The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou Read online

  Roll off your tongue

  To grace this eager ebon ear.

  Doubt and fear,

  Ungainly things,

  With blushings

  Disappear.

  When I Think About Myself

  When I think about myself,

  I almost laugh myself to death,

  My life has been one great big joke,

  A dance that's walked,

  A song that's spoke,

  I laugh so hard I almost choke,

  When I think about myself.

  Sixty years in these folks’ world,

  The child I works for calls me girl,

  I say “Yes ma'am” for working's sake.

  Too proud to bend,

  Too poor to break,

  I laugh until my stomach ache,

  When I think about myself.

  My folks can make me split my side,

  I laughed so hard I nearly died,

  The tales they tell sound just like lying,

  They grow the fruit,

  But eat the rind,

  I laugh until I start to crying,

  When I think about my folks.

  On a Bright Day, Next Week

  On a bright day, next week

  Just before the bomb falls

  Just before the world

  Just before I die

  All my tears will powder

  Black in dust like ashes

  Black like Buddha's belly

  Black and hot and dry

  Then will mercy tumble

  Falling down in godheads

  Falling on the children

  Falling from the sky

  Letter to an Aspiring Junkie

  Let me hip you to the streets,

  Jim,

  Ain't nothing happening.

  Maybe some tomorrows gone up in smoke,

  raggedy preachers, telling a joke

  to lonely, son-less old ladies’ maids.

  Nothing happening,

  Nothing shakin', Jim.

  A slough of young cats riding that

  cold, white horse,

  a grey old monkey on their back, of course,

  does rodeo tricks.

  No haps, man.

  No haps.

  A worn-out pimp, with a space-age conk,

  setting up some fool for a game of tonk,

  or poker or

  get ‘em dead and alive.

  The streets?

  Climb into the streets, man, like you climb

  into the ass end of a lion.

  Then it's fine.

  It's a bug-a-loo and a shing-a-ling,

  African dreams on a buck-and-a-wing and a prayer.

  That's the streets, man,

  Nothing happening.

  Miss Scarlett, Mr. Rhett and Other Latter-Day Saints

  Novitiates sing Ave

  Before the whipping posts,

  Crisscrossing their breasts and

  tearstained robes

  in the yielding dark.

  Animated by the human sacrifice

  (Golgotha in blackface)

  Priests glow purely white on the

  bas-relief of a plantation shrine.

  (O Sing)

  You are gone but not forgotten.

  Hail, Scarlett. Requiescat in pace.

  God-Makers smear brushes in

  blood/gall

  to etch frescoes on your

  ceilinged tomb.

  (O Sing)

  Hosanna, King Kotton.

  Shadowed couplings of infidels

  tempt stigmata from the nipples

  of your true believers.

  (Chant Maternoster)

  Hallowed Little Eva.

  Ministers make novena with the

  charred bones of four

  very small

  very black

  very young children

  (Intone DIXIE)

  And guard the relics

  of your intact hymen,

  daily putting to death,

  into eternity,

  The stud, his seed,

  His seed

  His seed.

  (O Sing)

  Hallelujah, pure Scarlett,

  Blessed Rhett, the Martyr.

  Times-Square-Shoeshine-Composition

  I'm the best that ever done it

  (pow pow)

  That's my title and I won it

  (pow pow)

  I ain't lying, I'm the best

  (pow pow)

  Come and put me to the test

  (pow pow)

  I'll clean ‘em till they squeak

  (pow pow)

  In the middle of next week

  (pow pow)

  I'll shine ‘em till they whine

  (pow pow)

  Till they call me master mine

  (pow pow)

  For a quarter and a dime

  (pow pow)

  You can get the dee-luxe shine

  (pow pow)

  Say you wanta pay a quarter?

  (pow pow)

  Then you give that to your daughter

  (pow pow)

  I ain't playing dozens, mister

  (pow pow) You can give it to your sister

  (pow pow)

  Any way you want to read it

  (pow pow)Maybe it's your momma need it

  (pow pow)

  Say I'm like a greedy bigot

  (pow pow)

  I'm a cap'talist, can you dig it?

  (pow pow)

  Faces

  Faces and more remember

  then reject

  the brown caramel days of youth.

  Reject the sun-sucked tit of

  childhood mornings.

  Poke a muzzle of war in the trust-frozen eyes of a favored doll.

