by Maya Angelou
Roll off your tongue
To grace this eager ebon ear.
Doubt and fear,
Ungainly things,
With blushings
Disappear.
When I Think About Myself
When I think about myself,
I almost laugh myself to death,
My life has been one great big joke,
A dance that's walked,
A song that's spoke,
I laugh so hard I almost choke,
When I think about myself.
Sixty years in these folks’ world,
The child I works for calls me girl,
I say “Yes ma'am” for working's sake.
Too proud to bend,
Too poor to break,
I laugh until my stomach ache,
When I think about myself.
My folks can make me split my side,
I laughed so hard I nearly died,
The tales they tell sound just like lying,
They grow the fruit,
But eat the rind,
I laugh until I start to crying,
When I think about my folks.
On a Bright Day, Next Week
On a bright day, next week
Just before the bomb falls
Just before the world
Just before I die
All my tears will powder
Black in dust like ashes
Black like Buddha's belly
Black and hot and dry
Then will mercy tumble
Falling down in godheads
Falling on the children
Falling from the sky
Letter to an Aspiring Junkie
Let me hip you to the streets,
Jim,
Ain't nothing happening.
Maybe some tomorrows gone up in smoke,
raggedy preachers, telling a joke
to lonely, son-less old ladies’ maids.
Nothing happening,
Nothing shakin', Jim.
A slough of young cats riding that
cold, white horse,
a grey old monkey on their back, of course,
does rodeo tricks.
No haps, man.
No haps.
A worn-out pimp, with a space-age conk,
setting up some fool for a game of tonk,
or poker or
get ‘em dead and alive.
The streets?
Climb into the streets, man, like you climb
into the ass end of a lion.
Then it's fine.
It's a bug-a-loo and a shing-a-ling,
African dreams on a buck-and-a-wing and a prayer.
That's the streets, man,
Nothing happening.
Miss Scarlett, Mr. Rhett and Other Latter-Day Saints
Novitiates sing Ave
Before the whipping posts,
Crisscrossing their breasts and
tearstained robes
in the yielding dark.
Animated by the human sacrifice
(Golgotha in blackface)
Priests glow purely white on the
bas-relief of a plantation shrine.
(O Sing)
You are gone but not forgotten.
Hail, Scarlett. Requiescat in pace.
God-Makers smear brushes in
blood/gall
to etch frescoes on your
ceilinged tomb.
(O Sing)
Hosanna, King Kotton.
Shadowed couplings of infidels
tempt stigmata from the nipples
of your true believers.
(Chant Maternoster)
Hallowed Little Eva.
Ministers make novena with the
charred bones of four
very small
very black
very young children
(Intone DIXIE)
And guard the relics
of your intact hymen,
daily putting to death,
into eternity,
The stud, his seed,
His seed
His seed.
(O Sing)
Hallelujah, pure Scarlett,
Blessed Rhett, the Martyr.
Times-Square-Shoeshine-Composition
I'm the best that ever done it
(pow pow)
That's my title and I won it
(pow pow)
I ain't lying, I'm the best
(pow pow)
Come and put me to the test
(pow pow)
I'll clean ‘em till they squeak
(pow pow)
In the middle of next week
(pow pow)
I'll shine ‘em till they whine
(pow pow)
Till they call me master mine
(pow pow)
For a quarter and a dime
(pow pow)
You can get the dee-luxe shine
(pow pow)
Say you wanta pay a quarter?
(pow pow)
Then you give that to your daughter
(pow pow)
I ain't playing dozens, mister
(pow pow) You can give it to your sister
(pow pow)
Any way you want to read it
(pow pow)Maybe it's your momma need it
(pow pow)
Say I'm like a greedy bigot
(pow pow)
I'm a cap'talist, can you dig it?
(pow pow)
Faces
Faces and more remember
then reject
the brown caramel days of youth.
Reject the sun-sucked tit of
childhood mornings.
Poke a muzzle of war in the trust-frozen eyes of a favored doll.
