For Bernice and Adisa
CONTENTS
I. from I’ve Been a Woman 1978
Homecoming
Poem at Thirty
Malcolm
Personal Letter No. 2
A Poem for My Father
Poem No. 3
Blues
Haiku
Sequences
Haiku
Poem No. 8
Present
Tanka
Tanka.
A Love Poem Written for Sterling Brown
Kwa mama zetu waliotuzaa
II. from Homegirls and Handgrenades 1984
“Just Don’t Never Give Up on Love”
Ballad
After Saturday Night Comes Sunday
I Have Walked a Long Time
On Passing thru Morgantown, Pa.
On Seeing a Pacifist Burn
Letter to Ezekiel Mphahlele
III. from Under a Soprano Sky 1987
Under a Soprano Sky
Philadelphia: Spring, 1985
Haiku
Dear Mama
Fall
Fragment 1
Fragment 2
Haiku
Towhomitmayconcern
Blues
Song No. 2
An Anthem
Graduation Notes
IV. from Wounded in the House of a Friend 1995
Wounded in the House of a Friend
Catch the Fire
A Remembrance
Poem for July 4, 1994
This Is Not a Small Voice
Like
Haiku 1
Haiku 9
V. from Does Your House Have Lions? 1997
Father’s Voice
VI. from Like the Singing Coming off the Drums 1998
Dancing
Haiku
Tanka
Blues Haiku
Blues Haiku
Haiku
Love Poem
VII. NEW WORKS
Mrs. Benita Jones Speaks
Morning Song and Evening Walk
For Sweet Honey in the Rock
Aaaayeee Babo (Praise God)
Homecoming
i have been a
way so long
once after college
i returned tourist
style to watch all
the niggers killing
themselves with
three-for-oners
with
needles
that cd
not support
their stutters.
now woman
i have returned
leaving behind me
all those hide and
seek faces peeling
with freudian dreams.
this is for real.
black
niggers
my beauty.
baby.
i have learned it
ain’t like they say
in the newspapers.
Poem at Thirty
it is midnight
no magical bewitching
hour for me
i know only that
i am here waiting
remembering that
once as a child
i walked two
miles in my sleep.
did i know
then where i
was going? traveling.
i’m always traveling.
i want to tell
you about me
about nights on a
brown couch when
i wrapped my
bones in lint and
refused to move.
no one touches
me anymore.
father do not
send me out
among strangers.
you you black man
stretching scraping
the mold from your body.
here is my hand.
i am not afraid
of the night.
Malcolm
do not speak to me of martydom
of men who die to be remembered
on some parish day.
i don’t believe in dying
though i too shall die
and violets like castanets
will echo me.
yet this man
this dreamer,
thick-lipped with words
will never speak again
and in each winter
when the cold air cracks
with frost, i’ll breathe
his breath and mourn
my gun-filled nights.
he was the sun that tagged
the western sky and
melted tiger-scholars
while they searched for stripes.
he said, “fuck you white
man. we have been
curled too long. nothing
is sacred now. not your
white face nor any
land that separates
until some voices
squat with spasms.”
do not speak to me of living.
life is obscene with crowds
of white on black.
death is my pulse.
what might have been
is not for him/or me
but what could have been
floods the womb until i drown.
Personal Letter No. 2
i speak skimpily to
you about apartments i
no longer dwell in
and children who
chant their dis
obedience in choruses.
if i were young
i wd stretch you
with my wild words
while our nights
run soft with hands.
but i am what i
am. woman. alone
amid all this noise.
A Poem for My Father
how sad it must be
to love so many women
to need so many black
perfumed bodies weeping
underneath you.
when i remember all those nights
i filled my mind with
long wars between short
sighted trojans & greeks
while you slapped some
wide hips about in
your pvt dungeon,
when i remember your
deformity i want to
do something about your
makeshift manhood.
i guess
that is why
on meeting your sixth
wife, i cross myself
with her confessionals.
Poem No. 3
i gather up
each sound
you left behind
and stretch them
on our bed.
each nite
i breathe you
and become high.
Blues
in the night
in my half hour
negro dreams
i hear voices knocking at the door
i see walls dripping screams up
and down the halls
won’t someone open
the door for me? won’t some
one schedule my sleep
and don’t ask no questions?
noise.
like when he took me to his
home away from home place
and i died the long sought after
death he’d planned for me.
Yeah, bessie he put in the bacon
and it overflowed the pot.
and two days later
when i was talking
i started to grin.
as everyone knows
i am still grinning.
Haiku
did ya ever cry
Black man, did ya ever cry
til you knocked all over?
Sequences
1.
today I am
tired of sabbaths.
I seek a river of sticks
scratching the spine.
O I have laughed the clown’s air
now my breath dries in paint.
2.
what is this profusion?
the sun does not burn
a cure, but hoards
while I stretch upward.
I hear, turning
in my shrug
a blaze of horns.
O I had forgotten parades
belabored with dreams.
3.
in my father’s time
I fished in ponds
without fishes.
arching my throat,
I gargled amid nerves
and sang of redeemers.
(o where have you been sweet
redeemer, sharp redeemer,
o where have you been baroque
shimmer?
i have been in coventry
where ghosts danced in my veins
i have heard you in all refrains.)
4.
ah the lull of
a yellow voice
that does not whine
with roots.
I have touched breasts
and buildings answered.
I have breathed
moth-shaped men
without seeds.
