Shake Loose My Skin by Sonia Sanchez Read Free Book Online

shook from the colors of the night, and the sound of fear fell close to his ears each day.
    We parted at five o’clock in the morning. I had seen Atlanta through his eyes, and I knew as he knew that the country had abandoned reason. But he stayed in Atlanta and continued to do his duty to the country. Raising the consciousness of a city. And the world.
    I was out of town, traveling in the Midwest on flat lands with no curves, the last time he visited Philadelphia. He had come to speak with poet Gwendolyn Brooks at the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum. One of my twins, Mungu, walked up to Jimmy that night, shook his hand and heard his male laughter as he introduced himself. They hugged each other, then my son listened to his Baldwinian talk cast aside the commotion of the night. The next day Mungu greeted me with Jimmy’s sounds, and he and his brother Morani thanked me for insisting that they travel to the museum to hear Mr. Baldwin and Ms. Brooks.
    Today, home from Trinidad, I thank James Arthur Baldwin for his legacy of fire. A fine rain of words when we had no tongues. He set fire to our eyes. Made a single look, gesture endure. Made a people meaningful and moral. Responsible finally for all our sweet and terrible lives.

Poem for July 4, 1994
    For President Vaclav Havel
    1.
    It is essential that Summer be grafted to
bones marrow earth clouds blood the
eyes of our ancestors.
It is essential to smell the beginning
words where Washington, Madison, Hamilton,
Adams, Jefferson assembled amid cries of:
    “The people lack of information”
“We grow more and more skeptical”
“This Constitution is a triple-headed monster”
“Blacks are property”
    It is essential to remember how cold the sun
how warm the snow snapping
around the ragged feet of soldiers and slaves.
It is essential to string the sky
with the saliva of Slavs and
Germans and Anglos and French
and Italians and Scandinavians,
and Spaniards and Mexicans and Poles
and Africans and Native Americans.
It is essential that we always repeat:
    we the people,
we the people,
we the people.
    2.
    “Let us go into the fields” one
brother told the other brother. And
the sound of exact death
raising tombs across the centuries.
Across the oceans. Across the land.
    3.
    It is essential that we finally understand:
this is the time for the creative
human being
the human being who decides
to walk upright in a human
fashion in order to save this
earth from extinction.
    This is the time for the creative
Man. Woman. Who must decide
that She. He. Can live in peace.
Racial and sexual justice on
this earth.
    This is the time for you and me.
African American. Whites. Latinos.
Gays. Asians. Jews. Native
Americans. Lesbians. Muslims.
All of us must finally bury
the elitism of race superiority
the elitism of sexual superiority
the elitism of economic superiority
the elitism of religious superiority.
    So we welcome you on the celebration
of 218 years Philadelphia. America.
    So we salute you and say:
Come, come, come, move out into this world
nourish your lives with a
spirituality that allows us to respect
each other’s birth.
come, come, come, nourish the world where
every 3 days 120,000 children die
of starvation or the effects of starvation;
come, come, come, nourish the world
where we will no longer hear the
screams and cries of women, girls,
and children in Bosnia, El Salvador,
Rwanda . . . AhAhAhAh AHAHAHHHHH
    Ma-ma. Dada. Mamacita. Baba.
Mama. Papa. Momma. Poppi.
The soldiers are marching in the streets
near the hospital but the nurses say
we are safe and the soldiers are
laughing marching firing calling
out to us i don’t want to die i
am only 9 yrs old, i am only 10 yrs old
i am only 11 yrs old and i cannot
get out of the bed because they have cut
off one of my legs and i hear the soldiers
coming toward our rooms and i hear
the screams and the children are
running out of the room i can’t get out
of the bed i don’t want to die Don’t
let me die Rwanda. America.