BLACK POEMS

The Plain

I was alone with a chair on a plain
Which lost itself in an empty horizon.

The plain was flawlessly paved.
.....

Jean Arp

Unspoken

Some things sometimes feel like a black hole
A dream that cannot be shaken off
Yet we depend on it to survive
Love is a feeling that connects hearts
.....

Ibthlhal Abdul

With You In My Life

My Life was a book of empty pages,
Some shredded in rages,
Others crayoned in black,
Proof how my life was a wreck.
.....

Salma Hatim

My First Ever Mistake

The mistake I had never expected,
I did it without getting into awareness
Of how it would react.
Lacking that girl in me is like lacking
.....

Abubakar Mohammed Musa

Early Sunset

If the sun sets for me at dawn
So that the white in me turns black
Before I shed off a single milk teeth
If I vacate that soothsome seat
.....

Michael Aete

Macdougal Street

As I went walking up and down to take the evening air,
(Sweet to meet upon the street, why must I be so shy?)
I saw him lay his hand upon her torn black hair;
(”Little dirty Latin child, let the lady by!”)
.....

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Snake

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
.....

D. H. Lawrence

Am I English?

Am i English?
Iam doing my poetry in English
not that i can do English
better than the English
.....

Francis Ngwenya

Black Beauty

Ebony is what I call her name
She and beauty are equal and same
Whenever she's out of sight causes an ache
Because she taste sweet like cake
.....

Ogunjobi Olaitan

The Escape Of The Old Grey Squirrel

Old Grey Squirrel might have been
Almost anything -
Might have been a soldier, sailor,
Tinker, tailor
.....

Alfred Noyes

My Friend

Art thou abroad on this stormy night
on thy journey of love, my friend?
The sky groans like one in despair.

.....

Rabindranath Tagore

I Guess It's Over

I guess they were right,
when they said the world isn't all black and white.
Nothing lasts forever,
but I thought we'd stay together
.....

Duwayne Frieslaar

Address To The Devil

O Prince, O chief of many throned pow'rs!
That led th' embattled seraphim to war!
(Milton, Paradise Lost)

.....

Robert Burns

The Barefoot Boy

Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Bridge Between The Past And The Present-"the Actual Matter Of Fact"

Several ministers were replaced in years;
Is there the one who hasn't given tears?

Position and power was their inclined foothold;
.....

Karnika Barthwal

In The Bayou

Lazy and slow, through the snags and trees
Move the sluggish currents, half asleep;
Around and between the cypress knees,
Like black, slow snakes the dark tides creep-
.....

Don Marquis

Iam A Poet

Iam a poet
i have been writing for a while
for both the black and white,
of late none of my literature
.....

Francis Ngwenya

My Country

South Africa the rainbow nation
So beautiful it's God's creation
Madiba fought for our freedom
South Africa is our Kingdom
.....

Llewellyn Douglas

Grant Me Your Eyes

GRANT ME YOUR EYES

O You who has revealed
Your hidden treasure to me
.....

Mohammad Younus

A Song In The Desert

Friend, thou beholdest the lightning? Who has the charge of it,
To decree which rock-ridge shall receive, shall be chosen for targe of it?
Which crown among palms shall go down, by the thunderbolt broken;
While the floods drown the sere wadis where no bud is token?
.....

Rudyard Kipling

Freedom's Plow

When a man starts out with nothing,
When a man starts out with his hands
Empty, but clean,
When a man starts to build a world,
.....

Langston Hughes

Was Robert Gabriel Mugabe The Twentieth Century Black Angel Gabriel?

Was Robert Gabriel Mugabe the black twentieth century Angel Gabriel?
news of the birth of Zimbabwe,
was brought by Mugabe Gabriel,

.....

Francis Ngwenya

The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell

THE ARGUMENT

RINTRAH roars and shakes his
fires in the burdenM air,
.....

William Blake

I Am Sorry

I'm sorry i could not protect you from the hands of evil that took you away from this world

And you could give so much to it

.....

Martina Rimbaldo

Beautiful Black Men

(With compliments and apologies to all not mentioned by name)

i wanta say just gotta say something
bout those beautiful beautiful beautiful outasight
.....

Nikki Giovanni

Michael: A Pastoral Poem

If from the public way you turn your steps
Up the tumultuous brook of Green-head Ghyll,
You will suppose that with an upright path
Your feet must struggle; in such bold ascent
.....

William Wordsworth

L' Envoi

There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield
And the ricks stand gray to the sun,
Singing:-'Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the clover
And your English summer's done.'
.....

Rudyard Kipling

The Sonnets Cxlvii - My Love Is As A Fever Longing Still

My love is as a fever longing still,
For that which longer nurseth the disease;
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
.....

