Lorenzo Thomas
“[Poetry] says something that’s true. It points people to truth.”
Born in Panama, raised in New York, and based in Texas, Lorenzo Thomas was a professor of English at the University of Houston–Downtown as well as an internationally acclaimed poet and critic. Thomas served in the Navy during the Vietnam War, attended Queens College, and during the Black Arts Movement, was a member of the legendary Umbra workshop in New York City. As such, Thomas’ own work has focused on issues of war, civil rights, and introspection. His collections of poetry include A Visible Island (1967), Dracula (1973), Chances Are Few (1979, re-released in 2003), The Bathers (1981), Sound Science (1992) and Dancing on Main Street (2004). Thomas was the recipient of two Poets Foundation awards, the Lucille Medwick Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, and a Houston Festival Foundation Award. He died in 2005.
Back in the Day
When we were boys
We called each other “Man”
With a long n
Pronounced as if a promise
We wore felt hats
That took a month to buy
In small installments
Shiny Florsheim or Stacey Adams shoes
Carried our dancing gait
And flashed out challenge
Breathing our aspirations into words
We harmonized our yearnings to the night
And when the old folks on porches dared complain
We cussed them out
under our breaths
And walked away
And once a block away
Held learned speculations
About the character of their relations
With their mothers
It’s true
That every now and then
We killed each other
Borrowed a stranger’s car
Burned down a house
But most boys went to jail
For knocking up a girl
He really truly deeply loved
really truly deeply
But was too young
Too stupid, poor, or scared
To marry
Since then I’ve learned
Some things don’t never change:
The breakfast chatter of the newly met
Our disappointment
With the world as given
Today,
News and amusements
Filled with automatic fire
Misspelled alarms
Sullen posturings and bellowed anthems
Our scholars say
Young people doubt tomorrow
This afternoon I watched
A group of young men
Or tall boys
Handsome and shining with the strength of futures
Africa’s stubborn present
To a declining white man’s land
Lamenting
As boys always did and do
Time be moving on
Some things don’t never change
And how
back in the day
Well
things were somehow better
They laughed and jived
Slapped hands
And called each other “Dog”
Lorenzo Thomas, “Back in the Day,” in Furious Flower: African American Poetry form the Black Arts Movement to the Present, ed. Joanne Gabbin (University of Virginia Press, 2004), 149-150.
L’Argent
I know you don’t know what
Love is it isn’t
Dagwood kisses on the way to work
It’s going to work
Love could be but it’s not
A 50/50 partnership
Matched sets of polished lies
A usury of affection
I understand that you don’t understand
Money don’t grow on trees
And if it did,
Those trees would grow
So far away
It would be work to get it
Lorenzo Thomas, “L’Argent,” in Furious Flower: African American Poetry form the Black Arts Movement to the Present, ed. Joanne Gabbin (University of Virginia Press, 2004), 148-149.