and if ever i touched a life i hope that life knows
that i know that touching was and still is and will always
be the true
revolution
Nikki Giovanni, When I Die (1972)
… a poem is pure energy
horizontally contained
between the mind
of the poet and the ear of the reader
if it does not sing discard the ear
for poetry is song
if it does not delight discard
the heart for poetry is joy
if it does not inform then close
off the brain for it is dead
if it cannot heed the insistent message
that life is precious
which is all we poets
wrapped in our loneliness
are trying to say
Nikki Giovanni, Poetry (1975)
For the poet and essayist, for the “activist”, for Nikki Giovanni, in her own words …
Poetry is like a child in many ways: it grows and grows adding whatever is needed: teeth, longer legs, a mind that discriminates.
Or maybe its like a thorn tree: it grows but you have to be careful how you touch it or how it touches you. It can be beautiful but it can also hurt.
We hear poetry from the moment we are conceived. Our mothers sing songs to us in the womb while she smiles and anticipates. The old days were better than the new because then no one knew who we were so everyone could guess and smile and tell our mothers who we would be. No one knows what a good poem is, either. We read it or we hear it but it will be a long time before we truly understand what an impact the poem will have.
People think poetry has gotten better because the youngsters are now quoting the oldsters but it’s not true. We were always young to someone else’s old. Countee Cullen all but ruined Baltimore for many of us and Paul Laurence Dunbar made us stand taller when he expressed his understanding of the caged bird.
But didn’t someone who is now unknown tell us she sometimes feels like a Motherless Child? Weren’t those Spirituals poems of the highest order? Weren’t those Spirituals the poems “that got us over? Our souls look back and wonder how we got over?” Though Langston Hughes answered that saying “I’ve known rivers?” My Grandmother sang “Pass Me Not, Oh Gentle Savior.”
It’s the nature of humans to always discover and rediscover the same thing. Aren’t we all really the canary in the mine? We, sadly, might just be the donkey going blind because there is no light. Every now and then Hitler trumps along to bring hatred and some poor folks think that is a candle.
We need poetry because it brings the light of love. Everybody wants to confuse love with sex. Ask Bill Cosby about that. But love is the patience to forgive and go forth. There is no way not to like Black Americans. We try to practice love. We use the chicken feet to make a stew; we take the scraps of cloth to make the quilt. We find the song in the darkest days to say “put on your red dress, baby ’cause we’re going out tonight,” understanding we may be lynched on the way home but knowing between that cotton field and that house party something wonderful has been shared.
We are poetry. And poetry is us. Those who share with us are poetry. Those who sit and eat our pig feet and chitterlings and those who come on Sunday to worship with us. There is no “Oh my goodness! The poetry is growing!” It is the soil that keeps all of us growing. So that the lemons will fall from the tree. And Beyoncé can make Lemonade.
Nikki Giovanni: “Lemonade Grows From Soil, Too”, From Make Me Rain (2020)
Word Poem (1968)
(Perhaps Worth Considering)
As things be/come
let’s destroy
then we can destroy
what we be/come
let’s build
what we become
when we dream
Seduction (1968)
One day
you gonna walk in this house
and i’m gonna have a long African
gown
you’ll sit down and say ‘The Black…’
and i’m gonna take one arm out
then you-not noticing me at all- will say ‘What about this brother…’
and i’m going to be slipping it over my head
and you’ll rap on about ‘The revolution…’
while i rest your hand against my stomach
you’ll go on-as you always do- saying
‘I just can’t dig…’
while i’m moving your hand up and down
and i’ll be taking your dashiki off
then you’ll say ‘What we really need…’
and taking your shorts off
the you’ll notice
your state of undress
and knowing you you’ll just say
‘Nikki/
isn’t this counterrevolutionary…?’
The Funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968)
His headstone said
FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST
But death is a slave’s freedom
We seek the freedom of free men
And the construction of a world
Where Martin Luther King could have lived
and preached non-violence.
