What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore - -
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over - -
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load?
Or does it explode?
Lincoln Battalion
International Brigades
November Something, 1937
Dear Brother at home:
We captured a wounded Moor today.
He was just as dark as me.
I said, Boy, what you been doin' here
Fightin' against the free?
He answered something in a language
I couldn't understand
But somebody told me he was sayin'
They nabbed him in his land
And made him join the fascist army
And come across to Spain
And he said he had a feelin'
He'd never get back home again.
He said he had a feelin'
This whole thing wasn't right.
He said he didn't know
The folks he had to fight.
And as he lay there dying
In a village we had taken,
I looked across to Africa
And seed foundations shakin'.
Cause if a free Spain wins this war,
The colonies, too, are free - -
Then something wonderful'll happen
To them Moors as dark as me.
I said, I guess that's why old England
And I reckon Italy, too,
Is afraid to let a workers' Spain
Be too good to me and you - -
Cause they got slaves in Africa - -
And they don't want ‘em to be free.
Listen, Moorish prisoner, hell!
Here, shake hands with me!
I knelt down there beside him,
And I took his hand - -
But the wounded Moor was dyin'
And he didn't understand.
Salud,
Johnny
The Roosevelt, Renaissance, Gem, Alhambra:
Harlem laughing in all the wrong places
at the crocodile
tears
of crocodile art
that you know
in your heart
is a crocodile.
(Hollywood
laughs at me,
black - -
so I laugh
back.)
I said to my baby,
Baby, take it slow,
I can't, she said, I can't!
I got to go!
There's a certain
amount of traveling
in a dream deferred.
Lulu said to Leonard,
I want I diamond ring.
Leonard said to Lulu,
You won't get a goddamn thing!
A certain
amount of nothing
in a dream deferred.
Daddy, daddy, daddy,
All I want is you.
You can have me baby - -
but my lovin' days is through.
A certain
amount of impotence
in a dream deferred.
Three parties
On my party line - -
But that third party,
Lord, ain't mine!
There's liable
to be confusion
in a dream deferred.
From river to river,
Uptown and down,
There's liable to be confusion
when a dream gets kicked around.
President Roosevelt, you
Are our Commander in Chief.
As such, I appeal
To you for relief.
Respectfully, sir,
I await your reply
As I train here to fight,
Perhaps to die.
I am a soldier
Down in Alabam
Wearing the uniform
Of Uncle Sam.
But when I get on the bus
I have to ride in the back.
Rear seats only
For a man who's black.
When I get on the train,
It's the Jim Crow car - -
That don't seem to jibe
With what we're fighting for.
Mr. President, sir,
I don't understand
Democracy that
Forgets the black man.
Respectfully, therefore,
I call your attention
To these Jim Crow laws
Your speeches don't mention.
I ask why YOUR soldiers
Must ride in the back,
Segregated - -
Because we are black?
I train to fight,
Perhaps to die.
Urgently, sir,
I await your reply.
This year, maybe, do you think I can graduate?
I'm already two years late.
Dropped out six months when I was seven,
a year when I was eleven,
then got put back when we came North.
To get through high at twenty's kind of late - -
But maybe this year I can graduate.
Maybe now I can have that white enamel stove
I dreamed about when we first fell in love
eighteen years ago.
But you know,
rooming and everything
then kids,
cold-water flat and all that.
But now my daughter's married
And my boy's most grown - -
quit school to work - -
and where we're moving
there ain't no stove - -
Maybe I can buy that white enamel stove!
Me, I always did want to study French.
It don't make no sense - -
I'll never go to France,
but night schools teach French.
Now at last I've got a job
where I get off at five,
in time to wash and dress,
so s'il vous plait, I'll study French!
Someday,
I'm gonna buy two new suits
at once!
All I want is
one more bottle of gin.
All I want is to see
my furniture paid for.
All I want is a wife who will
work with me and not against me. Say,
baby, could you see your way clear?
Heaven, heaven, is my home!
This world I'll leave behind
When I set my feet in glory
I'll have a throne for mine!
I want to pass the civil service.
I want a television set.
You know, as old as I am,
I ain't never
owned a decent radio yet?
I'd like to take up Bach.
Montage
of a dream
deferred.
Buddy, have you heard?