by Maya Angelou
ALSO BY MAYA ANGELOU
And Still I Rise
Gather Together in My Name
The Heart of a Woman
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water fore I Diiie
Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well
Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry hike Christmas
Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?
All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes
I Shall Not Be Moved
On the Pulse of Morning
Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now
This book is dedicated
to the great love of my life.
Contents
Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water fore I Diiie
PART ONE: WHERE LOVE IS A SCREAM OF ANGUISH
They Went Home
The Gamut
A Zono Man
To a Man
Late October
No Loser, No Weeper
When You Come to Me
Remembering
In a Time
Tears
The Detached
To a Husband
Accident
Let's Majeste
After
The Mothering Blackness
On Diverse Deviations
Mourning Grace
How I Can Lie to You
Sounds Like Pearls
PART TWO: JUST BEFORE THE WORLD ENDS
When I Think About Myself
On a Bright Day, Next Week
Letter to. an Aspiring Junkie
Miss Scarlett, Mr. Rhett and Other Latter-Day Saints
Times-Square-Shoeshine-Composition
Faces
To a Freedom Fighter
Riot: 60's
We Saw Beyond Our Seeming
Black Ode
No No No No
My Guilt
The Calling of Names
On Working White Liberals
Sepia Fashion Show
The Thirteens (Black)
The Thirteens (White)
Harlem Hopscotch
Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well
PART ONE
Pickin Em Up and Layin Em Down
Hereys to Adhering
On Reaching Forty
The Telephone
PART TWO
Passing Time
Now Long Ago
Greyday
Poor Girl
Come. And Be My Baby
Senses of Insecurity
Alone
Communication I
Communication II
Wonder
A Conceit
PART THREE
Request
Africa
America
For Us, Who Dare Not Dare
Lord, in My Heart
Artful Pose
PART FOUR
The Couple
The Pusher
Chicken-Licken
PART FIVE
I Almost Remember
Prisoner
Woman Me
JohnJ.
Southeast Arkanasia
Song for the Old Ones
Child Dead in Old Seas
Take Time Out
Elegy
Reverses
Little Girl Speakings
This Winter Day
And Still I Rise
PART ONE: TOUCH ME, LIFE, NOT SOFTLY
A Kind of Love, Some Say
Country Lover
Remembrance
Where We Belong, A Duet
Phenomenal Woman
Men
Refusal
Just for a Time
PART TWO: TRAVELING
Junkie Monkey Reel
The Lesson
California Prodigal
My Arkansas
Through the Inner City to the Suburbs
Lady Luncheon Club
Momma Welfare Roll
The Singer Will Not Sing
Willie
To Beat the Child Was Bad Enough
Woman Work
One More Round
The Traveler
Kin
The Memory
PART THREE: AND STILL I RISE
Still I Rise
Ain't That Bad?
Life Doesn't Frighten Me
Bump d'Bump
On Aging
In Retrospect
Just Like Job
Call Letters: Mrs. V. B.
Thank You, Lord
Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?
Awaking in New York
A Good Woman Feeling Bad
The Health-Food Diner
A Georgia Song
Unmeasured Tempo
Amoebaeanfor Daddy
Recovery
Impeccable Conception
Caged Bird
Avec Merciy Mother
Arrival
A Plagued Journey
Starvation
Contemporary Announcement
Prelude to a Parting
Martial Choreograph
To a Suitor
Insomniac
Weekend Glory
The Lie
Prescience
Family Affairs
Changes
Brief Innocence
The Last Decision
Slave Coffle
Shaker; Why Don't You Sing?
My Life Has Turned to Blue
I Shall Not Be Moved
Worker's Song
Human Family
Man Bigot
Old Folks Laugh
Is Love
Forgive
Insignificant
Love Letter
Equality
Coleridge Jackson
Why Are They Happy People?
Son to Mother
Known to Eve and Me
These Yet to Be United States
Me and My Work
Changing
Born That Way
Televised
Nothing Much
Glory Falls
London
Savior
Many ama More
The New House
Our Grandmothers
Preacher, Doni Send Me
Fightin'Was Natural
Loss of Love
Seven Women's Blessed Assurance
In My Missouri
They Ask Why
When Great Trees Fall
On the Pulse of Morning
To AMBER SAM and the ZORROMAN
They Went Home
They went home and told their wives,
that never once in all their lives,
had they known a girl like me,
But … They went home.
They said my house was licking clean,
no word I spoke was ever mean,
I had an air of mystery,
But … They went home.
My praises were on all men's lips,
they liked my smile, my wit, my hips,
they'd spend one night, or two or three.
But …
The Gamut
Soft you day, be velvet soft,
My true love approaches,
Look you bright, you dusty sun,
Array your golden coaches.
Soft you wind, be soft as silk,
My true love is speaking.
Hold you birds, your silver throats,
His golden voice I'm seeking.
Come you death, in haste, do come,
My shroud of black be weaving,
Quiet my heart, be deathly quiet,
My true love is leaving.
A Zorro Man
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Here
in the wombed room
silk purple drapes
flash a light as subtle
as your hands before
love-making
Here
in the covered lens
I catch a
clitoral image of
your general inhabitation
long and like a
late dawn in winter
Here
this clean mirror
traps me unwilling
in a gone time
when I was love
and you were booted and brave
and trembling for me.
To a Man
My man is
Black Golden Amber
Changing.
Warm mouths of Brandy Fine
Cautious sunlight on a patterned rug
Coughing laughter, rocked on a whorl of French tobacco
Graceful turns on woolen stilts
Secretive?
A cat's eye.
Southern. Plump and tender with navy-bean sullenness
And did I say “Tender”?
