Hi,
This is regarding the fall that happened
when we were in the air and you wondered in my ear,
If the world ends today
whisks us away
And we run floating and disappear,
While the flames surround
char and blackness swirl toward the edge, my love,
Will we float with my heavy heart?
Will it like a sponge surround the water and soak it in
Will it like steel withstand the flames
And still have space for you? Or will we
Caught in the storm with only a raft
Will we last forever in our minds?
And then my ear was full of promises and air wasn’t so light.
But something else - a pause - and then the fall.
but always the lillies bloomed
In early December she stood,
naked and shimmering, by the light
beneath the sea.
Praying to the sun beyond the precipice,
she saw the newness under her skin.
In late July she was tired, and
freedom wasn’t all it was supposed to be.
The edge, she found,
was never to lead anywhere
but to another like it, always
the never-ending dailiness,
of a life she was tired of knowing.
April was frozen, always
the same as the one before,
waiting for the renaissance
They promised would come
the time last.
Knowing
He will say to leave him
outside of the frame,
he’s too afraid
to let sleep overtake him.
He’ll stay awake through the night,
roaming the halls and searching
for what he lost years ago, and
his peace of mind
his heritage
Freedom to just be.
He’ll keep looking
and never notice the danger
gathering around him, like water
engulfing a small cracked boat in the sea
He doesn’t know when it happened, but you
you always saw it coming, heard
The trickling before it began
rushing, and the warning
he’s drowning,
it has been ringing in your ears
all this time.
For the Rest
My brand of sexy is not printed in your magazines.
It isn’t a size two, early evaporating for lack of substance,
It’s not porcelain,
It is not long and straight.
My brand of sexy is the color of caramel,
almonds and olives, thick,
rich, smooth like butter.
My sexy fills my bra with breasts,
my jeans with hips.
Sometimes it’s curly,
maybe coarse and tangled,
But my brand of sexy never suffers
Sameness.
Here is the thing about real, inconvenient, unstoppable love: you don’t want it. your instinct is not to go after it, but to run to safety. it will not let you breathe freely if you let it invade your life, and you will never be the same. you will suffer, you will be in agony every minute you are without this love but you will do so in safety. because, once you let it into your life, once you look directly at it and see that you’d rather lose yourself than be without that love, you will never be the same.
legacy
My people built the first ships
on the first seas,
the first earth, but
my people were shipwrecked.
Their brown feet, calloused,
once walked on new ground
Their children once climbed the first tree.
But they were forced to their knees,
their children thrown,
hurled to the ground.
The hard, yellow underside of their hands
once bent the wood, the bone,
and ran for miles - free -
until those hands were tied,
and legs bound to unfamiliar metal,
forced onto a brand new ship.
My people, like many, invented suffering;
but they have chosen to survive.
a manifesto
Poetry is many things, but it is certainly not: formulaic, defined, finite. It is not words and phrases strung together, each line beginning with a capital letter, describing a specific thing or feeling. Because, it does not begin with the title, and it does not end with the last line. Poetry is: infinite, personal, truth that changes with the reader, from the poet.
boundless, new
When the revolution came,
we were like divers, on our knees,
our passion at a standstill,
watching the sun creep out from behind the sea.
We were young, and we were free,
For we didn’t know what it was to be free.
When the revolution came,
Across the fence,
the people peered at our game of hopscotch
And my sister thew pebbles at their shadows.
Conscience was standing in the way of beastly oblivion.
When the revolution came,
the screams split my father’s eardrums
And my mother said something else
broke way from its bone.
alone, throwing balls of fire into the raging storm
Years after I fought my fate, this is all I have left:
the wind raises icy water from the sea,
the mist is heavy like snow, and the birds dance with the waves,
too close to the rage
and the crows perch on the rails beside me,
waiting.
Blocks of ice have formed my walkway, and
the tears are uncontrolled.
I know
human flesh is misleading of permanence.
Diaspora Fatherhood
my dream was never American, your shores
never attracted me away
from my own, mine was an act of desperation
a choice among defeat and,
here I wait, today, for your judgment
my failure, my inability to hold tight
to your dream.
I let it go because it burns my hands
though I dream it for my children
it burns my hands.
Submitted by: mabelleevangeline
