1. Escaped into the
Swamp Then Made His Way Back to His Plantation
500 men in uniforms in army
uniforms 500 slaves
/ 500
niggers we happy we nigger
soldiers marched on New Orleans / And I was there I saw
after we niggers heads on sticks
500 men in stolen uniforms or only
some of us but everything
Even ourselves we touched our touch
made stolen even
our own bodies
In rags of uniforms from living even just a minute in them
The white folks in the city must have thought
It was something about our skin itself
Made clothes fall off
something about a nigger’s skin
puts holes in everything he wears / 500
men in blood the blood
inside our bodies and the blood the dried
Spray of the blood of the white men we
killed in the night
/ And the black skin between
Like almost the
blood of the white men wearing from
the outside the
skin of us niggers
Against the blood inside us
And joy and something less than joy
kept us from washing our skin clean
We niggers we
wanted to be exactly
what the white men thought we were
Kill them with that
and not with who we really were / And now
I see it now and now I didn’t see it then
Killing them we
made ourselves more
nigger their niggers and they
Killing us after
They made themselves
more innocent
More as
if they were gods I know about their gods
born from our heads on sticks