  Breathe, Brother,

  and displace a moment's hate with organized love.

  A poet screams “CHRIST WAITS AT THE SUBWAY!”

  But who sees?

  To a Freedom Fighter

  You drink a bitter draught.

  I sip the tears your eyes fight to hold,

  A cup of lees, of henbane steeped in chaff.

  Your breast is hot,

  Your anger black and cold,

  Through evening's rest, you dream,

  I hear the moans, you die a thousands’ death.

  When cane straps flog the body

  dark and lean, you feel the blow.

  I hear it in your breath.

  Riot: 60's

  Our

  YOUR FRIEND CHARLIE pawnshop

  was a glorious blaze

  I heard the flames lick

  then eat the trays

  of zircons

  mounted in red gold alloys

  Easter clothes and stolen furs

  burned in the attic

  radios and teevees

  crackled with static

  plugged in

  only to a racial outlet

  Some

  thought the FRIENDLY FINANCE FURNITURE CO.

  burned higher

  When a leopard-print sofa with gold legs

  (which makes into a bed)

  caught fire

  an admiring groan from the waiting horde

  “Absentee landlord

  you got that shit”

  Lighting: a hundred Watts

  Detroit, Newark and New York

  Screeching nerves, exploding minds

  lives tied to a policeman's whistle

  a welfare worker's doorbell

  finger

  Hospitality, southern-style

  corn pone grits and you-all smile

  whole blocks novae

  brand-new stars

  policemen caught in their

  brand-new cars

  Chugga chugga chigga

  git me one nigga

  lootin’ n burnin’

  he won't git far

  Watermelons, summer ripe

  grey neckbones and boiling tripe

>   supermarket roastin’ like the

  noonday sun

  national guard nervous with his shiny gun

  goose the motor quicker

  here's my nigga picka

  shoot him in the belly

  shoot him while he run

  We Saw Beyond Our Seeming

  We saw beyond our seeming

  These days of bloodied screaming

  Of children dying bloated

  Out where the lilies floated

  Of men all noosed and dangling

  Within the temples strangling

  Our guilt grey fungus growing

  We knew and lied our knowing

  Deafened and unwilling

  We aided in the killing

  And now our souls lie broken

  Dry tablets without token.

  Black Ode

  Your beauty is a thunder

  And I am set a wandering—a wandering

  Deafened

  Down twilight tin-can alleys

  And moist sounds

  “OOo wee, Baby, look what you could get if your name

  was Willie”

  Oh, to dip your words like snuff.

  A laughter, black and streaming

  And I am come a being—a being

  Rounded

  Up Baptist aisles, so moaning

  And moist sounds

  “Bless her heart. Take your bed and walk.

  You been heavy burdened”

  Oh, to lick your love like tears.

  No No No No

  No

  the two-legg'd beasts

  that walk like men

  play stink finger in their crusty asses

  while crackling babies

  in napalm coats

  stretch mouths to receive

  burning tears

  on splitting tongues

  JUST GIVE ME A COOL DRINK OF WATER ‘FORE I DIIIE

  No

  the gap-legg'd whore

  of the eastern shore

  enticing Europe to COME

  in her

  and turns her pigeon-shit back to me

  to me

  who stoked the coal that drove the ships

  which brought her over the sinuous cemetery

  of my many brothers

  No

  the cocktailed afternoons

  of what can I do.

  In my white layered pink world

  I've let your men cram my mouth

  with their black throbbing hate

  and I swallowed after I've let your mammies

  steal from my kitchens

  (I was always half-amused)

  I've chuckled the chins of

  your topsy-haired pickaninnies.

  What more can I do?

  I'll never be black like you.

  (HALLELUJAH)

  No

  the red-shoed priests riding

  palanquined

  in barefoot children country

  the plastered saints gazing down

  beneficently

  on kneeling mothers

  picking undigested beans

  from yesterday's shit.

