A Letter to Dr. Martin Luther King ~ Sonia Sanchez (National Poetry Month, Day 4)

Dear Martin,

Great God, what a morning, Martin!

The sun is rolling in from faraway places. I watch it reaching out, circling these bare trees like some reverent lover. I have been standing still listening to the morning, and I hear your voice crouched near hills, rising from the mountain tops, breaking the circle of dawn.

You would have been 54 today.

As I point my face toward a new decade, Martin, I want you to know that the country still crowds the spirit. I want you to know that we still hear your footsteps setting out on a road cemented with black bones. I want you to know that the stuttering of guns could not stop your light from crashing against cathedrals chanting piety while hustling the world.

Great God, what a country, Martin!

The decade after your death docked like a spaceship on a new planet. Voyagers all we were. We were the aliens walking up the ’70s, a holocaust people on the move looking out from dark eyes. A thirsty generation, circling the peaks of our country for more than a Pepsi taste. We were youngbloods, spinning hip syllables while saluting a country neutral with pain.

And our children saw the mirage of plenty spilling from capitalistic sands.

And they ran toward the desert.

And the gods of sand made them immune to words that strengthen the breast.

And they became scavengers walking on the earth.

And you can see them playing. Hide-and-go-seek robbers. Native sons. Running on their knees. Reinventing slavery on asphalt. Peeling their umbilical cords for a gold chain.

And you can see them on Times Square, N.Y.C., Martin, selling their 11-, 12-year-old, 13-, 14-year-old bodies to suburban forefathers.

And you can see them on Market Street in Philadelphia bobbing up bellywise, young fishes for old sharks.

And no cocks are crowing on those mean streets.

Great God, what morning, it’ll be someday, Martin!

That decade fell like a stone on our eyes. Our movements. Rhythms. Loves. Books. Delivered us from the night, drove out the fears keeping some of us hoarse. New births knocking at the womb kept us walking.

We crossed the cities while a backlash of judges tried to turn us into moles with blackrobed words of reverse racism. But we knew. And our knowing was like a sister’s embrace. We crossed the land where famine was fed in public. Where black stomachs exploded on the world’s dais while men embalmed their eyes and tongues in gold. But we knew. And our knowing squatted from memory.

Sitting on our past, we watch the new decade dawning. These are strange days, Martin, when the color of freedom becomes disco fever; when soap operas populate our Zulu braids; as the world turns to the conservative right and general hospitals are closing in Black neighborhoods and the  young and the restless are drugged by early morning refer butts. And houses tremble.

These are dangerous days, Martin, when cowboy-riding presidents corral Blacks (and others) in a common crown of thorns; when nuclear-toting generals recite an alphabet of blood; when multinational corporations  assassinate ancient cultures while inaugurating new civilizations. Come out come out, wherever you are. Black country. Waiting to be born…

But, Martin, on this day, your 54th birthday–with all the reversals–we have learned that black is the beginning of everything.
it was black in the universe before the sun;
it was black in the mind before we opened our eyes;
it was black In the womb of our mother;
black is the beginning.
and if we are the beginning we will be forever.

Martin. I have learned too that fear is not a black man or woman. Fear cannot disturb the length of those who struggle against material gains for self-aggrandizement. Fear cannot disturb the good of people who have moved to a meeting place where the pulse pounds out freedom and justice for the universe.

Now is the changing of the tides, Martin. You forecast it where leaves dance on the wings of man. Martin. Listen. On this your 54th birthday, listen and you will hear the earth delivering up curfews to the missionaries and the assassins. Listen. And you will hear the tribal songs:

Ayeee Ayooooo Ayeee
Ayeee Ayooooo Ayeee

Malcolm…                                                          Ke wa rona*
Robeson…                                                          Ke wa rona
Lumumba…                                                       Ke wa rona
Fannie Lou…                                                     Ke wa rona
Garvey…                                                             Ke wa rona
Johnbrown…                                                    Ke wa rona
Tubman…                                                           Ke wa rona
Mandela…                                                          Ke wa rona
(free Mandela,
free Mandela)
Assata…                                                              Ke wa rona

As we go with you to the sun,
as we walk in the dawn, turn our eyes
Eastward and let the prophecy come true
and let the prophecy come true.
Great God, Martin, what a morning, it will be!

*he is ours

Poem excerpted from Homegirls and Handgrenades

Sonia Sanchez website

Song by Sweet Honey in the Rock

Sweet Honey in the Rock website

Requiem for a Nest ~ Wanda Coleman (National Poetry Month, Day 3)

the winged thang built her dream palace
amid the fine green eyes of a sheltering bough
she did not know it was urban turf
disguised as serenely delusional rural
nor did she know the neighborhood was rife
with slant-mawed felines and those long-taloned
swoopers of prey, she was ignorant of the acidity & oil
that slowly polluted the earth, and was never
to detect the serpent coiled one strong limb below

following her nature she flitted and dove
for whatever blades twigs and mud
could be found under the humming blue
and created a hatchery for her spawn
not knowing all were doomed

 

Excerpted from Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry

 

Evening Primrose ~ Rita Dove (National Poetry Month, Day 2)

Poetically speaking, growing up is mediocrity
– Ned Rorem

Neither rosy nor prim
not cousin to the cowslip
nor the extravagant fuchsia-
I doubt anyone has ever
picked one for show,
though the woods must be fringed
with their lemony effusions.

Sun blathers its baronial
endorsement, but they refuse
to join the ranks. Summer
brings them in armfuls,
yet, when the day is large,
you won’t see them fluttering
the length of the road.

They’ll wait until the world’s
tucked in and the sky’s
one ceaseless shimmer-then
lift their saturated eyelids
and blaze, blaze
all night long
for  no one.

