Mississippi, Don’t You Do Me Wrong

Poverty, oh poverty and prejudice

Across my hand

Mississippi don’t you do me wrong

For I was raised from

This mud

This soggy reddish mud

And all my life

It’s been tears

Atop fears

I ain’t seen nothin, nothin but blood

My neighbors

They all sing about being carried home

And it’s been sung

For so long

Until it

Sounds like the blues

The blues

Running through

My veins

Poverty, oh poverty

And prejudice across my hand

Mississippi don’t cha do me wrong

Poverty, oh poverty

When will I ever see

Tranquility

Mississippi (excerpt)

The moss hung from the trees

The neighbors hung from the trees

They cried

Be bop

Was so busy tendin’ to the share croppin’

Until the culture cried shame

Just plow the field, Walter Lee,

Just plow the field.

More work needed to produce rhythm for

Madison Avenue

The bigots played on it

And the state justified it

So the culture sought refuge.

Sing the blues for me, Lola.

Sing, baby,

To the sound of drums and chains.

Will the culture keep the culture.

16-16^th notes tryin’ to beat out shame

Rhythm and drums that beat out chains

We bop ah lee bop

De bop

Never again

And never again

Carthage

The sound bores a tremble

Within one’s soul.

Carthage

Again the Spirit shakes

(from Is, The Color of Mississippi Mud & Lou Next Door: Two Vignettes of Poetry, Revised Edition, edited by Vincent Kobelt and James L. Martin, available from lulu.com)