Beautiful the Black
i’ve known from folklore learned
the history of my people’s skin
this color black y’all yearn
yet america has come to pretend
this land should I never been born
Nile my Queen
Sahara never have i seen
believe it is true
i’ve heard ancestors grieve
From hills of Cameroon to
dusty plains of Abilene
you know it is true
i’ll never be an african king.
true: it is a fact
people old and people new
carved of pieces of me
shaped of pieces of you
Beautiful the Black.
for the taiwainese japanese and chinese
true peruvian cannot deny
how high how low it is to fly
to this land of “the free and the brave”
without learning how to comply.
just another slow day on a fast train
seemed ole boss man ushered us all aboard
blurred all nights to all day; memories ignored
how speeds of motion capture time the same,
framed life’s picture, black eyes etch with death-row
sentence, time caged inside locomotion
racing thoughts bound in hyper slow motion
raging here or there to never know
old black men’s warped sense of time and speed
or their panoramic views of past times
forgotten in years the future left behind
riding fast trains on slow days, yes indeed.
the sky painted the moon and sun upon its face
wayward stars blinked envious green without disgrace
come all you royal scandalnavians and ejiptians
fragments of long found jews
seeking babylon’s modern day mecca
you can choose your divided refuse
here in america it’s only histories that are confused
Queen my Nile
Sahara frowned miles frowning miles
take me back Africa if only for a little while
when people told and people knew
pieces of me
pieces of you
Black the Beautiful.
Devery Landrum has worked as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker specializing working
with children and adolescents for over twenty years. He has been writing poetry
since he was in high school and has had poems in The San Fernando Journal, Blindman’s Rainbow, Writer’s Cramp, Sounds of Poetry, The Sunday Suitor Poetry Review, Lucid Moon, and the Society of American Poets. He is a member of The Writers Center in Bethesda MD.
Pulsebeat Poetry Journal 