1.

All I have is the moment of my life. You,
You took a more-than-a-moment away.
Delighted laughing,
You and I lonely by the Supreme Court
Wondered what hell was.

Hell to me was a girl whose lonely body
Needed me, some place, to be lonely
With her.
Hell to you was the difficult, problems
Of getting there.

How in hell that we live in can we write it?
Long scripts, was the phrase that I suggested.
No, you said, the scripts of our lives are longer.
What is our life, then?
We African-Americans, loneliness of heart and body,
Black, sick at the beauty of the body,
Men and women and children we leave each
Other, lonely,
Darryl, you said lonely.

2.

What is life? say the drunk in Mount Vernon.
What is everlasting?
Where are you, Darryl, I asked, and what the
Hell good does
It do me the breaking?
The trees shrunk under the swelling sky.
We grow smaller as the sky opens.
The young men fall down on their faces.
The pain falls down on their faces.
The girls rise.
It still looks like the winter and summer never
Changes.
I pull my hat down, I say the hell with it, mainly
Because I know
That this is spring, winter, are fall.
The wall’s coils all over what I can see of
New York City or New Jersey,
And somebody is crying in darkness that I
Cannot see though I want
--Listen you didn’t give me time enough to live
The true life that I love to live. Even the
Air that I breathe is a crime?