Three Odes and Selected Poems - David E Patton

Three Odes and Selected Poems

David E. Patton

Calliope Nerve Media http://www.calliopenerve.blogspot.com

1

Table of Contents Ode to Aimé Césair ………………………………………………1 Ode to Beauty…………………………………………………....10 Ode to Federico Garcia Lorca…………………………………...13 Morning News…………………………………………………...17 All I wanted to do…………………………………………….….18 For the Color Folks………………………………………..……..19 Pregnancy is Walking…………………………………………….20 Beneath the Moon…………………………………………......…21 My Sons Needn’t Pay Homage…………………………......……22 I’m a Bad Mother Fucker……………………………………...…23 Sou City……………………………………………………......…24 Miss Lucy, She’s in that Way…………………………………….26 I’ll Cry No More……………………………………………...…..27 I Went to the Pawn Shop………………………………………....28 You Sho Do Treat Me Good Baby……………………..…………29 Old Mrs. Reagan Told Us to Just Say No………………………...30 Anthony Patton-Burton Wolfrang……………………………..….31 I Would Have Love to do Me Dirty……………………………....33 Mellow Bones……………………………………………………..34 If God……………………………………………………………...35 I Hear a Street Blues………………………………………………36 Portrait of God…………………………………………………….37 Poem Written on Two Lines by Countee Cullen…………….……38 Working for the Woman………………………………………..…39 I Like Sounds………………………………………………..……..40 O Holy God My father…………………………………………..…41 A Midsummer’s Night……………………………………..………42 The Expert Witness…………………………………………...……43 Voodoo Won’t Work………………………………………………..45 Certain Gestures Holding Pure Forms……………………………..46 A St. Louis Tale……………………………………………………47 The Glen Black………………………………………………….…48 Why I want to have Sex with Poets……………………………..…49 The Short of it…………………………………………………..….51 An Atomic Explosion………………………………………………52 I’ve Gotten to the Point in My Life………………………………..…53

2

Black Attack…………………………………………………………..54 In Such an Age as This………………………………………………..55 En Las Tardes………………………………………………………….56 In the Negro Quarters……………………………………………….…57 For Anne Waldman and Reed Bye…………………………………….58 Angel of My Desiring………………………………………………….59 A Love Poem…………………………………………………………...60 A Brush with Papa Death…………………………………………….…61 Fragment and Reconstruction from the Book of Rys……………..…….62 Friends Are Fattening Themselves……………………………….….….63 The Smell of Death……………………………………………….…..…64 I Went Away From Uijonbu………………………………………….....65 Gertrude Stein N Mind……………………………………………….....66 A Place in Your Heart……………………………………………….…..67 If Ten Thousand People…………………………………………………68 The Promise Land……………………………………………………….69 I Slipped on a Dream………………………………………………..…..70 I Keep Droppin My Gs…………………………………………….….…71

By Deep Design………………………………………………….……...72

3

Ode to Aimé Césair The body of a black man is stretched across the sky with stars in his eyes and the band-aid moon on his cheek. All the empires are calling; all wish to overcome their defeat at the hand of time. There in Americus the black men are kept in the closet close to the hangers where a lynched man swinging in the broken wind is reading the Bible that has forgotten how to save him.

The body of a black man is stretched across the sky with its pin point light lit by distant fire telling that there is life in the womb of night. In Americus the children of the Buffalo are crying out but Americus cannot hear then there for she have stuffed her ears with dollar bills that bleed oil across the face of Washington painted in a school on the San Carlos reservation and the Ute are united with the memory of Chief Ouray and the Lenid meteor showers streak across the black man’s body bold and biting at his nipples, bold and bitter by the blood that bleed its beautiful bounty born by the Buffalo’s brother.

The body of a black man is stretched across the night where crime is committed in the heated heart heard by the hard hour of a flower smelling of baby’s babble of mama and dada, papa and the Hungarian’s tata, a tic for a tock runs the baby’s body clock ticking as darkly of any black man’s skin. The baby will come to call himself nigger in a whisper barely heard in the smell of cornbread baking in the freezer where we keep out memories cool, where we want for not the weeping of a good man mending his mind mindfully mining the Moor’s motion mapped and moped by militants marooned in the bloody battle buying its time in the told tall tale of tongues.

The body of a black man is stretched across the night that spreads from the heart of trees dropping their spoils in spoonful to be eaten by the poor with pockets full of the butt ends of commercialism kept in the warm handout of a caution consumerism recklessly wounding the poor penny pinchers who pile their mounding of miseries in a make ready meant to met the mighty monster moaning its mouthful of maturation swollen and swallowed sour and salty as the tears of a baby Baboon.

The body of a black man is stretched across earth where the dealers of stars fluff the telling moon with its stolen light listless and capable of a long lasting loneliness liquid by the last lane leading its facelift given by the 12 hour night neat and nodding its knowable knowledge nipping at the hind end of a new cold cloudy caravel wish with its cumbersome cruel chill that cure its stored craven caravan in the hands and feet of the homeless whose hunger is hurried and hurled from the body into the trash dumpster where their dinner is to be found, full of the heat that hinge the horror hard and high on the wounded hurt hidden behind the honesty of the hind legs of a quarrel quickness of a quirky squirrel quick and quite as the cold is calling the craving cure of a careful crime committed in the criminal hour of the lady St. Louis stretched along the Mississippi. The blacks shall come to piss there, will pour out their pities that have piled pound by pound its pulling at the patriarch that preach to St. Louis a lady of common crimes committed in the common hour. The black man have consummated his union with the Mississippi, he has bathed there and the

4

sweat washed from his skin and the dirt of living as one with the land was washed ashore to create the city.

The body of a black man is stretched across earth spinning without regret its regurgitation of the umbilical cord of air, weather blown over by outrageous winds weeping the lost scent of Isis befriending the slaves who picks cotton from her eyes. All matter of mischief break through when the Gods cry their prayers sobbing like benedictions given in the wee hour of a satanic challenge, sobbing inconsolable its blazes of flesh, sobbing a millennium of membranes, sobbing ‘who am I to say” sobbing the tepidity of an indigent delirious lava that girdle the blue blooded body born by a biting and bitter bully being itself while drinking from a bottle of blue baby’s tears tossed and tinted to time told tall in the tradition of trepidation.

The body of a black man is stretched across the dirt done over and under where the bodies of black children killed by their own rattle their bones with an essential concentration that rush in the Mississippi night hawking its hunger hard and heartfelt as horny as flowers are for bees. The children are killing children, are killing the killers, and are killing with bloody hand they go looking for the great myth of their fathers. The children are playing war in the urban brain with its train of tidal waves rushing pass the vices of their memories dropping like red bricks from an abandoned building torn open by the weight of black birds.

The body of a black man is stretched across the dirt where grows the joyous purple public in October opting out of the splendor of bread and wine giving only on Sunday in the church of Yellow Pine weeping their shadows beneath unforeseeable towns abrupt in their sleep of vague streets lined with shacks restored to their fallen grander. Outside of Brooksville Mississippi, beside the grim of cutwater throated birds the black plow is rusting for want of use, rusting a dirty red the blood soaked hands of killing the meaty land in an exoticism’s pulse. The children are killing themselves with the word nigger; slicing open their throats where fly from them flocks of crows brilliantly bold blue black in their blackness, birds the bully the bull the butt end of being bold children birth by other children.

The body of a black man is stretched across the sky, it is tied down both hands and feet by Christianity less he escape into the obsessive rain whose song is the very ecstasy of a mother God liquefied and dozing its surprises of remembrance of manmade treacheries committed against all but the sun’s force and the cloth that it ware while Willows weep wantonly white and woozy willing to wrap their warm bragging branches around the witness that leaving leaves make in the full fall of the atoms of Autumn always over dress with it dropping of the dressing of all trees and mums low to the girlishness of a grown season seasoned by the northern wind numbing the knowable night nudging the near-by near-sighted needs napping in the never-land we know the knee level legalist knowledge of dogs and guinea pigs and grown ground hogs napping in the shadow of a needed night of sleep. The night creatures fulfill their needs under the flight of night people flying from city to city they enter the eye of the black man nodding his nap near a dream. The black man’s body is as bold in his blackness as the tenacity of a milk weed climb on a chain link fence

5

The body of a black man is stretched across the sky; he is prostrated before the stagnant breath bitten by baboons and bison, boa constrictors and bobcats listening to the last bobtail tight and tugged in a tell-tale tongue fit for the language of the young. When Europe have fallen into white despair that twist its screams as white as virginal milk hatching their overrated pride then will a brighter day come, an astonishing ambition of accumulated systematic confessing shadows of an authentic announcing day will come to the brow beaten land. When the English clothe sleeps in the vomit of the drunken streets full of exhaled fog falling forward fast and firmly, freely and fondly, fluently as smoke from a thousand foundries then and then will a brighter day fall full of the mercies showed to the slaves by Elizabeth dying in her room on morphine, Elizabeth who shall love us best after death. Why do I love thee, let me pray the way. Elizabeth kind to slaves cannot save the black man born bare by the body of his question that he must ask himself “where forth am I the child of the feature God of my fortunes fathers founders of my full faith?”

The body of a black man is stretched across the night where negritude falls from his skin to accused the whites of their aborted sins towering above the jazzy jimson turbulence heard in the boredom drowning its scandals of offense of skin as sable as Cain’s, living out their lives in the fundamental hypocrisy of a race done wrong. Do not weep. Be strong in your Armstrong song. Be hard fisted. Be heard where you have planted your pelvis. Let the children be full of soulful songs suing the strained long histories of being with the whites with their wilted promises of 40 acres and a mule. In them the gauntly complicities of smiles of children; the guilty gusts of children, the empty spaces that they cannot keep will be filled with a horny history hiding its headstrong hornets of honor, it’s his story holding a hug that tell of time told by the rime where an empty child is waiting to be filled with the holy curiosity of broken stones when the mountain convulse and shred the clouds as it rush to the sea that sucks at the sand to remake the beach in God’s image.

