Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (2 page)

I sit a throne upon the times

when Kings are rare and

Consorts

slide into the grease of scullery maids.

So gaily wave a crown of light

(astride the royal chair) that blinds

the commoners who genuflect and cross their fingers.

The years will lie beside me

on the queenly bed.

And coupled we'll await

the ages' dust to cake my lids again.

And when the rousing kiss is given,

why must it always be a fairy, and

only just a Prince?

No sound falls

from the moaning sky

No scowl wrinkles

the evening pool

  The stars lean down

  A stony brilliance

  While birds fly

The market leers

its empty shelves

Streets bare bosoms

to scanty cars

  This bed yawns

  beneath the weight

  of our absent selves.

She came home running

  back to the mothering blackness

  deep in the smothering blackness

white tears icicle gold plains of her face

  She came home running

She came down creeping

  here to the black arms waiting

  now to the warm heart waiting

rime of alien dreams befrost her rich brown face

  She came down creeping

She came home blameless

  black yet as Hagar's daughter

  tall as was Sheba's daughter

threats of northern winds die on the desert's face

  She came home blameless

When love is a shimmering curtain

Before a door of chance

That leads to a world in question

Wherein the macabrous dance

Of bones that rattle in silence

Of blinded eyes and rolls

Of thick lips thin, denying

A thousand powdered moles,

Where touch to touch is feel

And life a weary whore

  I would be carried off, not gently

  To a shore,

  Where love is the scream of anguish

  And no curtain drapes the door.

If today, I follow death

go down its trackless wastes,

salt my tongue on hardened tears

for my precious dear times waste

race

along that promised cave in a headlong

deadlong

haste,

Will you

have

the

grace

to mourn for

me?

now thread my voice

with lies

of lightness

force within

my mirror eyes

the cold disguise

of sad and wise

decisions.

Sounds

  Like pearls

Roll off your tongue

  To grace this eager ebon ear.

Doubt and fear,

  Ungainly things,

With blushings

  Disappear.

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

Just before the bomb falls

Just before the world ends,

  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

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.

Novitiates sing Ave

Before the whipping posts,

Criss-crossing their breasts and

tear-stained robes

in the yielding dark.

Animated by the human sacrifice

(Golgotha in black-face)

Priests glow purely white on the

bar-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.

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 til they squeak

(pow pow)

  In the middle of next week,

  (pow pow)

I'll shine 'em til 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'tilist, can you dig it?

  (pow pow)

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?

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.

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 wont git far

Watermelons, summer ripe

grey neck bones and boiling tripe

supermarket roastin like the

noon-day 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

  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.

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

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 after noons

of what can I do.

In my white layed 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.