The first sign was your hair, un-straightened, shortened from worry,
and it had only been a year since the wedding, but you had grown older, Mama.
I felt your usual care in the mustard greens, sweet potatoes and chicken, yet you smelled of whiskey and prayer.
I showed you the pictures, asked which you’d like remade and watched you fidget, unable to see them.
Raising your arm, you spoke of your rheumatism, it seems life left your arm first, like crumbs given to front-yard robins.
Age and need, those simple weeds, were gathering around and taking you away….
Reprinted by permission of
learn moreMy Daddy has paid the rent
and the insurance man is gone
and the lights is back on
and my uncle Brud has hit
for one dollar straight
and they is good times
good times
good times
My Mama has made bread
and Grampaw has come
and everybody is drunk
and dancing in the kitchen
and singing in the kitchen
Oh these is good times
good times
good times
oh children think about the
good times…
Reference:
Lucille Clifton
I said:
Now will the poet sing,-
Their cries go thundering
Like blood and tears
Into the nation’s ears,
Like lightning dart
Into the nation’s heart.
Against disease and death and all things fell,
And war,
Their strophes rise and swell
To jar
The foe smug in his citadel.
Remembering their sharp and pretty
Tunes for Sacco and Vanzetti,
I said:
Here too’s a cause divinely spun
For those whose eye are on the sun,
Here in epitome
Is all disgrace
And epic wrong,
Like wine to brace
The minstrel heart, and blare it to song.
Surely, I said,
Now will the poets sing.
But they
Unforgettable, that’s what you are
Unforgettable though near or far
Like a song of love that clings to me
How the thought of you does things to me
Never before has someone been more
Unforgettable in every way
And forever more, that’s how you’ll stay
That’s why, darling, it’s incredible
That someone so unforgettable
Thinks that I am unforgettable too
Unforgettable in every way
And forever more, that’s how you’ll stay
That’s why, darling, it’s incredible
That someone so unforgettable
Thinks that I am unforgettable too….
Words and Music by Irving Gordon
peak Billboard pos
boys
I don’t promise you nothing
but this
what you pawn
I will redeem
what you steal
I wil conceal
my private silence to
your public guilt
is all I got
girls
first time a white man
opens his fly
like a good thing
we’ll just laugh
laugh real loud my
black women
children
when they ask you
why your mama so funny
say
she is a poet
she don’t have no sense…
From Good Times Copyright 1969 by Lucille Clifton.
Reference:
Lucille Clifton
Darling you send me
I know you send me
darling you send me
honest you do, honest you do
honest you do, whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
you thrill me
I know you, you, you thrill me
darling you, you, you, you thrill me
honest you do
at first i thought it was infatuation
but woo, it’s lasted so long
now I find myself wanting
to marry you and take you home
whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
you, you, you, you send me
I know you send me
I know you send me
honest you do
whoa-oh-oh, whenever I’m with you
I know, I know, I know when I’m near you
mmm hmm, mmm hmm, honest you do, honest you do
whoa-oh
cupid draw back your bow
and let your arrow go
straight to my lover’s heart for me
cupid please hear my cry
and let your arrow fly
straight to my lover’s heart for me
now i don’t mean to bother you but i’m in a mess
there’s danger of me losing all of my happiness
for i love a girl who doesn’t know i exist
and this you can fix
so…
cupid draw back your bow
and let your arrow go
straight to my lover’s heart for me
cupid please hear my cry
and let your arrow fly
straight to my lover’s heart for me
cupid with your arrow make a love storm for me
i promise i will lover
If here and now be but a timely span
Between today’s unhappiness, tomorrow’s
Joys, what if today’s abundant sorrows
Never end, tomorrow never comes, what then?
If youth, impatient of the disrespect
Accorded it, yearns to be old,
Age chafes, beneath the manifold
Losses of its prime and mourns neglect;
So let it be fore here and now, my dear,
Not for the when of an eternity;
No gazer in the crystal ball can see
The future as we see the now and here…
Ali
Is our prince
Regal and Black
A glass that could not fall and never break
A flower without rain that never could die
Ali
Is our prince…
His country seared its conscience through its gain,
And had not wisdom to behold its loss,
It held God partner in the hellish stain,
And saw Christ dying on a racial cross.
What unto it the shackled fellowman,
Whose plea was mockery, and whose groans were mirth?
Its boasted creed was: “he should rule who can
Make prey of highest heaven and dupe of earth.”
From out this mass of century-tutored wrong
A man stood God-like and his voice rang true.
His soul was sentry to the dallying throng,
His thought was watchword to the gallant few.
He saw not as his fellow beings saw;
He wo
