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| Island
Within Island our voices waved upwards into a tide that wrapped itself around the island like some great blue snake and i with visions unravelled my body from the great octopus i had slain with our voices across the island i carried my soul as one would carry a tiny baby found starving and dying back leaving skin shedding and merging with tentacles of the rotting world my voice walks like a skeleton i have reached the edge of the lagoon protected in the curve of the tidal rhythms are beating down my bones the island has appeared floating perhaps beckoning me to its water free of beasts our voices are saying to our voices i am the center and the sense i am the sun out of me comes everything --Henry Dumas (african american poet, killed in halem subway, mistaken identity at the age of 33 in 1968) |
| Love
Song Beloved, I have to adore the earth: The wind must have heard your voice once. It echoes and sings like you. The soil must have tasted you once. It is laden with your scent. The trees honor you in gold and blush when you pass. I know why the north country is frozen. It has been trying to perserve your memory. I know why the desert burns with fever. It has wept too long without you. On hands and knees, the ocean begs up the beach, and falls at your feet. I have to adore the mirror of the earth. You have taught her well how to be beautiful. --Henry Dumas |
| Thought Love came to me and said: What do you want of me? Save me I said, Save me. Love knelt down beside me and Love said: If you knew the price of coming to you, you would ask nothing but would give. --Henry Dumas |