Shake Loose My Skin

i have been a
way so long
once after college
i returned tourist
style to watch all
the niggers killing
themselves with
three-for-oners
with
needles
that cd
not support
their stutters.

now woman
i have returned
leaving behind me
all those hide and
seek faces peeling
with freudian dreams.
this is for real.

black
niggers
my beauty.

baby.
i have learned it
ain’t like they say
in the newspapers.

Poem at Thirty

it is midnight
no magical bewitching
hour for me
i know only that
i am here waiting
remembering that
once as a child
i walked two
miles in my sleep.
did i know
then where i
was going? traveling.
i’m always traveling.
i want to tell
you about me
about nights on a
brown couch when
i wrapped my
bones in lint and
refused to move.
no one touches
me anymore.
father do not
send me out
among strangers.
you you black man
stretching scraping
the mold from your body.
here is my hand.
i am not afraid
of the night.

Malcolm

do not speak to me of martydom
of men who die to be remembered
on some parish day.
i don’t believe in dying
though i too shall die
and violets like castanets
will echo me.

yet this man
this dreamer,
thick-lipped with words
will never speak again
and in each winter
when the cold air cracks
with frost, i’ll breathe
his breath and mourn
my gun-filled nights.
he was the sun that tagged
the western sky and
melted tiger-scholars
while they searched for stripes.
he said, “fuck you white
man. we have been
curled too long. nothing
is sacred now. not your
white face nor any
land that separates
until some voices
squat with spasms.”

do not speak to me of living.
life is obscene with crowds
of white on black.
death is my pulse.
what might have been
is not for him/or me
but what could have been
floods the womb until i drown.

Personal Letter No. 2

i speak skimpily to
you about apartments i
no longer dwell in
and children who
chant their dis
obedience in choruses.
if i were young
i wd stretch you
with my wild words
while our nights
run soft with hands.
but i am what i
am. woman. alone
amid all this noise.

A Poem for My Father

how sad it must be
to love so many women
to need so many black
perfumed bodies weeping
underneath you.

when i remember all those nights

i filled my mind with
long wars between short
sighted trojans & greeks
while you slapped some
wide hips about in
your pvt dungeon,
when i remember your
deformity i want to
do something about your
makeshift manhood.
i guess

that is why
on meeting your sixth
wife, i cross myself
with her confessionals.

Poem No. 3

i gather up
each sound
you left behind
and stretch them
on our bed.

each nite
i breathe you
and become high.

Blues

in the night
in my half hour
negro dreams

i hear voices knocking at the door
i see walls dripping screams up
and down the halls

won’t someone open
the door for me? won’t some
one schedule my sleep
and don’t ask no questions?
noise.

like when he took me to his
home away from home place
and i died the long sought after
death he’d planned for me.
Yeah, bessie he put in the bacon
and it overflowed the pot.
and two days later
when i was talking
i started to grin.
as everyone knows
i am still grinning.

Haiku

did ya ever cry

Black man, did ya ever cry

til you knocked all over?

Sequences

today I am
tired of sabbaths.
I seek a river of sticks
scratching the spine.

O I have laughed the clown’s air
now my breath dries in paint.

what is this profusion?
the sun does not burn
a cure, but hoards
while I stretch upward.

I hear, turning
in my shrug

a blaze of horns.

O I had forgotten parades
belabored with dreams.

in my father’s time

I fished in ponds
without fishes.

arching my throat,

I gargled amid nerves

and sang of redeemers.

(o where have you been sweet

redeemer, sharp redeemer,

o where have you been baroque
shimmer?

i have been in coventry

where ghosts danced in my veins

i have heard you in all refrains.)

ah the lull of
a yellow voice
that does not whine
with roots.

I have touched breasts
and buildings answered.
I have breathed
moth-shaped men
without seeds.

(O indiscriminate sleeves)

(once upon an afternoon

i became still-life

i carried a balloon

and a long black knife.)

love comes with pink eyes
with movements that run
green then blue again.
my thighs burn in crystal.

Haiku

if i had known, if
i had known you, i would have
left my love at home.

Poem No. 8

i’ve been a woman

with my legs stretched by the wind

rushing the day

thinking i heard your voice

while it was only the nite

moving over

making room for the dawn.

Present

This woman vomiting her

hunger over the world

this melancholy woman forgotten

before memory came

this yellow movement bursting forth like

coltrane’s melodies all mouth

buttocks moving like palm trees,

this honeycoatedalabamianwoman

raining rhythm of blue/black/smiles

this yellow woman carrying beneath her breasts

pleasures without tongues

this woman whose body weaves

desert patterns,

this woman, wet with wandering,
reviving the beauty of forests and winds
is telling you secrets
gather up your odors and listen
as she sings the mold from memory.

there is no place
for a soft/black/woman.
there is no smile green enough or
summertime words warm enough to allow my growth.
and in my head
i see my history
standing like a shy child
and i chant lullabies
as i ride my past on horseback
tasting the thirst of yesterday tribes
hearing the ancient/black/woman

me, singing hay-hay-hay-hay-ya-ya-ya.

hay-hay-hay-hay-ya-ha-ya.

like a slow scent
beneath the sun

and i dance my
creation and my grandmothers gathering
from my bones like great wooden birds
spread their wings
while their long/legged/laughter
stretches the night.

and i taste the
seasons of my birth. mangoes. papayas.
drink my woman/coconut/milks
stalk the ancient grandfathers
sipping on proud afternoons
walk with a song round my waist
tremble like a new/born/child troubled
with new breaths

and my singing
becomes the only sound of a
blue/black/magical/woman. walking.
womb ripe. walking. loud with mornings. walking.
making pilgrimage to herself. walking.

Tanka

i kneel down like a
collector of jewels before
you. i am singing
one long necklace of love my
mouth a sapphire of grapes.

Tanka

autumn. a bonfire
  of leaves. morning peels us toward
     pomegranate festivals.
         and in the evening i bring
           you soup cooled by my laughter.

A Love Poem Written for Sterling Brown

(after reading a
New York Times
article re
a mummy kept preserved for about 3000 years)

I’m gonna get me some mummy tape for your love

preserve it for 3000 years or more

I’m gonna let the world see you

tapping a blue shell dance of love

I’m gonna ride your love bareback

on totem poles

bear your image on mountains
turning in ocean sleep
string your sighs thru the rainbow
of old age.

In the midst of desert people and times

I’m gonna fly your red/eagle/laughter ’cross the sky.

Kwa mama zetu waliotuzaa
^*