Amiri Baraka Online Poems Essay Research Paper

Amiri Baraka: Online Poems Essay, Research Paper

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note

Lately, I’ve become accustomed to the way

The ground opens up and envelopes me

Each time I go out to walk the dog.

Or the broad edged silly music the wind

Makes when I run for a bus…

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.

And each night I get the same number.

And when they will not come to be counted,

I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night I tiptoed up

To my daughter’s room and heard her

Talking to someone, and when I opened

The door, there was no one there…

Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands

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In Memory of Radio

Who has ever stopped to think of the divinity of Lamont Cranston?

(Only jack Kerouac, that I know of: & me.

The rest of you probably had on WCBS and Kate Smith,

Or something equally unattractive.)

What can I say?

It is better to haved loved and lost

Than to put linoleum in your living rooms?

Am I a sage or something?

Mandrake’s hypnotic gesture of the week?

(Remember, I do not have the healing powers of Oral Roberts…

I cannot, like F. J. Sheen, tell you how to get saved & rich!

I cannot even order you to the gaschamber satori like Hitler or Goddy Knight)

& love is an evil word.

Turn it backwards/see, see what I mean?

An evol word. & besides

who understands it?

I certainly wouldn’t like to go out on that kind of limb.

Saturday mornings we listened to the Red Lantern & his undersea folk.

At 11, Let’s Pretend

& we did

& I, the poet, still do. Thank God!

What was it he used to say (after the transformation when he was safe

& invisible & the unbelievers couldn’t throw stones?) "Heh, heh, heh.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows."

O, yes he does

O, yes he does

An evil word it is,

This Love.

Online

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Notes For a Speech

African blues

does not know me. Their steps, in sands

of their own

land. A country

in black & white, newspapers

blown down pavements

of the world. Does

not feel

what I am.

Strength

in the dream, an oblique

suckling of nerve, the wind

throws up sand, eyes

are something locked in

hate, of hate, of hate, to