GoSetaPhire

April Is National Poetry Month

This poem was first published in The Crisis magazine in March 1940.

Notes on Commercial Theatre

You've taken my blues and gone--

You sing 'em on Broadway

And you sing 'em in Hollywood Bowl,

And you mixed 'em up with symphonies

And you fixed 'em

So they don't sound like me.

Yep, you done taken my blues and gone.

You also took my spirituals and gone.

You put me in Macbeth and Carmen Jones

And all kinds of Swing Mikados

And in everything but what's about me--

But someday somebody'll

Stand up and talk about me,

And write about me--

Black and beautiful--

And sing about me,

And put on plays about me!

I reckon it'll be

Me myself!

Yes, it'll be me.