#TheSealeyChallenge 2023 – day #31 – Henry Dumas – Black Trumpeter

Henry Dumas – Black Trumpeter
from Knees of a Natural Man. 1989

we must kill our gods before they kill us
not because we will to kill but because
our gods think themselves gods
they are only actors who have lost their script
cannot remember the lines, and fake visions
of themselves without mirrors
phantoms screaming without voices

We must kill our gods before they kill us
this then is the law and the testament
with malice toward none we give your warning
when the statue falls the pedestal remains
black birds do not light upon the roots of trees
the wing praises the root by taking to the limbs
we are Americans looking in the mirror of Africa.

#TheSealeyChallenge 2023- day #30 – Conrad Kent Rivers – Wordsworth for a native son

Conrad Kent Rivers – Wordsworth for a native son
(A poem for James Baldwin)

There was a time when meadow, house and face,

Brought winter too soon, and death not long enough.

From despair and pickaninnies buried in ignorance

before our birth, our death did come.

We were Hams destroyed, but now

skill alone decrees our burial ground,

our graves unplug restricted covenants

and our soul cometh from afar to truth.

American, our native land, is but a hopeful weed.

We cannot think in terms of black and white

nor mourn such thoughts as lie too deep for dreams.

We are the sunset of this hour, and our minds can
repent what some white god redeems. Conscience or liar,
the spring of life rewards the sturdy human being.

#TheSealeyChallenge 2023 – day #29 – Lucia Mae Pitts – Requiem

Lucia Mae Pitts – Requiem
from Negro Voices. 1938

If I should hear tonight that you were dead,
forsaking me and all this earthly place,
I do not think that I would bow my head
and weep wild tears into a square of lace.
I think I’d only silently arise
and step outside, then walk and walk and walk
until I found some hill that touched the skies,
long leagues away from any madd’ning talk.
High up, where stars swarm bright, I’d disembark
my sorrow on the cool, receptive ground.
And in that quiet place, warmed by the spark
of memory, I think strength could be found
to bear my loss dry-eyed, and see the days
go by much as before- though with less praise . . .

#TheSealeyChallenge 2023 – day #28 – Pauli Murray – Dark Testament

Pauli Murray – Dark Testament, pt. I

Freedom is a dream
Haunting as amber wine
Or worlds remembered out of time.
Not Eden’s gate, but freedom
Lures us down a trail of skulls
Where men forever crush the dreamers —
Never the dream.

I was an Israelite walking a sea bottom,
I was a Negro slave following the North Star,
I was an immigrant huddled in ship’s belly,
I was a Mormon searching for a temple,
I was a refugee clogging roads to nowhere —
Always the dream was the same —
Always the dream was freedom

Dark Testament, pt. II

Free earth hungered for free men but
Free men soon hungered for gold.
Planters bargained with traders,
traders bargained with slavers,
Slavers turned towards Africa.
The dream was lost in the quest for gold.

The men of Africa were stalwart men,
Tough as hickory deep in their primal forests,
Their skins the color of tree bark —
Ebony, bamboo, cocoanut, mango —
Their hair was thick with jungle,
Their eyes were dark as star-fed night.
They were sly and cunning, fearless and cool,
They knew the cry of every forest bird and beast.

#TheSealeyChallenge 2023 – day #27 – Countee Cullen – Sonnet

Countee Cullen – Sonnet
From Early, Gerald, ed. 1991. My Soul’s High Song

These are no wind-blown rumors, soft say-sos,
No garden-whispered hearsays, lightly heard:
I know that summer never spares the rose,
That spring is faithless to the brightest bird.
I know that nothing lovely shall prevail
To win from Time and Death a moment’s grace;
At Beauty’s birth the scythe was honed, the nail
Dipped for her hands, the cowl clipped for her face.
And yet I cannot think that this my faith,
My winged joy, my pride, my utmost mirth,
Centered in you shall ever taste of death,
Or perish from the false, forgetting earth
You are with time as wind and weather are,
As is the sun, and every nailed star.

