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 just EXPLODE?!

--LANGSTON HUGHES

Be Bop
Re Bop
Can't quit...won't stop

So...

Don't ask me to talk or sing
'Bout puttin' no cotton in no pan
Talk to me about the eloquence of a Black woman and man
Who came from
What you say was nothing...
Well, we sho did make it sumthin'
Didn't we?
Paul Laurence Dunbar, Claude McKay
If we must die, it won't be today
Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes
A dream deferred sings the weary blues
Charles W. Chesnutt, Gwendolyn Brooks
We real cool in however we look
But why must we look the way you want us to
And why must we sound the way that's comfortable to you
Especially when we don't like talking or singing
'Bout puttin' no cotton in no pan
Talk to us about the eloquence of a Black woman and man
Who wrote sonnets and essays
And novels of great praise
Yet you hear so little of them today
Like...between Phyllis Wheatley and Tupac
Maya Angelou was the only poet who had something to say
So many brilliant Black writers and poets left by the way
And you wonder why my children don't like reading today
Because maybe they don't like reading
'Bout puttin' no cotton in no pan
Talk to them about the eloquence of a Black woman and man
And maybe, just maybe...
They...
Just...
Might...
Listen...
Then!

Be Bop
Re Bop
Can't quit...won't stop

Til the brilliance in Black...is back!

 
~val jones 2003