The trombones slap me in the face with their high-life beats and the piano’s glamorous tunes tap me on my shoulder and whisper in my ears. As I look down into the Juke-Joint from my bedroom floor, rotted house, rotted life, plain rotten, seems forgotten as the music plays and the beats go down to the same rhythm of my heart’s pound, there’s a Harlem Renaissance in my head, there’s a Harlem Renaissance in my head.
Through the floor a light where the music roared, overtakes the darkness that surrounds me as I look through this floorboard. I can see the hoppin’ and a dancin’ and the suave men a prancin’ around the young ladies who stand stunning on the floor….
The music stops, the poet stands up, and with each turn of the page he demonstrates, as his mind’s thoughts he will emancipate, and everybody in the room he will captivate. His pen his only weapon in which injustice he must irradiate. As I look down into the Juke-Joint from my bedroom floor, rotted house, rotted life, plain rotten seems forgotten as the music plays and the beats go down to the same rhythm of my thoughts pound, there’s a Harlem Renaissance in my head, there’s a Harlem Renaissance in my head.
Let your ink run rampant, Langston Hughes. Let your fingers tickle the ivories forever, Duke. At every moment history being make in my own personal Juke-Joint. I lean my ears to hear ever closer and find my mind in a past tense, opening my eyes to see beauty, but surrounded by pure silence. There’s a Harlem Renaissance in my head, a Harlem Renaissance in my head.
by Maurice, 12th Grade
