into my dreams
no longer caring
either
The Way I Feel
i’ve noticed i’m happier
when i make love
with you
and have enough left
over to smile at my doorman
i’ve realized i’m fulfilled
like a big fat cow
who has just picked
for a carnation contentment
when you kiss your special place
right behind my knee
i’m as glad as mortar
on a brick that knows
another brick is coming
when you walk through
my door
most time when you’re around
i feel like a note
roberta flack is going to sing
in my mind you’re a clock
and i’m the second hand sweeping
around you sixty times an hour
twenty-four hours a day
three hundred sixty-five days a year
and an extra day
in leap year
cause that’s the way
that’s the way
that’s the way i feel
about you
Communication
if music is the most universal language
just think of me as one whole note
if science has the most perfect language
picture me as MC2
since mathematics can speak to the infinite
imagine me as 1 to the first power
what i mean is one day
i’m gonna grab your love
and you’ll be
satisfied
Luxury
i suppose living
in a materialistic society
luxury
to some would be having
more than what you need
living in an electronic age seeing
the whole world by pushing a button
the nth degree might perhaps be
adequately represented by having
someone there to push
the buttons for you
i have thought if only
i could become rich and famous i would
live luxuriously in new york knowing
famous people eating
in expensive restaurants calling
long distance anytime i want
but you held me
one evening and now i know
the ultimate luxury
of your love
Poem
like a will-o’-the-wisp in the night
on a honeysuckle breeze
a moment sticks
us together
like a dolphin being
tickled on her stomach
my sea of love flip-flops all
over my face
like the wind blowing
across a field of wheat
your smile whispers to my inner ear
with the relief of recognition
i bend to your eyes
casually
raping me
Hampton, Virginia
the birds flew south
earlier this year
and flowers wilted under the glare
of frost
nature puts her house in order
the weather reports say this
will be the coldest winter
already the perch have burrowed
deep into the lakes
and the snails are six instead
of three feet under
i quilted myself
one blanket and purchased five
pounds of colored popcorn
in corners i placed dried
flowers and in my bathroom a jar
of lavender smells
my landlord stripped my windows
and i cut all my old sox for feet pads
they say you should fight the cold with the cold
but since i never do anything right
i called you
Poetry Is a Trestle
poetry is a trestle
spanning the distance between
what i feel
and what i say
like a locomotive
i rush full speed ahead
trusting your strength
to carry me over
sometimes we share a poem
because people are near
and they would notice me
noticing you
so i write X and you write O
and we both win
sometimes we share a poem
because i’m washing the dishes
and you’re looking at your news
or sometimes we make a poem
because it’s Sunday and you want
ice cream while i want cookies
but always we share a poem
because belief predates action
and i believe
the most beautiful poem
ever heard is your heart
racing
The Laws of Motion
(for Harlem Magic)
The laws of science teach us a pound of gold weighs as
much as a pound of flour though if dropped from any
undetermined height in their natural state one would
xreach bottom and one would fly away
Laws of motion tell us an inert object is more difficult to
propel than an object heading in the wrong direction is to
turn around. Motion being energy—inertia—apathy.
Apathy equals hostility. Hostility—violence. Violence
being energy is its own virtue. Laws of motion teach us
Black people are no less confused because of our
Blackness than we are diffused because of our
powerlessness. Man we are told is the only animal who
smiles with his lips. The eyes however are the mirror of
the soul
The problem with love is not what we feel but what we
wish we felt when we began to feel we should feel
something. Just as publicity is not production: seduction
is not seductive
If I could make a wish I’d wish for all the knowledge of all
the world. Black may be beautiful Professor Micheau
says but knowledge is power. Any desirable object is
bought and sold—any neglected object declines in value.
It is against man’s nature to be in either category
If white defines Black and good defines evil then men
define women or women scientifically speaking describe
men. If sweet is the opposite of sour and heat the
absence of cold then love is the contradiction of pain and
beauty is in the eye of the beheld
Sometimes I want to touch you and be touched in
return. But you think I’m grabbing and I think you’re
shirking and Mama always said to look out for men like
you
So I go to the streets with my lips painted red and my
eyes carefully shielded to seduce the world my reluctant
lover
And you go to your men slapping fives feeling good
posing as a man because you know as long as you sit
very very still the laws of motion will be in effect
Something to Be Said for Silence
there is something
to be said for silence
it’s almost as sexual as moving
your bowels
i wanted to be in love
when winter came
like a groundhog i would burrow
under the patchwork pieces
of your love
but the threads are slender
and they are being stretched
i guess it’s all right
to want to feel
though it’s better to really feel
>
and sometimes i wonder
did i ever love anyone
i like my house my job i gave up
my car
but i bought a new coat
and somewhere something is missing
i do all the right things
maybe i’m just tired
maybe i’m just tired of being tired
i feel sometimes so inert
and laws of motion being what they are
i feel we won’t feel again
it’s all right with me
if you want to love
it’s all right with me if you don’t
my silence is at least
as sexy as your love
and twice as easy
to take
Africa
i am a teller of tales
a dreamer of dreams
shall i spin a poem around you
human beings grope to strangers
to share a smile
complain to lovers of their woes
and never touch
those who need to be touched
may i move on
the african isn’t independent
he’s emancipated
and like the freedman he explores
his freedom rather than exploits
his nation
worrying more about the condition
of the women than his position in the world
i am a dreamer of dreams
in my fantasy i see a person
not proud for pride is a collection of lions
or a magazine in washington d.c.
