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Wel / come back, brother
from …
the House of many Slams
to
these mean bricks
a poet
sung to me:
lets us
drink wine in the alley
and dance in the streets
everyday people
have found
a prince
bright-eyed
wonder-child
comes
Revolution.
From The Lost Etheridge Knight: The Uncollected Poems of Etheridge Knight. Copyright © 2022 by Etheridge Knight. Published by Kinchafoonee Creek Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
1
Outside, the thunder
Shakes the prison walls; inside
My heart shakes my ears.
2
(For Sonia)
Snow from the mountains
Of my heart instantly melts
In your warm Blackness.
3
Black men with Torches
Follow the bloody tracks of
The albino beast.
4
Gray jets drag white tails
Across blue skies; gray rats drag
Tails across black legs.
I have heard your voice floating, royal and real,
Across the dusky neighborhoods,
And the eyes of old men grow bright, remembering;
Children stop their play to listen,
Remembering—though they have never heard you before,
You are familiar to them:
Queen of the Blues, singing an eternal song.
In the scarred booths of Forty-Third street,
“Long Johns” suck in their bellies,
On the brass studded leather of Elite-town,
Silk-suited Bucks raise their chins …
Mother taught me.
I learned about despair when
I smiled instead of weeping
as she’d sit blue as the
heavy pot belly stove,
overcome with a promise tinted
futility;
angry as God
between her affair with sweep and scrub.
Needing laughter
she’d think of a stronger arm,
but seeing me:
a holy devil protested,
decently attacking
thin floors
that spun
undefeatable yellow.
Thinking quiet in my toy,
I watched
looking cool
for mother.