THE POEM BOOK

YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA, CLAUDE MCKAY, & ETHERIDGE KNIGHT      

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Poems from the  Americans

YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA
Blue Dementia

In the days when a man
would hold a swarm of words
inside his belly, nestled
against his spleen, singing.

In the days of night riders
when life tongued a reed
till blues & sorrow song
called out of the deep night:
Another man done gone.
Another man done gone.

In the days when one could lose oneself
all up inside love that way,
& then moan on the bone
till the gods cried out in someone’s sleep.

Today,
already I’ve seen three dark-skinned men
discussing the weather with demons
& angels, gazing up at the clouds
& squinting down into iron grates
along the fast streets of luminous encounters.

I double-check my reflection in plate glass
& wonder, Am I passing another
Lucky Thompson or Marion Brown
cornered by a blue dementia,
another dark-skinned man
who woke up dreaming one morning
& then walked out of himself
dreaming? Did this one dare
to step on a crack in the sidewalk,
to turn a midnight corner & never come back
whole, or did he try to stare down a look
that shoved a blade into his heart?
I mean, I also know something
about night riders & catgut. Yeah,
honey, I know something about talking with ghosts.

_________ 

TPB's notes: n/a

_____________________

ETHERIDGE KNIGHT
The Idea of Ancestry

1
Taped to the wall of my cell are 47 pictures: 47 black
faces: my father, mother, grandmothers (1 dead), grand-
fathers (both dead), brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts,
cousins (1st and 2nd), nieces, and nephews. They stare
across the space at me sprawling on my bunk. I know
their dark eyes, they know mine. I know their style,
they know mine. I am all of them, they are all of me;
they are farmers, I am a thief, I am me, they are thee.

I have at one time or another been in love with my mother,
1 grandmother, 2 sisters, 2 aunts (1 went to the asylum),
and 5 cousins. I am now in love with a 7-yr-old niece
(she sends me letters in large block print, and
her picture is the only one that smiles at me).

I have the same name as 1 grandfather, 3 cousins, 3 nephews, and 1 uncle. The uncle disappeared when he was 15, just took off and caught a freight (they say). He's discussed each year when the family has a reunion, he causes uneasiness in the clan, he is an empty space. My father's mother, who is 93 and who keeps the Family Bible with everbody's birth dates (and death dates) in it, always mentions him. There is no
place in her Bible for "whereabouts unknown."

2
Each fall the graves of my grandfathers call me, the brown
hills and red gullies of mississippi send out their electric
messages, galvanizing my genes. Last yr/like a salmon quitting the cold ocean-leaping and bucking up his birth stream/I hitchhiked my way from LA with 16 caps in my pocket and a monkey on my back. And I almost kicked it with the kinfolks.
I walked barefooted in my grandmother's backyard/I smelled the old land and the woods/I sipped cornwhiskey from fruit jars with the men/
I flirted with the women/
I had a ball till the caps ran out
and my habit came down. That night I looked at my grandmother and split/
my guts were screaming for junk/but I was almost contented/
I had almost caught up with me.
(The next day in Memphis I cracked a croaker's crib for a fix.)

This yr there is a gray stone wall damming my stream, and when the falling leaves stir my genes, I pace my cell or flop on my bunk and stare at 47 black faces across the space. I am all of them, they are all of me, I am me, they are thee, and I have no children
to float in the space between.

"From The Essential Etheridge Knight by Etheridge Knight © 1986. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15261. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press."

___________ 

TPB's notes: see youtube of etheridge knight reading his above poem: youtubedotcomslash: watch?v=FbUOIByUfmg
(we made the link above a spell-it-out since ** no longer allows removal of youtube image preview. our aesthetic here is to present words only. without same old social media image aids. that way a poem stands on its own. after all, words are choke full of images. /TTA) 

here's what he has to say about his poem:  

The Idea of Ancestry: "It has to do with identity—being one with other people. That poem came when I was in prison also. I had just gone through a thing of being in the hole for days. The first two or three days in the hole, you sing songs, recite Shakespeare, masturbate, and think about the streets. After about ten days in there, you stop singing songs and start remembering your early life. You deal with those kinds of thing when you go into prison. When you first go there, they take away your name—the name given you at birth. If you’re black, you don’t accept that name anyway. You know somewhere names means more than that. It’s the whole thing of identity. You’re not called Etheridge Knight, but 35652. When they bring your mail, they say 35652. The letter could be from your mother. If anybody knows your name, she does. But they yell 35652. It’s the question of identity. To keep your sanity, you have to place yourself in the context of the world somehow. I had just been in the hole some thirty or forty days and that poem came." -EK
source: http://www.nathanielturner.com/etheridgeknightspeaks.htm

_____________________

CLAUDE MCKAY
America

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

_______ 

TPB's notes: "Claude McKay (born Festus Claudius McKay) (September 15, 1889 – May 22, 1948) was a Jamaican-American writer and poet, who was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance. He wrote four novels: Home to Harlem (1928), a best-seller that won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, Banjo (1929), Banana Bottom (1933), and in 1941 a manuscript called Amiable With Big Teeth: A Novel of the Love Affair Between the Communists and the Poor Black Sheep of Harlem that has not yet been published." -WIKI
misc, etc: it is sad that despite all that was hoped for when americans elected their obama to say no at least to the bush years, more americans are not so much patriotic (nay, the contrary since the republican elect are bent on ambushing their own country to prove their stance, etc) as nationalistic where fear and ignorance of other nations reigns. perhaps this has to do with obama himself, at least to some extent? his drone wars sore plague to many around the globe. 

mckay calls it 'cultured'. but we disagree a wee bit. america is feral. there's goodwill in there too. hence why it is so interesting.