They dragged you from the homeland, They chained you in coffles,
They huddled you spoon-fashion in filthy hatches,
They sold you to give a few gentlemen ease.
They broke you in like oxen, They scourged you, They branded you,
They made your women breeders, They swelled your numbers with bastards.. They taught you the religion they disgraced.
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 mask and dances and swelling chants with African eyes and noses and arms though we sprawl in gray chains in a place full of winters, when what we want is sun.
We have been captured, brothers.
learn moreMaud went to college.
Sadie stayed at home.
Sadie scrapped for life
With a fine tooth comb.
She didn’t leave a tangle in.
Her comb found every strand.
Sadie was one of the livingest chits
In all the land.
Sadie bore two babies
Under her maiden name.
Maud and Ma and Papa
Nearly died of shame.
Every one but Sadie
Nearly died of shame.
When Sadie said her last so-long
Her girls struck out from home.
(Sadie had left as heritage
Her fine tooth comb.)
Maud, who went to college,
Is a thin brown mouse.
She is living all alone
In this old house….
From Blacks by Gwendol
learn moreThe promises of a thousand suns,
Printless ground, swirling flakes against the sky.
Morning in the heart of this surprised city,
Laid siege by a March storm,
Found me listening to out-of-tuned guitars;
Slack strumming of black boys
With trains and big-legged women in their voice.
My mind caught in sound and light of winter,
Turned gymnast,
Vaulted somber years to youth..
Closed doors and “WHITE ONLY” sins of Louisville
Changed the sun’s birth to sounds of loss.
A loving absence,
Lyrical savior who took the midnight special and left us.
Highballed it home to heaven.
In the heart
A Cooper and Vinter sat down for a talk,
Both being so groggy, that neither could walk,
Says Cooper to Vinter, “I’m the first of my trade,
There’s no kind of vessel, but what I have made,
And of any shape, Sir-just what you will-and of any size, Sir-from a ton to a gill!”
“Then,” says the Vinter, “you’re the man for me,-
Make me a vessel, if we can agree.
The top and the bottom diameter define,
To bear that proportion as fifteen to nine,
Thirty-five inches are just what I crave,
No more and no less, in the depth, will I have;
Just thirty-nine gallons this vessel must hold,-
Then I
Some word in this writing may require adult scrutiny
*phone number being dialed*
*phone rings three times*
[Biggie] Yo!, [P. Dad] Yo Big wake up wake up baby, [Biggie] Mmm, yo…
[P. Dad] Yo Big wake yo’ ass up c’mon
[Biggie] I’m up! I’m up. *mumbling* I’m up I’m up, [P. Dad] Big, wake up!
[Biggie] I’m up baby, what the fuck, man? What’s up?
[P. Dad] C’mon now it’s a quarter to six we got the 7:30 flight
[Biggie] Mmm, *mumbling* yeah, [P. Dad] Yo Big Big, Big
[Biggie] Yeah I hear you dogg, I hear you, alright, 7:30
[P.
I kissed a kiss in youth
Upon a dead man’s brow;
And that was long ago-
And I’m a grown man now.
It’s lain there in the dust,
Thirty years and more-
My lips that set a light
At a dead man’s door…..
Reference:
William S. Brathwaite
Cymbals clash, and in this scene of annulled jazz,
gay stepping stompers roll in shouting
“Hallelujah” at a deposed “Spirit” until like a mimic-child,
it rages, stumbles, and lies exhausted strung like Jesus.
The honky-tonk riffs, runs, and breaks,
are superimposed on the sounds of weeping amen’s.
The mandrill sounds of tuba snorts,
coned by applauding tambourines;
laugh at the banjo-dance of amen-women
shouting at the boogie-woogie voice of God…..
The Bishop seduces the world with his voice
Sweat strangles mute eyes
As insinuations gush out through a hydrant of sorrow
Dream’s, a world never seen
Moulded on Africa’s anvil, tempered down home
Documented in cries and wails
Screaming to be ignored, crooning to be heard
Throbbing from the gutter
On Saturday night
Silver offering only
The Right Reverend’s back in town
Don’t it make you feel alright????????
Carry me back to old Virginia,
There’s where the cotton, and the corn and taters grow,
There’s where the birds warble sweet in the springtime,
There’s where this old darky’s heart longs to go.
There’s where I labored so hard for old Massa,
Day after day in the yellow corn,
No place on earth do I love more sincerely,
Than old Virginia, the state where I was born.
Carry me back to old Virginia,
There let me live until I decay,
Long by the old dismal swamp have I wandered,
There’s where this old darky’s life will pass away,
Massa and Missis have long gone before me,
Soon we will
