When Black People Are (audio only)
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i will die in havana in a hurricane it will be morning, i'll be facing southwest away from the gulf, away from the storm away from home, looking to the virid hills of matanzas where the orisha rise, lifted by congueros in masks of iron, bongoseros in masks of water, timbaleros in masks of fire by all the clave that binds the rhythms of this world i'll be writing when i go, revising another hopeful survey of my life. i will die of nothing that i did but of all that i did not do i promised myself a better self than i could make & i will not forgive you will be there, complaining that i never saved you, that i left you where you live, stranded in your own green dream when you come for me come singing no dirge, but scat my eulogy in bebop code. sing that i died among gods but lived with no god & did not suffer for it. find one true poem that i made & sing it to my shade as it fades into the wind. sing it presto, in 4/4 time in the universal ghetto key of b flat i will die in havana in rhythm. tumbao montuno, guaguanco, dense strata of rhythm pulsing me away & the mother of waters will say to the saint of crossroads well, damn. he danced his way out after all
Click the icon above to listen to this audio poem.
Click the icon above to listen to this audio poem.
3. Not Knowing Better
florene barco moved
to philadelphia &
on a visit home told
us she went
to school with
white kids
it was a lunar image
everything shouted
inferior
to us
the patterns
we walked. the ease
with which they
commanded. that
we could not live
by the river
word of lynching
farther south & of course
the signs. i
thought it all to be
as much of nature
as the night sky
the birds of the air
the notion of place
meant not where
you stood but how
you talked
to a white man
place was
the wet brown earth
your knees
sank down in
& philadelphia
was the crescent
moon