To Essex Hemphill
I am reading you and I am wondering
What the verse does and when and how
You don't betray me with your words
They are piercing
And just a little uncomfortable
(It's your non pacified rage that surmounts everything)
You wear the essence of frustration up your sleeve
It reminds me so much of James Baldwin
That ambition to reach over and win
You take home trophies and amorphous, gigantic bunches of gift flowers
And overwhelmed by emotion
by other people's searches and falls
collapse and rest by the side of the bed
which always awaits in return
The ambition for success which burns our insides
That quiet success that pacifies our spirits
that drives the mileage of cacophonies away
that works the soil and breaks away starchy weeds
and allows new seeds to grow in the ploughed and rendering soil ...
New York, 3rd November 1994
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