Thread: A Dance For Militant Diletantes By Al Young

Another favourite poem, I love the freedom of expression, paints a violent portrait of racism in 60's America.


A Dance For Militant Diletantes By Al Young

No one’s going to read
Or take you seriously a hip friend advises
Until you start coming down on them!
Like the black poet you truly are
And ink and lots of black… in your poems
Soul is not enough
You need real color
Shining out of real skin
Nappy snaggly afro hair
Baby girl up and dig on that!

You got to learn to put in about stone black fists
Coming up against white jaws
And red blood splashing down those
Fabled wine and urine stained hallways
Black bombs blasting out real white estate
The sky itself black with what’s to come
Final holocaust, the settling up

Don’t nobody want no nice nigga no more
These honkees man
That put out these books and things?
They want an angry Splib!
A furious niggra!
They don’t want no boojwah woogie
They want them a militant nigga
And a fiji haircut fresh out of
Some secret boot camp
With a bad book in one hand
And a Molotov cocktail in the other
Subject to turn up at one of their
Conferences or swarays
And shake the shit out them

AWESOME! AWESOME! AWESOME!

It's a good poem, but I wouldn't say it paints a "violent portrait of racism". More like a black poet appealing against being told to paint a violent portrait of racism.