The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 59. from Montage of a Dream Deferred

.

from Montage of a Dream Deferred

 

NOTE: In terms of current Afro American popular music and the sources from which it has progressed – jazz, ragtime, swing, blues, boogie-woogie, and be-bop – this poem on contemporary Harlem, like be-bop, is marked by conflicting changes, sudden nuances, sharp and impudent interjections, broken rhythms, and passages some- times in the manner of the jam session, sometimes the popular song, punctuated by the riffs, runs, breaks, and disc-tortions of the music of a community in transition.

L. H.

 

 

Necessity

 

Work

I don’t have to work.

I don’t have to do nothing

but, drink, stay Black, and die.

 

This little old furnished room’s

so small I can’t whip a cat

without getting fur in my mouth

and my landlady’s so old

her features is all run together

and God knows she sure can overcharge –

Which is why I reckon I does

have to work after all.

 

 

Question

 

Said the lady, Can you do

what my other man can’t do –

That is

love me, daddy –

and feed me too?

 

 

Buddy

 

That kid's my buddy,

still and yet

I don't see him much.

He works downtown for Twelve a week.

Has to give his mother Ten –

she says he can have

the other Two

to pay his carfare, buy a suit,

coat, shoes,

anything he wants out of it.

 

 

Ultimatum

 

Baby, how come you can't see me

when I'm paying your bills

each and every week?

 

If you got somebody else,

tell me –

else I'll cut you off

without your rent.

I mean

without a cent.

 

 

Movies

 

The Roosevelt, Renaissance, Gem, Alhambra:

Harlem laughing in all the wrong places

at the crocodile tears

of crocodile art

that you know

in your heart

is crocodile:

(Hollywood

laughs at me,

black—

so I laugh

back.)

 

 

Tell Me

 

Why should it be my loneliness,

Why should it be my song,

Why should it be my dream

deferred

overlong?

 

 

Not A Movie

 

Well, they rocked him with road-apples

because he tried to vote

and whipped his head with clubs

and he crawled on his knees to his house

and he got the midnight train

and he crossed that Dixie line

now he's livin'

on a 133rd.

 

He didn't stop in Washington

and he didn't stop in Baltimore

neither in Newark on the say.

Six knot was on his head

but, thank God, he wasn't dead,

And there ain't no Ku Klux

on a 133rd.

 

 

Neon Signs

 

WONDER BAR

•     •     •

WISHING WELL

•     •     •

MONTEREY

•     •     •

MINTON'S

(altar of Thelonious)

•     •     •

MANDALAY

•     •     •

Spots where the booted

and unbooted play

LENOX

•     •     •

CASBAH

•     •     •

POOR JOHN'S

 

Mirror-go-round

where a broken glass

in the early bright

smears re-bop

sound

 

 

Motto

 

I play it cool

and dig all jive

That's the reason

I stay alive.

My motto,

As I live and learn,

is:

Dig and Be Dug

In Return.

 

 

Dead In There

 

Sometimes

A night funeral

Going by

Carries home

A re-bop daddy.

 

Hearse and flowers

Guarantee

He'll never hype

Another paddy.

 

It's hard to believe,

But dead in there,

He'll never lay a

Hype nowhere!

 

He's my ace-boy,

Gone away.

Wake up and live!

He used to say.

 

Squares

Who couldn't dig him,

Plant him now –

Out where it makes

No diff' no how.

 

 

Advice

 

Folks, I’m telling you,

birthing is hard

and dying is mean –

so get yourself

a little loving

in between.

 

 

Corner Meeting

 

Ladder, flag, and amplifier:

what the soap box

used to be.

 

The speaker catches fire

looking at their faces.

 

His words

jump down to stand

in listeners’ places.

 

 

Projection

 

On the day when the Savoy

leaps clean over to Seventh Avenue

and starts jitterbugging

with the Renaissance,

on that day when Abyssinia Baptist Church

throws her enormous arms around

St. James Presbyterian

and 409 Edgecombe

stoops to kiss 12 West 133rd,

on that day—

Do, Jesus!

Manhattan Island will whirl

like a Dizzy Gillespie transcription

played by Inez and Timme.

