Holy Days
By Larry Neal
Holy the days of the prune face junkie men
Holy the scag pumped arms
Holy the Harlem faces
looking for space in the dead rock valleys of the City
Holy the flowers
sing holy for the raped holidays
and Bessie’s guts spilling on the Mississippi
road
Sing holy for all of the faces that inched
toward freedom, followed the North Star
like Harriet and Douglass
Sing holy for all our singers and sinners
for all the shapes and forms
of our liberation
Holy, holy, holy for the midnight hassles
for the gods of our Ancestors bellowing
sunsets and blues that gave us vision
O God make us strong and ready
Holy, holy, holy for the day we dig ourselves
and rise in the sun of our own peace and place
and space, yes Lord.
1969/70
Copyright Credit: Larry Neal, "Holy Days" from Hoodoo Hollerin' Bebop Ghosts. Copyright © 1968, 1974 by Larry Neal. Reprinted by permission of Evelyn Neal.