national poetry month, day 25.

I couldn't choose just one poem by Gwendolyn Brooks. I couldn't even just choose two. In the end I stopped trying to choose, and here is a whole pile. 

Of Robert Frost

There is a little lightning in his eyes.

Iron at the mouth.

His brows ride neither too far up nor down.

He is splendid. With a place to stand.

Some glowing in the common blood.

Some specialness within.

***

To Be In Love

            To be in love

Is to touch things with a lighter hand.

In yourself you stretch, you are well.

You look at things

Through his eyes.

             A Cardinal is red.

             A sky is blue.

Suddenly you know he knows too.

He is not there but

You know you are tasting together

The winter, or light spring weather.

His hand to take your hand is overmuch.

Too much to bear.

You cannot look in his eyes

Because your pulse must not say

What must not be said.

When he

Shuts a door --

Is not there --

Your arms are water.

And you are free

With a ghastly freedom.

You are the beautiful half

Of a golden hurt.

You remember and covet his mouth,

to touch, to whisper on.

Oh when to declare

Is certain Death!

Oh when to apprize

Is to mesmerize,

To see fall down, the Column of Gold, 

Into the commonest ash.

***

Langston Hughes

            is merry glory.

Is saltatory.

Yet grips his right of twisting free.

Has a long reach,

Strong speech,

Remedial fears.

Muscular tears.

Holds horticulture

In the eye of the vulture

Infirm profession.

In the Compression --

In mud and blood and sudden death --

In the breath

Of the holocaust he

Is helmsman, hatchet, headlight.

See

One restless in the exotic time! and ever,

Till the air is cured of its fever.

***

My Little 'Bout-Town Gal

Roger of Rhodes

My little 'bout-town gal has gone

'Bout town with powder and blue dye

On her pale lids and on her lips

Dye sits quite carminely.

I'm scarcely healthy-hearted or human.

What can I teach my cheated Woman?

My Tondeleyo, my black blonde

Will not be homing soon.

None shall secure her save the late the

Detective fingers of the moon.

***

The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till

after the murder,

after the burial

Emmett's mother is a pretty-faced thing;

              the tint of pulled taffy.

She sits in a red room,

              drinking black coffee.

She kisses her killed boy.

              And she is sorry.

Chaos in windy grays

              through a red prairie.