Nikki-Rosa (1968)
childhood remembrances are always a drag
if you’re Black
you always remember things like living in Woodlawn
with no inside toilet
and if you become famous or something
they never talk about how happy you were to have
your mother
all to yourself and
how good the water felt when you got your bath
from one of those
big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in
and somehow when you talk about home
it never gets across how much you
understood their feelings
as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale
and even though you remember
your biographers never understand
your father’s pain as he sells his stock
and another dream goes
And though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that
concerns you
and though they fought a lot
it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference
but only that everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays and very good
Christmases
and I really hope no white person ever has cause
to write about me
because they never understand
Black love is Black wealth and they’ll
probably talk about my hard childhood
and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy
The Great Pax Whitie (1968)
In the beginning was the word
And the word was
Death
And the word was nigger
And the word was death to all niggers
And the word was death to all life
And the word was death to all
peace be still
The genesis was life
The genesis was death
In the genesis of death
Was the genesis of war
be still peace be still
In the name of peace
They waged the wars
ain’t they got no shame
In the name of peace
Lot’s wife is now a product of the Morton company
nah, they ain’t got no shame
Noah packing his wife and kiddies up for a holiday
row row row your boat
But why’d you leave the unicorns, noah
Huh? why’d you leave them
While our Black Madonna stood there
Eighteen feet high holding Him in her arms
Listening to the rumblings of peace
be still be still
CAN I GET A WITNESS? WITNESS? WITNESS?
He wanted to know
And peter only asked who is that dude?
Who is that Black dude?
Looks like a troublemaker to me
And the foundations of the mighty mighty
Ro Man Cat holic church were laid
hallelujah Jesus
nah, they ain’t got no shame
Cause they killed the Carthaginians
in the great appian way
And they killed the Moors
“to civilize a nation”
And they just killed the earth
And blew out the sun
In the name of a god
Whose genesis was white
And war wooed god
And america was born
Where war became peace
And genocide patriotism
And honor is a happy slave
cause all god’s chillun need rhythm
And glory hallelujah why can’t peace
be still
The great emancipator was a bigot
ain’t they got no shame
And making the world safe for democracy
Were twenty million slaves
nah, they ain’t got no shame
And they barbecued six million
To raise the price of beef
And crossed the 38th parallel
To control the price of rice
ain’t we never gonna see the light
And champagne was shipped out of the East
While kosher pork was introduced
To Africa
Only the torch can show the way
In the beginning was the deed
And the deed was death
And the honkies are getting confused
peace be still
So the great white prince
Was shot like a nigger in texas
And our Black shining prince was murdered
like that thug in his cathedral
While our nigger in memphis
was shot like their prince in dallas
And my lord
ain’t we never gonna see the light
The rumblings of this peace must be stilled
be stilled be still
ahh Black people
ain’t we got no pride?
A Historical Footnote to Consider Only When All Else Fails (1968)
While it is true
(though only in a factual sense)
That in the wake of a
Her-I-can comes a
Shower
Surely I am not
The gravitating force
that keeps this house
full of panthers
Why, LBJ has made it
quite clear to me
He doesn’t give a
Good goddamn what I think
(else why would he continue to masterbate in public?)
