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
■
the 1st
what 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
■
if i stand in my window
naked in my own house
and press my breasts
against my windowpane
like black birds pushing against glass
because i am somebody
in a New Thing
and if the man come to stop me
in my own house
naked in my own window
saying i have offended him
i have offended his
Gods
let him watch my black body
push against my own glass
let him discover self
let him run naked through the streets
crying
praying in tongues
■
for deLawd
people say they have a hard time
understanding how i
go on about my business
playing my ray charles
hollering at the kids—
seem like my afro
cut off in some old image
would show i got a long memory
and i come from a line
of black and going on women
who got used to making it through murdered sons
and who grief kept on pushing
who fried chicken
ironed
swept off the back steps
who grief kept
for their still alive sons
for their sons coming
for their sons gone
just pushing
■
ca’line’s prayer
i have got old
in a desert country
i am dry
and black as drought
don’t make water
only acid
even dogs won’t drink
remember me from wydah
remember the child
running across dahomey
black as ripe papaya
juicy as sweet berries
and set me in the rivers of your glory
Ye Ma Jah
■
generations
people who are going to be
in a few years
bottoms of trees
bear a responsibility to something
besides people
if it was only
you and me
sharing the consequences
it would be different
it would be just
generations of men
but
this business of war
these war kinds of things
are erasing those natural
obedient generations
who ignored pride
stood on no hind legs
begged no water
stole no bread
did their own things
and the generations of rice
of coal
of grasshoppers
by their invisibility
denounce us
■
flowers
here we are
running with the weeds
colors exaggerated
pistils wild
embarrassing the calm family flowers oh
here we are
flourishing for the field
and the name of the place
is Love
■
after kent state
only to keep
his little fear
he kills his cities
and his trees
even his children oh
people
white ways are
the way of death
come into the
black
and live
■
being property once myself
i have a feeling for it,
that’s why i can talk
about environment.
what wants to be a tree,
ought to be he can be it.
same thing for other things.
same thing for men.
■
the lost baby poem
the time i dropped your almost body down
down to meet the waters under the city
and run one with the sewage to the sea
what did i know about waters rushing back
what did i know about drowning
or being drowned
you would have been born in winter
in the year of the disconnected gas
and no car we would have made the thin
walk over genesee hill into the canada wind
to watch you slip like ice into strangers’ hands
you would have fallen naked as snow into winter
if you were here i could tell you these
and some other things
if i am ever less than a mountain
for your definite brothers and sisters
let the rivers pour over my head
let the sea take me for a spiller
of seas let black men call me stranger
always for your never named sake
■
apology
(to the panthers)
i became a woman
during the old prayers
among the ones who wore
bleaching cream to bed
and all my lessons stayed
i was obedient
but brothers i thank you
for these mannish days
i remember again the wise one
old and telling of suicides
refusing to be slaves
i had forgotten and
brothers i thank you
i praise you
i grieve my whiteful ways
■
lately
everybody i meet
is a poet.
“Look here”
said the tall delivery man
who is always drunk
“whoever can do better
ought to do it. Me,
I’m 25 years old
and all the white boys
my age
are younger than me.”
so saying
he dropped a six pack
turned into most of my cousins
and left.
■
listen children
keep this in the place
you have for keeping
always
keep it all ways
we have never hated black
listen
we have been ashamed
hopeless tired mad
but always
all ways
we loved us
we have always loved each other
children all ways
pass it on
■
the news
everything changes the old
songs click like light bulbs
going off the faces
of men dying scar the air
the moon becomes the mountain
who would have thought
who would believe
dead things could stumble back
and kill us
■
the bodies broken on
the trail of tears
and the bodies melted
in middle passage
are married to rock and
ocean by now
and the mountains crumbling on
white men
the waters pulling white men down
sing for red dust and black clay
good news about the earth
■
song
sons of slaves and
daughters of masters
all come up from the
ocean together
daughters of slaves and
sons of masters
all ride out on the
empty air
brides and hogs and dogs and babies
close their eyes against the sight
bricks and sticks and diamonds witness
a life of death is the death of life
■
africa
home
oh
home
the soul of your
variety
all of my bones
remember
■
earth
here is where it was dry
when it rained
and also
here
under the same
what was called
tree
it bore varicolored
flowers children bees
all this used to be a
place once all this
was a nice place
once
■
God send easter
and we will lace the
jungle on
and step out
brilliant as birds
against the concrete country
feathers waving as we
dance toward jesus
sun reflecting mango
and apple as we
glory in our skin
■
so close
they come so close
to being beautiful
if they had hung on
maybe five more years
we would have been together
for these new things
and for them old niggers
to have come so close oh
seem like some black people
missed out even more than
all the time
■
poem for my sisters
like he always said
the things of daddy
will find him
leg to leg and
lung to lung
and the man who
killed the bear
so we could cross the mountain
will cross it whole
and holy
“all goodby ain’t gone”
■
Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival
November 1973
for Margaret Walker Alexander
I
Hey Nikki
wasn’t it good, wasn’t it good June
Carole wasn’t it good, wasn’t it good Alice
Carolyn wasn’t it good, Audre wasn’t it good
wasn’t it good Sonia, sister wasn’t it
