I. “Love affair with a counter-culture facade”

 

 

I’ve felt the world die

And I’ve seen the world resurrected

Reborn and rehashed

dumb, vibrant and laughing

Unaware of its insecurity

And insecure of its awareness

 

I’ve felt angel-headed hipsters

Breathe fire into my words

And felt betrayed

As their children stalked Harlem

Howling through my Negro cities

Gentrifying for an artistic fix

 

I’ve seen beautiful blue-eyed radicals

Trying to Contemplate Black Mecca

And waiting for the moon

College educated contraband;

Hob knobbing with the hobos

As if they Jazz June

Gorgeous Green eyed gentry

Thrift store jeans,

Imposed poverty facades,

And white-washed technicolor dreams

Of Harlem.

 

Unsatisfying, seductive and

Subversive imitations of

Lenox Avenue

Leaving me breathless

Addicted to literary white girls

Reading Malcolm

With no justification for belief

 

Feigning for subculture,

And subtext filled dreams

Lusting for open minded intercourse

With unprotected themes

I find myself destroyed by madness,  Starving, hysterical, naked

Black like the night is Black

Quixotically striking straight and singing sin