Rhythm and Blues is not
The downfall of a great civilization
And I expect you to
Realize
That the Temptations
have no connection with
The CIA
We must move on to
the true issues of
Our time
like the mini-skirt
Rebellion
And perhaps take a
Closer look at
Flour power
It is for Us
to lead our people
out of the
Wein-Bars
into the streets
into the streets
(for safety reasons only)
Lord knows we don’t
Want to lose the
support
of our Jewish friends
So let us work
for our day of Presence
When Stokely is in
The Black House
And all will be right with
Our World
Woman Poem (1968)
you see, my whole life
is tied up
to unhappiness
it’s father cooking breakfast
and me getting fat as a hog
or having no food
at all and father proving
his incompetence
again
i wish i knew how it would feel
to be free
it’s having a job
they won’t let you work
or no work at all
castrating me
(yes it happens to women too)
it’s a sex object if you’re pretty
and no love
or love and no sex if you’re fat
get back fat black woman be a mother
grandmother strong thing but not woman
gameswoman romantic woman love needer
man seeker dick eater sweat getter
fuck needing love seeking woman
it’s a hole in your shoe
and buying lil sis a dress
and her saying you shouldn’t
when you know
all too well that you shouldn’t
but smiles are only something we give
to properly dressed social workers
not each other
only smiles of i know
your game sister
which isn’t really
a smile
joy is finding a pregnant roach
and squashing it
not finding someone to hold
let go get off get back don’t turn
me on you black dog
how dare you care
about me
you ain’t go no good sense
cause i ain’t shit you must be lower
than that to care
it’s a filthy house
with yesterday’s watermelon
and monday’s tears
cause true ladies don’t
know how to clean
it’s intellectual devastation
of everybody
to avoid emotional commitment
“yeah honey i would’ve married
him but he didn’t have no degree”
it’s knock-kneed mini-skirted
wig wearing died blond mamma’s scar
born dead my scorn your whore
rough heeled broken nailed powdered
face me
whose whole life is tied
up to unhappiness
cause it’s the only
for real thing
i
know
No Reservations (1970)
(for Art Jones)
there are no reservations
for the revolution
no polite little clerk
to send notice
to your room
saying you are WANTED
on the battlefield
there are no banners
to wave you forward
no blaring trumpets
not even a blues note
moaning wailing lone blue note
to the Yoruba drums saying
strike now shoot
strike now fire
strike now run
there will be no grand
parade
and a lot thrown round
you neck
people won’t look up and say
‘why he used to live next to me
isn’t it nice
it’s his turn now’
there will be no recruitment
station
where you can give
the most convenient hours
‘monday wednesday i play ball
friday night i play cards
any other time i’m free’
there will be no reserve
of energy
no slacking off till next time
‘let’s see – i can come back
next week
better not wear myself out
this time’
there will be reservations
only
if we fail
Walking Down Park (1970)
walking down park
amsterdam
or columbus do you ever stop
to think what it looked like
before it was an avenue
did you ever stop to think
what you walked
before you rode
subways to the stock
exchange (we can’t be on
the stock exchange
we are the stock
exchanged)
did you ever maybe wonder
what grass was like before
they rolled it
into a ball and called
it central park
where syphilitic dogs
and their two-legged tubercular
masters fertilize
the corners and side-walks
ever want to know what would happen
if your life could be fertilized
by a love thought
from a loved one
who loves you
ever look south
on a clear day and not see
time’s squares but see
tall Birch trees with sycamores
touching hands
and see gazelles running playfully
after the lions
ever hear the antelope bark
from the third floor apartment
ever, did you ever, sit down
and wonder about what freedom’s freedom
would bring
it’s so easy to be free
you start by loving yourself
then those who look like you
all else will come
naturally
ever wonder why
so much asphalt was laid
in so little space
probably so we would forget
the Iroquois, Algonquin
and Mohicans who could caress
the earth
ever think what Harlem would be
like if our herbs and roots and elephant ears
grew sending
a cacophony of sound to us
the parrot parroting black is beautiful black is beautiful
owls sending out whooooo’s making love …
and me and you just sitting in the sun trying
to find a way to get a banana tree from one of the monkeys
koala bears in the trees laughing at our listlessness
ever think its possible
for us to be
happy
Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why) (1970)
I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
that only glows every one hundred years falls