The sun is the secret stolen face of God that secretes its simple song of heat and light without our buying by a penny. The wind is God’s face forced full of feathers falling from foul figures who fluid their flight forward finding the rain ever willing to feed the black man’s body born of bold beliefs that he can build bodies upon bodies to reach the heaven of his brother. Be my brother’s bitterly bony body born of his mother’s flesh, be my bold brother that bully the bones of a burdensome belief in a God that built his home in the heated heart harden and hurried, hung and haggard in its hunger for faith that is flung full footed with foolish fortitude filed on the grinning wheel of the cross where is hung the bloody body with nails rusting on the backside as the bebop born to bop you is buying its time by being busy with the business end that concern you when the sea open its depth wide to swallow us.

The body of a black man is stretched across the night, its grotesque fatherhood is the step son of liberty caught between slavery and the crimes of the blood done in the egalitarian rain running round the mulatto who scorched his skin in a tan under the justifiable sun abolishing the rain once prosecuted by the Christian slave holders who supported the vanguards leading the way toward racism taught to children running barefooted between trees of condemned men, condemned by ready rope waiting patiently, by the cottonwood’s strength tarred beaten feathered by pigeons rose breasted grosbeak and by the white wind blowing the jaw bone of its prize. Hear all the lynched bodies that cry “Americus I am your

6

crime never forgotten by the sacrificial tongue! I am the rope burn around your history! I am the hands chained to the machines humming their monogeneses of moans meaning to warn the wayward against wandering into the wilderness where the doing by the hands is all that shall concern thee when the judgment come calling.”

The body of a black man in stretched across the earth, stymied by the iron-fisted absolute human dignity of slaves’ work songs making their escape from the spiritual, songs as poignant and yearning and smart as Brer Rabbit of the city park, the modern American black man is Brer Rabbit incarnate to his American brothers, he is part Africans that flies little by black birds calling massa with a yessuh, yessuh massa ringing down through the extent of his cowardice that war the dices. I am such a man in my right knocked about battled and bullied by bullets born of my heroism fit to be lying down. The socket of my question is simple, discolored and taxing, the very roads of my nose, the lanes of my lips where words play leads to the oldest human heart, the depth of my over exaggerated skin with it propensity for American poverty is born body bold with a Jackal’s justification. The measure of the rhythm of my hair is well kept by the dread locks of Jamaica trees home grown home hammed locks hangs light its new growth girlishly it guard my brain once tamed by the whip that worked my dark flesh under the soiled sun shining like a girlish God grilled and grounded as a great get-through that got the angry rhythm riding the rim round the root of a riot rousted by rust.

The body of a black man is stretched across the earth where rabbits tickling and licking his underbelly are wishing to nature what is needed beneath a map of the nearest knob-nose knowledge found by the opossums that climb up to ride along his back bone. The bats wing his hair. Under his body the animals are working on Tiger’s farm and Leopard woman is chasing Bush cows. The monkeys are tiding bobcat’s tail to the black man’s ankle. The yellow dog is talking to Blackbird and Ringdove about the curse of the birds while Lion and Jackal are saving the rain as Tortoise gives underrated praise. Hyenas are following the elephant’s hips. Hare and Spider are off to visit Spider’s fiancée’s parents in heaven.

Squirrel is robbing Rabbit of his tail. Eagles and hawks are afraid of fowls. Brer Fox and the Tar Baby play awful Mr. Wolf. The Pig is nosing the Baboon’s rear as King Buzzard is spying down. On the body of the black man stretched is the gratitude of an ounce of oozing air odd and odorous in an ounce of offspring owing their ownership of order given to the self assured mark made on the forehead of the faithful followers who kneel on the Bible to pray for foul forgiveness fast with faith found in the future of a formal prayer. The black man cup his hands and drawn them, he is unprepared for the everlasting energy of eternity, for the notion that man shall fall into disuse when the last God leave the earth for better real estate. Yes it shall come to past when the science of the body is all known by the body that holds it. Nature has decreed that there is to always be something of us kept as secret from our self’s the black man cannot fully tell who he is.

The body of a black man is stretched across the dirt that is as dark as him, as crusted with history as a tongue tied into a knot, as stubborn as a child crying for its metamorphosis mother, as carved up as an African mask’s enthusiasm, as bleached a dingy dark by night polluted by light, as right as the need for whiskey in need of a brown paper bag. Both man and dirt hunger the worst that man can do and do again along the sixteen blocks roadway

7

where piety with its spat heretical petty splashing in a pool of conscienceless confederating that is feeding on the considerations pined against the wall of a fragile cannibalistic quarter that deceived the children who hunger for their father who are behind the bars of gratitude in the slaughter house of leisure where the wheels that governs the grinning of its growth gifted with green gravures of the quick quarter. Quite quiet and quick the black man quarrel with himself, he quite on one hand that there is a gilded gifted God of glory and gracious giving of its mercies. On the other in the place of order Nature is the quite God that rules life by her living and loving of the long latitudes of it The body of a black man is stretched across the dirt where the savage death of freedom comp an attitude against the miseries that is a mirage emphatic as being alone in the hideousness of fire’s embrace, burning the collapsed mouthful of fraternal consumption and contempt for the restless fallen hour that morn the conflagration of voices crying out for a singular word birthed out of their ignore. The word was made flesh and from then on was the knowledge of death known. The black man’s soul is tied in a knitted knot knighted by his belief in a foreign God that has broken his heart with the Holy Ghost power held by the pound as a put down near-about where a God knows the color of a race then is he blinded by little babies born the color of wheat, the clears color of sleek, del la soul my amigos.

The body of a black man is stretched across the sky, his human fatigue docile against the Ten Commandment given in a famished year to the ancient itching etching of the souls of the chosen people who thirsted for the unimproved fireworks tormented by the benevolent meant to heal wounds made when man was a child playing God by the fire of the sun that burns the sea form relieving itself on the bleached beach by secrets of frenetic miners of fishes in the water forest growing with generosities found in the mouth of a wayward wave breaking its spectacle of collapsed brotherhood growing modest as morning also breaking when the sun mounting the sky imprisoned by man’s body screaming its convulsions there where the four windows corners of our world wisely will be folded into a compost church where the birds worship their rhetoric rigged round riding the realms ready for the rills, ready to reel in the ancestral dawn’s part of the soul sold sadly and simply shyly to the church where the prodigious tadpoles voyage the sea of their hunger. The black man is built of the dark muscles of reemerging memories, to each baby born to bull the Christ, each body that will taste their taste, each tasting a task, each task taken till time tell the foretold. Youth will old away from its oddness owing an ounce of age edged by the goodness that Gods can do. Youth will gray away its girlishness that guard the grand ground of childlike crimes committed to the completed cooperation of the body. Youth will bend its back to bones and lastly be bury by the bull head bum who built the high rise building back when he was once caught in the everything of anywhere Americus, when he was worthy of the upper middle class caught in the creature comfort of the work a day world. The black man remembers his youth in a land nearly forgotten. He remember the history of the soil, the vegetation the coming of the mulattos. He remember Thebes, Thines and Napata.

The body of a black man is stretched across the night. Who will tear the moon from his naval, who will eat his ripe prick, who will be his prophet at large, who can hold him close

8

around the neck of his missionaries insult, who will and when wean themselves from his nipple and his fountain of tears when climate of his season injury the confidence of his offense? Who is the priest of the pauper piled high with pity and pride, pitted against the pets that paw at human forgiveness? Who can save the poor pulling at his belly where a crumb hurt as a grain of sand turned into a pearl? Who will save the souls of the hungry as sweet as homey honey, as honeyed eyed as the child that sleeps in a box beside the heat vent of the street? Who can save man at the precise moment when hell flood the streets of St. Louis and hang beautifully by the heat of consuming the skeletons that subpoenaed the incrusted monsoon as ancient as the splendid musky and clumsy rain that run riot round the sambo-mosquitos. O black man, O chumbo, O cimarrone, O cimarró O bozale, brothers, brothers all we bother to build our future on your backs, we look back in wonder that you wounded maintained to birth your offspring, maintain against the whip and the 200 lashes that leaked your blood. We know that you are unsung, underrated, unappreciated, underlings of the greater cause you unsung heroes, you common foot soldiers that marched in Salem Alabama in a fat year of dogs and water hose, you who never broke your blackness from your bones, brothers your children have grown to mannered manhood sometime marooned as they mop the halls of justice. O brave and noble race why should we wait to be vindicated at the pearly gates?

The body of a black man is stretched across the night and ten thousand tears shed in one year are filled with minnows that whip their tails in the weight of the wee hour of a hundred years. The electrified concrete and old steel of evil water have lost their confidence in being an accomplice with hands that takes a turn at misleading the satanic challenges that we make against the justice of force for the nostalgic yellowish wash of the delirious sun. O black man, black man, brothers both to bother our busy words, brother by bold blood that leak by brother’s hands. It is as black as black can be. It is as bothersome with it bully ways born of the back biting burses buried in your history. Man has wounded the back of the black man but he endure to endorse the faiths of the Gods The body of a black man is stretched across the earth of compulsion for the last anguish he toss with trembling heart to the old lust of European overrated desires encircled with blood smelling of tea and rum plowing the field where memories are planted to free the history of pulse beating the beautiful egotism of a machine gun unappeased by the obscene dignity precious and filled with accumulated madness heap in the heart of a lost love leaving a trial of blue blooded blood.