#TheSealeyChallenge 2023 – day #26 – Raymond Maxwell – Sonnet #8

Raymond Maxwell – Sonnet #8: Unclothed we come into this world

Unclothed we come into this world, possession-less, alone,
The odyssey to reach each goal acquaints us with new pain,
Each stumbling block, despite the odds, becomes a stepping stone,
And every loss, a predecessor to a greater gain.
Our meeting was revealed to me when I was but a child:
A revelation of a form, a loveliness, pristine,
Yet planted in my heart was that pure vision, undefiled,
Someday to manifest itself just as it was foreseen.
I found you when I lacked the wherewithal to make you mine,
Distressed, perplexed, I felt compelled to spell my love that June.
That summer’s love was but a glimpse into a world divine,
A harbinger of better days, of times more opportune.
We’ll meet again and then we must decide upon the hour
When we’ll allow our destinies to intertwine and flower.

#TheSealeyChallenge 2023 – day #25 – Gwendolyn Brooks – the progress

Gwendolyn Brooks – the progress

And still we wear our uniforms, follow
The cracked cry of the bugles, comb and brush
Our pride and prejudice, doctor the sallow
Initial ardor, wish to keep it fresh.
Still we applaud the President’s voice and face.
Still we remark on patriotism, sing,
Salute the flag, thrill heavily, rejoice
For death of men who too saluted, sang.
But inward grows a soberness, an awe,
A fear, a deepening hollow through the cold.
For even if we come out standing up
How shall we smile, congratulate, and how
Settle in chairs? Listen, listen. The step
Of iron feet again. And again wild.

#TheSealeyChallenge 2023 – day #24 – Owen Dodson – Midnight Bell

Owen Dodson – MIDNIGHT BELL
From Powerful Long Ladder. 1946.

This cannot be the hour for oral speech:
Words vying with the wind, with private sounds
Of other lovers striving on the beach,
With waves: the sand sniffers, the hounds.
No, this is quiet in between the long
Sentences, the lengths of speech at will.
Let the eyes remember, the ears catch the songs
We sing deep in the bone, in the still
Unoutward parts, that have their resurrection
In themselves. Cancel the mouth of poetry and prose;
Be eager now to seek the dark confection
In the flesh and feed until desire goes,
Until we sleep, until we cannot tell
Why midnight walked and did not ring her bell.

#TheSealeyChallenge 2023 – day #23 – John Murillo – A Refusal to Mourn the Deaths, by Gunfire

John Murillo – A Refusal to Mourn the Deaths, by Gunfire, of Three Men in Brooklyn from Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry. Copyright © 2020

“And at times, didn’t the whole country try to break his skin?”
                                          —Tim Seibles
I.
You strike your one good match to watch its bloom
and jook, a swan song just before a night
wind comes to snuff it. That’s the kind of day
it’s been. Your Black & Mild, now, useless as
a prayer pressed between your lips. God damn
the wind. And everything it brings. You hit
the corner store to cop a light, and spy
the trouble rising in the cashier’s eyes.
TV reports some whack job shot two cops
then popped himself, here, in the borough, just
one mile away. You’ve heard this one before.
In which there’s blood. In which a black man snaps.
In which things burn. You buy your matches. Christ
is watching from the wall art, swathed in fire.

#TheSealeyChallenge- day #22 – James D. Corrothers – Paul Laurence Dunbar

James D. Corrothers – Paul Laurence Dunbar
From Kerlin, 1923. Negro Poets and Their Poems

He came, a dark youth, singing in the dawn

Of a new freedom, glowing o’er his lyre,
Refining, as with great Apollo’s fire,

His people’s gift of song. And, thereupon,
This Negro singer, come to Helicon,
Constrained the masters, listening, to admire,
And roused a race to wonder and aspire,
Gazing which way their honest voice was gone,
With ebon face uplit of glory’s crest.
Men marveled at the singer, strong and sweet,
Who brought the cabin’s mirth, the tuneful night,
But faced the morning, beautiful with light,

To die while shadows yet fell toward the west,
And leave his laurels at his people’s feet.

Dunbar, no poet wears your laurels now;   
None rises, singing, from your race like you.   
Dark melodist, immortal, though the dew   
Fell early on the bays upon your brow,
And tinged with pathos every halcyon vow   
And brave endeavor.  Silence o’er you threw   
Flowerets of love.   Or, if an envious few   
Of your own people brought no garlands, how
Could malice smite him whom the gods had crowned?   
If, like the meadow-lark, your flight was low,   
Your flooded lyrics half the hilltops drowned;
A wide world heard you, and it loved you so,   
It stilled its heart to list the strains you sang.   
And o’er your happy songs its plaudits rang.