he game he loved like a country

until the guard finally lunges out    and commits to the wrong man

and filling the lanes in tandem

athering the orange leather    from the air like a cherished possession

A hook shot kisses the rim and hangs there, helplessly, but doesn’t drop,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

Mother of Exiles.

onquering limbs astride

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

long blows that you want to give and blows you are going to get.

I call for youcultivation of strength to heal and enhancein the non-cheering dark,

I call for you cultivation of strength in the dark.

You may carve a dream With an humble tool. The tallest tower Can tumble down If it be not rooted In solid ground.

Thus at Tuskegee He built a school With book-learning there And the workman's tool.

For smartness alone's Surely not meet—

He said, Till the soil And learn from the land.

practical man.

could say ‘Elves’ to him, But it's not elves exactly,

We keep the wall between us as we go.

No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there.

Spring is the mischief in me

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair

prophet becomes the poet and when prophecy becomes the expressive song, the chant of fulfillment.

Art or Propaganda.

Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme Or a major chord.

He stepped to the sill himself, his jacket flared And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter, The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union, The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze

The nearly invisible stitches along the collar Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

She burns like oil on water.

The cry I bring down from the hillsbelongs to a girl still burning

 Does it stink like rotten meat?       Or crust and sugar over—       like a syrupy sweet?

  Or fester like a sore—

What happens to a dream deferred?

And though I had no Gown of Gauze ‑No Ringlet, to my Hair,Nor hopped for Audiences ‑ like Birds ‑One Claw opon the air ‑

Nor any know I know the ArtI mention ‑ easy ‑ Here ‑

A Glee possesseth me,

I cannot dance opon my Toes ‑No Man instructed me ‑

And the stuff that I write is even tougher than life

Bullet holes left in my peepholes, I'm suited up in street clothes