into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad
I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
the tears from my birth pains
created the nile
I am a beautiful woman
I gazed on the forest and burned
out the sahara desert
with a packet of goat’s meat
and a change of clothes
I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
so swift you can’t catch me
For a birthday present when he was three
I gave my son hannibal an elephant
He gave me rome for mother’s day
My strength flows ever on
My son noah built new/ark and
I stood proudly at the helm
as we sailed on a soft summer day
I turned myself into myself and was
jesus
men intone my loving name
All praises All praises
I am the one who would save
I sowed diamonds in my back yard
My bowels deliver uranium
the filings from my fingernails are
semi-precious jewels
On a trip north
I caught a cold and blew
My nose giving oil to the arab world
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach east and had to round off
the earth as I went
The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid
across three continents
I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended except by my permission
I mean…I…can fly
like a bird in the sky…
Poem For A Lady Whose Voice I Like (1970)
so he said: you ain’t got no talent
if you didn’t have a face
you wouldn’t be nobody
and she said: god created heaven and earth
and all that’s Black within them
so he said: you ain’t really no hot shit
they tell me plenty sisters
take care better business than you
and she said: on the third day he made chitterlings
and all good things to eat
and said: “that’s good”
so he said: if the white folks hadn’t been under
yo skirt and been giving you the big play
you’d a had to come on uptown like everybody else
and she replied: then he took a big Black greasy rib
from adam and said we will call this woeman and her
name will be sapphire and she will divide into four parts
that simone may sing a song
and he said: you pretty full of yourself ain’t chu
so she replied: show me someone not full of herself
and i’ll show you a hungry person
Mothers (1970)
the last time i was home
to see my mother we kissed
exchanged pleasantries
and unpleasantries pulled a warm
comforting silence around
us and read separate books
i remember the first time
i consciously saw her
we were living in a three room
apartment on burns avenue
mommy always sat in the dark
i don’t know how i knew that but she did
that night i stumbled into the kitchen
maybe because i’ve always been
a night person or perhaps because i had wet
the bed
she was sitting on a chair
the room was bathed in moonlight diffused through
those thousands of panes landlords who rented
to people with children were prone to put in windows
she may have been smoking but maybe not
her hair was three-quarters her height
which made me a strong believer in the samson myth
and very black
i’m sure i just hung there by the door
i remember thinking: what a beautiful lady
she was very deliberately waiting
perhaps for my father to come home
from his night job or maybe for a dream
that had promised to come by
‘come here’ she said ‘i’ll teach you
a poem: i see the moon
the moon sees me
god bless the moon
and god bless me‘
i taught it to my son
who recited it for her
just to say we must learn
to bear the pleasures
as we have borne the pains
Winter Poem (1970)
once a snowflake fell
on my brow and i loved
it so much and i kiss
it and it was happy and called its cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me then
i reached to love them all
and i squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and i stood perfectly
still and was a flower
The Laws of Motion (1975)
(for Harlem Magic)
The laws of science teach us a pound of gold weighs as
much as a pound of flour though if dropped from any
undetermined height in their natural state one would
reach bottom and one would fly away
Laws of motion tell us an inert object is more difficult to
propel than an object heading in the wrong direction is to
turn around. Motion being energy—inertia—apathy.
Apathy equals hostility. Hostility—violence. Violence
being energy is its own virtue. Laws of motion teach us
Black people are no less confused because of our
Blackness than we are diffused because of our
powerlessness. Man we are told is the only animal who
smiles with his lips. The eyes however are the mirror of
the soul
The problem with love is not what we feel but what we
wish we felt when we began to feel we should feel
something. Just as publicity is not production: seduction
is not seductive
If I could make a wish I’d wish for all the knowledge of all
the world. Black may be beautiful Professor Micheau
says but knowledge is power. Any desirable object is
bought and sold—any neglected object declines in value.
