Inspiration

________"These poets &influential thinker are simply a few who inspire this soul..

I Know My Soul


I plucked my soul out of it's secret place,
And held it to the mirror of my eye,
To see it like a star against the sky,
A twitching body quivering in space,
A spark of passion shining on my face.
And I explored it to determine why
This awful key to my infinity
Conspires to rob me of sweet joy and grace.
And if the sign may not be fully read,
If I comprehend but not control,
If I need not gloom my days with futile dread,
Because I see apart and not the whole.
Contemplating the strange, I'm comforted
By this narcotic thought: I know my soul.

The Harlem Dancer

Applauding youths laughed with young prostitutes
And watched her perfect, half-clothed naked body sway;
Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes
Blown by black players upon a picnic day.
She sang and dance on gracefully and calm,
The light gauze hanging loose about her form;
To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm
Grown lovelier for passing through a storm.
Upon her swarthy neck black curls
Luxuriant fell; and tossing coins in praise,
The wine-flushed; bold-eyed boys, and even the girls,
devoured her shape with eager passionate gaze;
But looking at her falsely-smiling face,
I knew herself was not in this strange place.

Claude McKay (1890-1948)

______________________

Call to Creation


Listen!
All you beauty-makers,
Give up beauty for a moment.
Look at harshness, look at pain,
Look at life again.
Look at hungry babies crying,
Listen to rich man lying,

Look at starving China dying.
Hear the rumble in the East:
"In spite of all,
Life must not cease."
In India with folded arms,
In China with the guns,
In Africa with bitter smile-
See where the murmur runs:

"Life must not cease,
Because the fat and greedy ones
Proclaim their thieving peace."
Their peace far worse then war and death-
For this better than living breath:
Free! To be Free!

Listen!
Futile beauty-makers-
Work for awhile with the pattern-breakers!
Come for a march with new world-makers:
Let beauty be!



Harlem Renaissance
Esthete In Harlem


Strange,
That in this nigger place
I should meet life face to face;
When for years, I had been seeking,
Life in places gentler-speaking,
Until I came to this vile street
And found life stepping on my feet!


Langston Hughes, The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes
_______________________


If I Stand in My Window

If I stand in my window
naked in my own house
and press my breasts
against the windowpane
like blackbirds pushing against glass
because I am somebody
in a New Thing

and if the man come to stop me
in my own house
naked in my own window
saying I have offended him
I have offended his

Gods

let him watch my black body
push against my own glass
let him discover self
let him naked through the streets
crying
praying in tongues

Lucille Clifton, The Black Poets
_________________________

My Love When This Is Past

My love when this is past
and you have turned away
-or I

and we are no longer
as we are today
I will be more

having known your love
I will be more
and not alone.


Who Is Not a Stranger Still

Who is not a stranger still
even after making love,
or the morning after?

The interlude of sleep again divides
it is clear again where one body
ends and the next begins,

Think to think that each encounter,
we will be strangers still
even after making love
and even after long conversation,
even after meals and showers
together

and years of touching.
It is not often that the core
of what I am is lost in longing

and is less often filled.
I understand my clinging
to the thought of you.

Stephany, The Black Poets
_______________________

The Poet

He sang of life, serenely sweet,
With, now and then, a deeper note.
From some high peak, nigh yet remote,
He voiced the world's absorbing beat.

He sang of love when earth was young,
And love, itself was in his lays.
But ah, the world, it turned to praise
A jingle in a broken tongue.

Paul Laurence Dunbar
_____________________

"It would be much more to the point for us to make a serious attempt to recognize our own shadow and it's nefarious doings. If we could see our shadow (the dark side of our nature), we should be immune to any moral and metal infection and insinuation. As matters now stand, we lay ourselves open to every infection, because we are really doing practically the same thing as they. Only we have the additional disadvantage that we neither see nor want to understand what we ourselves are doing, under the cover of good manners."

Approaching the Unconscious, Carl G. Jung


...however, I sound like Me.