My Baby Brother Is Black
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy-zVlB4mvA
Shock of shocks—my baby brother was black
I didn’t know I had a younger brother back then
But on my mother’s death bed—she confessed
She’d fallen in love—with a saxophone player
Who played in a blues band—there in Chicago
It was after her divorce—from my father
She lived alone for awhile in the Windy City
To get away from our small town Ingeville
Named after the famous gay playwright
(Picnic, Bus Stop, Splendor in the Grass)
Little did I know—about cute young Jerome
He had red hair like mother—my kid brother
He had a nice smooth albino complexion—
He was only sixteen—but tall like his father
He was living in the South End of Chicago
His father was dead—like our mother
He was living in welfare housing with his
Grandmother who raised him by herself
I was his half-brother—she could tell right
Away when I knocked—at the door
“My young kid baby-brother was black”
Kept running through my nervous mind
Sitting in the dumpy living room with him
Not wanting to look at me very much—
Naturally anybody could tell I was gay
Who needs a white-trash older brother?
Especially a nelly weak-wristed gay one
Like me ogling at him like I was doing
But I was curious naturally—about him
Plus I had some inheritance $$$ for him
Like a $100,000 annuity—that mother
Had left him in her estate—in her will
The lawyer reading to me after they
Pulled the plug in the hospital after
The Santa Fe train hit her Cadillac
Jerome’s grandmother passed away
Pretty soon after my visit—and Jerome
Moved from Chicago to Ingeville—
Not far from Kansas City where he
Lived with me and went to school
My Baby’s Black—became the story
Of my life—and we became lovers
Back then in the Sixties—just like in
Claude Bernard-Aubert’s French
Blaxploitation Les Lâches vivent d'espoir
It was during the early days of the
Civil rights movement—when society
Was examining different views on race
When I wrote my bio-pic script about
Jerome & me—living together
My Baby Brother Is Black (2010)—
(Pre-production) starring Tyrese Gibson,
Snoop Dogg, Ving Rhames, Langston
Hughes, Bruce Nugent, Essex Hemphill,
Cuba Gooding and James Baldwin
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