Ashes, Lord-
But warm still from the fire that cheered us,
Lighted us in this clearing where it seems
Scarcely an hour ago we feasted on
Burnt pig from our tormentors’ in willing
Bounty and charted the high purpose you
Word had launched us on, And now, my comrades
Dead, or taken; your servant, pressed by the
Blood-drenched yelps of hounds, forsaken, save for
The stillness of the word that persist quivering
And breath-moist on his tongue; and these faint coals
Soon to be rushed to dying glow by the
Indifferent winds of miscarriage-What now,
My Lord?
Is yo eye so empty
in the moonlight of yo smoke
u cant see me waitin
for u to sway my way
sway fine & black & so cool
a swift swayin tree
swayin bendin down
& catchin me up into yo movement
pleasing u?
is yo eye so empty
in the moonlight of yo smoke
u cant see me waitin
O my man
our beginning will be
as beginnings be
total through all the sweet secretions
from your prime cause
and I will be a woman-fire
orbiting your night
and you will protect my burning softness
because you wont be
out of it when I need you…..
copyright 1972 by Johari Amini
Beyond the turning sea’s far foam
a tender ephemera
of a moment’s dawn in a fantastic place
sudden’d its appear and was gone!
was gone out, as a young man farewell’d to all
but arms!
don’t ask me more
what of it, of it why
I cannot explain it any-
no don’t ask me, I insist-
some dared and died-
Listen a moment-!Sh! Listen-!
that hurrying as of a shore of fugitives!!!!!!
The sky hangs heavy tonight
Like the hair of a Negro woman.
The scars of the moon are curved
Like the wrinkles on the brow of a Negro woman.
The stars twinkle tonight
Like the glaze in a Negro woman’s eyes,
Drinking the tears set flowing by aging hurt
Gnawing at her heart
The earth trembles tonight
Like the quiver of a Negro woman’s eye-lids cupping tears…
Copyright 1927, by Harper & Row publishers.
I went to Riis Beach and Put my ear to the ocean
I went to Atlantic city and Put my ear to the ocean
I went to Chesapeake Bay and Put my ear to the ocean
I went to the South Sea Islands and put my ear to clapboard walls
I heard chains inside the ocean’s roar
I heard bones whitened by salty time ratlin for black-skin
I heard defiant moan-blues in Yoruba, Ibo, Akan, Bantu
I heard transformed memories and tears drop from ashy sea-swept faces
I looked into Jamestown waters and saw
Black-bones beckoning me in rhythm to a Jr.
Henry Porter wore good clothes for his Journey,
the best his wife could make from leftover cambric,
shoes stolen from the master. They bit his feet,
but if he took them off he feared he’d never get them on again.
He needed to look like a free man when he got there.
Still in a box in the jostling heat, nostrils to a board pried to a vent,
(a peephole, too, he’d hoped, but there was only black to see)
there was nothing to do but sleep and dream and weep.
Sometime the dreams were frantic, frantic loneliness an acid in his heart.
Freedom was near but unimaginable.
*The career of Satchel Paige, the legendary baseball pitcher extended into five decades.
Sometimes I feel like I will never stop
Just go on forever
Till one fine mornin
I’m gonna reach up and grab me a handfulla stars
Swing out my long lean leg
And whip three hot strikes burnin down the heavens
And look over a God and say
How about that!!!!
