I want so little: another leather boundBook, a gimlet with a lavender gin, breadSo good when I taste it I can tell youHow it’s made. I’d like us to rethinkWhat it is to be a nation. I’m in a mood about AmericaToday.

I try to be as kind to poetry as I can... the expectation of the poem is much higher. People really expect to read seven lines, and walk away from that better. They want to be healed. People really think, "Oh, here's a poem, OK, let's see what you gonna do. Fix me." You don't go watch Alvin Ailey thinking "fix me." You don't go to the museum thinking "give me wisdom.

Let me be Another invisible, Used and forgotten and left To whatever narrow miseries I make for myself Without anybody asking What's wrong. Concern for my soul offends me....

By the time the bloomsUnfurl themselves for a few hours of light, the women who tend themAre already at work. Blue. I’ll never know who started the lie that we are lazy,But I’d love to wake that bastard upAt foreday in the morning, toss him in a truck, and drive him under GodPast every bus stop in America to see all those black folkWaiting to go work for whatever they want.

My mother grew morning glories that spilled onto the walkway toward her porchBecause she was a woman with land who showed as much by giving it color.She told me I could have whatever I worked for. That means she was an American.But she’d say it was because she believedIn God. I am ashamed of AmericaAnd confounded by God.

I will not shoot myselfIn the head, and I will not shoot myselfIn the back, and I will not hang myselfWith a trashbag, and if I do, I promise you, I will not do itIn a police car while handcuffedOr in the jail cell of a townI only know the name ofBecause I have to drive through itTo get home.

When I kill me, I willDo it the same way most Americans do, I promise you: cigarette smokeOr a piece of meat on which I chokeOr so broke I freeze In one of these winters we keepCalling worst. I promise if you hearOf me dead anywhere nearA cop, then that cop killed me.

I’d like us to rethinkWhat it is to be a nation. I’m in a mood about AmericaToday.

I want you To heed that I'm still here Just beneath your skin and in Each organ The way anger dwells in a man Who studies the history of his nation.If I can't leave youDead, I'll haveYou vexed.