Black Poetry

Black Poetry Undercover
(By a White Man: Four Poems)



The Chick-bone Poem

Black is black
And White is white
An’ it don’t matter (to me)
What Youall like—
Its chicken-bones for me tonight!

No: 2899 (2-27-2011)



Derek Walcott’s Poem

I aint wrote poetry like this for a long while
I think I’ve lost my style
Perhaps the goat and the rope
Perhaps after this poem
I’ll lose the Black votes…
But Derek Walcott don’t care
He’s a fresh wind over old Roman
Balconies—he’s on the Obama’s list
As the outstaring anthropologist…!

He even breaths in white air
When he’s in Washington signing books
He eats drumsticks made out of stones—
So, I hear; I wonder if he’s ever ate
A Watermelon Whole…?
That would be worth buying a book or two.

No: 2901 (2-27-2011)


In the Deep

From Africa to America I came,
The hard way…
It wasn’t on a four engine plane
With me, I brought some poetry
Made of black speech and music….
(a little drumming and dancing too)
We had more rhythm than the baboons.
From our ancestral tongues
That’s how poetry was begun…!
Then, from the slave ships and all
From their Deep suffocating halls…
We got the call! More poetry due

Homer and Dante and Shakespeare
They weren’t around: didn’t know a thing
When they came, about Negro poetry,
Not even the Jew…That’s how it was
We were a waterway in the deep—

No: 2900 (2-27-2011)



Sister Marlo

Sister Marlo, was on her elbows
Praying away one day…
When de gallopin’ hoss of hell
Passed her by…
He say: “Come on here, come…!”
“You de devil’s voice,” she say
“It aint God doin’ de callin’.
And de devil he say: “How
Youall know that?”
And sister Marlo say:
“I knows he can afford a chariot,
When he comes a calling,
Not no humdrum mule.”

No: 2902 (2-28-2011)