It is against man’s nature to be in either category
If white defines Black and good defines evil then men
define women or women scientifically speaking describe
men. If sweet is the opposite of sour and heat the
absence of cold then love is the contradiction of pain and
beauty is in the eye of the beheld
Sometimes I want to touch you and be touched in
return. But you think I’m grabbing and I think you’re
shirking and Mama always said to look out for men like
you
So I go to the streets with my lips painted red and my
eyes carefully shielded to seduce the world my reluctant
lover
And you go to your men slapping fives feeling good
posing as a man because you know as long as you sit
very very still the laws of motion will be in effect
Rosa Parks (2002)
This is for the Pullman Porters who organized when people said
they couldn’t. And carried the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago
Defender to the Black Americans in the South so they would
know they were not alone. This is for the Pullman Porters who
helped Thurgood Marshall go south and come back north to fight
the fight that resulted in Brown v. Board of Education because
even though Kansas is west and even though Topeka is the birth-
place of Gwendolyn Brooks, who wrote the powerful “The
Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock,” it was the
Pullman Porters who whispered to the traveling men both
the Blues Men and the “Race” Men so that they both would
know what was going on. This is for the Pullman Porters who
smiled as if they were happy and laughed like they were tickled
when some folks were around and who silently rejoiced in 1954
when the Supreme Court announced its 9—0 decision that “sepa-
rate is inherently unequal.” This is for the Pullman Porters who
smiled and welcomed a fourteen-year-old boy onto their train in
1955. They noticed his slight limp that he tried to disguise with a
doo-wop walk; they noticed his stutter and probably understood
why his mother wanted him out of Chicago during the summer
when school was out. Fourteen-year-old Black boys with limps
and stutters are apt to try to prove themselves in dangerous ways
when mothers aren’t around to look after them. So this is for the
Pullman Porters who looked over that fourteen-year-old while
the train rolled the reverse of the Blues Highway from Chicago to
St. Louis to Memphis to Mississippi. This is for the men who kept
him safe; and if Emmett Till had been able to stay on a train all
summer he would have maybe grown a bit of a paunch, certainly
lost his hair, probably have worn bifocals and bounced his grand-
children on his knee telling them about his summer riding the
rails. But he had to get off the train. And ended up in Money,
Mississippi. And was horribly, brutally, inexcusably, and unac-
ceptably murdered. This is for the Pullman Porters who, when the
sheriff was trying to get the body secretly buried, got Emmett’s
body on the northbound train, got his body home to Chicago,
where his mother said: I want the world to see what they did
to my boy. And this is for all the mothers who cried. And this is
for all the people who said Never Again. And this is about Rosa
Parks whose feet were not so tired, it had been, after all, an ordi-
nary day, until the bus driver gave her the opportunity to make
history. This is about Mrs. Rosa Parks from Tuskegee, Alabama,
who was also the field secretary of the NAACP. This is about the
moment Rosa Parks shouldered her cross, put her worldly goods
aside, was willing to sacrifice her life, so that that young man in
Money, Mississippi, who had been so well protected by the
Pullman Porters, would not have died in vain. When Mrs. Parks
said “NO” a passionate movement was begun. No longer would
there be a reliance on the law; there was a higher law. When Mrs.
Parks brought that light of hers to expose the evil of the system,
the sun came and rested on her shoulders bringing the heat and
the light of truth. Others would follow Mrs. Parks. Four young
men in Greensboro, North Carolina, would also say No. Great
voices would be raised singing the praises of God and exhorting
us “to forgive those who trespass against us.” But it was the
Pullman Porters who safely got Emmett to his granduncle and it
was Mrs. Rosa Parks who could not stand that death. And in not
being able to stand it. She sat back down.
Without being an anarchist, with political commitments and engagements which would not necessarily be ours, Nikki Giovanni’s poetry speaks beyond anything reducible to a simple ideology and she gives voice to what has often been absent from anarchism: the experience of resistance, struggle, solidarity and care of “american blacks” – to use her expression.
