Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems

by James Baldwin

I don’t know if one ever gets to be what one wants to be.

the hand becomes a fist, the prick becomes a club, the womb a dangerous swamp, the hope, and fear, of love is acid in the marrow of the bone.

sometimes that just makes it worse, like obliterating the path that leads back to whence you came, and to where you can begin.

where is your image now? where your inheritance, on what rock stands this pride?

Needy and blind, unhopeful, unlifted, what gift would give them the gift to be gifted?

wants to go where nothing is everything and everything adds up to nothing.

Each time Desire looked towards Love, hoping to find a witness, Guilt shouted louder and shook them hips

Although you know what’s best for me, I cannot act on what you see.

What panic makes you want to die?

(I am not sure that my radio is working. No voice has answered me for a long time now.)

Hey. The rags of my life are few. Abandoned priceless gems are scattered here and there

and those eyes—! brighter than the jewels, far more amazing than the loot of my looted life.

And pain’s no gift it will not lift you up from the mid-night hour.

Pain cannot be given, can only be tracked down, discovered somewhere—