Harlem Blues

It's night now in harlem, time to explore Snakes are diurnal, rats love their nocturnal Life, the subway is a swinging door. A cockroach crawls before it falls Catalectic between the broken walls. It's time to pay the rent and feed children Feeding themselves from a golden arch Of junk. Sunday's money is gone to heaven But Sunday's soul is strung out in a park. The boundaries of black life draw tourists From away places, easy to find on Harlem Streets young girls window shopping closed stores And vermins that never meets the eyes When day is bright. Young boys in their pack Cannot prowl alone, someone must watch the crack In the wall, the sound of shadowy foot falls The blind bullet speeding towards a sighless back. She comes click clacking through the door, A stilletto shaft of light on the puddle of gore Why are all her children dead so young? What happen to black boys in their dreams To belong? Sisters, be strong, keep the veins On idle from the needle punctuating The decisions of a real sinister man. Sisters, I hear In the blues, thin pointed, small stilletto shoes Walking through cold, papers blowing the evening news Across the tangled sounds of aimless feet. A scrawny, melodramatic light, shines Where the streets lamps dispossessed of bulbs Points to the origin of the curling incense A sweet cat reads children fairy tales On a carpet that will not fly. We have a new president Looking like Malcolm talking like King But since sister Tubman left us The genii blew out the lamp Who is circling the wagon, who is pulling camp? This north is still far from promiseland The only thing not found on the ground In Harlem is cotton, It is too white for self inflicted wounds. Cotton burns, it would burn in the night. We who plant it has none of its delights. Pour me a pint of blues, give me light My sorrow drives the economy, If I die what pall will bear testimony To the wreaths of wind shivering inthe empty space Of the shuttered mall. Read fairy tales Harriet, meant well but went the wrong way Pinkerton did not stop her, hope decentralizes the wealth But Marcus, O Marcus was a different thing They had to prison him. He knew the way to go Flip flapping wind sail and no stilletto toe Could carry this burden across so much salt of water Through these hypertensions of night. Cry for Marcus To come from his whirlwind, a hollow laughter echoes here.