Oh bleed, bleed, scream on until, like coal tar as black as me, it thumps out from your shriveled skins and won't don't hurt no more. I ain't words, I ain't tears, I ain't black, but I am as hard as winter crows and as cold hot as passionate circles in Tuscan dust in bare damn feet and your wicker sandals--
--Was that a yellow red flower print on your white dress that was bare in smooth places, that hung and furled like a twilight maple in a Spanish wind, was it not you that stirred me, scarred me, slurred me and cried unto my burnt skin, you ain't black baby, you ain't got moves, you ain't got the jump or the shimmy or the soul--
--And I slung back, but baby I know ain't black but I am BLACK, as richly dark as the weepy terrible face of the deep, ain't that good enough for you?

what say my pale raven, what say my black, black woman of the second floor?

Say she, you crazy, damn boy, damn young bull fool, a thousand fires in yo eyes and seven thousand clattering out yo fingers and boy you got to see it--
--See what, wicker-sandal raven?
--Hell, boy, you ain't black.

--Naw girl, I as black as they get. I ain't colored with it, I ain't got the flavor, hell, I ain't even got the style. But baby, I got BLACK, you see--
I got night plastered into my flesh with tin moons flung ripe as summer oranges into my face.
I got songs twanging my bones like blue harp strings, like a porch banjo.
I got vision screeching wild as owls furrowing the warm evening with the great hunt.

And damn, baby, you can't beat that.