Maya Angelou: Still I Rise

Today the world lost one of its greats...

Rest in paradise Maya Angelou

Your legacy will live forever 

This is how I will remember you ... phenomenal woman!!! 

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise. 

Maya Angelou

Homage to my Hips

These hips are big hips.

they need space to

move around in.

They don't fit into little

petty places.

These hips

are free hips.

They don't like to be held back.

These hips have never been enslaved,

they go where they want to go 

they do what they want to do. 

These hips are mighty hips.

These hips are magic hips.

I have known them

to put a spell on a man and 

spin him like a top.

Lucille Clifton

Image source: Black women by Sergey Levin 

Three poems by Langston Hughes

Dream Variations

To fling my arms wide In some place of the sun, 

To whirl and to dance Till the white day is done. 

Then rest at cool evening Beneath a tall tree

 While night comes on gently,

 Dark like me— That is my dream!

 To fling my arms wide

 In the face of the sun, Dance! 

Whirl! Whirl!

 Till the quick day is done. 

Rest at pale evening . . . 

A tall, slim tree . . .

 Night coming tenderly

Life is Fine 

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!

 I came up twice and cried!

 If that water hadn't a-been so cold I might've sunk and died.

 But it was Cold in that water!

 It was cold!

 I took the elevator 

Sixteen floors above the ground.

 I thought about my baby

 And thought I would jump down.

 I stood there and I hollered!

 I stood there and I cried! If it hadn't a-been so high

 I might've jumped and died.

 But it was High up there! It was high! 

 So since I'm still here livin', 

I guess I will live on. 

I could've died for love— But for livin' I was born 

Though you may hear me holler, 

And you may see me cry—

 I'll be dogged, sweet baby,

 If you gonna see me die.

 Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!

The Grass

The grass so little has to do, --
A sphere of simple green,
With only butterflies to brood,
And bees to entertain,

And stir all day to pretty tunes
The breezes fetch along,
And hold the sunshine in its lap
And bow to everything;

And thread the dews all night, like pearls,
And make itself so fine, --
A duchess were too common
For such a noticing.

And even when it dies, to pass
In odors so divine,
As lowly spices gone to sleep,
Or amulets of pine.

And then to dwell in sovereign barns,
And dream the days away, --
The grass so little has to do,
I wish I were the hay!

Emily Dickinson 

Splittings

1.

My body opens over San Francisco like the day –

light raining down      each pore crying the change of light

I am not with her     I have been waking off and on

all night to that pain     not simply absence but

the presence of the past      destructive

to living here and now      Yet if I could instruct

myself, if we could learn to learn from pain

even as it grasps us      if the mind, the mind that lives

in this body could refuse      to let itself be crushed

in that grasp     it would loosen      Pain would have to stand

off from me and listen     its dark breath still on me

but the mind could begin to speak to pain

and pain would have to answer:

We are older now

we have met before     these are my hands before your eyes

my figure blotting out      all that is not mine

I am the pain of division      creator of divisions

it is I who blot your lover from you

and not the time-zones or the miles

It is not separation calls me forth      but I

who am separation      And remember

I have no existence      apart from you

2.

I believe I am choosing something now

not to suffer uselessly     yet still to feel

Does the infant memorize the body of the mother

and create her in absence?     or simply cry

primordial loneliness?      does the bed of the stream

once diverted      mourning       remember the wetness?

But we, we live so much in these

configurations of the past      I choose

to separate her     from my past we have not shared

I choose not to suffer uselessly

to detect primordial pain as it stalks toward me

flashing its bleak torch in my eyes     blotting out

her particular being     the details of her love

I will not be divided      from her or from myself

by myths of separation

while her mind and body in Manhattan are more with me

than the smell of eucalyptus coolly burning      on these hills

3.

The world tells me I am its creature

I am raked by eyes     brushed by hands

I want to crawl into her for refuge     lay my head

in the space     between her breast and shoulder

abnegating power for love

as women have done      or hiding

from power in her love     like a man

I refuse these givens      the splitting

between love and action      I am choosing

not to suffer uselessly      and not to use her

I choose to love      this time      for once

with all my intelligence.

- Adrienne Rich
Dream of a Common Language

The Mothering Blackness

She came home running

back to the mothering blackness
deep in the smothering blackness
white tears icicle gold plains of her face
She came home running

She came down creeping
here to the black arms waiting
now to the warm heart waiting
rime of alien dreams befrosts her rich brown face
She came down creeping

 She came home blameless

 black yet as Hagar’s daughter

 tall as was Sheba’s daughter

 threats of northern winds die on the desert’s face 

 She came home blameless

Maya Angelou

Source: The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (Random House Inc., 1994)

Image Source: Unknown

National Poetry Month

April was chosen in 1996 to become the National poetry month. 

"The concept is to widen the attention of individuals and the media—to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our complex poetic heritage, and to poetry books and journals of wide aesthetic range and concern. We hope to increase the visibility and availability of poetry in popular culture while acknowledging and celebrating poetry’s ability to sustain itself in the many places where it is practiced and appreciated." Poets.org

The website poets.org suggests 30 ways to celebrate and make time for poetry. 

I've always loved poetry and I will be celebrating by sharing a poem every Wednesday.

Here is goes: 

“If You Forget Me,”  by Pablo Neruda

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

Pablo Neruda is one of my favorite poets. He was crowned by  Gabriel Garcia Marquez as “the greatest poet of the 20th  Century in any language.”

(image source: www.poets.org)

On Change...

Trying to Name What Doesn't Change

BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

Roselva says the only thing that doesn't change   

is train tracks. She's sure of it.

The train changes, or the weeds that grow up spidery   

by the side, but not the tracks.

I've watched one for three years, she says,

and it doesn't curve, doesn't break, doesn't grow.

Peter isn't sure. He saw an abandoned track

near Sabinas, Mexico, and says a track without a train   

is a changed track. The metal wasn't shiny anymore.   

The wood was split and some of the ties were gone.

Every Tuesday on Morales Street

butchers crack the necks of a hundred hens.   

The widow in the tilted house

spices her soup with cinnamon.

Ask her what doesn't change.

Stars explode.

The rose curls up as if there is fire in the petals.   

The cat who knew me is buried under the bush.

The train whistle still wails its ancient sound   

but when it goes away, shrinking back

from the walls of the brain,

it takes something different with it every time.

Naomi Shihab Nye, "Trying to Name What Doesn't Change" from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Source: Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Far Corner Book, 1995)