Why I Write
They wrote. That’s why I write — when my beau has not done me right
and it’s a lonely, late night — with cold dancing on my windows, frozen snow huddling below.
Yet, he is too hot in the ass to notice his little lass at home, awaiting his arrival.
And, he denies me his company, so I retreat back in my memory as she, Lorraine Hansberry wrote.
So, at night I wouldn’t cry demon’s, rivers wide.
Nor will I have night terror fights.
She wrote and so I write.
I write sometimes for an Open Mic, honoring the strife
that erupted, when he dug up his roots and uprooted some shit about Christian racists
and god-awful slavery.
He was brave to write about this.
He wrote to set me free, he wrote as Alex Haley, and so
I write.
They wrote, that’s why I write,
Now,
And I cannot cease, less I procure my space in history, next to the sweet words of divinity by Rita Dove.
She wrote about yellow houses on Sundays, I write melancholy poems on Mondays,
Grieving for the weekend I was left heaving and bleeding from an elbow to the nose.
All my life I had to fight, and just cause I tried to take back my rights, she wrote and so too, I write.
They wrote manly tales of men, strong, honest and loyal to their women,
Even after he has come inside her, like only her husband. Appreciating her making that one last exception, even after she swore she was done with men, she didn’t reject men like him, for understanding his need to save her from the early graves other men put her in,
He, W.E. wrote for me.
His words painted gently on my memory’s tapestry. He wrote masculine hidden messages of undying love and life that lasted longer than his.
Death stole him from his young door, Paul Dunbar was only 34, but he too wrote for me.
That’s why I desperately place words on a page, I know birds can’t fly caged. She postulated this too, Maya Angelou.
As her streams flow into tepid Brooks, perusing her books, Gwen also let me in, to her effortlessly chosen words from a fountain pen.
These men and women wrote, perhaps even when they could scarcely cope with the flaws and injustice, put on us, from ship to shore — no more chains, still games we play with one another, when we were supposed to be each other’s fiercest lover.
Little black boys and girls stuck on plantations, grown to men and women living in lush condominiums — forgetting “the struggle again, go tell that on a mountain.
Tell why Jessie Redman Faucet didn’t let her Crisis keep her from besetting her editing skills on me.
Now I am driven, and I just can’t fit in either, into a tiny Yogi Kudu box, just too hot, hot with the desire to write.
Hot like fire, before water rains on her parade. Hot like red burning embers, that finally remembered what I almost forgot I knew.
They wrote to unite.
Yes, that’s why I write.
Copyright 2005 Yolanda D. White
(From Moody…A Collection of Poems in Myriad of Moods)