The body of a black man is stretched across the earth, he laugh his thunder loud as a proud glory, as a prince of wooden warriors carved by time, warriors that vomit in the hold of a slave ship, warriors that enchant the forest, warriors of weariness found amid the noble adventure recognized by the hard march of men looking to bring home the prize found in their cowardice, warriors in the shape of black fathers marching away from their sons who longs for a hard hand to hold, warriors of the masterpiece of pride untiring the poverty found in the uninhibited industrious cities hiding the defense of machines in the fruit on the tree that droop heavily heavenly with pedantic tears, warriors victoriously wounded by the warriors of slavery fighting in Peru, warriors of Chem at Nowe, at Memphis of old, of old Thinis, warriors of Khufu and Cushites, warriors of the Libyans, the Ethiopians, the

9

Nubian and the Thebans, warriors of the talking drums heard when the Spider that outwitted the rich woman, heard for Mwiundo the little one just born, he walk the baby rivers running, he dance round about the darkness of his skin.

He who went to sleep wake up, he walk calling you home again.

You have no power against Mwindo, Mwindo is the little one born he walks.

He who went to sleep wakes up.

Look, I am playing with my conga scepter .

Though Muisa slay Mwindo And I shall die, Muisa, you are really helpless against Mwindo, Against Mwindo, the little one just born he walks The little one just born he walk toward the city of a hundred gates when black Egypt turned brown and white, when the mulattos came, when the blacks were scattered in a force migration when the whites came, when the blacks was chained with the bloody irons smelling of their names, the chains forged by the hands of slaves to enslave their brothers.

The little one just born he wakes, he walk, he wink at going astray, he weep and wish out a wheeze of praises. The little one just born he walks the city of the common grave when the Christens came to change our names.

The body of a black man is stretched across the dirt and ancestral Christianized tom-toms growing from his skin where cries of treason against the fate of Christianity wilted in the light of nature as the one true God. The lotus eaters are gathering in the lake to be baptized by the bats beating their wings back against the black skin of a sudden pride caught in the order of hands luminous and extremely humble by the thumb that poke itself in the eye of the sun when the bird of prey circle the disorder of the flesh breaking down deep and done drawn and quarter by the whip in the town square fatigued from seeing so much murder done in the name of a God that darken his skin in a desert walk, wandering through the cathedral of sand his aim was to save man but mindful man resisted the salvation of his spirit for the appetites of his flesh in a fat year where the fat of an apple is picked from the tree of carnal knowledge and the fat of the criminal tree is burning back its bark by the bail bondman’s bounty booming its bulky bullwhip by the bee’s building honey combs better then manmade homes of bricks mixed with blood.

The body of a black man is stretched across the dirt, he illuminates the hummingbird’s wings beating back the strong winds that beam the gentle alcoholic quicklime of luminous deafness of a heard germination of femininity, he illuminate the exultation of reincarnated joy of a beautiful prophesy in the form of a beautiful boy spoken for in the temperament of a figurehead unique to the germination of a tyrannical universal hunger that thirst for the drunken blemishes found in the promiscuity humble and yet callused in the muscles that brace the horizon weeping under water. He illuminates the locomotive secret of sorcerers that break the wounds of water flowing it’s deform currents of thirst. He illuminates the trade winds blowing its speech of reasons gaping it’s proclaim strength apocalyptic as a tornado of volcanoes gigantic with blisters. He illuminates the negritude found in a baby’s

10

fist. He illuminates the business end of earth by parasites. He illuminates every star, omnipotent but injured by an enormous bone bloated and bound by pestilence. He illuminates the fat of his liver trapezoidal as second class citizens draping themselves with an unexpected respect for control. He illuminates the white God that tells us to be good niggers to accept our servitude without complaint, to bare our burden as fresh milk midst the udders of a cow holy in the streets of India. We will not willfully listen, we won’t worry wild the wish wontedly to woo the wounded woman who sell herself in the market place of commerce. The whore is nothing without his customers. The corporate whore that sell his wares in the temple, the priestly whore that lust after the altar boy, the priest wishing to sell his flesh for the favoritism of the Gods, the political whore selling his vote to the highest bidder, the military whore selling his body for a change to wage a war, whores of the world they all are young and old alike they fight to maintain their whorish ways, they are all allied owning and the black man is a whore for words strung around his neck like a crusted crucifix drawn and quartered by the whip of smack back licks that tips the tongue tired tone telling time told by the knowable known.

The body of a black man is stretched across the sky he is held captivated by the conquering fire of the sun and the invented motion of the moon. He is breathing for the entire world.

He is reconciled by the exultation of his survival. He is the resentment of meditation on the uniqueness of his sable race rocked by slavery and the religion of fornication that seeks to preserve the tyrannical nation of his intermittencies imposed by a God stolen from his master who taught the Bible with a whip to make the calluses of his laboring hands humble and for free hire by the holy words. He is stretched over the veinlets of trees and the veins of rivers forever running wild till man temporarily take away their force but there is always something wild about the hinged river that overflows its banks and floods the land; something willing to pass on the grim of the mercenary water in the conflagration of spring. The ancestors are gathering to free us from our orders issued by our suppressors, and the warriors who have done the flesh of their lives by the dirt; the joyful jolly of warriors is all that was not taken from us. The indigent throat of warriors drifts its compulsion of membranes like the last train leaving history behind and their whisper of words wave across the great water washing away the girdle wind that confess its confusion invented by the flamboyant roll call of dead name. When the ancestors come calling us to command the fatherhood of our forgettable distant with its counter-thrusts pushed and pulled by a startled bird with its shoulder to the griming wheel then they will come to know their lost fathers. The black man in his darkness is calling forth his black Gods lost to history but have yet to earn an appearance; his Gods are now silent as if dead. As the mask was once a tree as the tree was once a seed, as the seed was once a fruit and that fruit once a blossom things by the precept of time changes and so too Gods die on the human tongue as surely as they sweat from our pores.

The body of a black man is stretched across the sky spilling the scum of freedom from the lungs when the ancestral dawn blooms dangerously close to the closed door that leaves to the marvelous innocence hour where the meat of a flower perform the unlimited dance of desperation. He is that he is buying his freedom with cold cream to lighten his skin like the man in the mirror of mimicking the fair skinned race that ignores him. The black man with bushy hair is howling gigantically at the bronze blazing children falling feet first from his

11

belly when the wee hour full of desolate deceit calls him to task; to harvest the contempt heap upon his back bone like old oak trees in a row whose roots twisted and twined around his body are searching for the true beat of his fatigue heart. His blood rich thirst of hunger is to know the truth of America’s clumsy tenderness of guttural gossip about growing a tail in the midnight hour. In the wee hour rising up from shadows hiding under cars there is to be found the sounds of miniscule fear beating its fist against the gusts of anguish.

The black man is stretched across the night, the only thing that is darker them him. The black man bold in his skin color, bold in his impartial boredom, bold in his hunger for the famine of freedom drenched by the bloated bellies born in the mother land have learned not to fear the dance of drums dazzling the spectacle of his bold blood knowing that it is as ancient as the breath of man.

The black man is stubborn in his blackness, he wear it well in the little cell of incarceration, wear it well as prisoner and jailer of the absurd. His persistent is legendary in its prohibitions, his crimes against himself is the apostate of modem man O brave race of daggers of blackbirds, O exultation of quivering laughter your power is bold by the woman that birth you, O shade of the shadow that hides you in the promises of a heaven of corpses, O bold brothers caressed by the rain the last implacable train of voluptuousness is leaving the station of complete jazz. O beautiful, O bodacious, O blood of my sisters and brothers I salute your authenticity that have endured through the ages.

12

Ode to Beauty O beauty, beauty the great boundaries of your cutting blaze is the throat that preach the holy way known to the souls lost in the armpit of a shriveled city where what remain of the overgrown growth hoping to gain a foothold is the resistance of the concrete to mother the motion of grass. Beauty you are my Venus of ashes, my cold sealing wax of new graves dug in the palm of my hand. Beauty you are the seawater breathing hundreds of gills full of tears that rush upon the breach of my thighs. You are a mountain of heavenly lies ancient as finding yourself struggling encased in a plastic drop. You empty the sky. You are the sleepless skeleton that we pray by, lay by, and in vain wait by, and you are the tongues that speak of the proslavery of children born with a gun in their hands when only they can defend the beauty of the sun.

O beauty, beauty shall I kiss your hair that hides the summer birds, your cheeks flush with worm’s blood grounded in a gorge grinning its grain gorgeously by the geese’s cries? Shall I keep you safe in my breast pocket of tenderness taught to the young who keep their youth tight between the shoreline of their fingernails? My pockets are filled with gravity, yours with the rose’s thorn fit for making torn love’s fluency bleed with the blood of angels who worship at the chemist’s shoulders.

O beauty, beauty forever defying the whispering motion of who you shall call to task, you are my hands I take them from you, you are my legs mad with your strength, you are my eyes eating the quite, low mourning of an exquisite cry, you are my melancholy telegram issued by the governor of cold fishes, none is your equal for everything is caught in the tail wind of your pulverized breath. O beauty, O moon the same, O sun that drain away beauty’s face from the terrify cover of everything caught within your middle age grace where the rivers runs like deserted streets sweep by a wind lost in the corroders of the landscape of the city. You bite once you have bitten the body. You build after buying time by the barrels full of the yearning of the soul shown by the complexities of poetry; your show of words that woo words.

