Black Poetry : for joy (revised)

romusthepoet

Well-Known Member
REGISTERED MEMBER
Nov 21, 2001
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for joy
(a poem i finally found the courage to write)
by romus simpson

i know you joy
in the silent corner of laughter
in the absences & awful gatherings
where the world regrets
calls back its daggers time & time
again too late

i
once a fat child
once a stutterer
once odd & slow
once asthmatic
was formed at the expense of the world
i marginal
i omitted
i square

joy
those people who bark at you
who are literal in dark reference to you
who make guttural noises at your heaviness
& refuse to touch u slow
who discover themselves because they are not you
who party & banter in the whirling lights &
find their hipness standing square on your's
don't know that your mother may wish you were different
& that when you come home
after perms & braids & blue grease
she takes exception to your short hair
& your father explains to company
in his rehearsed way
while you hide in the kitchen
that you are ugly but sweet
& your mother challenges you for wearing red
& that maybe you hanging your head
is a hundred years old
& that your mother breathes in an atmosphere of pain
& that the maelstrom of cultural female images are
staring & accusing you of defiling your parent's & your people's hopes
in the years of orchestras & blue eyed references
after reading poe & his lenore with her hyacinth hair
& the listening to the english lit professor elaborate on marilyn monroe
& how she was america's cleopatra
the anthropology professor speak on his trip to papua new guinea &
their primitive culture and animal like behavior
& how western africans scared europeans with their aggressive features
that your mother was made at the expense of a fairskinned world
& that short haired girls
with wide noses & thick lips
who are dark & heavy
know all the news is old
the comments on you being a bear
from your father old hash
the muted anger at having failed at being beautiful
the boys the dreamy romances lighting the neighbor's windows
the army of insults & dismissals
the terrible gawking
years past its sting

joy
the earth is cruel with perfect people
we watch their backs as they know one another
we foreign we liability
we inhabitants of a world running from our faces
know loneliness
we know empty summers
we know time & age
we know romance from a distance
we know the carnival from the river
we know that only the air is benign
we know dreams of waking up as someone else
we know mornings when wounds bleed profusely
& no one anywhere
seems to really care
 

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