PART ONE
Where Love Is a Scream of Anguish
They Went Home
They went home and told their wives,
that never once in all their lives,
had they known a girl like me,
But … They went home.
They said my house was licking clean,
no word I spoke was ever mean,
I had an air of mystery,
But … They went home.
My praises were on all men’s lips,
they liked my smile, my wit, my hips,
they’d spend one night, or two or three.
But …
The Gamut
Soft you day, be velvet soft,
My true love approaches,
Look you bright, you dusty sun,
Array your golden coaches.
Soft you wind, be soft as silk
My true love is speaking.
Hold you birds, your silver throats,
His golden voice I’m seeking.
Come you death, in haste, do come
My shroud of black be weaving,
Quiet my heart, be deathly quiet,
My true love is leaving.
A Zorro Man
Here
in the wombed room
silk purple drapes
flash a light as subtle
as your hands before
love-making
Here
in the covered lens
I catch a
clitoral image of
your general inhabitation
long and like a
late dawn in winter
Here
this clean mirror
traps me unwilling
in a gone time
when I was love
and you were booted and brave
and trembling for me.
To a Man
My man is
Black Golden Amber
Changing.
Warm mouths of Brandy Fine
Cautious sunlight on a patterned rug
Coughing laughter, rocked on a whorl of French tobacco
Graceful turns on woolen stilts
Secretive?
A cat’s eye.
Southern. Plump and tender with navy bean sullenness
And did I say “Tender”?
The gentleness
A big cat stalks through stubborn bush
And did I mention “Amber”?
The heatless fire consuming itself.
Again. Anew. Into ever neverlessness.
My man is Amber
Changing
Always into itself
New. Now New.
Still itself.
Still.
Copyright © 2013 by Maya Angelou. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