The gentleness
A big cat stalks through stubborn bush
And did I mention “Amber”?
The heatless fire consuming itself.
Again. Anew. Into ever neverlessness.
My man is Amber
Changing
Always into itself
New. Now New.
Still itself.
Still.
Late October
Carefully
the leaves of autumn
sprinkle down the tinny
sound of little dyings
and skies sated
of ruddy sunsets
of roseate dawns
roil ceaselessly in
cobweb greys and turn
to black
for comfort.
Only lovers
see the fall
a signal end to endings
a gruffish gesture alerting
those who will not be alarmed
that we begin to stop
in order simply
to begin
again.
No Loser, No Weeper
“I hate to lose something,”
then she bent her head,
“even a dime, I wish I was dead.
I can't explain it. No more to be said.
‘Cept I hate to lose something.
“I lost a doll once and cried for a week.
She could open her eyes, and do all but speak.
I believe she was took, by some doll-snatching sneak.
I tell you, I hate to lose something.
“A watch of mine once, got up and walked away.
It had twelve numbers on it and for the time of day.
I'll never forget it and all I can say
Is I really hate to lose something.
“Now if I felt that way ‘bout a watch and a toy,
What you think I feel ‘bout my lover-boy?
I ain't threatening you, madam, but he is my evening's joy.
And I mean I really hate to lose something.”
When You Come to Me
When you come to me, unbidden,
Beckoning me
To long-ago rooms,
Where memories lie.
Offering me, as to a child, an attic,
Gatherings of days too few,
Baubles of stolen kisses,
Trinkets of borrowed loves,
Trunks of secret words,
I CRY.
Remembering
Soft grey ghosts crawl up my sleeve
to peer into my eyes
while I within deny their threats
and answer them with lies.
Mushlike memories perform
a ritual on my lips
I lie in stolid hopelessness
and they lay my soul in strips.
In a Time
In a time of secret wooing
Today prepares tomorrow's ruin
Left knows not what right is doing
My heart is torn asunder.
In a time of furtive sighs
Sweet hellos and sad goodbyes
Half-truths told and entire lies
My conscience echoes thunder.
In a time when kingdoms come
Joy is brief as summer's fun
Happiness its race has run
Then pain stalks in to plunder.
Tears
Tears
The crystal rags
Viscous tatters
of a worn-through soul.
Moans
Deep swan song
Blue farewell
of a dying dream.
The Detached
We die,
Welcoming Bluebeards to our darkening closets,
Stranglers to our outstretched necks,
Stranglers, who neither care nor
care to know that
DEATH IS INTERNAL.
We pray,
Savoring sweet the teethed lies,
Bellying the grounds before alien gods,
Gods, who neither know nor
wish to know that
HELL IS INTERNAL.
We love,
Rubbing the nakednesses with gloved hands,
Inverting our mouths in tongued kisses,
Kisses that neither touch nor
care to touch if
LOVE IS INTERNAL.
To a Husband
Your voice at times a fist
Tight in your throat
Jabs ceaselessly at phantoms
In the room,
Your hand a carved and
Skimming boat
Goes down the Nile
To point out Pharaoh's tomb.
You're Africa to me
At brightest dawn.
The Congo's green and
Copper's brackish hue,
A continent to build
With Black Man's brawn.
I sit at home and see it all
Through you.
Accident
Tonight
when you spread your pallet
of magic,
I escaped.
Sitting apart,
I saw you grim and unkempt.
Your vulgarness
not of living,
your demands
not from need.
Tonight
as you sprinkled your brain-dust
of rainbows,
I had no eyes.
Seeing all
I saw the colors fade
and change.
The blood, red dulled
through the dyes,
and the naked
Black-White truth.
Let's Majeste
I sit a throne upon the times
when Kings are rare and
Consorts
slide into the grease of scullery maids.
So gaily wave a crown of light
(astride the royal chair) that blinds
the commoners who genuflect and cross their fingers.
The years will lie beside me
on the queenly bed.
And coupled we'll await
the ages’ dust to cake my lids again.
And when the rousing kiss is given,
why must it always be a fairy, and
only just a Prince?
After
No sound falls
from the moaning sky
No scowl wrinkles
the evening pool
The stars lean down
A stony brilliance
While birds fly.
The market leers
its empty shelves
Streets bare bosoms
to scanty cars
This bed yawns
beneath the weight
of our absent selves.
The Mothering Blackness
She came home running
b
ack to the mothering blackness
deep in the smothering blackness
white tears icicle gold plains of her face
She came home running
She came down creeping
here to the black arms waiting
now to the warm heart waiting
rime of alien dreams befrosts her rich brown face
She came down creeping
She came home blameless
black yet as Hagar's daughter
tall as was Sheba's daughter
threats of northern winds die on the desert's face
She came home blameless
On Diverse Deviations
When love is a shimmering curtain
Before a door of chance
That leads to a world in question
Wherein the macabrous dance
Of bones that rattle in silence
Of blinded eyes and rolls
Of thick lips thin, denying
A thousand powdered moles,
Where touch to touch is feel
And life a weary whore
I would be carried off, not gently
To a shore,
Where love is the scream of anguish
And no curtain drapes the door.
Mourning Grace
If today I follow death,
go down its trackless wastes,
salt my tongue on hardened tears
for my precious dear time's waste
race
along that promised cave in a headlong
deadlong
haste,
Will you
have
the
grace
to mourn for
me?
How I Can Lie to You
now thread my voice
with lies
of lightness
force within
my mirror eyes
the cold disguise
of sad and wise
decisions.
Sounds Like Pearls
Sounds
Like pearls