
am the result of
President Lincoln
World War I
and Paris
the
Red Ball Express4
white drinking fountains
sitdowns and
sit-ins
Federal Troops
Marches on Washington
and
prayer meetings . . . .
today
They hired me
it
is a status
job . . . . .
along
with my papers
They
gave me my
Status Symbol . . .
the
key
to the
White
Locked
JOHN
1964

4 Title of a 1952 film starring Sidney Poitier as a member of a famous trucking unit among U.S.
troops in the Korean War.
 I Am a Black Woman

I am a black woman
the music of my song
some sweet arpeggio of tears
is written in a minor key
and I
can be heard humming in the night
Can be heard
humming
in the night.

I saw my mate leap screaming to the sea

and I/with these hands/cupped the lifebreath
from my issue in the canebrake
I lost Nats5 swinging body in a rain of tears
and heard my son scream all the way from Anzio6
for Peace he never knew . . . . I
learned Da Nang and Pork Chop Hill7
in anguish
Now my nostrils know the gas
and this trigger tire/d fingers
seek the softness in my warriors beard

I
am a black woman
tall as a cypress
strong
beyond all definition still
defying place
and time
and circumstance
assailed
impervious
indestructible
Look
on me and be
renewed

5 Nat Turner, Virginia slave who was executed in1831 for leading a slave revolt.
6 A fishing town in Italy, which was the site of a bloodstained attack by the Germans on allied
forces in World War II.
7 The site of one of the last battles of the Korean War; it was ultimately abandoned by U.N.
forces after multiple attacks by the North Koreans. Da Nang was a major American base in South
Vietnam.
 1969

10.- Carolyn M. Rodgers

Jesus Was Crucified
Or, It Must Be Deep (an epic poem)

i was sick
and my motha called me
tonight yeah, she did she
sd she was sorri
i was sick, but what
she wanted tuh tell
me was that i shud pray or
have her (hunky) preacher
pray for me. she sd. i
had too much hate in me
she sd u know the way yuh think is
got a lots to do
wid the way u feel, and i
agreed, told her i WAS angry a lot THESE days
and maybe my insides was too and she sd
why its somethin wrong wid yo mind girl
thats what it is
and i sd yes, i was aware a lot
lately and she sd if she had evah known educashun
woulda mad me crazi, she woulda neva sent me to
school (college that is)
she sd the way i worked my fingers to the bone in
this white mans factori to make u a de-cent some-
bodi and here u are actin not like decent folks
talkin bout hatin white folks & revolution
& such and runnin round with NegroEs
WHO CURSE IN PUBLIC!!!! (she sd)
THEY COMMUNIST GIRL!!! DONT YUH KNOW THAT???
**DONT YOU READ***THE NEWSPAPERS?????
(and i sd)
i dont believe(and she sd) U DONT BELIEVE IN GOD
NO MO DO U?????
u wudnt raised that way! U gon die and go tuh HELL
and i sd i hoped it wudnt be NO HUNKIES there
and she sd
what do u mean, there is some good white people and some
bad ones, just like there is negroes
and i says i had neva seen ONE (wite good that is) but
she sd negroes aint readi, i know this and
deep in yo heart you do too and i sd yes u right
negroes aint readi and she sd
why just the utha day i was in the store and there was
uh negro packin clerk put uh colored womans ice cream
in her grocery bag widout wun of them dont melt bags
and the colored ladi sd to the colored clerk
how do u know mah ice cream aint gon tuh melt befo I
git home.
clerk sd. i dont and took the ice cream
back out and put it in wun of them stay hard
bags,
and me and that ladi sd see see, ne-groes dont treat
nobody right why that clerk packin groceries was un
grown main, acted mad, white folks wudnt treat yuh that
way, why when i went tuh the BANK the otha day to de-
posit some MONEY
this white man helped me fast and nice. u gon die girl
and go tuh hell if yuh hate white folks. i sd, me and
my friends could dig it . . . hell, that is
she sd du u pray? i sd sorta when i hear Coltrane8 and
she sd if yuh read yuh bible itll show u read genesis
revelation and she couldnt remember the otha chapter
i should read but she sd what was in the Bible was
happnin now, fire & all and she sd just cause i didnt
believe the bible dont make it not true
(and i sd)
just cause she believed the bible didnt make it true
and she sd it is it is and deep deep down
in yo heart u know its true
(and i sd)
it must be d
eeeep
she sd i mon pray fuh u tuh be saved. i sd thank yuh.
but befo she hung up my motha sd
well girl, if yuh need me call me
i hope we dont have to straighten the truth out no mo.
i sd i hoped we didnt too
(it was 10 P.M. when she called)
she sd, i got tuh go so i can git up early tomorrow
and go tuh the social security board to clarify my
record cause i need my money.
work hard for 30 yrs. and they dont want tuh give me
$28.00 once every two weeks,

