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Best Poems Written by Earle Brown

Below are the all-time best Earle Brown poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Earle Brown Poem

Saved By Sugarcane

Rain is brewing; 
black clouds hang over the Cockpit Country.
Them rainclouds have a habit of shifting colors like a lizard.
The smell of the pending shower is strong on September’s breath; 
the sun take a well-deserved break.

Mango season is long gone, 
and bellies are tied up in knots.
Naseberries; they accompanied the mangoes.

Them guys from abroad, 
who bought the government land across from the football field, 
slaughtered them faithful guava trees. 
They build condos,
but poor people can’t eat condos. 
How inconsiderate them big-shot government boys are.

We (me, Footloose, and Squealie) device a plan, 
when our bellies start telling us something must be done, 
but we have to wait ‘til darkness falls, 
‘cause bushes have eyes in sunlight.

While everyone sleeps in the bosom of the night,
we put on our birthday suits, 
and scale the barbed wire fence at the back of the house. 
We are now one with the blinding shadows.

We race carelessly across the open pasture; 
burrs biting at our tender flesh, 
and mosquitoes humming maddening music in our ears.

We tip toe on the dry leaves, 
using our hands as shields
to fend off the razor-sharp edges of the cane leaves.
We drop down on all four, bellies on the ground; 
we navigate the rows like them American marines – naked and all.

We ate our full, 
and Squealie wet the bed that night.
Them sugarcane have a way of making us hyper.
Footloose fell from a Poinciana tree and fractured his hand, 
but we stayed energized that fall.

Details | Earle Brown Poem

The African Cry

Mama Africa, 
Land of my ancestors' birth;
Source of all mankind, 
the once Shangri la of mother earth.

Stir up the spirit of the Mau-Mau in vibrato on the bongo.
Your ways are far higher than the crags of the Kilimanjaro. 
Let the cry for freedom rides the winds of the Serengeti,
 and the walls of segregation fall like confetti.

With careful utterances, 
ransack the minds of the pig-headed souls.
Uhuru milele! Milele bure!
Adamantly, gluttons deprive her black gold. 
In the villages, griots will invoke a new story.

Follow the way of the lion, 
and watch out for the hyenas.
When the rivers are dry in Tanzania, 
danger resides in the mud. 
Remember; when liberty is threaten in Somalia,
 freedom is written in blood.
Blood stained her crevices with love; 
black sons’ and black daughters’ blood.

Details | Earle Brown Poem

Creating a Negro

On the bank of the James River,
Virginia Colony, 
a proposal was conceived to constrain the African fire.
The ploy, a real achievement in the West-Indian settlements.
In Rome, bodies were paraded along the byways, 
to make a statement. 
My Massa used ropes.
We dangled by our necks like roosters in a slaughter house.
When the pining for liberty was stirred up in the marrows of our bones,
we set ablaze a few bungalows, 
and murder some dumb beasts.
The statement we made was called an uprising. 
The fields were abandoned, the livestock ran wild, 
and the slothful young mistress had to breast-feed her own child. 
The scheme had the ingredients of breaking a mule, 
and Virginia Colony was the first lab for creating fools.
A prophet’s blessing was given to the merchants, 
and black diamonds were shipped; 
they were purged of the soil of the mother land.
A new being was fashioned, dependent on Massa.
A man was set against his consort and his seeds,
and the whips wrote rules on our backs in their faces; 
our pride drained from the gorges in our hides,
and respect slowly seeped from their eyes. 
The bond was broken; 
a negro was concocted 
without the spirit of Ghana, the Warrior King, 
and the Ashanti, the pre-colonial backbone.
Should we not push as a woman in nativity for the renaissance?

Details | Earle Brown Poem

Sam

Sam, 
A man, 
A good man
Is now tainted
We judge by the shallow sketches painted;

 In the crimson, pallid, and cobalt dream,
The devil scheme,
A mean plan.
God bless …
Sam   

Male, 
A sex, 
A pretext.
Man is a lie.
Behind closed doors great heroes often cry.

Details | Earle Brown Poem

Let Me Love You Again

Let not tomorrow come if 
I alone must stand.
Vain is love if not 
Everlasting. 

