Everything but People
Just you Larry and me walkin down these diamond streets
Don’t know what town this is. Don’t know the name of no place
just know we sixty years old and smellin like a hundred days
of bathin in piss and MD2020...
Look at us Larry, pants open
dick all out swingin and swingin
white girl clutch her purse as we pass
I say “sistah don’t you think you ought to be
clutching your pusseeeeeeeeee....? Can’t you see
we in no condition to snatch anything from you?”
She say she goin to call a cop.
I say I got Bull Conner’s phone number
etched in my head by one hundred billy clubs one summer in ‘63
I take off my hat in deference to her. She screams
at the hills and valleys of knots in my skull.
Shit, man, after Bull Conner, I couldn’t even remember
the address of NYU ...wonder if Dizzy still comin to play for the BSU?
Better shake my head before I remember too much
And look a here, Larry, look a here, niggas dressin up store window dummies.
One got on an NYU sweat-shirt. Niggas gettin good jobs these days.
I remember when no niggas was allowed to dress a white dummy
or sit on a park bench. Other day I sat
on a bench in front of the Big Baptist Church
and the elder said the bench was for decoration only.
I asked could I sit there if I put on my red Christmas sweater?
Now I like Bus Stations. This old grip I carry is always packed
so I fit right in until the police begin to suspect
the Number Nine I’m waitin on ain’t never comin in.
What bus did we catch, Larry, to go to Birmingham? A Scenic Cruiser?
Larry you was so silly cryin cause you couldn’t
sit in the upper deck with the white girls like me. Well I was light
in them days. I’m mud and blood colored now.
You know Larry, you should have lived instead of giving in
to their billy clubs. Yeah, it’s true we didn’t give in to some stuff
we didn’t shake our dicks at each other
like they wanted, didn’t sign our names as Mr. Niggers
but I only left teeth and one kidney at their altar. But you Larry
gave them bastards your life. Your Mother fuckin life!
You! Going back to Poughkepsie where you was from,
in the baggage belly of a Greyhound Scenic Cruiser--
Your dead eyes staring straight up into white girl’s twats
Larry, Larry, Larry, Lord I ought to burn down this Bus Station.
Make me wanna holla, the way they use my... Alabama God damn!
I wish they would let us back in Sears
but ever since that time with me and the claw hammer attackin
cans of Sears Best paint I ain’t been allowed nowhere but
bus stations, jail, and Ben Taub.
Larry did you know that Ben Taub used to be a man
and he turned himself into a hospital?
I wish I could do that, be Eddie Jefferson the man
then be Eddie Jefferson the Hardware store or Eddie Jefferson the planet.
Yeah that’s it I ain’t gonna stop at being no hardware store.
everything can live on my planet too
dogs, elephants, ants, cats, the duckbill platypus,
everything but people. Look what people did to us Larry,
so everything but people.
c. Harvey
MIGHTY REAL ... Check it out
Coming Home Tomorrow ... Enjoy 
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