Breathe, Brother,
and displace a moment's hate with organized love.
A poet screams “CHRIST WAITS AT THE SUBWAY!”
But who sees?
To a Freedom Fighter
You drink a bitter draught.
I sip the tears your eyes fight to hold,
A cup of lees, of henbane steeped in chaff.
Your breast is hot,
Your anger black and cold,
Through evening's rest, you dream,
I hear the moans, you die a thousands’ death.
When cane straps flog the body
dark and lean, you feel the blow.
I hear it in your breath.
Riot: 60's
Our
YOUR FRIEND CHARLIE pawnshop
was a glorious blaze
I heard the flames lick
then eat the trays
of zircons
mounted in red gold alloys
Easter clothes and stolen furs
burned in the attic
radios and teevees
crackled with static
plugged in
only to a racial outlet
Some
thought the FRIENDLY FINANCE FURNITURE CO.
burned higher
When a leopard-print sofa with gold legs
(which makes into a bed)
caught fire
an admiring groan from the waiting horde
“Absentee landlord
you got that shit”
Lighting: a hundred Watts
Detroit, Newark and New York
Screeching nerves, exploding minds
lives tied to a policeman's whistle
a welfare worker's doorbell
finger
Hospitality, southern-style
corn pone grits and you-all smile
whole blocks novae
brand-new stars
policemen caught in their
brand-new cars
Chugga chugga chigga
git me one nigga
lootin’ n burnin’
he won't git far
Watermelons, summer ripe
grey neckbones and boiling tripe
> supermarket roastin’ like the
noonday sun
national guard nervous with his shiny gun
goose the motor quicker
here's my nigga picka
shoot him in the belly
shoot him while he run
We Saw Beyond Our Seeming
We saw beyond our seeming
These days of bloodied screaming
Of children dying bloated
Out where the lilies floated
Of men all noosed and dangling
Within the temples strangling
Our guilt grey fungus growing
We knew and lied our knowing
Deafened and unwilling
We aided in the killing
And now our souls lie broken
Dry tablets without token.
Black Ode
Your beauty is a thunder
And I am set a wandering—a wandering
Deafened
Down twilight tin-can alleys
And moist sounds
“OOo wee, Baby, look what you could get if your name
was Willie”
Oh, to dip your words like snuff.
A laughter, black and streaming
And I am come a being—a being
Rounded
Up Baptist aisles, so moaning
And moist sounds
“Bless her heart. Take your bed and walk.
You been heavy burdened”
Oh, to lick your love like tears.
No No No No
No
the two-legg'd beasts
that walk like men
play stink finger in their crusty asses
while crackling babies
in napalm coats
stretch mouths to receive
burning tears
on splitting tongues
JUST GIVE ME A COOL DRINK OF WATER ‘FORE I DIIIE
No
the gap-legg'd whore
of the eastern shore
enticing Europe to COME
in her
and turns her pigeon-shit back to me
to me
who stoked the coal that drove the ships
which brought her over the sinuous cemetery
of my many brothers
No
the cocktailed afternoons
of what can I do.
In my white layered pink world
I've let your men cram my mouth
with their black throbbing hate
and I swallowed after I've let your mammies
steal from my kitchens
(I was always half-amused)
I've chuckled the chins of
your topsy-haired pickaninnies.
What more can I do?
I'll never be black like you.
(HALLELUJAH)
No
the red-shoed priests riding
palanquined
in barefoot children country
the plastered saints gazing down
beneficently
on kneeling mothers
picking undigested beans
from yesterday's shit.
I have waited
toes curled, hat rolled
heart and genitals
in hand
on the back porches
of forever
in the kitchens and fields
of rejections
on the cold marble steps
of America's White Out-House
in the drop seats of buses
and the open flies of war
No more
the dream that you
will cease haunting me
down in fetid swamps of fear and will turn to embrace your own
humanity
which I AM
No more
the hope that
the razored insults
which mercury-slide over your tongue
will be forgotten
and you will learn the words of love
Mother Brother Father Sister Lover Friend
My hopes
dying slowly
rose petals falling
beneath an autumn red moon
will not adorn your unmarked graves
My dreams
lying quietly
a dark pool under the trees
will not carry your name
to a forgetful shore
And what a pity
What a pity
that pity has folded in upon itself
an old man's mouth
whose teeth are gone
and I have no pity.