  I have waited

  toes curled, hat rolled

  heart and genitals

  in hand

  on the back porches

  of forever

  in the kitchens and fields

  of rejections

  on the cold marble steps

  of America's White Out-House

  in the drop seats of buses

  and the open flies of war

  No more

  the dream that you

  will cease haunting me

  down in fetid swamps of fear and will turn to embrace your own

  humanity

  which I AM

  No more

  the hope that

  the razored insults

  which mercury-slide over your tongue

  will be forgotten

  and you will learn the words of love

  Mother Brother Father Sister Lover Friend

  My hopes

  dying slowly

  rose petals falling

  beneath an autumn red moon

  will not adorn your unmarked graves

  My dreams

  lying quietly

  a dark pool under the trees

  will not carry your name

  to a forgetful shore

  And what a pity

  What a pity

  that pity has folded in upon itself

  an old man's mouth

  whose teeth are gone

  and I have no pity.

  My Guilt

  My guilt is “slavery's chains,” too long

  the clang of iron falls down the years.

  This brother's sold, this sister's gone,

  is bitter wax, lining my ears.

  My guilt made music with the tears.

  My crime is “heroes, dead and gone,”

  dead Vesey, Turner, Gabriel,

  dead Malcolm, Marcus, Martin King.

  They fought too hard, they loved too well.

  My crime is I'm alive to tell.

  My sin is “hanging from a tree,”

  I do not scream, it makes me proud.

  I take to dying like a man.

  I do it to impress the crowd.

  My sin lies in not screaming loud.

  The Calling of Names

  He went to being called a colored man

  after answering to “hey, nigger.”

  Now that's a big jump,

  anyway you figger.

  Hey, Baby, watch my smoke.

  From colored man to Negro,

  With the N in caps,

  was like saying Japanese

  instead of saying Japs.

  I mean, during the war.

  The next big step

  was a change for true,

  From Negro in caps

  to being a Jew.

  Now, Sing, Yiddish Mama.

  Light, Yellow, Brown

  and Dark-brown skin,

  were okay colors to

  describe him then.

  He was a Bouquet of Roses.

  He changed his seasons

  like an almanac.

  Now you'll get hurt

  if you don't call him “Black.”

  Nigguh, I ain't playin’ this time.

  On Working White Liberals

  I don't ask the Foreign Legion

  Or anyone to win my freedom

  Or to fight my battle better than I can,

  Though there's one thing that I cry for

  I believe enough to die for

  That is every man's responsibility to man.

  I'm afraid they'll have to prove first

  That they'll watch the Black man move first

  Then follow him with faith to kingdom come.

  This rocky road is not paved for us,

  So, I'll believe in Liberals’ aid for us

  When I see a white man load a Black man's gun.

  Sepia Fashion Show

  Their hair, pomaded, faces jaded

  bones protruding, hip-wise,

  the models strutted, backed and butted,

  then stuck their mouths out, lip-wise.

  They'd nasty manners, held like banners,

  while they looked down their nose-wise.

  I'd see ‘em in hell, before they'd sell

  me one thing they're wearing, clothes-wise.

  The Black Bourgeois, who all say “yah”

  when yeah is what they're meaning,

  should look around, both up and down,

  before they set out preening.

  “Indeed,” they swear, “that's what I'll wear

  when I go country-clubbing.”

  I'd remind them please, look at those knees,

  you got at Miss Ann's scrubbing.

  The Thirteens (Black)

  Your Momma took to shouting,

  Your Poppa's gone to war,<
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  Your sister's in the streets,

  Your brother's in the bar,

  The thirteens. Right On.

  Your cousin's taking smack,

  Your uncle's in the joint,

  Your buddy's in the gutter,

  Shooting for his point,

  The thirteens. Right On.

  And you, you make me sorry,

  You out here by yourself,

  I'd call you something dirty,

  But there just ain't nothing left,

  ‘cept

  The thirteens. Right On.

  The Thirteens (White)

  Your Momma kissed the chauffeur,

  Your Poppa balled the cook,

  Your sister did the dirty,

  in the middle of the book,

  The thirteens. Right On.

  Your daughter wears a jock strap,

  Your son he wears a bra,

  Your brother jonesed your cousin

  in the back seat of the car.

  The thirteens. Right On.

  Your money thinks you're something,

  But if I'd learned to curse,

  I'd tell you what your name is,

  But there just ain't nothing worse

  than

  The thirteens. Right On.

  Harlem Hopscotch

  One foot down, then hop! It's hot.

  Good things for the ones that's got.

  Another jump, now to the left.

  Everybody for hisself.

  In the air, now both feet down.

  Since you black, don't stick around.

  Food is gone, the rent is due,

  Curse and cry and then jump two.

  All the people out of work,