Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blue-black cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house.
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices????
Copyright 1966 by Robert Hayden.
learn moreThey call it Stormy Monday
But Tuesday’s just as bad.
They call it Stormy Monday
But Tuesday’s just as bad.
Lord, and Wednesday’s worse
And Thursday’s all so bad.
The eagle flies on Friday,
Saturday I go out to play.
The eagle flies on Friday,
Saturday I go out to play.
Sunday I go to church,
Gonna kneel down and pray.
Lord have mercy,
Lord have mercy on me.
Lord have mercy,
Lord have mercy on me.
Though I’m tryin’ and tryin’ to find my baby,
Won’t someone please send her home to me.
Copyright 1962, Warner Bros., Inc
learn more#1
Yeah here am I am standing at the crest of a tallest hill with a trumpet in my hand & dark glasses on.
Bearded & bereted I proudly stand! but there are no eyes to see me. I send down cool sounds! but there are no ears to hear me. My lips they quiver in aether-emptiness! there are no hearts to love me.
Surely though through night’s gray fog mist of delusion & dream & the rivers of tears that flow like gelatin soul-juice some apathetic bearer of paranoid-ic peyote vision (or some other source of inspiration) shall hear the song I play.
honeystain…
the rhetoricians of blackness
matters me not
we are black
and you are beautiful
it matters me not whether
your breast are American pumpkin or
African gourds
they are full and you are beautiful
it matters me not be your belly
black or brown
it is soft and you are beautiful
it matters me not be your buttocks
bourgeois or “grass roots”
they are good
and you are beautiful
it matters me not if your bread loaf
thighs are Negro or Afro-American
they are round and so ripe
and you are so beautiful
it matters not whether it is
Victoria falls
yes, yes
it’s time
to do my spring thing
hanging
around the sweet and the green
flowing
up warm sap
rising
days of
being fresh as April and
common as grass
yes, yes
it’s spring
to do my time slow
as the bulbs burst
from the scrotal earth
while
the gay and golden sun sighs
over the bright dick daffodils’
stiff erections
Yes, yes
it’s my thing to time
my spring
by the frequency of small
patches of black
grass in the splendor
of thighs
without words-
worth…
Patience…patience
they all say…
but will patience
climb up a stair
or pick up a spoon
or chant a litany?
…those hollows
worn in a cathedral step
by the long slow prayers
of countless worshippers kneeling…
But do I not have a hundred years
nor forty
nor ten-
O you they call Eternal
to whom a thousand years
are but the wink of a languid eye-
help me to crowd
years of patient trial
and error
into the few flying days
I have…
Lend me but a jot
of Your aeon-packed
eternity
compress its infinite patience
into hours
and minutes
if it be Thy w
Down the street you can hear her scream “you’re a disgrace”
As she slams the door in his drunken face.
And now he stands outside
And all the neighbors start to gossip and drool.
He cries “Oh, girl you must be mad,
What happened to the sweet love you and me had?”
Against the door he leans and starts a scene,
And his tears fall and burn the garden green.
And so castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually
A little Indian brave before he was ten,
Played war games in the woods with his Indian friends,
And he built up a dream that when he grew up
He would be a fearless warrior
i arrive /Langston
the new york times told me when to come
but I attended your funeral
late by habit of colored folk and didnt miss a thing
you lie on saint Nicolas avenue
between the black ghetto & sugar hill
where slick black limousines await yr body
for the final haul from neutral
santa claus avenue harlem usa
you are dressed sharp & dark as death
yr cowlick is smooth like the Negro gentlemen
in the ebony whiskey ads /
gone is yr puff of face yr paunch of chest tho
yr lips are fuller now especially on the side
where hazard had you a cigarette /
two sisters fel
Let happy throats be mute;
Only the tortured reed
Is made a flute!
Only the broken heart can sing
And make of song
A breathless and lovely thing!
Only the sad-only the tortured throat
Contrives of sound
A strangely thrilling note!
Only the tortured throat can fling
Beauty against the sky-
Only the broken heart can sing
Not asking why!!!
E’er since Miss Susan Johnson lost her Jockey, Lee, there has been much excitement, more to be. You can hear her moaning night and morn.
Wonder where my Easy Rider’s gone? Cablegrams come of sympathy
Telegrams go of inquiry. Letters come from down in “Bam” and every where that Uncle Sam has even a rural delivery. All day the phone rings but it’s not for me. At last good tidings fill our hearts with glee. This message comes from Tennessee.
Dear Sue, your Easy Rider struck his burg today. On a southbound rattler side door Pullman car. Seen him here, an’ he was on the hog.
