Poem Delivered Before an Assembly of Colored People…

Ishmael Reed

          an extract

          President Waterbugger only your crimes

          Want to be near you now

          Your daughters have moved out of town

          Your wife refuses to hold your hand

          On the elevator

          Inexplicably, Lincoln’s picture

          Just fell from the wall

          Next time you kill a poet

          You’d better read his poems first

          Or they will rise up and surround you

          Like 1945 fire cannons a few miles from

          Berlin

          And History will find no trace of

          Your ashes in the bunker of your hell