Still I Rise

You might record me in history

With your severe, bent lies,

You may trample me in the extremely soil

Yet, similar to tidy, I'll rise.

Does my cheekiness disturb you?

For what reason would you say you are plagued with misery?

Because I walk like I have oil wells

Siphoning in my family room.

Very much like moons and like suns,

With the conviction of tides,

Very much like expectations springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you need to see me broken?

Bowed head and brought down eyes?

Shoulders tumbling down like tears.

Debilitated by my deep cries.

Does my haughtiness irritate you?

Don't you take it dreadful hard

Because I snicker like I have mother lodes

Diggin' in my own back yard.

You might shoot me with your words,

You might cut me with your eyes,

You might kill me with your disdain,

Yet, similar to air, I'll rise.

Does my hotness agitate you?

Does it come as a shock

That I dance like I have jewels

At the gathering of my thighs?

Out of the hovels of history's disgrace

I rise

Up from a past that is established in torment

I rise

I'm a dark sea, jumping and wide,

Welling and enlarging I bear in the tide.

Abandoning evenings of dread and dread

I rise

Into a dawn that is wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my predecessors gave,

I'm the fantasy and the expectation of the slave.

I rise