O beauty, beauty when will you be washed away, when will you cub your waves, when will you taste the equilibrium of gunpowder used as your shade against the musical muscles of the brave? When will you remember the wreckage of eyeglasses and the millions of pigeons that people the accommodating sky? When will you free us from the machines delirious by your perfume, fragile by a blue perspective that sleeps in a circumcision?

When will you sing the signs of the cross when the newly created Mr. Ross sees your beauty but still doubt that you are but an illusion an ill fit fixed to beauty that claims itself by the homeless man that eats pizza crust from the dumpster found just around the corner from Beauty and Time, both fade fair. The beauty found in the black man’s hair and the beauty that loves a man in a uniform alongside the beauty that uniform a nation. Beauty you are the hard half behind my hidden horror hiding haunch and huddled within your marrow.

13

O beauty, beauty you are the tambourine of my memory, you are the bare back black boy that builds industry nursing at the breast of the Mississippi ignorant of St. Louis. Few are your column of comrades, few who will weep at the gasoline of your feet, you are the first fire fruit eaten, and you are the nudity of a Sycamore leaf falling at the crack of dust dawning; the split opening in night hiding under cars. No one will avoid you. Many seek to repeat your delight, yes many; the given boy and they gave to girl that plays at prostitution, even your enemies with the sleeplessness of their hurtful poison are sons and daughters of your bitter beauty born in the belly of a burned beast roasting its nude pillow beside the bride of breeze in branches.

O beauty, beauty, solitary in the public squares where classical pagan pigeon outwit man with their inscription writ in feather. O beauty you are the museum of mirrors where-in is seen the unforgettable statues of intimate tree trunks and your timeless blushing beauty that burse the brute who buried you in the muzzle of a gun. Awake O beauty with your genuine antiquity of tongues, awake my dark haired lover of the enormous weight of water. Awake you furiously abandoned science of ignorant. Awake you rusty secret held in the blood of poets that cry your suggestive wisdom, your voice is caught in the equilibrium that probes the motion of a child on the run.

O beauty, beauty you are to me as the common water that runs in my veins, a blessed thing.

You are to me as the as the light of my design to praise thee. O beauty may you ware out your shoes on the tongues of the poets, give them the time to tell tall tales told timidly in defiance to your beauty born in the belly of a baby building it body bold by the bodache breath of a newborn’s grip. Beauty, my baby my body my bones my budded you got my back with it bold black just tight in beauty it tugs tight when the sun is tall to tell the time tired to a whisper. O worn wise willing beauty of the world when will you woo the woman wearing the woody wind. Beauty you are kin to a kind of kindling used to break the beauty of a mistress that calls poets to ball the bouncy and bully the bulk of their beautiful words woven with winds willing to wild the beauties that are bruises on my skin. You are the everything of my memories that cannot master your beauty. You are the hard work of the flesh; the quick hand of a raccoon that commits seduced suicide behind the wheel where the lust of greed that guard the grin reaper’s beauty is telling time till the beauty of a tongue taught to teach the young that knows less beauty the beauty of being born.

O beauty, beauty the blind roses are in bloom, the mute noon is in bloom, the loose noose blooms in the desert. Beauty cut me loose with your terrifying news of how the shirt drinks the blood of a fatal blow, there is beauty there, in the grave yard where the wind steals its way across the goodness of a given grave and the crows calls out beauty and the robins catches it worm where the dead ones lays beauty gives no judgments in its play. O beauty when will you slash me open and peel back my skin to let beauty in? When will you cut a tear in two to have me love you? When will you prim the trees that grow from my fingernails when the beauty of the Gods has forgotten to pray their praises. With cut-throat precision you feed me, flee me, keep me hard, headedly you teach me. Beauty you are O beauty, beauty we cry out to you as a wounded leaf to the wind, you are the murmuring landscape of our target, you who were murdered by the astonishment of nocturnal desires

14

held in the knife hand of a fluid compliant against the Gods who have abandon all the little animals within your arms. You are the evident of your epidemic. You are the ecstatic insistency that hesitate and tremble your strangle suffering of the heart that harvest a profusion of miracles held in a pleasing face, the non-evasive face utterly beautiful as to ensnare the criminal from his extraordinary deeds done down by the disheveled docks doped by trash. O beauty, beauty stripped of the anger of forgotten things, beauty delicious as atmosphere and flamboyant as the free odor of the triumphant sexual desires, cavernous and corrosive that commands thee. O beauty, beauty born in the baby’s breath bathed by the boisterous bounty of their growing body, I boast of you born bare bathed by the eyes. I am your frantic fan who worships with the tongue and I hold none as your equal; none can match your make free for the world to see, you, yes you are all that matter my mother, my bride, my lover. My male mate made more beautiful by the moment that moves across the moans of the moon. I salute you.

15

Ode to Federico Garcia Lorca O Federico, now long in the limbs of your death the boys who set by the big muddy Mississippi river and dreams that the river is nude are damned by the selfish love of the would be misunderstood righteous bastards who people the eight points of the cross, damned to Hell to Purgatory To the Naraka of the Buddhist, to the Dya of China, to the Duat of Egypt, to the Niflheim of Germany, to the Hades of Greece, to the Jahannam of Islam To the Jigoku of Japan, to the Gehennom of Judaism, and to the Yomi of the Shinto O Federico, the river is forever making love to the banks that runs like children caught in the shadow of the moon and your statue in the Plaza de Santa Ana is suffering from the depression of a red kerchief used to blow the nose of an evil butterfly O Federico, only the worms knows where your body is to be found where between cities are your bones, still I shall tell you what is up. The blacks are at it again mining the history of the whites to fit in.

O Federico, the boys in their wedding grown are making love to the psychedelic fantastic realism of the machines that calls our names while the wheat fields are attacking the crows dressed up in their Sunday feathers, only the best for the best, only the finest for the crows staled passerine.

O Federico, only the Blackbirds knows the secret hiding place of the mid night Sun God that war against the stars when the sky falls and collect in the gutter where the homeless are fishing, but the wisdom of the rain will not feed them, will not fend for them, will not issues its cleaning praises heard above the insistence propaganda of thunder.

O Federico, the boys are going home from the midnight last call wounded by the alcoholic art of the drunken poets who have given over their sex to the denial of the church that Jesus smelled his own musk in the desert walk and longed for the flesh of other when nobody slept. No-no nobody is asleep beneath the cooling heat of the light of misplaced stars, nono nobody.

O Federico, the river is bloated like a known nude corpse long in the bourbon color water where turtles are nibbling at the knees of a quiet pain and the shadows of trees are dancing in the rain to the dehumanized music of machines use to keep us young and sane.

O Federico, Dya exist in the eye of a butterfly, Naraka exist in the bodies of worms, Duat can be found in the blood soaked proboscis of mosquitoes. Niflkeim exist in the mist of a fart traveling through the body of a dark cloud hung from the stars. The deep body of Tartarus exists in the place within the manifested yawning void of the holy chaos of a lost God beating his cross against the primordial night, three layer s deep that it cannot weep or fight back against the assault of the moon. Diyu is imprisoned by Yanlao Wang who also imprison the Devil until the time he atone for the greedy sin of the sane who pitch a penny

16

to the homeless drunk on the rain and dancing down the Shirley Temple stairs beside the dark footsteps of a hoofer wide eyed ya! Federico, the black are at it again with wide grins and bugged eyes the stereotyped southern draw dancing the jazzy Hot Mikado.

O Federico, the sky is sweating into the river that brush against St. Louis along Broadway where muddy white kids are dreaming of Bo jangles running backward in a forward world.

O Federico, the machines are at it again eating the flesh of workers who have made money and credit the new found God, whose breath smells of plastic and oil mined off shore in the gulf of disbelief where the water is stained and stagnate by the blue breath of fishes washed a shore to be a play thing to boys who care nothing for the sex to be found under the skirts of girls dreaming of changing their minds and the natural aperture of their sexual appetites.

O Federico, the whites are at it again enslaving the rivers that runs like vein in the body of mosquitoes sucking the blue blooded notion that the poor are poor because someone has to be lost in the economic currency of the state.

O Federico, O Garcia Lorca, O proud poet who never hid your sex in the button up coat of a brown skin night walking the dingy dark streets of Madrid where the Manzanares smelling of the Moors who lost their ethnological value to the history of brandy skin in oceanic melanin of the protist pigment sleeping sickness of a tsetse fly in the dark country.

O Federico, a river of machines is humming and buzzing busy as bees buying their time till they flood-fill the thimble of the Gods’ desires be fulfilled, the Gods will sew together the slender bodies of pubescent boys playing and bathing in the suggestive lake of Whitman’s desires, out of the cradle endless rocking in the river that washes over their bodies tinted by a love that dear not speak its name in the crowed fields of the sexual insane.

O Federico, O my Spanish lover of words kept in the breast pocket of Generacion del ’27 the Ultraist shall follow you pass the unmark grave where your statue is a cenotaph erected by the guilt of the living who claim you in death. Your dark eyes are full of the boy’s desires toward the muzzle of the bed where the blushing wounds weeping its wreckage of flesh is the music of a man’s muscles meaning to entice you out of your silent.

O Federico, peaceful ruler of words like a fox you mapped the landscape of New York with your bowtie around its neck and the Blacks welcomed you as if you were a long lost child come home to the dead river running round the neck of the lynched flesh hanging from a southern Cottonwood.

