Amiri Baraka

Gave us the sacred

Rite of passage

He took us into

That New York upper room

Held us together

Taught us to cherish

Blackness; showed us how

To shape it into art.

Amiri Baraka

Moved us to pray

To walk towards

Golgotha, the place of the skull,

To stir our cross

Of blackness in red soil

As we shaped blackness

Into Art

from I Am Black American (2016)