Hold Tight Gently by Martin Duberman Read Free Book Online

name
                             the name of the Lord
                             who likes those who give
                             so that others may receive . . .
    The hurt and disappointment that Essex experienced at the hands of his father is the likely subject of the poignant poem he dated February 23, 1974:
                             You built my hopes up high
                             knowing that you wouldn’t
                             be at the bottom to catch them
                             when they fell
                             You promised you would be there
                             whenever I needed you
                             but you never came
                             You promised me I wouldn’t be hurt by you
                             but the pain is still here
                             because
                             you and your promises are gone
    The simmering anger that Essex felt for anyone—perhaps including his father—who dared to mock his dreams comes out strongly in the poem he entitled “Revenge,” dated January 21, 1975:
                             Step on my dreams, and I’ll break your legs
                             and feet into pieces which will never, ever
                             fit together again,
                             You will be crippled.
                             call me names, and I will still your mind,
                             Busting it in half with a brick,
                             which has your name signed on it,
                             it is there that the names were thought . . .
    By age twenty, encouraged by the prominent African American children’s writer Sharon Bell Mathis, Essex would start trying to get some of his poems published. Though little literary merit can be claimed for most of them, an occasional fragment provides some foretaste of the powerful poet he’d later become:
                             The radio plays syncopated rhythms
                             To soothe and relax
                             Black bodies in the quiet of night
                             that have met
                             and come/together/apart
                             from one another
                             saying something to each other
                             that words weren’t made for
                             and these same
                             syncopated rhythms
                             raise the hand
                             that will slap a face
                             and crack, what could’ve been
                             but now isn’t
                             while she walks the streets
                             syncopated rhythmically
                             to do her thing
                             with whoever is willing to/for a couple of sheets
                             of green stuff
                             moving her body to a beat
                             that will feed the