my girls
my girls
my almost me
mellowed in a brown bag
held tight and straining at the top
like a good lunch
until the bag turned weak and wet
and burst in our honeymoon rooms.
we wiped the mess and
dressed you in our name
and here you are
my girls
my girls
forty quick fingers
reaching for the door.
If you’d like to be a jitter bug,
First thing you must do is get a jug,
Put whiskey, wine and gin within,
And shake it all up and then begin.
Grab a cup and start to toss,
You are drinking jitter sauce!
Don’t you worry, you just mug,
And then you’ll be a jitter bug!
Hear this fat boy blowing his horn;
He’s been a bug since the day he was born,
His favorite jitter sauce is rye,
I swear, he’ll drink it ’til the day he die!
Toot your whistle and ring your bell,
Oh, butchie-wutchie, time will tell,
Don’t you worry, you just mug,
You’ll always be a jitter bug!
When I pat this floor with my tap, when I slide on air and fill this horn intimate with the rhythm of my two drums.
When I cross kick scissor locomotive take four for nothing four we’re gone.
When the solidarity of my Yoruba turns join these vibrato feet in a Johnny Hodges lick a chorus of insistent Charlie Parker riffs.
When I stretch out for a chromatic split together with my double X converging in a quartet of circles.
When I dance my spine in a slouch slur my lyrics with a heel slide arch these insteps in free time.
When I drop my knees, when I fold my hands, when I decorate this atm
I ply with all the cunning of my art this little thing, and with consummate care I fashion it-so that when I depart, Those who come after me shall find it fair And beautiful.
It must be free of flaws-Pointing no laborings of weary hands; And there must be no flouting of the laws Of beauty-as the artist understands.
Through passion, yearnings infinite-yet dumb-I lift you from the debts of my own mind and glide you with my souls white heat to plumb The souls of future men.
I leave behind This thing that in return this solace gives:
He who creates true beauty ever lives.
The cotton blouse you wear, your mother said,
After a day of toil, “I guess I’ll buy it”;
For ribbons on your head and blouse she paid
Two-bits a yard-as if you would deny it!
And nights, after a day of kitchen toil,
She stitched your re-made skirt of serge-once blue-
Weary of eye, beneath a lamp of oil:
McDonogh would be proud of her and you.
Next, came white “creepers” and white stockings, too-
They almost asked her blood when they were sold;
Like some dark princess, to the school go you,
With blue larkspur and yellow marigold;
But few would know-or even guess this fact:
How
She does not know
Her beauty,
She thinks her brown body
Has no glory.
If she could dance
Naked,
Under palm trees
And see her image in the river
She would know.
But there are no palm trees
On the street,
And dishwater give back no images….
“As surely as I hold your hand in mine,
as surely as your crinkled hair belies
the enamored sun pretending that he dies
while still he loiters in its glossy shine,
as surely as I break the slender line
that spider linked us with, in no least wise
am I uncertain that these alien skies
do not our whole life measure and confine.
No less, once in a land of scarlet suns
And brooding winds, before the hurricane
Bore down upon us, long before this pain,
We found a place where quiet water runs;
I held your hand this way upon a hill,
And felt my heart forbear, my pulse grow still”
C
learn moreMy feet have felt the sands of many nations,
I have drunk the water
Of many springs,
I am old,
Older than the Pyramids,
I am older than the race
That oppresses me,
I will live on…
I will outlive oppression,
I will outlive oppressors…
Copyright 1948 by John Henrik Clarke.
Reference:
John H. Clarke
She stood hanging wash before the sun
and occasionally watched the kids
gather acorns from the trees,
and when her husband came,
complaining about the tobacco spit on him they decided to run North.
A FANCY halts my feet at the way-side well.
It is not to drink, for they say the water is brackish.
It is not to tryst, for a heart at the mile’s end beckons me on.
It is not to rest, for what feet could be weary when a heart at the mile’s end keeps time with their tread?
It is not to muse for the heart at the mile’s end is food for my being.
I will question the well for my secret by dropping a pebble into it.
Ah, it is dry.
Strike lightning to the road, my feet, for hearts are like wells.
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