Isaiah+Martin

=LANGSTON HUGHES= ==

James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. When he was little, his parents spilt, and he moved out of the country with his father to Mexico. There, he realized that his father did not support his aspirations to be a writer, this was the beginning of a strained relationship he would have with his father throughout his life. After living with various relatives, he finally landed in Cleveland, Ohio, where he finally began to achieve his dream of writing. He would soon be exposed to the works of Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman, who he would credit as his biggest influences. He would submit his writings and poetry to magazines that highlighted the subject, but they would ultimately reject him.

__ 50/50 __ By Langston Hughes

I’m all alone in this world, she said, Ain’t got nobody to share my bed, Ain’t got nobody to hold my hand— The truth of the matter’s I ain’t got no man.

Big Boy opened his mouth and said, Trouble with you is You ain’t got no head! If you had a head and used your mind You could have me with you All the time.

She answered, Babe, what must I do?

He said, Share your bed— And your money, too.

__ You and your whole race. __ By Langston Hughes

You and your whole race. Look down upon the town in which you live And be ashamed. Look down upon white folks And upon yourselves And be ashamed That such supine poverty exists there, That such stupid ignorance breeds children there Behind such humble shelters of despair— That you yourselves have not the sense to care Nor the manhood to stand up and say I dare you to come one step nearer, evil world, With your hands of greed seeking to touch my throat, I dare you to come one step nearer me: When you can say that you will be free!

__Remember__ By Langston Hughes

Remember The days of bondage— And remembering— Do not stand still. Go to the highest hill And look down upon the town Where you are yet a slave. Look down upon any town in Carolina Or any town in Maine, for that matter, Or Africa, your homeland— And you will see what I mean for you to see— The white hand: The thieving hand. The white face: The lying face. The white power: The unscrupulous power That makes of you The hungry wretched thing you are today.

=GWENDOLYN BROOKS=

Gwedolyn Brooks was born June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas where she was raised until her family moved to Chicago when she was six. Spending her adolescence there would become the core of her poetry. She faced racial prejudice living in the city, along with other large influences in her life. Publishing her first works at 13, she had a strong understanding of the "social dynamics" that went on in America during that time. She rose to fame after publishing her most famous collection, //A Street In Bronzeville//, in 1945

__ The Sunset in The City __

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 It is a real chill out, The genuine thing. I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer Because sun stays and birds continue to sing. ======

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 The sweet flowers indrying and dying down, The grasses forgetting their blaze and consenting to brown. It is a real chill out. ======

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The fall crisp comes I am aware there is winter to heed. There is no warm house That is fitted with my need. ======

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I am cold in this cold house this house Whose washed echoes are tremulous down lost halls. I am a woman, and dusty, standing among new affairs. ======

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 Tin intimations of a quiet core to be my Desert and my dear relief Come: there shall be such islanding from grief, And small communion with the master shore. ======

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 And I incline this ear to tin, Consult a dual dilemma. Whether to dry In humming pallor or to leap and die. ======

 __The Mother__
  Abortions will not let you forget.

You remember the children you got that you did not get,

The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,

The singers and workers that never handled the air.

You will never neglect or beat

Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.

You will never wind up the sucking-thumb

Or scuttle off ghosts that come.

You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,

Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.

I have contracted. I have eased

My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.

I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized

Your luck

And your lives from your unfinished reach,

If I stole your births and your names,

Your straight baby tears and your games,

Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths,

If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,

Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.

Though why should I whine,

Whine that the crime was other than mine?—

Since anyhow you are dead.

Or rather, or instead,

You were never made.

But that too, I am afraid,

Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?

You were born, you had body, you died.

It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.

Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you

All. We Real Cool

The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We Left school. We

Lurk late. We Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We Die soon.

=WOLE SOYINKA=

Born July 13, 1934 in Abeokuta, Nigeria, Wole Soyinka (born Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka) was the first African to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. Aside being a poet, he was also a writer, playwright. He played a major role in Nigeria's battle for independence against Great Britain, along with the Nigerian Civil War, in which he was arrested and imprisoned for 2 years. He began his writing career with //The Lion and The Jewel//, which launched him further into his career. He later became politically active, leading to his arrest, which both served as influence for his serious, west African style of poetry. He drew aspects that he worked with during his work in the theatre industry and his authorship, into his poetry.

IN THE SMALL HOURS

Blue diaphane, tobacco smoke Serpentine on wet film and wood glaze, Mutes chrome, wreathes velvet drapes, Dims the cave of mirrors. Ghost fingers Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins Of marooned mariners, captives Of Circe's sultry notes. The barman Dispenses igneous potions ? Somnabulist, the band plays on. Cocktail mixer, silvery fish

Dances for limpet clients.

Applause is steeped in lassitude,

Tangled in webs of lovers' whispers

And artful eyelash of the androgynous.

The hovering notes caress the night

Mellowed deep indigo ?still they play.

Departures linger. Absences do not

Deplete the tavern. They hang over the haze

As exhalations from receded shores. Soon,

Night repossesses the silence, but till dawn

The notes hold sway, smoky

Epiphanies, possessive of the hours.

This music's plaint forgives, redeems

The deafness of the world. Night turns

Homewards, sheathed in notes of solace, pleats

The broken silence of the heart.

__Dedication__
Earth will not share the rafter's envy; dung floors

Break, not the gecko's slight skin, but its fall

Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for life

As this yam, wholly earthed, yet a living tuber

To the warmth of waters, earthed as springs

As roots of baobab, as the hearth.

The air will not deny you. Like a top

Spin you on the navel of the storm, for the hoe

That roots the forests plows a path for squirrels.

Be ageless as dark peat, but only that rain's

Fingers, not the feet of men, may wash you over.

Long wear the sun's shadow; run naked to the night.

Peppers green and red-child-your tongue arch

To scorpion tail, spit straight return to danger's threats

Yet coo with the brown pigeon, tendril dew between your lips.

Shield you like the flesh of palms, skyward held

Cuspids in thorn nesting, insealed as the heart of kernel-

A woman's flesh is oil-child, palm oil on your tongue

Is suppleness to life, and wine of this gourd

From self-same timeless run of runnels as refill

Your podlings, child, weaned from yours we embrace

Earth's honeyed milk, wine of the only rib.

Now roll your tongue in honey till your cheeks are

Swarming honeycombs-your world needs sweetening, child.

Camwood round the heart, chalk for flight

Of blemish-see? it dawns!-antimony beneath

Armpits like a goddess, and leave this taste

Long on your lips, of salt, that you may seek

None from tears. This, rain-water, is the gift

Of gods-drink of its purity, bear fruits in season.

Fruits then to your lips: haste to repay

The debt of birth. Yield man-tides like the sea

And ebbing, leave a meaning of the fossilled sands

Civilian and Soldier

My apparition rose from the fall of lead, Declared, 'I am a civilian.' It only served To aggravate your fright. For how could I Have risen, a being of this world, in that hour Of impartial death! And I thought also: nor is Your quarrel of this world. You stood still For both eternities, and oh I heard the lesson Of your traing sessions, cautioning - Scorch earth behind you, do not leave A dubious neutral to the rear. Reiteration Of my civilian quandary, burrowing earth From the lead festival of your more eager friends Worked the worse on your confusion, and when You brought the gun to bear on me, and death Twitched me gently in the eye, your plight And all of you came clear to me. I hope some day Intent upon my trade of living, to be checked In stride by your apparition in a trench, Signalling, I am a soldier. No hesitation then But I shall shoot you clean and fair With meat and bread, a gourd of wine A bunch of breasts from either arm, and that Lone question - do you friend, even now, know What it is all about?