"Lover as we lay"
2009-09-21, 11:59 p.m.

So I recently wrote an email to a friend infused with poetry, and I thought I'd post them here as well, Some may be duplicates, but there's a hughes in there I know I haven't posted before.

Much love.

spoken word.Suheir Hammad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5OBiQv-cSw

Hughes:

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway ....
He did a lazy sway ....
To the tune o' those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man's soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan--
"Ain't got nobody in all this world,
Ain't got nobody but ma self.
I's gwine to quit ma frownin'
And put ma troubles on the shelf."

Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more--
"I got the Weary Blues
And I can't be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can't be satisfied--
I ain't happy no mo'
And I wish that I had died."
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.

hemingway;
They sucked us in;
King and country,
Christ Almighty
And the rest.
Patriotism,
Democracy,
Honor--
Words and phrases,
They either bitched us or killed us

Kelly Girls
Jen McKee

Musicals are like TV wedding in our house
No one speaks. Per mom.
She raised me right, made me a Gene
Kelly gil. None of Astaire's prissy, floating tails,
partner dancing for us. No sir.

We watch Gene's exaggerated Irish smile for hours.
He makes garbade can lids tap shoes
and stomps puddles into foot-fountains
and teacher French children English
for an I-Got-Rhythm Gershwin song.

And when Gene stops talking and starts dancing,
Mom removes the wood oval quilt frame from her lap
(covering up her canes on the carpet)
and leans forward in the recliner.
Her intent face opens and I hear her breathe in
as though she's been underwater
for days"