(O indiscriminate sleeves)
(once upon an afternoon
i became still-life
i carried a balloon
and a long black knife.)
5.
love comes with pink eyes
with movements that run
green then blue again.
my thighs burn in crystal.
Haiku
if i had known, if
i had known you, i would have
left my love at home.
Poem No. 8
i’ve been a woman
with my legs stretched by the wind
rushing the day
thinking i heard your voice
while it was only the nite
moving over
making room for the dawn.
Present
1.
This woman vomiting her
hunger over the world
this melancholy woman forgotten
before memory came
this yellow movement bursting forth like
coltrane’s melodies all mouth
buttocks moving like palm trees,
this honeycoatedalabamianwoman
raining rhythm of blue/black/smiles
this yellow woman carrying beneath her breasts
pleasures without tongues
this woman whose body weaves
desert patterns,
this woman, wet with wandering,
reviving the beauty of forests and winds
is telling you secrets
gather up your odors and listen
as she sings the mold from memory.
there is no place
for a soft/black/woman.
there is no smile green enough or
summertime words warm enough to allow my growth.
and in my head
i see my history
standing like a shy child
and i chant lullabies
as i ride my past on horseback
tasting the thirst of yesterday tribes
hearing the ancient/black/woman
me, singing hay-hay-hay-hay-ya-ya-ya.
hay-hay-hay-hay-ya-ha-ya.
like a slow scent
beneath the sun
and i dance my
creation and my grandmothers gathering
from my bones like great wooden birds
spread their wings
while their long/legged/laughter
stretches the night.
and i taste the
seasons of my birth. mangoes. papayas.
drink my woman/coconut/milks
stalk the ancient grandfathers
sipping on proud afternoons
walk with a song round my waist
tremble like a new/born/child troubled
with new breaths
and my singing
becomes the only sound of a
blue/black/magical/woman. walking.
womb ripe. walking. loud with mornings. walking.
making pilgrimage to herself. walking.
Tanka
i kneel down like a
collector of jewels before
you. i am singing
one long necklace of love my
mouth a sapphire of grapes.
Tanka
autumn. a bonfire
of leaves. morning peels us toward
pomegranate festivals.
and in the evening i bring
you soup cooled by my laughter.
A Love Poem Written for Sterling Brown
(after reading a New York Times article re
a mummy kept preserved for about 3000 years)
I’m gonna get me some mummy tape for your love
preserve it for 3000 years or more
I’m gonna let the world see you
tapping a blue shell dance of love
I’m gonna ride your love bareback
on totem poles
bear your image on mountains
turning in ocean sleep
string your sighs thru the rainbow
of old age.
In the midst of desert people and times
I’m gonna fly your red/eagle/laughter ’cross the sky.
Kwa mama zetu waliotuzaa*
death is a five o’clock door forever changing time.
and it was morning without sun or shadow;
a morning already afternoon. sky. cloudy with incense.
and it was morning male in speech;
feminine in memory.
but i am speaking of everyday occurrences:
of days unrolling bandages for civilized wounds;
of gaudy women chanting rituals under a waterfall of stars;
of men freezing their sperms in diamond-studded wombs;
of children abandoned to a curfew of marble.
as morning is the same as nite death and life are one.
spring. settling down on you like
green dust. mother. ambushed by pain in
rooms bloated with a century of cancer.
yo/face a scattered cry from queequeg’s wooden bier.
mother. i call out to you
traveling up the congo. i am preparing a place for you:
nite made of female rain
i am ready to sing her song
prepare a place for her
she comes to you out of turquoise pain.
restring her eyes for me
restring her body for me
restring her peace for me
no longer full of pain, may she walk
bright with orange smiles, may she walk
as it was long ago, may she walk
abundant with lightning steps, may she walk
abundant with green trails, may she walk
abundant with rainbows, may she walk
as it was long ago, may she walk
at the center of death is birth.
in those days when amherst fertilized by
black myths, rerouted the nile.
you became the word. (shirley, graham, du bois
you were the dance
pyramidal sister.
you told us in what egypt our feet
were chained
you. trained in the world’s studio
painted the day with palaces
and before you marched the breath
of our ancestors.
and yo/laughter passing
<
br /> through a village of blacks
scattered the dead faces.
and yo/voice lingering
like a shy goat fed our sad hungers.
and i. what Pennsylvania day was i sucking dry
while you stuttering a thousand cries
hung yo/breasts on pagodas?
and i. what dreams had i suspended
above our short order lives
when death showered you with bells.
call her back for me
bells. call back this memory
still fresh with cactus pain.
call her name again. bells.
shirley. graham. du bois
has died in china
and her death demands a capsizing of tides.
olokun.†
she is passing yo/way while
pilgrim waves whistle complaints to man
olokun.
a bearer of roots is walking inside
of you.
prepare the morning nets to receive her.
before her peace, i know no thirst because of her
behind her peace, i know beauty because of her
under her peace, i know no fear because of her
over her peace, i am wealthy because of her
death is coming. the whole world hears
the buffalo walk of death passing thru the
archway of new life.
the day is singing
the day is singing
he is singing in the mountains
the nite is singing
the nite is singing
she is singing in the earth
i am circling new boundaries
i have been trailing the ornamental
songs of death (life
a strong pine tree
dancing in the wind
i inhale the ancient black breath
cry for every dying (living
creature
come. let us ascend from the
middle of our breath
sacred rhythms
inhaling peace.
*for our mothers who gave us birth
†Goddess of the sea