Haki Madhubuti was born Don L. Lee in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1942 and raised primarily in Chicago. Madhubuti became involved in the Black Power revolution of the 1960s and has remained deeply committed to the African American community, devoting great amounts of time and money to helping young people.
Madhubuti’s direct and oftentimes explosive verse engages the themes and issues of contemporary black experience in uniquely forthright and honest ways. His meter is free; his poetics, by turns wrenching and humorous, lean toward the projective verse made popular in the poetic experiments of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
A publisher and essayist as well as a poet, Madhubuti has continued to live on Chicago’s South Side. His GroundWork: New and Selected Poems of Don L. Lee/Haki Madhubuti, from 1966–1996 was published by Third World Press in 1996.
1.
we run the dangercourse.
the way of the stocking caps & murray’s grease.
(if u is modern u used duke greaseless hair pomade)
jo jo was modern/ an international nigger
born: jan. 1, 1863 in new york, mississippi.
his momma was mo militant than he was/is
jo jo bes no instant negro
his development took all of 106 years
& he was the first to be stamped “made in USA”
where he arrived bow-legged a curve ahead of the 20th
century’s new weapon: television.
which invented, “how to win and influence people”
& gave jo jo is how/ever look: however u want me.
we discovered that with the right brand of cigarettes
that one, with his best girl,
cd skip thru grassy fields in living color
& in slow-motion: Caution: niggers, cigarette smoking
will kill u & yr/health.
& that the breakfast of champions is: blackeyed peas & rice.
& that God is dead & Jesus is black and last seen on 63rd
street in a gold & black dashiki, sitting in a pink
hog speaking swahili with a pig-latin accent.
& that integration and coalition are synonymous,
& that the only thing that really mattered was:
who could get the highest on the least or how to expand
& break one’s mind.
in the coming world
new prizes are
to be given
we ran the dangercourse.
now, it’s a silent walk/ a careful eye
jo jo is there
to his mother he is unknown
(she accepted with a newlook: what wd u do if someone
loved u?)
jo jo is back
& he will catch all the new jo jo’s as they wander in & out
and with a fan-like whisper say: you ain’t no
tourist
and Harlem ain’t for
sight-seeing, brother.
2.
Start with the itch and there will be no scratch. Study
yourself.
Watch yr/every movement as u skip thru-out the southside of
chicago.
be hip to yr/actions.
our dreams are realities
traveling the nature-way.
at the apex of their utmost
meanings/means;
we walk in cleanliness
down state st/or Fifth Ave.
& wicked apartment buildings shake
as their windows announce our presence
as we jump into the interior
& cut the day’s evil away.
We walk in cleanliness
the newness of it all
becomes us
our women listen to us
and learn.
We teach our children thru
our actions.
We’ll become owners of the New World
the New World.
will run it as unowners
for
we will live in it too
& will want to be remembered
as realpeople.
(9/22/63)
i,
at one time,
loved
my
color—
it
opened sMALL
tokenism
&
acceptance.
(doors called, “the only one” & “our negro”)
after painfully
struggling
thru Du Bois,
Rogers, Locke
Wright & others,
my blindness
was vanquished
by pitchblack
paragraphs of
“us, we, me, i”
awareness.
i
began
to love
only a
part of
me—
my inner
self which
is all
black—
&
developed a
vehement
hatred of
my light
brown
outer.