BIRMINGHAM 1963
They were just
four
little girls
in a church
not old
enough
to know
the Lord
forgave them
for being
born
four
little girls
ribbons
in their greased
tight hair
Tree Pride
for Peter Connor
Winter is for everyone
in my front room a tree
planted in a tea kettle
its lights like stars
glow there
may my Christmas
tree lights find you
and lead you safely
to my house in the cold
winter night
AMERICAN SWEETHEART
Whatever happened to Baby Jane
in her flip flops takin’ a drag
scraping the floor hanging
onto the icebox door with an Oreo
and a bottle of beer kitchen
in a whirl she’s feeling so good
talking to light bulbs and cockroaches
she’s America’s child actor
America’s sweetheart
a has-been the tap dancing
white kid with the finger curls
blood red eyes in a house
dress three days old smelling
of piss whatever happened
to you Baby Jane who used to keep
America warm in those hungry
depression days dancing
up the plantation stairs
my little southern gal our little
chile you were tomorrow
little sugar girl
in a dustbowl black storm time
singing of hope beyond Kansas
WHAT A WOMAN WANTS
IN STEPFORD
out of her ovens hot
cross buns and biscuits
tender hams come If
the world is white (my dears)
the perfect woman is a Step-
ford wife opening with pride
her oven
hair a combed straight blonde
no curls allowed
in Step-ford behind
her man a perfect Pat
Nixon suits and heels
at cocktail hour in an apron
the last one seated
at dinner she needs a husband
she thinks but I think all she wants
is a good stiff drink
HAVING IT ALL
He’s the dude*
with finger-combed
silvers like the fox
white
(for the dude in all
of us) hair the Hemingway
look
Razor-cut chin
player**
With a strut
A handful of give me
five
Down the aisles
in the bookstore
The dude
in New Titles
Rolling his shoulders
Like Marlon Brando Terry
Malloy
ready
To lean a little
On a chick****
he thinks
and he is
In a non smoking
Way
On the phone
like a private
Dick
Sam Spade***
Whiskey baritone
Man*
honey
So cool
he’s Ice
check out the stride
Slow deliberate
Like a cat****
On the prowl
For a small
Wild
Furry
Thing
He’s got it all
and some of yours too
He’s the dude
* White male with style
** Chick magnet who can’t say no
*** Private eye created by Dashiell Hammett and made famous by Humphrey Bogart
**** Cool but stylish woman
SINCE YOU WENT AWAY JIM CROW
— for Aaron Copland and sixteen presidential elections
Blues child
sixties
hip hoppers
homeboys (raisins out
of the sun)
grandmother
getting
looped
her January is
almost as good
as Concord
Grape
Freedom riders
and freedom
school
Margaret Walker’s
epic
people and poem
striving
striving
America is
beautiful
today
like Marian
Anderson so beautiful
(like an old sweet Ray
Charles
Georgia Georgia
Every word a promise
of her/his country
fulfilled
today
the corns cut
It fiddling time
Beyoncé singing
“At Last”
From ’Sippi
Boston
Mama’s cotton town
And the forgotten
Washington side
streets
throw a few licks
on the keys
lay a burden down
stand up
for President
elect Obama
Like we did
at lunch
counters
for
James Meredith (shot
cause he wanted
to learn
like a white
in Mississippi)
Stand up
for America
and each
other
shining faces
like the sun white
and brown standing
for tomorrow
and god
folks
gone yesterday
King Malcolm Bobby
Cheney Goodman
and Schwerner
This little light
of mine sang hands
clapping
Fannie Lou Hamer
“Let it shine!”
“Let it shine!”
Marian Anderson this country
is thee
we sing we
are here
spare change
In a Dunkin
Doughnut
cup
for the hungry
those tired
and still
there
put out
our hands
instead
of the fist
for a new president
We have
come bringing
the dream
and to dream
walk
with the sweat
and will
in the cold
stand
before the TV
march
boombox and
walkman
Blackberry
and latte
at Starbucks
and McDonalds
gather round
the kitchen table
in the Irish
pub next door
the radio
in the work
place table
and counters
the hoods
and country
in the sweet
by and by
on the beautiful
shore
no more someday
walk
America
with your bottle
water beer
latte Italian
Swiss Colony
Turtle Bay
pound penny
slots at Twin River
twist-off
in a brown
paper bag
the lottery
Common Ground
corner pub
for a early
happy hour good
day
Mr. Jim Crow
been a looong
time since
I seen you
America
has come home
from the mountain top
BEAUTIFUL MEL TORME
The drummer
sits above
us the horn
is the left bank
the music
jumping
over heads
and April
in Paris
is a pretty Mel Torme
smooth and crooning
A foggy day
and there is nothing
a tune from memory
of an old record
you may talk
about the blues
(and this is jazz)
cause hearing it ain’t the same
as playing it
live
says beats
the drummer
ROMANCE
For them O & M
Beyoncé and
the good old
songs
our parents
danced to
At Last
it is the two
of them
old school
slow
dancing
one
step
and then
another
glide
to the music
At Last
my lonely
days
are over
the two
of them
leaning
with the music
the song
is them
and us their
hearts
move
each other
hers
his
so close
they are
these two
we cannot
see
how dark
the ballroom
is young
people
thinking
it is our fathers
our mothers
in love
so
long
ago
DEAD RESPECTABILITY
the poet looking for cigarette butts
in the gutters of Common
wealth Avenue is not a bum living alone on Joy Street
he’s John Weiners my friends will speak well
of him after he’s dead at MIT the Blacksmith Poetry reading
see him now and then out of his fucking mind
he will be okay he’s dying his poems are collected
in a signed limited edition poets cannot afford they
thumb through the paperback edition at the Grolier Bookshop
the best books are the review copies the books you never pay for
good hunting Mr. Weiners the downtown and uptown
gutters are littered with butts like the shelves of poetry
