BlackLifePoetry.com

Martin Luther King Jr. & Jesse Jackson

GWENDOLYN BROOKS & LANGSTON HUGHES

You are a dancy little thing,

You are a rascal, star!

You seem to be so near to me,

And yet you are so far.

If I could get you in my hands,

You´d never get away.

I´d keep you with me always,

You´d shine both night and day.

--Gwendolyn Brooks

The night is beautiful,

So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful,

So the eyes of my people.

Beautiful, also, is the sun.

Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.

--Langston Hughes

Both poets had an influential impact on me in college & their work inspired me

to become a poet, teacher and writer.

It was literary author Jonathan Kozol

who introduced me to the work of both these writers.

In 1967, Jonathan Kozol, a young white teacher in the poor, black section of Boston

was fired for reading a Langston Hughes poem to his fourth grade students.

Jonathan Kozol understands the inner city lives of black children, the poor,

the oppressed and disadvantaged, and works with them in the public schools.

His writing has been most influential in knowing real black lives,

their education, development and root problems.

He is author of the National Book Award winner

Death At An Early Age,

& Illiterate America

Free Schools

Savage Inequalities

Amazing Grace

Ordinary Resurrections

GWENDOLYN BROOKS

First African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize (for Poetry, 1950)

 I corresponded with Gwendolyn Brooks when I was an undergraduate student

at Bensalem College, Fordham University,

and while in a Master's program at Goddard College.

She was poet laureate of Illinois.

--Uncle John

LANGSTON HUGHES

I, Too

By Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
 

Besides,
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

Langston Hughes, "I, Too" from The Collected Works of Langston Hughes. 

© 2002 by Langston Hughes. Reprinted by permission of Harold Ober Associates, Inc.

·       

Langston Hughes is the poet laureate of African-American experience — a popular writer of the Harlem Renaissance who gave hopeful expression to the aspirations of the oppressed, even as he decried racism and injustice. In addition to poetry, he published fiction, drama, autobiography, and translations. His work continues to serve as a model of wide empathy and social commitment.

Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.


(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?


Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!
Condensed version

Still I Rise

Maya Angelou - 1928-2014

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

From And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou. © 1978 by Maya Angelou. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.

Bob Marley

“You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters?
She's not perfect—you aren't either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break—her heart.
So don't hurt her, don't change her, don't analyze and don't expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she's not there.”

World Ambassador for Reggae Music

BOB MARLEY

Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right;
Let's get together and feel all right.

from the album EXODUS by Bob Marley

named by TIME magazine as the greatest album of the twentieth century.

 Remembering Bob Marley

by Uncle John

Meeting Bob Marley is a special and profound experience. The night before, I had performed his song "No Woman No Cry" at The Sweetwater in Mill Valley, California, with guitarist Gary Sangervasi. Gary is one of the best reggae sound and rock players I know. I met him when I taught high school poetry in San Francisco and he was one of my students. Gary comes with me to Solomon's Tower in San Francisco where we meet Bob Marley. Marley's music plays in the background of the record store. Bob's hips are swaying in rhythm to the music. There's more to his presence than his dreadlocks, being a man of creative passion with a genuine outpouring of love.  He captivates my attention & there is a deep spiritual seeking in his eyes, and the graceful motion of his hips, and in his simple smile there is peace about him, even though he has cancer.

Bob is dancing in front of me and Gary, and writes a note and hands it to me:

Bob Marley's inceptive spiritual orientation is as a  Christian, and he performs Biblical songs like "The Lord Will Make A Way". Influenced by Ethiopian illustrations of a dreadlocks Jesus, and incited by Rastaman Mortimo Pianno, Marley recorded an obscure first record, adapting the doo-wop hit "Crying In the Chapel" and changing it to "Selassie In the Chapel". The soul searcher who's early acoustic gem "Pray For Me" saw himself as a soul singer in the genre of rhythm and blues, and inspired by the ska vibration and tempo, and African-Jamaican folk drumming, a new unique soulish sound called reggae is born.

In Ethiopia, 1930, RasTafari Makonnen, became "His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie, king of kings, lord of lords, the conquering lion of the tribe of Judah", from the house of David and claims his lineage with King Solomon and Queen Sheba, the 225th restorer of the Solomon dynasty, a throne 3000 years old, the throne of God on earth, promised by God to endure as long as the sun and moon.

"Once for all, I have sworn by my holiness - and I will not lie to David - that his line will continue forever and his throne endure before me like the sun; it will be established forever like the moon, the faithful witness in the sky." (Psalm 89:36-37). Some consider him the promised messiah. They quote Jeremiah 23:1-8 to justify their belief that the scattered flock of Africans would be righteously restored, and his followers look to him and call themselves "Rastafarians". They believe Jesus looks like them. In the climate where Jesus grew up his skin was tan dark, his hair long. They wear a mane of dreadlocks, the ultimate symbol of their independence from Babylon. Reggae music is their conscious vessel to spread their message. They say they are faithful to living life according to the Bible. They adhere to a principled code. They study the Bible from an Afro-centrist view. They read of Moses marriage to an Ethiopian woman, and how Christ's apostle Philip baptized an Ethiopian Jew on his way to Jerusalem (Acts 8:26-40). They begin to see themselves as a remnant to be recovered.

Jeremiah 23 also cautions about false prophets and deceit in the heart. The Bible also warns us about idolatry, and idol worship as irrational, degrading, demonic, defiling, enslaving,  and abominable. Idols can be anyone or anything, whatever elevates itself equal to or above God, in whatever form the object of worship takes.

Emperor Selassie made a historic visit to Jamaica in 1966, and for the first time saw people, Rastafarians, worshipping him as God. The emperor, a true Ethiopian orthodox Christian, was deeply dismayed. In Kingston, at a news conference, he tried to dispel the myth, that they might renounce their idolizing him as a Divine human. RasTafari said: "I am a man, and man cannot worship man."

Bob Marley is an international icon, but his pursuit of God is genuine and no one can deter him from this true path. Seven months before he passes away from cancer at the age of 36, he renounces the Divinity of Selassie and is baptized into the Ethiopian Orthodox church. The Archbishop christens him in the chapel with a new name, "Berhane Selassie", meaning "light of the Trinity". He hugs his family and they weep together for about a half an hour that day. On his dying day, his final words to his son Ziggy were "Money can´t buy life." Bob stretches out his hand & his last words are "Jesus, take me".