Let me cuddle this desire,
Anchor me in your soft flesh
Until with liquid sighs I 
Gather myself.
Heave me up, if I’m indigestible.

Am I the only one who thirsts for this?
Never again my love; to love this way is evil.
Deep thoughts scale mountain crags to a place of once true love.

Listen, that’s the sound of love stealing laughter.
Oh, how deafening is this silent sound.
Vain is love if not
Eternal.

Details | Earle Brown Poem

On Mulish Eardrums I Pound This Note

Before morning sun was dressed for the day, 
the white noise came and shook the darkness,
like swells swinging ships on the French Passage, 
cargo ships before the engine was pulled 
from the womb of modernization

Before the day break open the citadel of night, 
leaving weak traces of dark shadows in small crevices, 
the darkness was crowned with gold and diamonds – 
stars gazing on eastern isles
The sand storms came from Arabia 
and we walked with our eyes closed

The Atlantic rocked ships like noisy babies, 
the white surge broke like whips, 
pushing salt in our wounds, 
and we prayed to the God we’ve forgotten, 
but he must allow our curse to come to pass, 
it was written of us 
Souls were thrown in the locker, 
as we were dragged westward 

On rigid eardrums I play this song

Details | Earle Brown Poem

Lunar Madness

White moon, 
Riding on the shoulders of a colored rain cloud, 
 admiring her reflections in a crystal stream, 
which fell asleep while visiting dreams 
of fishes dancing to the deep voice of a bass drum.
The darkness creeps in on its belly, 
and draped a mantle over Tennessee’s head. 

The white moon, now naked,
 smiles with a soft glow 
that mirrors in the vacant stares of the houses next door. 
Sad these houses appear.

Lips slowly drain the evidence
 of a crescent moon from a tall glass of whiskey, 
then the voices arrive, hitchhiking on the twilight’s breath, 
while attempting to balance feminine energies 
on spirituality’s deception.

Minds follow Luna Blanca, a lesser light, 
through the snares of the dark,
 but the shadows grip ankles inside the faded light.

Details | Earle Brown Poem

A Summer In Reflection

The morning sun hovers coyly
behind broad shoulders of the John Crow Mountain
before unwrapping petals of fever plant and Venice.
Mama’s countenance was far contrast to one so radiant, 
so when the old Leyland bus went shuddering along  gravel road
the first beams break through pinewood forest.

The old New Hampshire Red was up last night, 
bamboozled by the plump moon,
but all was still in the petite hours ‘fore daybreak.
His first boast was far too late;
Banties have already blown their tops, 
and warm rays long ago penetrated rabbit fence.
Leghorns proudly announced fresh eggs.

Beds were unoccupied and unmade.
Voices came, children in euphoria; 
oppressors were off to nine to five.
Nightingale sang an encore 
before morning forage, 
and gaiety commences. 

Brown skinned pickneys, 
like the color of the Balaclava clay, 
with reflections of innards on innocuous visages.
The hoopla lived until the Leyland snaked along treacherous drop
and the sun hastened to avoid mama’s air.
Chores rushed,
and mama voice ruined our names. 
Tomorrow, at first light, we will be children again.

Most of us have heard of lands where dogs licked their humans’ faces
and are driven about in carriages in nappies, 
while we loathe our predicament
some counterparts wrestle in grown-ups’ arenas; 
innocence lost to palm wine and brown-brown, 
and blood moves consciences far less than September’s rain. 
Will tomorrow’s shoots be allowed to be children,
delightful progenies?
Let the bright sun shine on Columbia, Cambodia, Guatemala, and Sierra Leone.

Details | Earle Brown Poem

I Cry Rivers For the Ocean

Republican fountain flows black
 on blue seas metamorphic rock, 
draining the earth’s core dry.
Greed streams while oceans cry.
The sea is sick but I’m shell shocked.

Details | Earle Brown Poem

Stereotyping a Poem

The Al-Qaeda is a blatant lie,
Are all Muslims terrorists and spies?
Eyes shift from the black man,
Now fixed on them Afghans,
But in war harmless people die.