On that day, Lord,

Willie Bryant and Marian Anderson

will sing a duet,

Paul Robeson

will team up with Jackie Mabley,

and Father Divine will say in truth,

Peace!

It’s truly

wonderful!

 

 

CAFE: 3 A.M.

 

Detectives from the vice squad

with weary sadistic eyes

spotting fairies.

 

Degenerates,

some folks say.

 

But God, Nature,

or somebody

made them that way.

 

Police lady or Lesbian

over there?

 

Where?

 

 

Dive

 

Lenox Avenue

by daylight

runs to dive in the Park

but faster . . .

faster . . .

after dark.

 

 

Theme For English B

 

The instructor said,

 

Go home and write

a page tonight.

And let that page come out of you –

Then, it will be true.

 

I wonder if it's that simple?

 

I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.

I went to school there, then Durham, then here

to this college on the hill above Harlem.

I am the only colored student in my class.

The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,

through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,

Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,

the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator

up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

 

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me

at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what

I feel and see and hear. Harlem, I hear you:

hear you, hear me – we two – you, me talk on this page.

(I hear New York, too.) Me – who?

 

Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.

I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.

I like a pipe for a Christmas present,

or records – Bessie, bop, or Bach.

 

I guess being colored doesn't make me not like

the same things other folks like who are other races.

So will my page be colored that I write?

Being me, it will not be white.

But it will be

a part of you, instructor.

You are white –

yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.

That's American.

Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.

Nor do I often want to be a part of you.

But we are, that's true!

As I learn from you,

I guess you learn from me –

although you're older – and white –

and somewhat more free.

 

This is my page for English B.

 

 

Low to High

 

How can you forget me?

But you do!

 

You said you was gonna take me

Up with you –

Now you've got your Cadillac,

you done forgot that you are Black.

How can you forget me

When I'm you?

 

But you do.

 

How can you forget me,

fellow, say?

How can you low-rate me

this way?

You treat me like you damn well please,

Ignore me – though I pay your fees.

How can you forget me?

 

But you do.

 

 

Shame On You

 

If you're great enough

and clever enough

the government might honor you.

But the people will forget –

Except on holidays.

 

A movie house in Harlem named after Lincoln,

Nothing at all named after John Brown.

 

Black people don't remember

any better than white.

 

If you're not alive and kicking,

shame on you!

 

 

Passing

 

On sunny summer Sunday afternoons in Harlem

when the air is one interminable ball game

and grandma cannot get her gospel hymns

from the Saints of God in Christ

on account of the Dodgers on the radio,

on sunny Sunday afternoons

when the kids look all new

and far too clean to stay that way,

and Harlem has its

washed-and-ironed-and-cleaned-best out,

the ones who’ve crossed the line

to live downtown

miss you,

Harlem of the bitter dream,

since their dream has

come true.

 

 

Sliver

 

Cheap little rhymes

A cheap little tune

Are sometimes as dangerous

As a sliver of the moon.

 

A cheap little tune

to cheap little rhymes

Can cut a man's

Throat sometimes.

 

 

Same in Blues

 

I said to my baby,

Baby, take it slow.

I can’t, she said, I can’t!

I got to go!

 

There’s a certain

amount of raveling

in a dream deferred.

 

Lulu said to Leonard,

I want a diamond ring.

Leonard said to Lulu,

You won't get a goddamn thing!

 

A certain

amount of nothing

in a dream deferred.

 

Daddy, daddy, daddy,

All I want is you.

You can have me, baby –

but my lovin' days is through.

 

A certain

amount of impotence

in a dream deferred.

 

Three parties

On my party line –

But that third party,

Lord, ain't mine:

 

There's liable

to be confusion

in a dream deferred.

 

From river to river

Uptown and down,

There's liable to be confusion

when a dream gets kicked around.

 

You talk like

they don't kick

dreams around

Downtown.

 

I expect they do –

But I'm talking about

Harlem to you!

 

 

Harlem

 

What happens to a dream deferred?

 

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore –

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over –

like a syrupy sweet?

 

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

 

Or does it explode?

—Langston Hughes, [i]

1951