#AmericanWriters
I could take the Harlem night and wrap around you, Take the neon lights and make a cr… Take the Lenox Avenue busses, Taxis, subways,
Harlem Sent him home in a long box— Too dead To know why:
Let’s go see Old Abe Sitting in the marble and the moon… Sitting lonely in the marble and t… Quiet for ten thousand centuries,… Quiet for a million, million years…
I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the w… flow of human blood in human veins My soul has grown deep like the ri… I bathed in the Euphrates when da…
Clean the spittoons, boy. Detroit, Chicago, Atlantic City, Palm Beach.
Oh, silver tree! Oh, shining rivers of the soul! In a Harlem cabaret Six long—headed jazzers play. A dancing girl whose eyes are bold
When a man starts out with nothing… When a man starts out with his han… Empty, but clean, When a man starts to build a world… He starts first with himself
When the old junk man Death Comes to gather up our bodies And toss them into the sack of obl… I wonder if he will find The corpse of a white multi—millio…
In the Quarter of the Negroes Where the doors are doors of paper Dust of dingy atoms Blows a scratchy sound. Amorphous jack—o’—Lanterns caper
been scared and battered. My hopes the wind done scattered. Snow has friz me, Sun has baked me, Looks like between 'em they done
The calm, Cool face of the river Asked me for a kiss.
God in His infinite wisdom Did not make me very wise— So when my actions are stupid They hardly take God by surprise
I would liken you To a night without stars Were it not for your eyes. I would liken you To a sleep without dreams
It’s such a Bore Being always Poor.
I went down to the river, I set down on the bank. I tried to think but couldn’t, So I jumped in and sank. I came up once and hollered!