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Raining in
This Terrible Land
—for
Amiri Baraka
By Rudolph Lewis
Ruby Dee weeps onstage reading
her “Ode to a Funny Man.”
She’s
not far from New Orleans misery
Our black queens be at the window
weeping—lost, frustrated,
deprived
It’s raining, raining at the
window
Will we fail, black men,
perpetually
in our weakness to stop the rain
from
falling from their sad flowering
lips
Their loneliness is buried beneath
the headlines, they don’t show
the
screaming, the cursed damnation
It’s raining, raining at the
window
The projects have been bolted down
We kicked down the shaft of stairs
If we were the Boston strangler
turned
upon ourselves—black flute-vulva
lips
Satin Woman I’d muffle the
screams
with kisses of love & desire.
We wait
for our mud pie government to call
us
dirty names, to send us a cheerful
death
The truth moments have always
limited
our choice of fantasies, dancing
solitaire
It’s raining, raining at the
window
Choked behind the veil, we a
people
of knotted secrets recognize a
different
reality in the vastness of
backwater
Ruby tonight reminds me of Lady
Day
absent of booze & drugs, the
weariness
& serenity of her eyes as the
stars spin
We gathered here in this warm dark
place—forgive, weep above the
pain
It’s raining, raining at the window *
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