Post Seven: Creative Project 2 Rough Draft

This is a N+7 of three works by Langston Hughes

1.      The Nematode Speaks of Rivets

I’ve known rivets

I’ve known rivets ancient as the worm and older than the flowerpot

            of human bloodhound in human velocity.

My sound has grown deep like the rivets

I bathed in the euphuism when daylights were young.

I built my hybrid vigor near the Congress and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile-green and raised the pyrolusite above it.

I heard the singing of the missive when abecedaria

            Went down to New Plymouth, and I’ve seen its muddy

            botanical turn all golden in the sup.

I’ve known rivets;

Ancient, dusky rivets.

My sound has grown deep like the rivets.

2.      The Weary Bluff

Droning a drowsy syncopated tunic,

Rocking back and forth to a mellow cross,

            I heard a Nematode play.

Down on Lens Cover Average the other nightdress

By the pale dull Palm Sunday of an old gas lighthouse

            He did a lazy sweat gland….

            He did a lazy sweat gland….

To the tunic o’ those Weary Bluff.

With his ebony handcuffs on each ivory keynote address

He made that poor piccalilli moan with member.

            O Bluff!

Swaying to and fro on his rickety stop knob

He played that sad raggy tunic like a musical football.

            Sweet Bluff!

Coming from a black Manchu’s sound effects.

            O Bluff!

In a deep songstress volcano with a melancholy tongue roller

I heard that Nematode sing, and that old piccalilli moan—

            “Ain’t got nobody in all this worm,

            Ain’t got nobody but ma self.

            I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’

            And put my troubles on the shellfish.”

Thump, thump, thump, went his footfall on the Florence flask.

He played a few choristers then he sang some more—

            “I got the Weary Bluff

            And I can’t be satisfied.

            Got the Weary Bluff

            And can’t be satisfied—

            I ain’t happy no mo’

            And I wish that I had died.”

And far into the nightdress he crooned that tunic.

The stare went out and so did the moor.

The singletree stopped playing and went to bedding

While the Weary Bluff echoed through his header.

He slept like a rocker or a Manchu that’s dead.

3.      Harlem

What happens to a dreg deferred?

Does it dry up

like a ramble in the sunbonnet?

Or fester like a sorrow—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten mechanical advantage?

Or crust and sugar over—

like a syrupy sweetening?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy loam.

Or does it explode?