collections in Barnes and Noble
walk in without knocking the world’s already here
waiting for Wieners wanting a true poem
life not literature Leroi wrote letters
in poems small press editions reading
in coffee shops cigarettes
smoking unwashed
smokers for Negro rights
and peace fags beating
bongos poetry on mimeograph queer
is good John Weiners Frank O’Hara
look for you on Forty-Second
Street in the all night movie
bathroom cheap hotel rooms stretch out
yr arms touch the walls wide enough
to touch yr fingers in a single cot long
room wish you stayed
in Baltimore the only Negro poet
downtown drinking T’bird national
bo- finger typing like Roi and Creeley
for love of the people the common language
of the stoops and avenue
the Negro night and jazz
in yr fingers to the keys of the typewriter
out of the pawnshop next to the bed
plate of kale last night
cigarettes and all those Totem Corinth poetry
books from the Eighth Street
Bookstore where you saw Ginsberg so cool like he here
right now in this room
in New York talking poetry reading poems
and you can’t believe that he sounds like
another guy reading
his stuff like the words are from somewhere
else in the ghetto
a cheap unheated apartment
and the streets are always night
dangerous punks
winos and he trying to save
America with a poem and chanting
and the world
is so small that Kruschev and Nixon
the cops are here in this room
waiting for Wieners to walk in
without knocking
the underfed non-educated Negro generation
post slavery depression world war two
Negro in the police Ginsberg
white jazz America of a beat America
of Time Magazine Communist intellectual
American life afraid to be mensches
book loving Negro white faggots
in American name only
Eisenhower schoolhouse door free south
separate and not even the black
eye popping knee-knocking stolen by
Elvis imprisoned in the living room life
John Weiners there you are like me
a poet without a butt a smoke
a coffee in Boston who remembers
Lamont Cranston the clouding
of the mind Mae West more man
than Cary Grant see her upstairs
pretending to be a woman the tits
are hers the body is Wallace Berry
John Weiners middle age is for
the empty nest wasp St Peter
on speed hard work if you can get
it you are Jimmy Cliff in Harvard Square
FOR WHAT WE ARE ABOUT TO RECEIVE
We are
the what
the living
Seed
now giving
thanks
to the new
;an thee
our lives and daily
suffering
is living
and like a gift
we are
thankful for
LANGSTON KNOCKING
— for the students in Mary Strickland’s class at the Creekside Intermediate School
Poems (one day)
Will come
(I promise)
for you
Langston Hughes (head
full of rivers
sorrow
Georgia
pine
and a little
moon
shine jazz)
give the feet (a little
jive)
a snap
to the
fingers
corn rolls
and red
shoes
toes
to keep the
beat
on Bourbon
Street
like some
a poem
will come
and open
a door
say
come in
I have
been waiting
for you for
Langston
and you
and you I promise
barber’s boy
writes
“Uncle Sam’s
no relative of mine”
broke in Kansas
hungry in Kansas
horny in Kansas
alone in the West
Buick and Plymouth
my home
hitchhiking
writer & drunk
cowboy
of the Denver
bus stop
and barber
shop
letter writer
of the eternal
sentence
shouting
“go go go go”
to Negroes
and bop
blank
verse poets
ride
out of flophouses
into America
driving
five hundred
stolen cars
lookin’ for chicks
and Kerouac
Cody of the poolhall
and backwoods
like Gene Autry
of the Hollywood
West the sunset
and horse
the gasoline
station
on his tombstone
he wanted to be
an Indian fighter
George Washington
Daniel Boone
in a coonskin cap
and here he is
shouting
“go go go go”
to Negroes
and bop
RESPECTABLE IN DEATH
Pretty Boy the baby face Nelson John with the smooth
red face of the farmer the hick the cracker
(don’t you boys know farmers can’t be Jessie James)
with a tommy gun a revolver a bullet hole in the back
of your starched white shirt fighting the railroad
the ranchers with sheep and the bible
doing something with the gun
to the banks the carpet baggers Floyd s pretty
enough to be a boy(nothing of a girl in his old face
he aint pretty he just young shooting squirrels and cats
Floyd with four bullets holes in your stomach boy in a suit
you are looking respectable like a hard working dead white man
LeRoi
is a
street
poem
going
by
a little
jig
step
his legs
break
at the
knee
ready
for a tap
dance
his jive
is cool
and
talkin’
baby
(not
a child
or woman)
man
he says
what’s
up
baby
Roi
is going
by
* Title of one of Baraka’s books
THE MAN FROM LARAMIE
— for James Sock
“No one knew anything about him”
— lyrics from the theme by Ned Washington
just a man longing
for his brother a stranger
riding out
of an old man’s dream in a white hat
two guns at his side they hog tied him
dragged his squirming body through
the campfire the salt and dust
he had been loading his mule drawn wagons
up with salt when they caught
him on the flats on the old man’s
range just salt but the range
is the old man they
shot him left
a bullet
in his gunhand
left him with the dead mules the burning
wagons the angry man
from Laramie nobody knew anything about
him ’cept he was diggin
on the old man’s range
LIKE A POOR MAN
He came home in a mule drawn cart
on a bridge in Selma
a burning slum in Negro America
in the fist and billy club in the black
Mariah to the foot of Jesus (and
there is no happiness anywhere
urban renewal and millions
just like me in
the night of an America he made
he went to glory like a old woman
in a hearse with four proud white houses
he was the king long live the king
he died an old time death
weary and ready to die like Richard
Wright’s Big Boy twisting
in the wind he’s gone home
like a poor man to the ground