I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
here it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.
A girl gets sick of a rose.
I want to go in the back yard now
and maybe down the alley,
to where the charity children play.
I want a good time today.
They do some wonderful things.
They have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine
how they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.
My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae
will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late
(on account of last winter he sold our back gate).
But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.
And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,
and wear the brave stockings of night-black lace
and strut down streets with paint on my face.
****
To The Young Who Want To Die
Sit down. Inhale. Exhale.
The gun will wait. The lake will wait.
The tall gall in the small seductive vial
will wait will wait:
will wait a week: will wait through April.
You do not have to die this certain day.
Death will abide, will pamper your postponement.
I assure you death will wait. Death has
a lot of time. Death can
attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is
just down the street; is most obliging neighbor;
can meet you any moment.
You need not die today.
Stay here—through pout or pain or peskyness.
Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.
Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.
Celebration of Love
A Need for Love
World of Love
Poems of Love and Hope
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