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George Elliott Clarke (1960-)

Blues for X


              1Pretty boy, towel your tears,
              2And robe yourself in black.
              3Pretty boy, dry your tears,
              4You know I'm comin' back.
              5I'm your lavish lover
              6And I'm slavish in the sack.

              7Call me Sweet Potato,
              8Sweet Pea, or Sweety Pie,
              9There's sugar on my lips
            10And honey in my thighs.
            11Jos'phine Baker bakes beans,
            12But I stew pigtails in rye.

            13My bones are guitar strings
            14And blues the chords you strum.
            15My bones are slender flutes
            16And blues the bars you hum.
            17You wanna stay my man,
            18Serve me whisky when I come.

Notes

11] Josephine Baker: African American dancer-singer (1906-75), catapulted to fame in Paris in a musical, La Revue Nègre, in the 1920s.

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
This poem cannot be published anywhere without the written consent of George Elliott Clarke or the Polestar Book permissions department.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: Whylah Falls (Vancouver: Polestar Book Publishers, 1990): 62.
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: 2004
Recent editing: 1:2004/7/22*1:2004/7/27

Form: sestets
Rhyme: ababcb

Other poems by George Elliott Clarke

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