Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

I keep on dying again
Veins collapse, opening like
Small fists of
Children

Your skin like
Mine like
One paints the beginningof a certain end
The other, the end of asure beginning

I've got the children to
The clothes to
The floor to
The food to

They have spent theircontent of simpering,holding their lips thisand that way, windingthe lines betweentheir brows
Old folksallow their bellies to jiggle like slowtambourines
The hollersrise up and spillover any way they want
When o...

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.

The night has been long,
The wound has been deep,
The pit has been dark,
And the walls have been steep

Her arms semaphore fat triangles,
Pudgy hands bunched on layered
Where bones idle under years of
And lima beans

No sprouted wheat and soya
And Brussels in a cake,
Carrot straw and spinach raw,(Today,
I need a steak)

A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends

Preacher, don't send mewhen I dieto some big ghettoin the skywhere rats eat catsof the leopard typeand Sunday brunchis grits and tripe
I've known those ratsI've seen them killand grits I've hadwould make a hill,or maybe a mountain,so what I n...

When I was young,
I used
Watch behind the
As men walked up and down the street