You're in this dream of cotton plants.
You raise a hoe, swing, and the first weeds
Fall with a sigh. You take another step,
Chop, and the sigh comes again,
Until you yourself are breathing that way
With each step, a sigh that will follow you into town.
That's hours later. The sun is a red blister
Coming up in your palm. Your back is strong,
Young, not yet the broken chair
......
Because this graveyard is a hill,
I must climb up to see my dead,
stopping once midway to rest
beside this tree.
It was here, between the anticipation
of exhaustion, and exhaustion,
between vale and peak,
my father came down to me
......
Come up from the fields, father, here's a letter from our Pete;
And come to the front door, mother-here's a letter from thy dear
son.
Lo, 'tis autumn;
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages, with leaves fluttering in the
moderate wind;
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang, and grapes on the trellis'd
vines;
......
I WANDER all night in my vision,
Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and
stopping,
Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers,
Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory,
Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping.
How solemn they look there, stretch'd and still!
How quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles!
......
We Black men of England
Too proud to cry for shame,
Let's cry a sea
Cry publicly,
Expose our very pain,
For Babylon the bandit
Is on our sisters trail,
The bad talk
And the cool walk
Will not keep us out of jail.
......
Every time I do a smell
I think it's cool, somehow just swell,
I turn around and look to see
If they caught on it was me.
I cast a frown and act confused
For all to know I'm quite bemused,
I quickly learned this is the key
To then bleat out...it wasn't me!
I feign a gaze of sad and hurt
......
You came quietly along…
One sunny day in June…
You were a beautiful child…
With a bit of silver spoon…
You often share a smile…
With everyone in sight…
Always playing the peacemaker…
Should your siblings fight…
......
I have understood my mother in the present weather.
Her colourless, toothless, though contended a smile
Naif, fair, with dappled on face,
Age and height middled
Beautiful, my ‘maa’ she was.
In winter, she caught the ability to forget,
Forget her past, her present.... future-
Everything, but not everything, not me.
I was the nectar if bee she was,
......
he watches the rain like
it's alive
but he feels less alive himself
behind him
the house turns dark
its last light going off
don't turn back
don't look back
keep going ahead
......
well
there's plenty of cutesy names to
call one's children
but his was 'unlovable trash'
He remembered it from the time he was in the crib
They held him there
for longer than most parents
held their kids in cribs. Though only dad
called him so
because he constantly claimed he wasn't his
......