ETHERIDGE KNIGHT'S POEM “Feeling Fucked Up” is just about the greatest love poem ever written. In language as honest and bone deep as any bluesman’s, Knight gets it just right: What it’s like to be left behind. "Lord, she done gone / packed up and split [...]” No platitudes or pretentions. Just what it is. And what it is, is the pain that comes from loving somebody so bad it breaks you. It’s like Ethelbert Miller once wrote in one of his poems: “There’s nothing philosophical about your woman leaving.”
— John Murillo
Etheridge Knight, “Feeling Fucked Up”
Lord she’s gone done left me done packed / up and split
and I with no way to make her
come back and everywhere the world is bare
bright bone white crystal sand glistens
dope death dead dying and jiving drove
her away made her take her laughter and her smiles
and her softness and her midnight sighs—
Fuck Coltrane and music and clouds drifting in the sky
fuck the sea and trees and the sky and birds
and alligators and all the animals that roam the earth
fuck marx and mao fuck fidel and nkrumah and
democracy and communism fuck smack and pot
and red ripe tomatoes fuck joseph fuck mary fuck
god jesus and all the disciples fuck fanon nixon
and malcolm fuck the revolution fuck freedom fuck
the whole muthafucking thing
all i want now is my woman back
so my soul can sing
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