The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (4 page)

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
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,
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.

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 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.