Still I Rise

Maya Angelou

 

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may tread me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

 

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

 

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

 

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops.

Weakened by my soulful cries.

 

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own back yard.

 

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

 

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

 

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

 

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

 

 

The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost

 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

 

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 

 

America The Beautiful

D. R. Dunston

 

America the beautiful

Land of the free

Free to think

Free to speak

Free to praise

Or so it was intended

 

Yet a nation of immigrants

have become a monolithic people

The revolution

has become an occupation

The oppressed

have become the oppressors

The stain of the War of Secession

is emblazoned across states

south of the Mason Dixon.

 

But how… when?

During the drafting of the Declaration of Independence?

or the Articles of Confederation?

or the infallible Constitution?

or later in 1850?

 

Or even later when this great nation

faced desolation from within

divided by an ideology

counter to the very tenets

espoused by its fathers.

Or were the founders themselves torn

between the perfect ideals

of freedom and equality

Pondering if one could truly be free

without the protection of equitable laws.

 

Who is truly free

in this great land

we affectionately call

America the Beautiful.

 

Advice To A Son

Ernest Hemingway

 

Never trust a white man,

Never kill a Jew,

Never sign a contract,

Never rent a pew.

Don’t enlist in armies;

Nor marry many wives;

Never write for magazines;

Never scratch your hives.

Always put paper on the seat,

Don’t believe in wars,

Keep yourself both clean and neat,

Never marry whores.

Never pay a blackmailer,

Never go to law,

Never trust a publisher,

Or you’ll sleep on straw.

All your friends will leave you

All your friends will die

So lead a clean and wholesome life

And join them in the sky.

 

A Dream Deferred

Langston Hughes

 

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

Like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore–

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over–

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Anonymous

 

How can you say you know me,

When you’ve only seen my skin,

And not the untamed world I hide,

That’s growing deep within,

You haven’t heard my ribs all creak,

Behind each plaited vine,

Or swum beneath the waterfall,

That cascades down my spine,

You’ve not been here for long enough,

To watch a new life start,

Or find the run-down castle,

Lying just inside my heart,

You haven’t climbed the branches,

That are wrapped around each lung,

Swaying with the breezes,

That come dancing past my tongue,

Don’t mark me with your footprints,

If you plan to leave too soon,

And only want to know me,

When my plants are all in bloom,

Because the birdsong might be pretty,

But it’s not for you they sing,

And if you think my winter is too cold,

You don’t deserve my spring.

 

Hope

Emily Dickinson

 

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.