I Want to Die While You Love Me by Georgia Douglas Johnson

Georgia Douglas Johnson
September 10, 1880 -- May 14, 1966

I want to die while you love me,
While yet you hold me fair,
While Laughter lies upon my lips
And lights are in my hair.
I want to die while you love me
And bear to that still bed
Your kisses turbulent, unspent
To warm me when I’m dead.

I want to die while you love me;
Oh, who would care to live
Till love has nothing more to ask
And nothing more to give?

I want to die while you love me,
And never, never see
The glory of this perfect day
Grow dim, or cease to be!

Mrs. Johnson was one of the many little known poets, meaning her name was not as well known as Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer and the like. She was well known with her peers. Although she wrote many poems, plays and newspaper articles I believe she wasn't give the acclaim to the likes of the fore mentioned writers.

Georgia Douglas Johnson, harlem renaissance, poet, writer

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Yet I Do Marvel by Countee Cullen

Countee Cullen
1903-1946

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,

Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare

If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune

To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

harlem renaissance poetry

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People [by Jean Toomer -- Harlem Renaissance Poet/Writer]

from The Collected Poems of Jean Toomer (Poet of the Harlem Renaissance)






To those fixed on white,

White is white,

To those fixed on black,

It is the same,

And red is red,

Yellow, yellow-

Surely there are such sights

In the many colored world,

Or in the mind.

The strange thing is that

These people never see themselves

Or you, or me.



Are they not in their minds?

Are we not in the world?

This is a curious blindness

For those that are color blind.

What queer beliefs

That men who believe in sights

Disbelieve in seers.




O people, if you but used

Your other eyes

You would see beings.

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Renaissance: Portrait of a Son -- [My tribute to] Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes


My tribute to Langston Hughes
by Deborah White

He always wrote
with the strength & endurance

of noir silk

and sometimes, he'd die
on the same page --

he too, was America;


the darker
brother who scribed of rivers;

he'd known rivers,
he'd known the deep
onward movement
of Congo currents.

If you crack open
a binder you'd find

him sitting
in Harlem's Cotton Club
or Savoy's Ballroom track
at a table under

puffs and swirls
from the continent without cold;

and he'd jot
to the struck wired
strings, of Ellington,

scribble along
with Calloway's
chest rolled
hi-de-hi's,
ho-de-ho's.

Then, you'd notice
his soul
would meander
back to the rivers --

look close,

watch him drink
from Euphrates' mouth
handfuls of Black-men hopes,

listen,

hear him sip
from Nile's lip
cocao and coffee dreams --

it would be then,

that you'd know
he'd known those rivers,

he'd known

the slow,

slow,

trickles
of wearied ink;


Negro rivers.

The Tropics of New York by Claude McKay

Claude McKay





Bananas ripe and green, and ginger root

Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,

And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit,

Fit for the highest prize at parish fairs,



Sat in the window, bringing memories

of fruit-trees laden by low-singing rills,

And dewy dawns, and mystical skies

In benediction over nun-like hills.



My eyes grow dim, and I could no more gaze:

A wave of longing through my body swept,

And, hungry for the old, familiar ways

I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.

From the Archives of Claude McKay.

[ Personal Note: Claude McKay was a Harlem Renaissance writer. Admired by many of the young black poets of that time, including Langston Hughes. I'm not not crazy about rhyming poetry but, I found this poem to have wonderful metaphors and rhythm. I do understand stand how some of the young black poets of the time admired him. Read more about Claude McKay]

Technorati Tags: claude mckay, harlem renaissance, poet, poetry

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Lady Day [My tribute to Billie Holiday]

(Billie Holiday 1915-1959)






Momma was thirteen
when I passed through
the delta of her thighs

tho' I never played
with baby dolls -- I sho'
could crank sad
melodic sighs.

My songs mourned
strange fruits hang'n
from south'n trees,

they pleaded
that smack take
his damn hands off me.

Yeah,
me, Ella and Sarah
we'd shine, shine, shine
I wuz melancholy's silk
in twelve bar time.

My name's Lady Day
tho' some called me Bill

and
if I wuz with y'all

blue, so blue
ma blues be'd

-- still.