Tickle Dip

tickle dip
though only blue bristle
can though juice


hair and
skin

tight and mauve and voice

Reasons Why

Just because I loves you-
That's de reason why
Ma soul is full of color
Like de wings of a butterfly.

Just because I loves you
Thats de reason why
Ma heart's a fluttering aspen leaf
When you pass by.

-Langston Hughes

God

I am God-
Without one friend,
Alone in my purity
World without end.

Below me young lovers
Tread the sweet ground-
But I am God-
I cannot come down.

Spring!
Life is love!
Love is life only!
Better to be human
Than God-and lonely.

-Langston Hughes

Suicide's Note

The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.

-Langston Hughes

Fascination

Her teeth are as white as the meat of an apple,

Her lips are like dark ripe plums.

I love her.

Her hair is a midnight mass, a dusky aurora.

I love her.

And because her skin is the brown of an oak leaf in autumn, but a softer color,

I want to kiss her.

-Langston Hughes

One Year After

I.

Not once in all our days of poignant love,

Did I a single instant give to thee

My undivided being wholly free.

Not all thy potent passion could remove

The barrier that loomed between to prove

The full supreme surrendering of me.

Oh, I was beaten, helpless utterly

Against the shadow-fact with which I strove.

For when a cruel power forced me to face

The truth which poisoned our illicit wine,

That even I was faithless to my race

Bleeding beneath the iron hand of thine,

Our union seemed a monstrous thing and base!

I was an outcast from thy world and mine.

II.

Adventure-seasoned and storm-buffeted,

I shun all signs of anchorage, because

The zest of life exceeds the bound of laws.

New gales of tropic fury round my head

Break lashing me through hours of soulful dread;

But when the terror thins and, spent, withdraws,

Leaving me wondering awhile, I pause -

But soon again the risky ways I tread!

No rigid road for me, no peace, no rest,

While molten elements run through my blood;

And beauty-burning bodies manifest

Their warm, heart-melting motions to be wooed;

And passion boldly rising in my breast,

Like rivers of the Spring, lets loose its flood.

Claude McKay

To Lindsay

Vachel, the stars are out

dusk has fallen on the Colorado mad

a car crawls slowly across the plain

in the dim light the radio blares its jazz

the heartbroken salesman lights another cigarette

In another city 27 years ago

I see your shadow on the wall

you're sitting in your suspenders on the bed

the shadow hand lifts up a Lysol bottle to your head

you shade falls over on the floor

Allen Ginsburg