Dudley Randall Poems

'Mother dear, may I go downtown
Instead of out to play,
And march the streets of Birmingham
In a Freedom March today?'
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Your lips were so laughing
Langston man
your lips were so singing
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She didn't know she was beautiful,
though her smiles were dawn,
her voice was bells,
and her skin deep velvet Night.
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'It seems to me,' said Booker T.,
'It shows a mighty lot of cheek
To study chemistry and Greek
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A poet is not a jukebox, so don’t tell me what to write.
I read a dear friend a poem about love, and she said,
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What can you do with a woman under thirty?
It's true she has a certain freshness, like a green apple,
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Splendid against the night
The searchlights, the tracers' arcs,
And the red flare of bombs
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In far-off Rabaul
I died for democracy.
Better I fell in Mississippi.
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After our fierce loving
in the brief time we found to be together,
you lay in the half light
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