My Guilt
My guilt is “slavery's chains,” too long
the clang of iron falls down the years.
This brother's sold, this sister's gone,
is bitter wax, lining my ears.
My guilt made music with the tears.
My crime is “heroes, dead and gone,”
dead Vesey, Turner, Gabriel,
dead Malcolm, Marcus, Martin King.
They fought too hard, they loved too well.
My crime is I'm alive to tell.
My sin is “hanging from a tree,”
I do not scream, it makes me proud.
I take to dying like a man.
I do it to impress the crowd.
My sin lies in not screaming loud.
The Calling of Names
He went to being called a colored man
after answering to “hey, nigger.”
Now that's a big jump,
anyway you figger.
Hey, Baby, watch my smoke.
From colored man to Negro,
With the N in caps,
was like saying Japanese
instead of saying Japs.
I mean, during the war.
The next big step
was a change for true,
From Negro in caps
to being a Jew.
Now, Sing, Yiddish Mama.
Light, Yellow, Brown
and Dark-brown skin,
were okay colors to
describe him then.
He was a Bouquet of Roses.
He changed his seasons
like an almanac.
Now you'll get hurt
if you don't call him “Black.”
Nigguh, I ain't playin’ this time.
On Working White Liberals
I don't ask the Foreign Legion
Or anyone to win my freedom
Or to fight my battle better than I can,
Though there's one thing that I cry for
I believe enough to die for
That is every man's responsibility to man.
I'm afraid they'll have to prove first
That they'll watch the Black man move first
Then follow him with faith to kingdom come.
This rocky road is not paved for us,
So, I'll believe in Liberals’ aid for us
When I see a white man load a Black man's gun.
Sepia Fashion Show
Their hair, pomaded, faces jaded
bones protruding, hip-wise,
the models strutted, backed and butted,
then stuck their mouths out, lip-wise.
They'd nasty manners, held like banners,
while they looked down their nose-wise.
I'd see ‘em in hell, before they'd sell
me one thing they're wearing, clothes-wise.
The Black Bourgeois, who all say “yah”
when yeah is what they're meaning,
should look around, both up and down,
before they set out preening.
“Indeed,” they swear, “that's what I'll wear
when I go country-clubbing.”
I'd remind them please, look at those knees,
you got at Miss Ann's scrubbing.
The Thirteens (Black)
Your Momma took to shouting,
Your Poppa's gone to war,<
br />
Your sister's in the streets,
Your brother's in the bar,
The thirteens. Right On.
Your cousin's taking smack,
Your uncle's in the joint,
Your buddy's in the gutter,
Shooting for his point,
The thirteens. Right On.
And you, you make me sorry,
You out here by yourself,
I'd call you something dirty,
But there just ain't nothing left,
‘cept
The thirteens. Right On.
The Thirteens (White)
Your Momma kissed the chauffeur,
Your Poppa balled the cook,
Your sister did the dirty,
in the middle of the book,
The thirteens. Right On.
Your daughter wears a jock strap,
Your son he wears a bra,
Your brother jonesed your cousin
in the back seat of the car.
The thirteens. Right On.
Your money thinks you're something,
But if I'd learned to curse,
I'd tell you what your name is,
But there just ain't nothing worse
than
The thirteens. Right On.
Harlem Hopscotch
One foot down, then hop! It's hot.
Good things for the ones that's got.
Another jump, now to the left.
Everybody for hisself.
In the air, now both feet down.
Since you black, don't stick around.
Food is gone, the rent is due,
Curse and cry and then jump two.
All the people out of work,