O Federico, O Garcia, O Lorca, O lover of boys loco for the flesh of men, O Maricas you cut a fine figure of a handsome man, your figure bounded by the beauty of words washing over the ages that got lost in the everything river made by time, wet with rimes, ripped with the sexual desires of fishes, ripe with righteousness riding on the grim of the public water where secrets are held deep in the currents. Your river of poem rush in between my thighs and I can but smile to absorb your poetic wisdom beneath my skin. Let my breath make

17

love to your poems. Let my meandering mind make crazy love to your words that tremble on my tongue like the tenderness of violins O Federico, like Whitman we are liken in ways beyond our art; beyond our habit to the pen, our love of men, our singular want of the taunt flesh tight on the bones, we will not study war no more but forever love, we will not praise the Gods of willing wars walking the battle fields where youth is murder by the muzzle of a gun, the new toys of black boys hiding in their skin.

O Federico, my comrade, my hermano. Ay hermano! Ah, arrest that I follow into the bars where words are sweating from the forehead and chest of the boys dancing shirtless on the dance floor to the back beat of a fish simmering toward the sexual bump and grind of their passion.

O Federico, the gays are at it again meeting in the drunk wooded parks they keep their sexual desires zipped up till a stranger’s hand release their passion held in the loins they suck the darkness of spoiled sons never to be born, fresh sperms are swimming pass the tongue.

O Federico, I remember the time Ginsburg kissed me and I sucked the poems on the tip of his generous lips, his genius was in being kind and concern for the heath of the world, he was tender to the boys who stood naked before his aging flesh, they kept him young; a sort of youthfulness that reside beside the wisdom earned by one living in their time.

O Federico, I remember walking along side Burroughs with his silent cane tapping on the walkway of Colorado University toward a peyote trip swimming in my head, we were silent but I heard the clouds speaking in the slow draw of Burroughs’ St. Louis voice adding up the machines one by one, the murderous clouds came alive with orange and crimson rain and the crime of the day arched over the setting sun and the late August moon looked down perplexed that two St. Louis writers could lose themselves in silent.

O Federico, Hell is at it again enticing man to do his worst, the rivers are at it again draining the land of its worth, the boys are at it again gathering in the sexual darkness where the secrets of the sexes plays out their desires. The sky is at it again weeping, weeping exquisite silent as if it was the blush of a young man. The machines are at it again rotating their grinning noise to the whisper of clouds and the lost desires of boys who drop their pants before the face of the government. The blacks are at it again rapping the words of the sexual Gods caught in the headlight of MTV. The whites are at it again pushing the American way of submission to the highest order found in the purse of a dormant race that bares the black man’s burden O Federico, O my flesh skinned beauty O my dark haired lover I shall teach your wisdom to the youngsters. I shall forever praise your name in the streets from St. Louis to Denver; from Boston to San Francisco and the boys of industries shall find comfort between the legs of their misplaced desires played out in the bed of warm darkness where they are dreaming of Whitman. O my poetic mentor the machinery’s rhythm with its agony of

18

sleeping winds has taken control of tobacco color Americus and the dusty delirium of a sexual act infinite and falling from the marrow of sweat formed in the fable that shall wrap its arm around the waist of your poems I love you forever.

O Federico, O father the futures of your words I too bent what is said. O fugitive of what is read the red reality ride the ribbon real rail ready and giddy by the girlish gush that grow on the skin of our mistrust. Here is the truth of the warring colors. Here is the fox of your name, here the New York of your labor that plays out upon the stage. Garcia guides me, glue me gifted in his wisdom woven round the wrong doing that I did in words. Wisdom sue me to understand, cash my coins of pens used to write the salt of a tear.

19

Morning News 1 The body of an unidentified automobile Was found to be carrying Saturday Morning after it ran a stop department In the St. Louis metropolitan area.

Traveling at a high rate of speed The 25 years old automobile was shot And wounded by the police As it speed westbound just south of 5:45 a.m.

St Louis gave chase, firing several shots At the fleeing highway.

It is reported that the estrange automobile Was mechanically wounded That it hit a road sign, then a tree And lastly overturned spilling spring Out over the city Clean up is expected to continue for the next three mouths.

2 Body of unidentified Black man about 25 Was found Sunday morning In a north side trash dumpsite Shot in right arm, shot in chest Strangled with a tie, lift around his neck Red and brown intercepting lines, wide cut Out of style, heavily stained One toe unfound, athlete feet at its worst One finger cut through, nails full of dirt Where grew a young peach tree bent toward earth.

20

All I Wanted to Do All I wanted to do Was to love you Yet my black folks Can be so cruel When I don’t subscribe To their adopted White man’s rule

21

For the Color Folks for Pat Black folks make yellow Look like it was meant to be And red, like it just gonna Jump out at you on the streets Green ain't never been greener Save for through and thorough leaves And blue is so cool on black skin Lord you think it’ll snow at 90 degree.

You know I think that God must have made Color just for showing off black folks Cause a black woman in white is a definite win And distant stars without blackness just ain’t got no kind of light And you know that gold can have no richer glow Then against our darkest skin.

Now white folks in the sun just can’t keep From turning black But they go around peeling -can you imagine that!

I say that God sho made color for showing off black folks Because we go together like the guest and the host.

22

Pregnancy is walking Pregnancy is walking through High schools now Cocked legs and Cock cocks too Condom, you say They will get them When their need them But boys that young Are day dreaming Of being men And have just begun To experiment with skin.

23

Beneath the Moon 1 Cold spotted rain fall Puddle ripple the moon Alley cat hunched under Tipped over waving pool.

2 In the air His perfume In the wine glasses The blushing moon.

3 Hand of a cloud Milking the moon Of all its yellow Its light And old ash.

4 Beneath The moon If God Puts Its Hands Around me Will I find Dirt in Its nails?

5 In each city Wild Irish Rose Will float with MD 20/20 vision To show you the Night Train To the Thunderbird Drunk on the moon

24

My Sons Needn’t Pay Homage My sons needn’t pay homage To the Statue of Liberty Her back have always been turned We saw not the light of her torch But the shadow of her raised hand Her unbroken lips never spoke Her copper ears never heard That behind her for years Were voices yearning

25

I’m a Bad Assed Mother Fucker I’m a bad assed mother fucker Who would rather fuck fathers And if you think it reflects badly on our race Wait!

I’m still capable of producing children Tho it won’t end my father fucking ways Now hold on If’n I was as bad as I make out to be I wouldn’t use the word fucker to tease, Bad ass fuckers are cruelly direct Cuss them out, they think you’re Having trouble breathing Come on up- slice you open Let in all the air you ain’t needing But I was born into a bad assed fucking world Sharpened my teeth on the western St. Louis streets Armored my heart with the petrified cotton dust From the lungs of my gramp Thicken by blood with U.S.D.A cheese And powder milk supplement Build my muscles on canned meat Feed my brain on Jack and Jill I’m a bad assed fucker who’ve been fucked Without pleasure received Wait, wait, wait one fucker’s minute I’m degrading that subtle increase In body heat I’m profaning that sweat rapture In ecstasy I’m blaspheming the other side of man’s spiritually But you see it’s a bad asser’s attitude It’s a fucking make believe A reaction to being mind fucked for centuries

26

SOU CITY In the wake of Kali’s second range The 40s 50s gave my home town boy Burroughs, William, Billy B beat Kerouac belling out to 60s’ hip-hip-hippies turned Abbey’s yippee into 70’s puppies and 80’s yuppies turned 90’s rap a hip-hop black.

BE WITH YOUR BOP BABY Human beat box blackening down the street of sou-cent-city St. Louis’ hippies section now yuppies’ trinkets of big cookies and silk flowers More concern with antiques then the homeless on the streets.

BE WITH YOUR BOP BABY Come on home Burroughs, run away as Elliot or driven as Tennessee, come on home and see the few bent back against night worshipping Sivas’ prick in the Cosmic dance of swallow.

MY BOP BE BOPPING ON ME BABY In this season of spate rain that coats, glistens, connection rivulet crack my spinal bones into a paralytic snip!

O’ St. Louis we are but a few who will decry the horror of our home O’ city of my birth you have sucked up my anger in to your neutralizing laughter O’ St. Louis, O’ saint on the river O, skull-capped cathedral mosaic on Lindel O, ninth Louis king long dead by the Seine O, park side horseman with your bronze sword O, Chouteau’s town the heavy eyebrows; I spa tho Spaniard and American long knives paved A road of wet bones to your bank back when they called you San Luis Del Yllinois Now you boast of wide you throw open your gate O, St. Louis I see the bones faces under your streets dressed in French names - Pierre Chouteau, LeCled, Carondelet, Clair, Florissant Creve Core, Frontenac, Lac Du Bois, Des Peres, Dupo, Giradadeau Yet I know you St. Louis, chemical coffin city of macaroni and beer Know that deep in your pockets are the brick harvester’s hands you hide O, city of my birth in this your two-hundred twenty-fifth year I lament with Breath lost between my love and dislike of you, for your earth section have Vibrated with the first cut of my trembling legs Your trees have felt the stretch of my youngest muscles, your air through Mama; then I the full moon of her belly heard your rain echoed as her Mississippi Blood pumped.

27

O, St. Louis I am of you as you will not be of me; my love against the hard birth Of our spirit against the quick hands of our lawmen against us.

Your air fill me with words that sting as acid mist inhaled thorough my noise Or swallowed pass the tongued and I rebel against our poverty as sure as if your Slums grow as parricide on my skin Yet I do not wish parricide of my riparian city For it is not the Bremadagrass or Creeping grass bent low against the wall Not the Starling, Blue jay or Sparrow’s red cedar nest where egg white drips on Ash-green needles, it is not your land; velvet leaf growing from the bricks of Your abandon building or the blue of low cropped Day flower wild in a vacant Lot nor the homeless in their home-city town who are suffered upon Your blacks you have trample on Your lower Southside Dutch Town, white kids muddier then the Mississippi Racing pass their doors The descendant of the Little Osage know your oppression one-hundred years more.