but a person who can be wrong and go on
or a person who can be praised and still work
but a person who can let a friend share a joy as easily
as a friend shares a sorrow
it’s odd that all welcome a tale of disappointment
though few a note of satisfaction
have none of us been happy
i am a teller of tales
i see kings and noblemen
slaves and serfs all selling
and being sold for what end
to die for freedom or live for joy
i am a teller of tales
we must believe in each other’s dreams
i’m told and i dream
of me accepting you and you accepting yourself
will that stroke the tension
between blacks and africans
i dream of truth lubricating our words
will that ease three hundred years
and i dream of black men and women walking
together side by side into a new world
described by love and bounded by difference
for nothing is the same except oppression and shame
may i spin a poem around you
come let’s step into my web
and dream of freedom together
Swaziland
i am old and need
to remember
you are young and need
to learn
if i forget the words
will you remember the music
i hear a drum speaking of a stream
the path is crossing the stream
the stream is crossing the path
which came first the drums ask
the music is with the river
if we meet does it matter
that i took the step toward you
the words ask are you fertile
the music says let’s dance
i am old and need to remember
you are young and want to learn
let’s dance together
let’s dance
together
let’s
dance
together
A Very Simple Wish
i want to write an image
like a log-cabin quilt pattern
and stretch it across all the lonely
people who just don’t fit in
we might make a world
if i do that
i want to boil a stew
with all the leftover folk
whose bodies are full
of empty lives
we might feed a world
if i do that
twice in our lives
we need direction
when we are young and innocent
when we are old and cynical
but since the old refused
to discipline us
we now refuse
to discipline them
which is a contemptuous way
for us to respond
to each other
i’m always surprised
that it’s easier to stick
a gun in someone’s face
or a knife in someone’s back
than to touch skin to skin
anyone whom we like
i should imagine if nature holds true
one day we will lose our hands
since we do no work nor make
any love
if nature is true
we shall all lose our eyes
since we cannot even now distinguish
the good from the evil
i should imagine we shall lose our souls
since we have so blatantly put them up
for sale and glutted the marketplace
thereby depressing the price
i wonder why we don’t love
not some people way on
the other side of the world with strange
customs and habits
not some folk from whom we were sold
hundreds of years ago
but people who look like us
who think like us
who want to love us why
don’t we love them
i want to make a quilt
of all the patches and find
one long strong pole
to lift it up
i’ve a mind to build
a new world
want to play
Night
in africa night walks
into day as quickly
as a moth is extinguished
by its desire for flame
the clouds in the caribbean carry
night like a young man
with a proud erection dripping
black dots across the blue sky
the wind a mistress of the sun howls
her displeasure at the involuntary
fertilization
but nights are white
in new york
the shrouds of displeasure
mask our fear of facing
ourselves between the lonely
sheets
Poetry
poetry is motion graceful
as a fawn
gentle as a teardrop
strong like the eye
finding peace in a crowded room
we poets tend to think
our words are golden
though emotion speaks too
loudly to be defined
by silence
sometimes after midnight or just before
the dawn
we sit typewriter in hand
pulling loneliness around us
forgetting our lovers or children
who are sleeping
ignoring the weary wariness
of our own logic
to compose a poem
no one understands it
it never says “love me” for poets are
beyond love
it never says “accept me” for poems seek not
acceptance but controversy
it only says “i am” and therefore
i concede that you are too
a poem is pure energy
horizontally contained
between the mind
of the poet and the ear of the reader
if it does not sing discard the ear
for poe
try is song
if it does not delight discard
the heart for poetry is joy
if it does not inform then close
off the brain for it is dead
if it cannot heed the insistent message
that life is precious
which is all we poets
wrapped in our loneliness
are trying to say
Always There Are the Children
and always there are the children
there will be children in the heat of day
there will be children in the cold of winter
children like a quilted blanket
are welcomed in our old age
children like a block of ice to a desert sheik
are a sign of status in our youth
we feed the children with our culture
that they might understand our travail
we nourish the children on our gods
that they may understand respect
we urge the children on the tracks
that our race will not fall short
but children are not ours
nor we theirs they are future we are past
how do we welcome the future
not with the colonialism of the past
for that is our problem
not with the racism of the past
for that is their problem
not with the fears of our own status
for history is lived not dictated
we welcome the young of all groups
as our own with the solid nourishment
of food and warmth
we prepare the way with the solid
The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni Page 14