For Nikki Giovanni, the writer is a tamer of words, with which “We learn to negotiate/That space between/Imagination and possibility/Reality and probability” and thus, the world is molded into our thoughts and “Our thoughts mold/Us into a different/Perspective”. (We Write – 2007)
If Nikki Giovanni can write that “we are all imprisoned in the castle of our skins” (Poem (for Nina), 1972), she equally speaks of her boredom “with categories” (Categories, 1972), because her poetry testifies to a politics of the everyday, of the concrete, of frustrations and loves. And it is at this level that a politics of liberation can be understood as a permanent struggle against all forms of oppression. “since i can’t go/where i need/to go, then i must, go/where the sings point/though always understanding/parallel movement/isn’t lateral” (Choices, 1978). If she celebrates the right to vote in the poem Vote (2020), it is not because voting is an end in itself or the realisation of a full democracy, but because the path to it is strewn with blood and sweat. It was a conquest of struggle and a revolutionary politics must be read in the light of the daily struggle for dignity and justice, at whatever the level, and not simply ideologically.
Vote (2020)
It’s not a hug, or a toy at Christmas
It’s not a colored egg at Easter
Or a bunny hopping across the meadow
It’s a vote, saying you are a citizen
Though sometimes it is traveling and sometimes a no.
It can be male of female
It can be right or left
I can disagree
But I am a citizen
I should be able to vote from prison
I should be able to vote from the battlefield
I should be able to vote when I get my driver’s license
I should be able to vote when can I purchase a gun
When I’m in the hospital
Or the old folk’s home
Or if I need a ride to the polling place
I am a citizen
I must be able to vote.
Folks were lynched
Folks were shot.
Folks communities were gerrymander
Folks who believed in the Constitution were lied to
Burned out, bought and sold because
They agreed that all men and women were created equal.
Folks vote to make us free
It’s not cookies or cake
But it is icing that is so sweet
Good for us, my country tis of thee.
Revolutionary Dreams (1970)
i used to dream militant
dreams of taking
over american to show
these white folks how it should be
done
i used to dream radical dreams
of blowing everyone away with my perceptive powers
of correct analysis
i even used to think i’d be the one
to stop the riot and negotiate the peace
then I awoke and dug
that if I dreamed natural
dreams of being a natural
woman doing what a woman
does when she’s natural
i would have a revolution
A Civil Rights Journey (1999)
…
So, certainly, things have to be changed. And there is a lot to do. The next century is right on us. Policemen need to give up their guns. Society needs to dismantle all our prisons. If we need to detain people, a local jail should be sufficient. We need many more doctors; we need many more social workers; we need lots more teachers. And, yes, a lawyer or two to keep the stew honest. We need to be proud of the taxes we pay. We need to tax the wealthy dead at 100 percent. It’s an abomination that the dead rich control ‘their’ money while the living must suffer. We need a new definition of neighbourhood, community, society. We need to make white America tell us why they hate and fear and hoard. We need a new definition of life so that we can find a truer definition of death. We all need a definition of responsibility. And I don’t think there is any one key o any easy answer. There are some clearer answers and some difficult decisions but our first decision must be to change the rather hateful, selfish species we are into something a bit better. I hope their are aliens out there and I hope they come to Earth. We need another perspective on the possibilities. Civil rights have to somehow be tied to civilized humans. So that is the question: What is a civil human?

Quilts (for Sally Sellers) (2007)
Like a fading piece of cloth
I am a failure
No longer do I cover tables filled with food and laughter
My seams are frayed my hems falling my strength no longer able
To hold the hot and cold
I wish for those first days
When just woven I could keep water
From seeping through
Repelled stains with the tightness of my weave
Dazzled the sunlight with my
Reflection
I grow old though pleased with my memories
The tasks I can no longer complete
Are balanced by the love of the tasks gone past
I offer no apology only
this plea:
When I am frayed and strained and drizzle at the end
Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt
That I might keep some child warm
And some old person with no one else to talk to
Will hear my whispers
And cuddle
near
For more on Nikki Giovanni’s life and work, see the website dedicated to her: nikki-giovanni.com.
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