The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (5 page)

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
 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.

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
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 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.

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.

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.