by Gwendolyn Brooks

Boy Breaking Glass

Whose broken window is a cry of art

(success, that winks aware

as elegance, as a treasonable faith)

is raw: is sonic: is old-eyed première.

Our beautiful flaw and terrible ornament.

Our barbarous and metal little man.

“I shall create! If not a note, a hole.

If not an overture, a desecration.”

Full of pepper and light

and Salt and night and cargoes.

“Don’t go down the plank

if you see there’s no extension.

Each to his grief, each to

his loneliness and fidgety revenge.

Nobody knew where I was and now I am no longer there.”

The only sanity is a cup of tea.

The music is in minors.

Each one other

is having different weather.

“It was you, it was you who threw away my name!

And this is everything I have for me.”

Who has not Congress, lobster, love, luau,

the Regency Room, the Statue of Liberty,

runs. A sloppy amalgamation.

A mistake.

A cliff.

A hymn, a snare, and an exceeding sun.

Young Afrikans

of the furious

Who take Today and jerk it out of joint

have made new underpinnings and a Head.

Blacktime is time for chimeful

poemhood

but they decree a

jagged chiming now.

If there are flowers flowers

must come out to the road. Rowdy!—

knowing where wheels and people are,

knowing where whips and screams are,

knowing where deaths are, where the kind kills are.

As for that other kind of kindness,

if there is milk it must be mindful.

The milkofhumankindness must be mindful

as wily wines.

Must be fine fury.

Must be mega, must be main.

Taking Today (to jerk it out of joint)

the hardheroic maim the

leechlike-as-usual who use,

adhere to, carp, and harm.

And they await,

across the Changes and the spiraling dead,

our Black revival, our Black vinegar,

our hands, and our hot blood.

We Real Cool

We real cool. We

Left school. We

Lurk late. We

Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We

Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We

Die soon.