i ain’t got time for that
 
i’m too busy
in tha mornin’
washin’ my face
scrubbin’ this high yellow skin
clean
 
polishin’ my one-sixteenth
pearly white-privilege
glassy eyed, green
 
by afternoon time,
real Negro women
despise or envy me
 
cuz i ain’t got time
to debate the word “nigga”
i’m too busy
bein’ a token
bein’ “progressive”
& keepin’ my
white friends in line
 
i ain’t writin’ nobody’s negro poetry
i simply ain’t got time
 
i’m too busy
tamin’ my naps
& pretendin’ that
“can I touch it?”
is innocent
a truce, a compliment
 
& too busy in the evenin’
commanding my language
no tongue-clickin’
no Motherland-ish
niggardly English
 
too busy
for the one drop rule
& all dat bullshit
too busy for nasty words
like mulatto
ain’t even got time
to name the rest
 
i ain’t writin’ nobody’s negro poetry
cuz it don’t be usin’ the right wordin’
& frankly, it’s too busy writin’ one side
of an already one-sided story
 
it’s too busy
for a great-great grandmother
rollin’ in the sheets
that she spent that mornin’ steamin’
too busy
for that kind-a slave woman
straddlin’ the hips of the whippin’ post
gettin’ a new kind-a lashin’
breathless, screamin’ Massa
 
i ain’t got time for negro poetry
cuz it ain’t got time for my legacy
 
it ain’t got time for a
gray-area, in-between,
white-washed, house-nigga,
pretty-eyed, high-yella
Negro Woman like me