 

Excerpted from Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry

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New World ~ Derek Walcott (National Poetry Month, Day 1)

Then after Eden,
was there one surprise?
O yes, the awe of Adam
at the first bead of sweat.

Thenceforth, all flesh
had to be sown with salt,
to feel the edge of seasons,
fear and harvest
joy that was difficult,
but was, at least, his own.

The snake? It would not trust
on its forked tree.
The snake admired Labour,
it would not leave him alone.

And both would watch the leaves
silver the alder,
oaks yellowing October,
everything turning money.

So when Adam was exiled
to our new Eden, in the ark’s gut,
the coined snake coiled there for good
fellowship also; that was willed.

Adam had an idea.
He and the snake would share
the loss of Eden for a profit.
So both made the New World. And it looked good.

Excerpted from Derek Walcott: Collected Poems 1948-1984

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National Poetry Month (New World by Derek Walcott)

Then after Eden,
was there one surprise?
O yes, the awe of Adam
at the first bead of sweat.

Thenceforth, all flesh
had to be sown with salt,
to feel the edge of seasons,
fear and harvest
joy that was difficult,
but was, at least, his own.

The snake? It would not trust
on its forked tree.
The snake admired Labour,
it would not leave him alone.

And both would watch the leaves
silver the alder,
oaks yellowing October,
everything turning money.

So when Adam was exiled
to our new Eden, in the ark’s gut,
the coined snake coiled there for good
fellowship also; that was willed.

Adam had an idea.
He and the snake would share
the loss of Eden for a profit.
So both made the New World. And it looked good.

 

Excerpted from Derek Walcott: Collected Poems 1948-1984

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Chloe and Yvonne (Chapter 2.0)

Dear Sewafe,

For the first time in a very long time, I am not coming to see you. I am taking Funmi to see a play called Desdemona in New York City. It is a reworking of Othello. Well, that’s not a totally accurate way of describing  it. It is more a reappropriation or retelling. Instead of Othello being the main character, Desdemona is. It’s written by Toni Morrison and is, apparently, the result of  her fulfilling some sort of contract she had with a white theater director.  You know that I’ve long adored Toni Morrison’s writing although I am not one for plays and such. However, I have to give Funmi an alternative to Shakespeare. She’s been driving me crazy. If her head isn’t buried in a bible-sized edition of the complete collection of Shakespeare, she is her room practicing, out loud, her role.

Yain Kain 

Dear Yain Kain,

What do you mean you’re not coming to see me? You know how much I depend on the visits. They keep me sane and help keep at bay some of the demons in here. To top off that bad news, you’re taking our daughter to see one of your womanist writers? You know I never approved of  your reading them and have told you so time and again. If these were the old days, I would forbid you from taking my daughter to the city where I was captured.  But these are not those days. The only thing I insist is that you contact and stay with one of the brothers, preferably Sundiata.  

Sewafe

New York? My name! New York! Who is Sundiata?

In Prison Town, USA, quiet, farms and a very white social order dominate. In New York City, cars, noises and smells on top of smells proliferate.  I’m too old to hold my mother’s hand but still, I stay closer than I do normally. Instead of flitting my eyes all about to take everything in, I keep them locked on her.  Out of the blue,  she started shaking her head and muttering under her breath about my father’s protective tendencies. Before I could ask, she was swept up in big bear hug by a man with the longest locs I’d ever seen. My mother was laughing and at the same time saying “put me down, Sundiata. I’m a grown woman with a daughter!” But I don’t think she really meant it because on her face was pure pleasure.

Next thing I know, I’m being swept up into the strongest arms I’ve ever felt outside of my father and hugged just as tightly as my mom was. I think I fell in love with him right then and there. Of course, I couldn’t express that or show how shocked I was that my mother was being so girlish and soft. Instead, I stiffened and ordered him to “put me down!”

He acquiesced without that wide smile leaving his face. “So you’re Funmilayo, huh? Sewafe has told me all about you!” Before I could respond, my mother pointed out our luggage. He picked up our bags easily and with my mom chatting his ears off, walked us to his car.

Those Bones Are Not My Child ~ Toni Cade Bambara (excerpt)

You’re on the porch with the broom sweeping the same spot, getting the same sound-dry straw against dry leaf caught in the loose-dirt crevice of the cement tiles. No phone, no footfalls, no welcome variation. It’s 3:15. Your ears strain, stretching down the block, searching through schoolchild chatter for that one voice that will give you ease. Your eyes sting with the effort to see over bushes, look through buildings, cut through everything that separates you from your child’s starting point-the junior high school.

The little kids you keep telling not to cut through your yard are cutting through your yard. Not boisterous-bold and loose-limbed as they used to be in the first and second grades. But not huddled and spooked as they were last year. You had to saw off the dogwood limbs. They’d creak and sway, throwing shadows of alarm on the walkway, sending the children shrieking down the driveway. You couldn’t store mulch in lawnleaf bags then, either. They’d look, even to you, coming upon those humps in your flowerbed, like bagged bodies.

A few months ago, everyone went about wary,  tense, their shoulders hiked to their ears in order to fend off grisly news of slaughter. But now, adults walk as loose-limbed and carefree as the children who are scudding down the driveway, scuffing their shoes, then huddling on the sidewalk below.

The terror is over, the authorities say. The horror is past, they repeat every day. There’ve been no new cases of kidnap and murder since the arrest back in June. You’ve good reason to know the official line is a lie. But you sweep the walk briskly all the way to the hedge, as though in clearing the leaves you can clear from you mind all that you know. You’d truly like to know less.You want to believe. It’s 3:23 on your Mother’s Day watch. And your child is nowhere in sight.