O, St. Louis, city of my birth, your wayward son, the mama’s boy have come Home with the dust of Boston brushed from my shoes.

Come with open arms I find you awakening from your long sleep into decay, You’re stretching your long limbs alone the Mississippi while the bed sores of your northern side still fester.

O, my love, my hatred, city of my birth look into the people we are your Mirror; see yourself clearer then there in the Mississippi muddy by the Missouri.

28

Miss Lucy, She’s in that Way Miss Lucy, she’s in that way Gonna have it now most any day O Miss Lucy who’s that child She say “fool, this here child’s mine” O Miss Lucy, the daddy be?

She say “Joe Blow been touching me” Now Joe Blow is a friend of mine Aunt seen 'em for quite some time Called him on the telephone He say “man, I’ve been alone There ain’t no baby that I own” O Miss Lucy say I Joe says no Miss Lucy say “Its Joey’s tho “ But back Door Joey is a friend of mine Three years now that boy been darning time O Miss Lucy whose it be, done told Two lies, don’t make it three Miss Lucy say “ Its God own child” Let the truth be known O Miss Lucy is in that way Gonna have it most any day.

29

I’ll Cry No More I’ll cry no more, I’ll cry no more I’ll scream no mouth swollen open for swallowing Night’s air wet with the warm steam of the streets With stars popping out as chill bumps On the skin of the sky With neo-circular moon yellowish in its fullness And excited gaseous neon particles glowing In their frenzy.

I’ll scream no more the trembling day air aflutter With red breast and red winged blackbird’s sound All rushing into me while you’re In my rose, my rose gone blind Welcoming the sum of your sons from you spitting eye.

I’ll cry no more but arch my black back Back against the black of night and clutch Grass grounded to its roots in this arching earth While your erect prick of a humming bird’s tongue In the reddish rose.

Sweat dancing on your chest and the sweating air Sweet between us -sweet between us Scrotum swing against in the hold-on rhythmic roll Of rocks to explode- your long o-o-os your whooos-breezes Sounds that cool my back in a city lost wind come home I’ll sing your sighs in poems And cry cries no more.

30

I Went to the Pawn Shop I went to the pawn shop To get some coins But the man turned me down Say he don’t take nothin’ broken Especially black hearts From out of town.

31

You Sho do Treat Me Good Baby You sho do treat me good baby Treat me good now that I’m gone I say you sho do treat me good baby So good now that I’m gone I remember when I was around baby You ran me right into the ground Now I passed away four days ago baby And now looking from my heavenly home I see you crying at my funeral baby Crying like life done done you wrong O girl, you’re just too damn good to me baby Too, too good now that I’m gone If’’n I was back down there with you baby You would be kicking- kicking me all over town.

All my friends I see there baby Partying hardy at my wake And you won’t touch a lick of liquor baby Say you suffering a hard heart ache

O you are just too damn good to me baby To damn good now that I am gone If’n I had somebody as good as you baby You know that I never would have gone and died at all.

32

Old Mrs. Reagan Told Us to Just Say No Old Mrs. Reagan told us to just say no To the snow white girl, the rock candy cloud, The smack boy horsing Mary Jane in the love boat.

But white powder and is o so sweet to kids That get the green back bucks from the streets.

15 years old can make more money than her dad Dad out there guarding the homes of rich folks, More than mama who have given over her soul To an absentee landlord, otherwise called God More than sister-woman pushing chemical infested burgers at the Mc. More than brother-man poor black ass teaching capital addiction To the disinherit who see every day of his life The snow queen riches smiling down from billboards Or hear the TV queen an advertisement king Screaming Buy Me, Buy Me, Buy Me! You ain’t shit without my sense, without my hair care, Without my car style, without my bony thin look in a size six You ain’t clean without my Tide clothe line fresh or My sunlight in a bottle with its lemon fast cleaning formula My cloud soft toiler paper for cleaning your ass, You ain’t healthy without my low calories, low salt, low fat You ain’t a man without my Brut super dry extra strength, Buy 2 get one free to put every woman at your feet You ain’t popular without my brand of beer You’re funky if your breath don’t smell of Scope original mint .

Now scope this, capitalism thrives on addiction Or is it that addiction thrives on capitalism?

33

Anthony Patton-Burton Wolfrang Anthony, how white is heaven, clouds are the whiter with grey belly storms of cement dust and coffee grounds Brewing morning in the urban dome.

How green is heaven, leaves are the greener Callow trees sparsely placed in the concrete raving Causey to the South Platte River.

How blue is heaven, sky the bluer Coal-fly ash and red brick powder flakes up a purple dawn Blue pressure on fish’s eye is oily float and phosphate foam.

How black is heaven, holder of the morning star Heaven how red, dogwood berries How yellow the primrose petal How iridescent male mallards’ feather Anthony P.B. Wolfrang One little, two little, three little in the rain Sleeping in a tree hollow, in a rocky cave Under viaduct over the South Platte, sniffing aerosol They hang their lives to the broken name One little, two little, three little tribes Cut their skies on an eagles’ feather ride And land scream to see her native born Die and die time told by bones that bore Porcupine quills, beads, and hair long.

Anthony and no harmony of selves Earth scream Arapahoe-Cheyenne sun-dance cries And alcoholic Sioux suicide drop Wolfrang to the Wind River madly running in Wyoming Why not on me Anthony Earth scream, sky pulls its’ hair Tear at eyes, beat head against Denver Sun hide from heaven’s laughter, clouds hunch Their backs and attack their reflection hung In the office building’s artificial sky Anthony!

I’ve come from the streets of Milwaukee,

34

Seen your tribe-men sitting in the shadows of Miller’s Valley Burping the stale air of beer and wintering over steam Vents of the streets while Pabst immigrants were Cozy in their blue ribbon homes of White Fish Bay.

I've come from the streets of Boston, seen Your tribe-men choked dust democracies bricks For the commonwealth of Beacon Hill.

I’ve come from the streets of quaint Saint Louis Its slums grew as parasites on my skin -that Sou-cent city Of the Mississippi, treaty city of Sac and Fox I’ve touched the stone that touched the thieving Hands of patriarch William Clark I’ve comes from the streets of Denver by way of the bad lands Where I saw the bad assed buffalo burger bite in the Black Hills Here under the stained aluminum sky of this Mile high city bent at the Moon Shell River Anthony, your blood swims toward the Wind River Reservation In life Anthony, I’ve come half and you full Your breath smelling of glue have come to the Hunting ground long since happy Yourself hunting yourself Hunting in this white heaven, cloud heaven of leaves Of sky heaven, until on you Anthony, harmony.

35

I Would Have Love to do Me Dirty I would have love to do me dirty To mud me over in earth To tangle me in roots Strong as limbs twisted bout My hips, To bury me in warm sand -tide lapping between my thighs To bloom irises from my tongue To roll me grit, chalk, clay’s muggy musk Mississippi creek water swelling roughly Wet with life birthing love -busted open!

I want’na be stormed over by love Drenched till each pore drown in its own ecstasy Drained and dripped dried to swell again Plumb as caucus’ flesh Prickly and erect, punched by love.

36

Mellow Bones Wrap your shroud In blue cloth It’ll keep it from Turning yellow And when you’ve laid With it for many years Your old bones will be mellow.

37

I Hear a Street Blues I hear a street blues Moving thru St. Lou Who do you belong to who-do Ears move long to Hear a street blues Who do you do to

38

Portrait of God It’s breath smell so foul With the circle of life and death That my nose chokes Within five life years of Its present It’s eyes so bright that I see Darkness where there is light It’s thoughts so crowed That I’m madden by Its noise It’s memory so awesome As to burn me from my boney core It’s spirituality so great that My atoms explode into suns It’s sexual urgency make Pregnant ovaries of my pores And I birth convulsive burning Chain reaction pain is pleasure, pain again Life crawls out from the grave yard Of my skin, pleasure slashes me open And trees sucker in.

My nose swell with the corpuses Of the dead, canker engross my genital It explode alga rivers and Kidney stone mountain Whales swim in my semen And in God there is no division Only the inherently packed core of contradictions From which we draw out A square to call reality And justify our human instance.

39

Poem Written on Two Lines by Countee Cullen You marveled then As many do now At the curiousness Of the thing That after two-hundred years On the freedom-go-round We find that the Brass ring has always Been bolted down.

40

Working for the Woman Sun offered me the job Of speaking of its wonders It’s wonder my payment The easiest of spends Moon employed me, night shift mostly “You job is to write of the union between us the union between us your payment only”

Death hired me in public relation My death as payment paid in the end.

41

I Like Sounds On my tongue Hunam, Canton, Pusan Saigon, Managua aqua water Phonon Penin In and out of my mouth, Phonon Penh Khmer Rouge; a fine red mare Except to those intellectuals who read the words Bullets bloomed red in their chests Hunam, a meditative sound fold-holding my breath Who in know, question asked.

Canton, container catching green rain Tin can kwang-chow of chu kiang American Pusan, a sigh within calmness Pus- after sex bubble up -San from the sea of Japan, Nippon!

42

O Holy God My Father For Emma Patton O holy God my father I raise a song to Thee.

When I get up in the morning My soul began to sing.

There is power in Thy name My soul will let it ring O holy God my father I sing this song to Thee Thy name will heal the sick, Will calm the troubled mind, Will strengthen the weary stranger My savior’s name divine When I get up in the morning When I lay my head to rest I will worship Thee in song From deep within my breast.

43

A Midsummer’s night The north side of St. Louis Like its sister across the river; Boggy-city of the Mississippi Is kinking in the fervid scorch Of the city’s night.

There’re black youths on-a window pose, Leaning against doors, kicking up and Down the stained pavement, and Propped against walls.

