LANGSTON HUGHES

SOME WHERE HE SAID, "Life ain't no crystal stair..."
and in THE PO' BOY BLUES, Hughes finished with,

"Weary, weary,

Weary early in de morn.

Weary, weary,

Early, early in de morn.

I's so weary

I wish I'd never been born"


BUT THEN THE MAN WROTE "LIFE IS FINE"
like this:

"So since I'm still here livin',

I guess I will live on.

I could've died for love--

But for livin' I was born"

FOR LANGSTON HUGHES, POET OF
RAGE AND HOPE:

HOPE SHOUTS
by Don Brennan

When we find it difficult
to move with the beat of the heart
because the heart is moving
to more frantic rhythms

We often curl around ourselves
yearn to return
to feel the mother’s belly
from inside, return

To the depths of the sea
to life before birth
to death before life

Believing hope is lost, we
cannot feel her calling us
as we run from societal madness

As we dream that violence
has found its
way inside our ribs

Discovered us sleeping
defenseless, as in a nursery

Has decided to feast on us,
chew the heart,
taste us with
drooling lips

We run into night
screaming
believing we are doomed

Not seeing that our
doom-dream is
hope shouting at us to
wake up, calling out
to us who have forgotten

Hope is the deity
of time, she has all
that we need.

Hughes, a literary genius, lived his life as a second class citizen in his home country. He advises us all with a few simple lines: WHEN DREAMS DIE
by Langston Hughes
Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.

DYING DREAMS
by Don Brennan

If your dreams should ever die
you may meet their ghosts
coming back to taunt you,
haunt your sleep, it's what
ghosts do.

They mean to shake you
awake from that fearful corner
of your brain, where crushed
dreams are forced into windowless
seclusion, to struggle like terminal
asthmatics for air, raging desperadoes
seeking light.

Hope summons the strength to
scream at you from that tortured
corner in the voices of a multitude
of lunatics chained to walls, refusing
to let you rest in the underground
of dead dreams.

No, you must rouse yourself and sing
with the power of Orpheus among the
phantoms; persuade the guardians of Hell
by your song, convince them by your love
to release the dead to your care.

To prevent hope's silencing, hope's
vanishing, you must guide the dead souls
back to life.