from Harlem Gallery (1965) by Melvin B Tolson:

" '...If,
anchored like hooks of a hag-fish to sea weeds
and patient as a weaver in haute-lisse tapestry,
a Rivera or a Picasso,
with a camel-hair alchemy,
paints in fresco-buono
the seven panels of a man's tridimensionality
in variforms and varicolors--
since virtue has no Kelvin scale,
since a mother breeds
no twins alike,
since no man is an escape running wild from
self-sown seeds--
then, no man,
judged by his biosocial identity
in toto
can be,
a Kiefekil or a Tartufe,
an Iscariot or an Iago.'

Is philosophy, then, a tittle's snack?
History a peacock's almanac?
He laughed down at me,
a kidney without anchorage,
and said: 'You must see through the millstone,
since you're not like Julio Sigafoos and me--
an ex-savage.'

His ebony forefinger an assagai blade,
he mused aloud as the box played in Harlem's juke:
'Creator of the Harlem Ghetto, what is a masterpiece?
A virgin or a jade,
the vis viva of an ape of God,
to awaken one,
to pleasure one--
a way-of-life's aubade.'

Black as cypress lawn,
the crag of a woman crabsidled in.
he breath of a fraxinella in hot weather,
her unlooked-for grin
evaporated; then,
like a well's spew
of mud and oil and raw gas,
she blew
her top.
Dipsy Muse slumped like Uhlan
when his feet failed to prop,
his squeal the squeal
of a peccary ax-poled in its pen. ..."