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THE MAROON TIGER
Page 17
CLOTHES
What are clothes?
What part do they play in life?
Clothes, merely give one a place in society.
Clothes are kin to drink.
While drink influences the body,
Clothes damn the soul.
Clothes, it is always, always clothes—
Wherever you go, wherever you stand
You perceive people buying clothes.
Some go to jail, some are enslaved
For what we know, as clothes.
Happy is the man unknown to clothes.
The hypocrisy and artificiality of man,
A brother to birds the beasts and nature,
And not a slave to the disdainful clothes.
Life is an uncertain vacation,
Perchance, for a year or more,
Into this dream we were ushered nude
As such are we scheduled to depart.
Yet. what a price, we pay for clothes.
Clothes, 0 Dear God! What an enemy is clothes.
They contaminate the morals ol man,
We kill, we destroy our mortal souls
We pollute, we befoul God’s code of laws
For what we know, as clothes.
All this to gain a station in life:
The admiration of man,
The pomposity, the vanities of this wicked world,
The inglorious joys of life.
For what a price—clothes, clothes.
On far away Africa where clothes are strange
There dwell what’s known as a savage race,
They know not God, nor pray to Him;
Yet God is seen in everything.
There are no clothes, no clothes.
The most gorgeous clothes in all the world
Are the clothes that are unseen.
These clothes are wrought by the hand of God
Over which no man controls.
These clothes I speak cost not a dime;
We call these clothes, the soul.
Oh! speak not of your clothes, my fair Chrystine,
Nor of your mean apparel.
I see, and yet, mine eyes are blind
To what man prices so high,
Clothes, clothes, clothes.
Draw near to me, oh, mate of mine,
And let me hear of the unseen,
Your unblemished, exquisite soul,
That magnifies virtue and truth,
The clothes of God, our King, the soul.
—Preston D. Show.
“Ghe^win the
DIE ANSICHTE
Brown womb swelling
Sore and telling.
Brown babe cries;
Cause witch-wench humming a song
Cares not if it dies.
And that is the way my people are born.
Thick lips spreading
In laughter that is catching.
Brown feet beat upon the sand.
In happy tatoo, the glee
Of a few years’ happiness in “promised lan’ ”
And that is the way my people play.
Brown brows wet with sweat,
Muscles tearing with a threat.
Singing songs of the soul,
Songs of toil and strife,
That can be traced to Israel’s fold
And that is the way my people work.
Hi-de-hi-de-ho. “C’mon babe let’s go,”
Dark lights blue and low.
No breath of air can escape between,
So Brown boy sighs as he feels warmth
Of his brown queen.
And that is the way my people love while dancing.
No wince of Pain
As fate crushes him though in vain.
Brown face turned toward the sun.
All ti ace of life is gone.
A race is finished, yet not won.
And that is the way my people die.
—John H. Young.
TO MY MOTHER
I wrote a poem, 0 so true—
Each line brings me bliss;
1 dedicate it to you
And it reads like this;
Mother,
Mother, dear.
I have found consolation
And a sweet heavenly joy
In the pleasurable
Time spent, dear,
With you.
Forget?
Never you,
’Cause you are my Star,
An’ everything that’s dear
Brings me nothing but sweet
Memories.
Of you.
—S. Wycliffe Garlington, ’34.