Some, their alcoholic bodies that Two hours ago were hip-hop rapping To the beat of human sweat and heat Collected with cigarette smoke against The dance hall’s ceiling sways or stagger To reestablish their balance.

I wonder if in this wack-crack water night If there will come disagreement when liquor Speak and releases the hidden beast that poverty Birth in the poor, the repressed, the thrown away, The discontented young blacks who through the boiling Day air held their tongues against emptiness Packed so thick within them as to hiss from The pores of their skin, like air forced out From the corners of our eyes, or, will they remain Suffocating in the dried red-brick powder air Like the aged ones locked inside these heat packed Homes, where plaster falls from the walls To expose the fragile wooden ribs And wounded hearts, Cell by cell wasting apart.

44

The Expert Witness I’m the expert witness Witnessing to all I’m the director I’m testimony I’m the commentary Scientist expert Technician, politician Expert on candidates And bars of soap.

I’m the expert On who you what You were when you Will be and why You wanna buy.

I’m the expert craftsman Poet and theology I’m expert on loyalty To church and state And tooth paste I’m expert on The soon to be dead Dying a death They never died before.

I’m expert on the hand of a cloud And man sleeping near Boone pond Expert on upper air skipping stones And crow’s shadow over harvest fields of Missouri I’m expert on unrehearsed thoughts And broken neck of baby robin On the shagginess of skunks And the significant of standing Buddha With leaves on its shoulders I’m the expert witness On cats and catholic boys

45

On Central City‘s rain soaked coffins On limestone’s effect on the Kankakee On the effect of magazine ad On the housewife while she is doing laundry I’m the director of scientific knowledge Without vision.

I’m the testimony of separation.

Segregation and insemination Expert on shoe size, on the personality of perfume And brown angels who will tease your throat to sing.

I’m expert on the thickness of sawing thread Expert on the frequency of sensual thoughts During the fourth year of celibacy I’m a testimony of masturbation Expert on training the penis to lie down.

I’m expert sexual in do windows Expert on sensual outer clothing.

Expert on blow job Politician of snow job.

I'm the expert witness Witnessing to all Expert on accident reconstruction and juvenile violence On vocational evaluation and rehabilitation On occupational physician and medical toxicologist On geochemistry and forensics psychologist.

I'm the expert witness witnessing to all Going on beneath the dine size moon.

46

Voodoo Won’t Work Not if I sprinkled dried powder heart of Humming bird on his sleeping body Would that man love me Not if I slept with his tobacco-colored hair Under my pillow and rubbed love oil in my right hand And still kept pieces of wood in my pocket Would that man love me Not nine ribbons blue or red tied in a bag Calling his name with each fold not nine bags hidden Under a rug or behind a door Would that man love me Not poetry sung between full moon and his bedroom window Not me masquerading as his lover Not Pepsi, cigarettes, crest or calling his long distance.

47

Certain Gestures Holding Pure Forms Certain gestures holding pure forms Profess the most feared demon of the corn.

Earthy spirits from a woman’s occasion; One victim of the misfortune labor Gives birth of Gods and justice born To the chill of midwinter Christmas morn.

Come my saints and demons dear Hear the jeering of the ass’ ear For drama be where heaven lay its temporary Judgment till that day when nothing But the aspect of father and son’s evidence, Warrants earth destruction for kingdom to come.

Take no Gods who will not dance, Will not drag your heat through the streets Then collect it in their hands to eat.

Come, let us arrive to that animal that we are; Ashes of goodness and evil’s bones Come, driven to church courtyard door where day Break on night sharp edge and spill itself across earth’s head And there let us praise with dance this light that Gives more than even Gods have dreamed to comprehend.

48

A St. Louis Tale Old man, old man Cussing on the street To an old woman About the money for the meat Old man, old man Knocked the woman down She hit him back so hard That he start to spin around Old man, old man Just won’t let it end He hit the woman back And she spent him around again Old man, old man Never gone to stopShe pulled a knife Sliced him once There the old man dropped Old man, old man Nothing do he say Three-hundred fifty bucks For the plot where he lay Old woman, old woman Sent off to jail She was to slow inside That she caught a lot of hell Old woman, old woman Finally made parole She bought a spoon, rented a room Just above the store Old woman, old woman Had a midnight fright A youngest from the neighborhood Broke her with his knife.

49

The Glen Black for Glen I want to be the blackest person on earth Black enough that stars take up resident in me Black enough that black birds wantna mate with me Black enough that the alphabet of life began with the letter B Black enough that black boy is the beginning of all belonging That black girl means the heavenly birth of the world.

I want people to look at me and say He’s black, he’s black, he’s black damn he’s black And still not get to the blackness of me I want to be blacker that grey black Blue black, blacker then black tinted with black So black that all things darken in my present I want to be Blacker then night caught inside my shoes I want to walk black, sleep black, eat black Dream black dreams as to push Earth into eternal darkness I want to look black, see black, think black back To the dawning of time So black that light is ashamed it was ever born I want to be black enough that moon ask sun for a tan And men take to their fashion an overcoat Of raven feathers I want to be Black enough to make crow’s feathers The monetary standard of the world And lord dear lord I want to be black enough to Know that I am black enough to be as black as I am.

50

Why I Want to Have Sex with Poets Their hands knows the moment of a million sounds …Words fall hard to shatter, recollect into some other, Hubble bubble words hover above the scent of an emotion Their tongues transverse hidden lands …Short leaf pine, rough bark of cinnamon red scales, Dark-blue green needles devise against the Evanescence blue evening of Tonguesville Their breath smells of the alphabet …Ox water Alpha and beta before gamma, Damp or fluent as lambda, flesh coffins Hissing young grass after taste of decompose tress.

Their eyes see what other ignore …Our minds blacken by its own shadow Enclosed as the acorn of over cup oak As sycamore ball borne on the bone of our spine They will bear witness to their own thoughts …If everything could be said there will still remain A handful of words; flocks of captured blackbirds Endless circling for a way out They come to except earth’s simple truth …Earth produce no waste of stone, water, bark, flesh Or bones. All is consumed, consummation of one’s own Importance, death impregnate life eternal.

They freely give it to you …Man eat air eternal, a shared plate Drinks from the same earthen bowl, Spilling our water with water of all that flows.

They are spies of the Gods …Knowing of what going on Beneath the dine size flowering moon, perplex Expression looking down on St. Louis.

They wear a simplistic cover …No return from nature, no separation but

51

Imagined superiority Shows extent of human ignorance.

They are earth centered …Earnest earth owns nothing but itself.

In sleep we breathe as earth breathes innate Life is whole owning to itself alone.

They masquerade …As mesquites, cat, as moon, as jay, as tress As transmitter and antenna insects, as banjo Or lyre, as micro cosmic vision focused on an eye.

Man for woman each for the other pleading.

They are forever examining, poking eyes into emotion …See Aluriste and Antler, Patchen and Poe William and Whitman, Ginse and Gun, Vorhes and Emily Rys and Bye, Delgado and Lorca, Hughes and Hayden and Kent Johnson’s eye Translating Nicaragua poetry Poetry is emotional …There is no shelter from the confusing Emotional weather that governs The landscape of our mental garden

52

The Short of it 1 There are few things as Refreshing as sleep Fewer still as being Awake in the hypnotic Sleep of poetry.

2 Johnny didn’t come to school today His sister says he’s sick During the night while he slept A roach crawled into his ear.

3 I’m so poor that I don’t even have rats And ain’t no sense’n me Making a blessin’ out-of-da.

4 For forty days And forty nights The fetus was held in red Till long cool forceps hands Reached in and squeezed it dead.

5 Snow have melted Save for in the shadows I linger Memories of you.

53

An Atomic Explosion An atomic explosion Is strictly extraordinary Destroy the air In the lungs A hum of dying there Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmy Country come try the tree aflame I cry for thee where Crying brands me as a sissy I see a thought a boil.

Boys to soon before the noon Of their lives loose The cry, a hum inside their eyes A sea a boil Socially forbid to flow Soon explode.

54

I’ve gotten to the Point in My Life I’ve gotten to the point in my life Where there must come a change Away with Three Musketeers Give me the no sugar, no hydrogenated fat I’ll have a high performance fudge bar with bean spouts I’ll take vitamins A C E B1 B2 B6 B 12 Zinc and potassium too.

I’ll buy two green peace Save the Whales tee-shirts.

I’ll write no-nuke graffiti on Milwaukee’s new Blue glass federal building in white spray paint From an air pump recyclable aluminum can.

I’ll become homo after trying bi, and love Naturally on my futon cotton bedding, My earth shoes parked obediently beside.

I’ll give up meat for tofu and grove on Holly Near While I apply for Co-Op Life America Health Insurance I’ll subscribe to In These Times and Mother Jones I’ll take courses at New College in San Francisco Or Naropa Institute.

I’ll. Build my own solar dome home in Boulder Colorado, Make my own desk where I’ll keep Remembrance of Things Past Both volumes open in different rooms.

I’ll learn meditation from Trungpa and poetry From Ginsberg.

I’ll find out where the hell is Rocky Flat And go lay myself on the tracks then go see Dr. Rose my chiropractor.

55

Black Attack Man invent Gods To hypnotize Man invent Gods to testify Man invent Gods To synchronize the truth and the human lie Bring those black folks on Tell’em to leave their own damn Gods at home We got one, JC, as landlord of Americas He’s an absentee but, Never mind that Black folks gonna make Him their own.

White man done Jesus me this, Jesus me that Jesus me into a black attack.

O Jesus black folks gonna make you their own.

