#AmericanWriters
Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear. I have as much right
I was so sick last night I Didn’t hardly know my mind. So sick last night I Didn’t know my mind. I drunk some bad licker that
Well, son, I’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal… It’s had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up,
In places like Selma, Alabama, Kids say, In places like Chicago and New York...
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 I get to be a composer I’m gonna write me some music abou… Daybreak in Alabama And I’m gonna put the purtiest so… Rising out of the ground like a sw…
You sicken me with lies, With truthful lies. And with your pious faces. And your wide, out—stretched, mock—welcome, Christian hands.
I catch the pattern Of your silence Before you speak I do not need To hear a word.
And that is what poetry may do, wrap up your dreams, protect and preserve and hold them until maybe they come true. Columbus dreamed of finding a new world, he found it. Edison dreamed ...
Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is… (America never was America to me.…
Have you dug the spill Of Sugar Hill? Cast your gims On this sepia thrill: Brown sugar lassie,
Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you— Then, it will be true. I wonder if it’s that simple?
That Justice is a blind goddess Is a thing to which we black are w… Her bandage hides two festering so… That once perhaps were eyes.
I live on a park bench. You, Park Avenue. Hell of a distance Between us two. I beg a dime for dinner—
I am your son, white man! Georgia dusk And the turpentine woods. One of the pillars of the temple f… You are my son!