Poetry Pages

Revolutionary Dreams

By Nikki Giovanni

 

TO THE WHITE FIENDS

by Claude McKay

 

I, Too, Sing America

by Langston Hughes

I used to dream militant

Dreams of taking

Over America to show

These white folks how it should be

Done

I used to dream radical dreams

Of blowing everyone away with my perceptive powers

Of correct analysis

I even used to think I’d be the one

To stop the riot and negotiate the peace

Then I awoke and dug

That if I dreamed natural

Dreams of being a natural

Woman doing what a woman

Does when she's natural

I would have a revolution

Color Of Pain

by Dorothy M. Davis

 

 I've questioned GOD from time to time,
about the hatred that lurks in our hearts and minds.
How it destroys the very fabric of the souls that yield,
and provides a false hope to those it pretends to shield.
Like a birth rite that only falls on those of the lighter hew,
It rejects those termed ‘minority’, in favor of the chosen few,
Who if asked whether "prejudiced”? will vehemently say "No,"
And being convinced of this claim, on their merry way go,
Satisfied that the very real problem that is amidst,
Is simply exaggerated, if at all it exists,
Driving those on the receiving end to become anguished, even insane,
As victims of the invisible color of pain
 

 

 

 

 

 

Home

 

  
Think you I am not fiend and savage too?
Think you I could not arm me with a gun
And shoot down ten of you for every one
Of my black brothers murdered, burnt by you?
Be not deceived, for every deed you do
I could match-out-match: am I not Afric's son,
Black of that black land where black deeds are done?
But the Almighty from the darkness drew
My soul and said: Even thou shalt be a light
Awhile to burn on the benighted earth,
Thy dusky face I set among the white
For thee to prove thyself of higher worth;
Before the world is swallowed up in night,
To show thy little lamp: go forth, go forth!

Ka'Ba            

Amiri Baraka 

 

"A closed window looks down
on a dirty courtyard, and Black people
call across or scream across or walk across
defying physics in the stream of their will.

Our world is full of sound
Our world is more lovely than anyone's
tho we suffer, and kill each other
and sometimes fail to walk the air.

We are beautiful people
With African imaginations
full of masks and dances and swelling chants
with African eyes, and noses, and arms
tho we sprawl in gray chains in a place
full of winters, when what we want is sun.

We have been captured,
and we labor to make our getaway, into
the ancient image; into a new

Correspondence with ourselves

and our Black family. We need magic
now we need the spells, to raise up
return, destroy, and create. 

What will be the sacred word?

 

 

  

I, too, sing America.


I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.


Tomorrow,

I'll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody'll dare

Say to me,

"Eat in the kitchen,"

Then.


Besides,

They'll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed--


I, too, am America.

 

Is Truth Liberating?

by Haki Madhubuti

If it is truth that binds
why are there
so many lies between
lovers?

If it is truth that is liberating
why
are people told:
they look good when they don’t
they are loved when they aren’t
Everything is fine when it ain’t
Glad you’re back when you’re not

Black people in America
May not be made for the truth
We wrap our lives in disco
And Sunday sermons
While
Selling false dreams to our children

Lies
Are refundable
Can be bought on our revolving
Charge cards as
We all catch truth
On the next go round
If
It doesn’t hurt