What you watch?
What you see?
What you hear?
What you read?

What you learn?
What you know?
What you don't?
Where you go?

The sound of the wind rustling the crusty leaves that bury me.
They smell so sweet, decomposing in the spring;
Like memories wafted to my brain and its stem.
Plant this seed in deep, between the vertebrae of my spine
And I’ll curl like a fetus, trying to find a heart to listen (to.)
The months pass in nines. I’m still trying to find a way out this womb.
Drying veins align, a path for these rivers to follow you.
I decay before I bloom, trace my pain through my roots.

-SLuR

Langston* said what happens
when dreams don't come true:
they fester, stink, or explode

but hell, hear what I say
colored girls ain't got no dreams,
what we got is schemes to make it
from here 'til tomorrow

and we don't drown saggin'
sorrow in gin, or the big H--least ways
not all of us do

it's true, the man done piled
on ****, high as it can be stacked on us
but we don't all ride no pity bus

the streets don't weep for the weak
or those of us who spread our legs to get us
a baby--a toy all our own

cause when he's all grown, he ain't
goin' be there to fill our empty bellies
or make us proud

so go on say it loud:
black girls don't need nobody
show 'em the way

and one day, we goin'
take what's ours--we just don't expect
to reach for no stars

we be fine with settlin'
for someone callin' us by name
and not feelin' no **** shame

Covenant Avenue, Harlem, 1968