by Maya Angelou
the breast of morning,
crooning, still sleep-besotted,
of childish pranks with
angels.
The Last Decision
The print is too small, distressing me.
Wavering black things on the page.
Wriggling polliwogs all about.
I know it's my age.
I'll have to give up reading.
The food is too rich, revolting me.
I swallow it hot or force it down cold,
and wait all day as it sits in my throat.
Tired as I am, I know I've grown old.
I'll have to give up eating.
My children's concerns are tiring me.
They stand at my bed and move their lips,
and I cannot hear one single word.
I'd rather give up listening.
Life is too busy, wearying me.
Questions and answers and heavy thought.
I've subtracted and added and multiplied,
and all my figuring has come to naught.
Today I'll give up living.
Slave Cqffle
Just Beyond my reaching,
an itch away from fingers,
was the river bed
and the high road home.
Now Beneath my walking,
solid down to China,
all the earth is horror
and the dark night long.
Then Before the dawning,
bright as grinning demons,
came the fearful knowledge
that my life was gone.
Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?
Evicted from sleep's mute palace,
I wait in silence
for the bridal croon;
your legs rubbing insistent
rhythm against my thighs,
your breath moaning
a canticle in my hair.
But the solemn moments,
unuttering, pass in
unaccompanied procession.
You, whose chanteys hummed
my life alive, have withdrawn
your music and lean inaudibly
on the quiet slope of memory.
O Shaker, why don't you sing?
In the night noisy with
street cries and the triumph
of amorous insects, I focus beyond
those cacophonies for
the anthem of your hands and swelling chest,
for the perfect harmonies which are
your lips. Yet darkness brings
no syncopated promise. I rest somewhere
between the unsung notes of night.
Shaker, why don't you sing?
My Life Has Turned to Blue
Our summer's gone,
the golden days are through.
The rosy dawns I used to
wake with you
have turned to grey,
my life has turned to blue.
The once-green lawns
glisten now with dew.
Red robin's gone,
down to the South he flew.
Left here alone,
my life has turned to blue.
I've heard the news
that winter too will pass,
that spring's a sign
that summer's due at last.
But until I see you
lying in green grass,
my life has turned to blue.
VIVIAN BAXTER
MILDRED GARRIS TUTTLE
Worker's Song
Big ships shudder
down to the sea
because of me
Railroads run
on a twinness track
'cause of my back
Whoppa, Whoppa
Whoppa, Whoppa
Cars stretch to
a super length
'cause of my strength
Planes fly high
over seas and lands
'cause of my hands
Whoppa, Whoppa
Whoppa, Whoppa
I wake
start the factory humming
I work late
keep the whole world running
and I got something … something
coming … coming….
Whoppa
Whoppa
Whoppa
Human Family
I note the obvious differences
in the human family.
Some of us are serious,
some thrive on comedy.
Some declare their lives are lived
as true profundity,
and others claim they really live
the real reality.
The variety of our skin tones
can confuse, bemuse, delight,
brown and pink and beige and purple,
tan and blue and white.
I've sailed upon the seven seas
and stopped in every land,
I've seen the wonders of the world,
not yet one common man.
I know ten thousand women
called Jane and Mary Jane,
but I've not seen any two
who really were the same.
Mirror twins are different
although their features jibe,
and lovers think quite different thoughts
while lying side by side.
We love and lose in China,
we weep on England's moors,
and laugh and moan in Guinea,
and thrive on Spanish shores.
We seek success in Finland,
are born and die in Maine.
In minor ways we differ,
in major we're the same.
I note the obvious differences
between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
Man Bigot
The man who is a bigot
is the worst thing God has got,
except his match, his woman,
who really is Ms. Begot.
Old Folks Laugh
They have spent their
content of simpering,
holding their lips this
and that way, winding
the lines between
their brows. Old folks
allow their bellies to jiggle like slow
tamborines.
The hollers
rise up and spill
over any way they want.
When old folks laugh, they free the world.
They turn slowly, slyly knowing
the best and worst
of remembering.
Saliva glistens in
the corners of their mouths,
their heads wobble
on brittle necks, but
their laps
are filled with memories.
When old folks laugh, they consider the promise
of dear painless death, and generously
forgive life for happening
to them.
Is Love
Midwives and winding sheets
know birthing is hard
and dying is mean
and living's a trial in between.
Why do we journey, muttering
like rumors among the stars?
Is a dimension lost?
Is it love?
Forgive
Take me, Virginia,
bind me close
with Jamestown memories
of camptown races and
ships pregnant
with certain cargo
and Richmond riding high on greed
and low on tedious tides
of guilt.
But take me on, Virginia,
loose your turban of flowers
that peach petals and
dogwood bloom
may
form epaulettes of white
tenderness on my shoulders
and round my
head ringlets
of forgiveness, poignant
as rolled eyes, sad as summer
parasols in a hurricane.
Insignificant
A series of small, on
their own insignificant,
occurrences. Salt lost half
its savor. Two yellow-
striped bumblebees got
lost in my hair.
When I freed them they droned
away into the afternoon.
At the clinic the nurse's
face was half pity and part pride.
I was not glad for the news.
Then I thought I heard you
call, and I, running
like water, headed for
the railroad track. It was only
the Baltimore and the Atchison,
Topeka, and the Santa Fe.
Small insignificancies.