Bring those nigger on Tell ‘‘em to leave their own names at home We got one, nigger They gonna make it their own O nigger, black folk gonna make you their own Come on everybody clap your hands Say I’m niggerist nigger in a nigger land Come on everybody clap your hands.

Black folks done nigger me this nigger me that Nigger me into having a black attack.

56

In Such an Age as this In such an age as this When some of us take Caution against the careless Tongue that caresses The unnamed prick, Where bush queen to Their cock press passion Give reckless abandon In the spruce shadow thick Night of Cheesman Park Where the headlights of roaming cars Hunt the dark for boys and men alike Alight as I and Whitman In ways more than our art And you too Lanston.

In such an age as this Some of my brothers grown bone thin With this disease that conquered their Bodies and the passion of their friends, In such an age the black bird still Flies; a spot of night in daylight, Squirrels waken from their Tress-top sleep look down upon Hands that grope and lips that mold Themselves to another’s tongue.

In such an age in light casted across The street or in moonlight I see zipper that sparkle under Low hanging branches of trees I hear twigs crack, Last season’s leaves crumple And pine cones accidentally kicked I hear a low and soft moans.

At this moment should I question Why I am here?

Is it a passion in the heart, A need for hands other than mine To smooth the wrinkles of my fore skin, Or is it just a sport?

57

En Las Tardes En las tardes Brown children bailan With their bellies full Of tortillaand frijoles En la noche The barrio dreams Of better thing Then daylight has shown.

El calor del sol Turned righteous folks Brown or deeper Sweet honey prieta.

58

In the Negro Quarters In the negro quarters Of Laurel Mississippi Big mamas and granddads Of the southern homeland Are wakening up to walk in fear Into the light of day Leaning on canes Or walking weapon sticks Pass frogs croaking In the wild grass They walk with weary eyes against Their oppressors, who comes To steal social security checks, To jump them in the cool shadows Of yellow pine They come bold, full of zest These strong young renegades Come single, couple or raiding packs of four Carrying sticks, knife or small guns These crusade warriors with tight muscle armor These keen eyed oppressor who will Break brittle bones These beat box black men to long idle Under the Mississippi sun.

59

For Anne Waldman and Reed Bye Last summer Anne wore A growing full moon Beneath her cotton clothing This winter the man once inside Smiles in the sunlight Wrapped up tight He sometimes cries as papa Reed Bye Talks of Pound and Dr. William.

For the moment baby Edwin Is more interesting.

60

Angel of My Desiring I wake to find you raining in your face Our bedroom have known many storms The maple outside kisses the window Your thorns puncture the pillow Why do you cry when the spirit of drought Is in the wisdom land?

Black bellies swell, the rivers are dried And ravens do not feed he who will be the next king.

You ware your love as a child in your belly Your body is lean as a man in need of his water In need of bread I shall gather some sticks to fashion your wings With oil from my skin will I smooth your prays My sins remember will I hang in your hair Go, show yourself in the wisdom land Strike rain from the God‘s cheeks The hidden prophets lay in wait beneath The sand they wake in the sounding of your feet Your lean body is leasing to the eye But I have drunken my fill And time will come to drink again Go, show yourself in the wisdom land Where pain holds its counsel I shall bake you two cakes of mud and grass To eat and give back to the land.

61

A Love Poem We at the dinner table It isn’t much but to our liking You play footsy and smile Between chews I wink, you flip a pea Off your spoon.

62

A Brush with Papa Death Death brushed Against my side Squeezed my flesh and found it thin Touching, stroking, holding to tight Leaving two broken and one cracked rib It kissed and took five sounds of breath It sucked till it bruised my lower lip Caressing my head it cut the skin Then licked the blood above my eye Then kicked that eye with a bit of glass All in a brush toward someone else.

63

Fragment and Reconstruction from the book of Rys My brother gave me toys Of orchard that was tacky Gave them to me because The source of his children Was bricked in silence.

And when I was as heavy in corns I did snigger for hours yet, Had to flee to my secret harbor That ever be ebony.

Behind the history of the blessed retribution The master of his children, shingled and slaughter Gave death’s fragrance to ware in my skin Then he pushed me into the light’s rim Where I became ashes and gravies catching To the rusted grave of dead metal.

64

Friends are Fattening Themselves Friends are fattening themselves On bundles of sticks At a reclusive seaport In heaven, Where maple skin guys Loosely sewed between Jet black garment trick Their locked hips to spacious wings Beneath the holy, holy tree of the Understood word.

They shake away their wings To hear that you have evicted young Satan; That fine historical bird First revolutionist of the winged set.

65

The Smell of Death Flies knows On the battlefield Where the dead men lay -buzz –buzz round their ears Land lightly on their faces What do you hear from The dying men’s throats Rattle rattle death’s rattle roll -buzz –buzz round their eyes What do you see, their lives -buzz buzz round their noses What do you smell The smell of death that drew you there.

66

I Went Away from Uijonbu I went away from Uijonbu, From Inchon stretching its rocky legs Smooth and snippy and algae covered into the Yellow Sea. Went away from Seoul, packed fitfully around The mountainside of the morning calm, Away from rice paddies like Square blue sheets of skies surrounding inlayed villages, Near summer harvest the thick growth of skies Bends slender green, a sea.

I went away from Taejon, Taegu and, Pusan, From Cheju-Do’s white sand that turns blue water emerald.

From Sinhyo-ri where red pepper dries on tin roofs Of hooches, Away from clam shells that once held the promise of pearls Littering the shore alone side bleached fish skeletons, The later, their ribs like white ferns growing from the rocks.

I went away from the pungent air of orange groves And air of the fat belly pheasant’s cries, Went away from the other side of this island where My feet ashed over with the dried salt of the sea cringed the sand.

I have come up here where sky and land fused grey And the surface of this road that leads to Hallo-san crater Crack, gives way, pulls my weight knee-deep in each steps Toward the place where winter keeps its strong-hold Foggy around the sitting Buddha.

Flakes drifts about this dark grey mediating stone In a silence broken only by the thin air burning of my breath.

Reaching to touch on Buddha’s belly a crescent of snow Like body-ash on the bellies of kids in EthiopiaTheir eyes, large as wooden statuettes of primitive Gods.

Flies buzz about their dark flesh in the noise of mating Broken only by the cold sting of stone to my hand.

67

Gertrude Stein N Mind

And how now Ms. Stein Have you come to be So big or should I say Rotund or wide about The hips and those Parts above and below And below the above there And how too or also So I should ask this Second question of you Ms. Stein So stout and steady To study you instance Standing among yellow Grass where there Now Ms. Stein a pint full I would say Did you ever see a Steinbok grazing in and out Of haze on some east Africa plain Or four saints with coloredNegro-black- afroAfrican American Inez wild In the Houseman’s house Well Welles we know Orson But wild is wild on my tongue Ms. Stein De ma lanque langsyne I sang on the deck of the Hannibal O Ms. Stein chooses je sonde je sonde Cèsaire My body lost without the Songs of my tongue Song of ostrich eggs Gold dust and ten tongue As black as mine Ms. Stein.

68

A Place in Your Heart A place in your heart Is all that I ask For you to pause here And hear the sound of my breath

69

If Ten Thousand People If ten thousand people Love ten thousand people And double that number loved more It wouldn’t be long before We brought heaven down From its sun side couch Where Gods watch Us as we watch TV Unable to intervene They presume it’s we who write The scripts of earth And we presume it’s they Neither willing to own up To the laugh track behind This human play.

70

The Promised Land The Promised Land From where I sleep Is a mighty fine place indeed With trees on the streets It’s hot water during the summer And ac too, an ice box Full of good healthy food Its decent wiring though out the house Room where a body can just move about.

In the Promised Land Black folks knows equity Mexicans comes up north first class And Los Coaster, if they wish Wear feathers in their hair It’s a land where a woman can Look her look and not starve it thin Where homeless is a thing that hangs in a museum O, yes the Promised Land Is a mighty fine place indeed But what use such a place If’n it can’t escape my place of dreams?

71

I Slipped on a Dream I slipped on a dream That you left on the floor, Slipped and broke my words.

In the commotion An hour was broken Till time went back to bed.

With a fancy Spanish knife I cut open your darkness To see if light would shine, Out flowed a thousand words In search of an immortal design.

O you are the love of my lover, You are the dream that I would murder In my murderous dream to discover What I keep secret in my head.

You are the dead poems unread Our abode is but a bed Where in lies the unspoken word.

72

I Keep Dropin’ My Gs I keep droppin’ my Gs Somethin’ pleasin’ there Somethin’ thin, ancient Dunbar drops more Then me Fu ta make his meanin’ Da lawd tho be catchin’ Wa’ I say I mean We the dark G droppers We a people to speak so bold While there are some who Their Rs rolls Know me by my speech Bred into me Since my days of young Bigmama taught me so.

Childhood in back water Mississippi Down on Big mama’s farm Just outside of Macon among The yellow pines Farm land in the family From ways back slavery times

73

By a Deep Design By a deep design Do the world goes on, Life for life sake Seem to be the rule.

When I wake I can see That in life There is more To be concern with Then me.

Earth is a garden of many things Lest among them man.

She nurture each in their stand; Rain she gives to the flower, The flower she gives To the bees.

By the sun are counted the hour.

The streams she gives to the rivers The rivers she gives to the sea.

But man thinks that all is given to he Foolish, foolish man When will you learn That you are one within the whole?

No more, no less important As time goes.

You are not the strongest, Your eyes are not The keenest, you nose Not the best of all the beasts, In running you are weak.

Know your place And keep to it well Less you turn earth Into a living hell.

Mark this as being told You cannot defeat the whole.

Get to close And she will turn on you And leave all others To jointly rule,

74

75