breath,
life after seven decades plus three years
is a lot of breathing. seventy three years on this
earth is a lot of taking in and giving out, is a
life of coming from somewhere and for many a bunch
of going nowhere.
how do we celebrate a poet who has created
music with words for over fifty years, who has
showered magic on her people, who has redefined
poetry into a black world exactness
thereby giving the universe an insight into
darkroads?
All you violated ones with gentle hearts;
You violent dreamers whose cries shout heartbreak;
Whose voices echo clamors of our cool capers,
And whose black faces have hollowed pits for eyes.
All you gambling sons and hooked children and bowery bums
Hating white devils and black bourgeoisie,
Thumbing your noses at your burning red suns,
Gather round this coffin and mourn your dying swan.
My grandmothers were strong.
They followed plows and bent to toil.
They moved through fields sowing seed.
They touched earth and grain grew.
They were full of sturdiness and singing.
My grandmothers were strong.
My grandmothers are full of memories
Smelling of soap and onions and wet clay
With veins rolling roughly over quick hands
They have many clean words to say.
My grandmothers were strong.
Why am I not as they?
herd on da wind you come back fo me
didn’ t think you come back fo me
didn’ t think you come back at all
been so long my skin grew tired
dis life too hard to know all alone
caroline cover me jus fine
she a quilt ginst the cold in ma blood
she mend de torn spots in ma soul
aint got no mind ta leev dis place
go on mosesfind yo promise lan
mines is here beside dis fire
wid folks we knows from when we’ s born
dis suit of clothes jus as empty
as a sky wid no stars
two years a workinsavin money
denjohn drop out my heart
i dont want ta see his wife
i knows dat she is me
i’ se could go inshootin de rifle
let my angry run free
bes notjust my temper risin
no use stoking dead fire
but ta see his face one mo time
now lordjus you on high
on thoth’ s tits
From Sonnet 75 (“So are you to my thoughts as food to life”)
A groovy day, a fish fillet, an elf hair,
A cosmonaut, a microdot, a hoedown,
A trusty door, the finest whore on welfare,
A neocon who’ s keeping on the lowdown,
A purple fist, a Federalist, a sunspot,
A bird that’ s got a big big butt to study,
A guy named Toots, ten dumb galoots, a gunshot,
Die Fledermaus by good ol’ Strauss (my buddy),
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
Away above a harborful
of caulkless houses
among the charley noble chimneypots
of a rooftop rigged with clotheslines
a woman pastes up sails
upon the wind
hanging out her morning sheets
with wooden pins
Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