William Shakespeare

Mowgli's Song

THAT HE SANG AT THE COUNCIL ROCK WHEN HE DANCED ON SHERE KHAN'S HIDE

The Song of Mowgli-I, Mowgli, am singing. Let
the jungle listen to the things I have done.
.....

Rudyard Kipling

The Season

The season with the reason is here, to be jolly and to share, to love and to care, but most are faced with despair, hopelessness that derive from the hardship when compared.

The season with the reason is here, to be joyful and to be happy, to let someone feels special, to laugh with him, to open your arms unto her, unfortunately the door that once welcome you is now closed, closed permanently.

.....

Mark Burrell

Depression

All the striving, all the failing,
To the silent Nothing sailing.
Swiftly, swiftly passing by!
For the land of shadows leaving,
.....

Morris Rosenfeld

Christmas In India

Dim dawn behind the tamerisks-the sky is saffron-yellow-
As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the riverside, each calling to his fellow
That the Day, the staring Easter Day is born.
.....

Rudyard Kipling

Beside The Spider Web

BEHIND THE SPIDER WEB

The horses dawn was silent
In the field of ours
.....

Mbam Abraham Izuchukwu

The Sower

Sitting in a porchway cool,
Fades the ruddy sunlight fast,
Twilight hastens on to rule--
Working hours are wellnigh past
.....

Victor Marie Hugo

Shine On

People of my kind black Africans,
Black and attractive Africans
See how bright you shine
Your bright blackness shines even in the dark.
.....

Mimi J Milson

A Letter Of Anti-slave Trade Memorandum.

A LETTER OF ANTI SLAVE-TRADE MEMORANDUM.
At the meeting
Of an international NGO
Which took place in Freetown
.....

Kasim Shalom

African Woman

Womanhood is a pride
Tied around her waist
To package her mountain
In her little boubou;
.....

Dauda Tholley

The Printing Machine

It begins at the brink of the dawn,
with the sound of chrring printing machine.
Chrring bloody scenes into bold black ink and we drink to that ink that make our stomach sink yet the machine harps happily.
and there goes the busy printing machine louder and louder, More louder than the screams of a woman screaming for help in a warehouse while she was raped, brutally but the fair and lovely ad gets more space snootily and strangly we go on reading the newspaper with our daily cup of tea perpetually.
.....

Riya Saluja

Forlorn

Cover under the tree of white blood
Matching in pain and fear's
Sounds of Tear's on the black face of young and old, sold to sorrowful days
Who will go next? the question, but answer not given
.....

Afe Tosin Shola

Jessie Cameron

“Jessie, Jessie Cameron,
Hear me but this once,” quoth he.
“Good luck go with you, neighbor's son,
But I'm no mate for you,” quoth she.
.....

Christina Rossetti

Remembrances

Summer pleasures they are gone like to visions every one
And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on
I tried to call them back but unbidden they are gone
Far away from heart and eye and for ever far away
.....

John Clare

The Pilgrim

I fasted for some forty days on bread and buttermilk,
For passing round the bottle with girls in rags or silk,
In country shawl or Paris cloak, had put my wits astray,
And what's the good of women, for all that they can say
.....

William Butler Yeats

Sandpiper

The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.
.....

Elizabeth Bishop

Magpies

Along the road the magpies walk
with hands in pockets, left and right.
They tilt their heads, and stroll and talk.
In their well-fitted black and white.
.....

Judith Wright

Seduction

One day
you gonna walk in this house
and i'm gonna have a long African
gown
.....

Nikki Giovanni

My Poison

You are my poison
That keeps me alive,
From all the nonsense
This world subscribes.
.....

Az Mo

The Bowl Of Contentment

Oh! Africa, You have baked me black
In the oven of your Sahara,
The attribute of resilience.

.....

Dauda Tholley

Wounded

Is it not strange? A year ago to-day,
With scarce a thought beyond the hum-drum round,
I did my decent job and earned my pay;
Was averagely happy, I'll be bound.
.....

Robert Service

The Desire To Paint

Unhappy perhaps is the man, but happy the artist, who is torn with this desire.
I burn to paint a certain woman who has appeared to me so rarely, and so swiftly fled away, like some beautiful, regrettable thing the traveller must leave behind him in the night. It is already long since I saw her.
She is beautiful, and more than beautiful: she is overpowering. The colour black preponderates in her; all that she inspires is nocturnal and profound.
Her eyes are two caverns where mystery vaguely stirs and gleams; her glance illuminates like a ray of light; it is an explosion in the darkness.
.....

Charles Baudelaire

Advent

We have tested and tasted too much, lover-
Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
But here in the Advent-darkened room
Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea
.....

Patrick Kavanagh