Love Letter
Listening winds
overhear my privacies
spoken aloud (in your
absence, but for your sake).
When you, mustachioed,
nutmeg-brown lotus,
sit beside the Oberlin shoji.
My thoughts are particular:
of your light lips and hungry
hands writing Tai Chi urgencies
into my body. I leap, float,
run
to spring cool springs into
your embrace. Then we match grace.
This girl, neither feather nor
fan, drifted and tossed.
Oh, but then I had power.
Power.
Equality
You declare you see me dimly
through a glass which will not shine,
though I stand before you boldly,
trim in rank and marking time.
You do own to hear me faintly
as a whisper out of range,
while my drums beat out the message
and the rhythms never change.
Equality, and I will be free.
Equality, and I will be free.
You announce my ways are wanton,
that I fly from man to man,
but if I'm just a shadow to you,
could you ever understand?
We have lived a painful history,
we know the shameful past,
but I keep on marching forward,
and you keep on coming last.
Equality, and I will be free.
Equality, and I will be free.
Take the blinders from your vision,
take the padding from your ears, and confess you've heard me crying,
and admit you've seen my tears.
Hear the tempo so compelling,
hear the blood throb in my veins.
Yes, my drums are beating nightly,
and the rhythms never change.
Equality, and I will be free.
Equality, and I will be free.
Coleridge Jackson
Coleridge Jackson had nothing
to fear. He weighed sixty pounds
more than his sons and one
hundred pounds more than his wife.
His neighbors knew he wouldn't
take tea for the fever.
The gents at the poolroom
walked gently in his presence.
So everyone used
to wonder why,
when his puny boss, a little
white bag of bones and
squinty eyes, when he frowned
at Coleridge, sneered at
the way Coleridge shifted
a ton of canned goods from
the east wall of the warehouse
all the way to the west,
when that skimpy piece of
man-meat called Coleridge
a sorry nigger,
Coleridge kept his lips closed,
sealed, jammed tight.
Wouldn't raise his eyes,
held his head at a slant,
looking way off somewhere
else.
Everybody in the neighborhood wondered
why Coleridge would come home,
pull off his jacket, take off
his shoes, and beat the
water and the will out of his puny
little family.
Everybody, even Coleridge, wondered
(the next day, or even later that
same night).
Everybody. But the weasly little
sack-of-bones boss with his
envious little eyes,
he knew. He always
knew. And
when people told him about
Coleridge's family, about the
black eyes and the bruised
faces, the broken bones,
Lord, how that scrawny man
grinned.
And the next
day, for a few hours, he treated
Coleridge nice. Like Coleridge
had just done him the biggest
old favor. Then, right
after lunch, he'd start on
Coleridge again.
“Here, Sambo, come here.
Can't you move any faster
than that? Who on earth
needs a lazy nigger?” And Coleridge would just
stand there. His eyes sliding
away, lurking at something else.
Why Are They Happy People?
Skin back your teeth, damn you,
wiggle your ears,
laugh while the years
race
down your face.
Pull up your cheeks, black boy,
wrinkle your nose,
grin as your toes
spade
up your grave.
Roll those big eyes, black gal,
rubber your knees,
smile when the trees
bend
with your kin.
Son to Mother
I start no
wars, raining poison
on cathedrals,
melting Stars of David
into golden faucets
to be lighted by lamps
shaded by human skin.
I set no
store on the strange lands,
send no
missionaries beyond my
borders,
to plunder secrets
and barter souls.
They
say you took my manhood,
Momma.
Come sit on my lap
and tell me,
what do you want me to say
to them, just
before I annihilate
their ignorance?
Known to Eve and Me
His tan and golden self,
coiled in a threadbare carapace,
beckoned to my sympathy.
I hoisted him, shoulders above
the crowded plaza, lifting
his cool, slick body toward the altar of
sunlight. He was guileless, and slid into my embrace.
We shared seeded rolls and breakfast on the mountaintop.
Love's warmth and Aton's sun
disc caressed
his skin, and once-dulled scales
became sugared ginger, amber
drops of beryl on the tongue.
His lidless eye slid sideways,
and he rose into my deepest
yearning, bringing
gifts of ready rhythms, and
hourly wound around
my chest,
holding me fast in taut
security.
Then, glistening like
diamonds strewn
upon a black girl's belly,
he left me. And nothing
remains. Beneath my left
breast, two perfect identical punctures,
the slithering sound of my own skin
moving in the dark.
These Yet to Be United States
Tremors of your network
cause kings to disappear.
Your open mouth in anger
makes nations bow in fear.
Your bombs can change the seasons,
obliterate the spring.
What more do you long for?
Why are you suffering?
You control the human lives
in Rome and Timbuktu.
Lonely nomads wandering
owe Telstar to you.
Seas shift at your bidding,
your mushrooms fill the sky.
Why are you unhappy?
Why do your children cry?
They kneel alone in terror
with dread in every glance.
Their nights are threatened daily
by a grim inheritance.
You dwell in whitened castles
with deep and poisoned moats
and cannot hear the curses
which fill your children's throats.
Me and My Work
I got a piece of a job on the waterfront.
Three days ain't hardly a grind.
It buys some beans and collard greens
and pays the rent on time.
'Course the wife works too.
Got three big children to keep in school,
need clothes and shoes on their feet,
give them enough of the things they want
and keep them out of the street.
They've always been good.