8 Avant-garde jazz saxophonist (1926-1967)

 i sd yeah . . .
dont let em nail u wid no technicalities
git yo checks . . . (the i sd)

catch yuh later on jesus, i mean motha!

it must be
deeeeep . . .
1969

It Is Deep
(dont never forget the bridge
that you crossed over on)

Having tried to use the

witch cord
that erases the stretch of
thirty-three blocks
and tuning in the voice which
woodenly stated that the
talk box was disconnected

My mother, religiously girdled in

her god, slipped on some love, and
laid on my bell like a truck,
blew through my door warm wind from the south
concern making her gruff and tight-lipped
and scared
that her baby was starving.
She, having learned, that disconnection results from
non-payment of bill (s).

She did not

recognize the poster of the
grand le-roi9 (al) cat on the wall
had never even seen the book of
Black poems that I have written
thinks that I am under the influence of
**communists**
When I talk about Black as anything
other than something ugly to kill it befo it grows
in any impression she would not be
considered relevant or Black

9 LeRoi Jones, who changed his name to Amiri Baraka.

 but
there she was, standing in my room
not loudly condemning that day and
not remembering that I grew hearing her
curse the factory where she cut uh slave
and the cheap j-boss10 wouldnt allow a union,
not remembering that I heard the tears when
they told her a high school diploma was not enough,
and here now, not able to understand, what she had
been forced to deny, still

she pushed into my kitchen so

she could open my refrigerator to see
what I had to eat, and pressed fifty
bills in my hand saying pay the talk bill and buy
some food; you got folks who care about you . . .

My mother, religious-negro, proud of

having waded through a storm, is very obviously,
a sturdy Black bridge that I
crossed over, on.

For Sistuhs Wearin Straight Hair

me?
i never could keep my edges and kitchen
straight
even after
supercool / straighterPerm had burned
whiteness onto my scalp
my edges and kitchen didnt
ever get the message that they
was not supposed to go back home.
oh yeah. edges and kitchens
will tell that they know where
they natchal home is at!
1969

10 i.e., Jewish boss

11.- Audre Lorde
Coal

I
is the total black, being spoken
from the earths inside.
There are many kinds of open
how a diamond comes into a knot of flame
how sound comes into a word, colored
by who pays what for speaking.

Some words are open like a diamond

on glass windows
singing out within the passing crash of sun
then there are words like stapled wagers
in a perforated bookbuy and sign and tear apart
and come whatever wills all chances
the stub remains
an ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge.

Some words live in my throat

breeding like adders. Others know sun
seeking like gypsies over my tongue
to explode through my lips
like young sparrows bursting from shell.
Some words
bedevil me.

Love is a word, another kind of open.

As the diamond comes into a knot of flame
I am black because I come from the earths inside
now take my word for jewel in the open light.

Black Mother Woman

I cannot recall you gentle

yet through your heavy love
I have become
an image of your once delicate flesh
split with deceitful longings.

When strangers come and compliment me

your aged spirit takes a bow
jingling with pride
but once you hid that secret
in the center of furies
hanging me
with deep breasts and wiry hair
with your own split flesh
and long suffering eyes
buried in myths of little worth.

But I have peeled away your anger

down to the core of love
and look mother
I Am
a dark temple where your true spirit rises
beautiful
and tough as chestnut
stanchion11 against your nightmare of weakness
and if my eyes conceal
a squadron of conflicting rebellions
I learned from you
to define myself
through your denials.
1971

11 Upright bar or post (for supporting, e.g., a roof).