Tag: poetic justice

YouTube: New Poem Added! Listen to “Grief” #Poetry #Spoken Word

I wrote this poem in honor of my dad last year, inspired by a real experience. I was listening to Pandora and Yolanda Adams “Open My Heart” came on. I usually turn the station because the song reminds me of my dad who died of cancer in 2000. This time though, I allowed myself to feel. I allowed myself to grieve. I put this video together when I first published the poem to this blog but I am just now getting it uploaded as I am getting my YouTube grind back! Listen to the poem below, read the poem here and be sure to subscribe for more poems!

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To Lose a Friend

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From crayons

To paper

To dreams

To memory.

We tied our wanting into a bow

And placed it on each other’s laps

Where neither trial

Nor thunderstorm

Could wash away our fairy tale.

Did not occur to us that neither plastic bags

Nor happiness

And not even the future was strong enough

To hold us.

We were brave.

We were warriors.

We were safe in each others ears

Promises to each others secrets

No one could tell us any different.

Calendars did not lend us its eyes

Did not carve reality into the sticky notes we placed

On our destiny’s

We merely rode on the backs of memories

We created out of air

That smelled of hope

And lullabies

That felt like oxygen to lung

Breath to life

Truth to wisdom

But that bled deception underneath the surface

Of blue lines

On white paper.

That smelled of jasmine

Now shattering glass

Hopelessly pasted together

Encoding our hearts in one anothers chest

We opened up

Fearlessly vulnerable.

Stored our futures away

With the ease of speech

Letting them hide behind our eyelids

Trapping falling tears into bottles for fear

Of losing sight of the other

Amidst the blurs it birthed

When doubt crept in.

And we held onto these bottles

Like we babysat the others gaze

Too naïve to understand

That there were no guarantees

That we must not put our hopes into fallen stars

And wishing wells

For now we bleed

Both apology and need

For our broken wings

Pierced diamonds

Both myth and martyr alike

Legend to sacrifice

Do you know what it’s like to feel every twist

And turn

Of a dying bow?

To be undone?

Shackled to the worst part of your life story

Prisoners to the memories you created

In each others smiles

Now dangling regret

In the sky.

Dear Poetry

Dear Poetry

I wish I can take your words
and carve them into the sky
as if you alone was the cement at the fingertips
of the Almighty
wish I can
breathe life into your nostrils like I held onto the strings
stapled to the backs of the wind
Dear poetry,
I wish I can copyright your metaphors,
& trademark your similes
Wish I could draw you away from every mouth
whose saliva has not promised to cherish your wisdom
like stomachs rejecting old food
You see I wish that your nutrition could be savored
only in the mouths of those who speak truth
I’m tired
tired of seeing Allegory’s
washed down the drain of unconscious minds who
seek only to dream fairy tales
bathed in rhetoric
to wake up wet with euphoric ignorance
I appeal to the relentless generosity of poetry
to drawback its compassion if it dares
and stop playing the violin on our hearts
like disobedient children that tap dances on their mother’s last nerve
cause
Poetry can change nothing if truth
can’t hit the concrete with a curve
I wish
Wish I could ensure that you are used only when truth spreads its wings like butterflies
nervously flapping inside the jaws of understanding
Like truth when it opens its legs to laws and commandments
and gives birth to obedience
In whose laughter resounds like the deadness of Sara’s womb
I wish
that deception can be buried inside the heavens
like the stars at noontime
that do not wish to be available
only so that our eyes may see something deep.

The Unknown Woman

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Wisdom is an unknown woman

her identity absent for too long now

a distorted image of degrees and formulas

neatly wrapped into the deceptive image

of professors and graduates of universities

with egos that stand taller than the academic buildings

from which they’ve misplaced their minds

creativity hung

twisted

in the silent hallways of repeated ignorance

wisdom is an unknown woman

hastening to make herself known to those who seek her

a radiant beauty of lawful lips she descends

into the beautiful body of instruction

only the most sincere men are courageous enough to approach her

and only the strong can be heard by her

for she whispers soft delicacies

into ears that wish her breath to brush upon their cheeks

but she is abandoned by men who do not delight in her structures

who believe her throne is a worthless scepter

that she wears like a burden

too foolish to know that there is nothing

that she cannot carry

But fools do not speak the language of wisdom

cannot hear the prayers coming from her tongues

the songs pouring forth from her words

wisdom is an unknown woman

to the man

to the woman

to the person

who values the knowledge of custom papers

with expensive ink,

this they chose over her

they cannot see that gold is but a little sand in her sight

and that silver is like clay before her

because her radiance never ceases

and in her hands is unaccounted

wealth

I’ll Carry It With Me

047

From the bowels of the deep south
To the place of the rising sun
She’ll stretch her roots to the ends of the Earth
And her scent to the universe edge
From the Nile
To the Euphrates
Her soul is Langston
And has grown deep like the rivers

On her bark
Are the names whipped out of her ancestors skin
Pocketbook scriptures ripped out from underneath their tongues
And she stands there
Towering over the people who pass her by
Singing their song in the wind

She remembers the scratchy fiber
It was course and woolly
Like Nyongo’s hair
When they tied her arms
Around the Magnolia

She was there when Moses died
They buried his bones under the shadow of her roof
Tied bright yellow ribbons to her branches like shackles on her arms
So that Tubman can tell that she was a slave
And carry her falling leaves to freedom
She sings her song
From the bowels of the deep south
And the deep North
clean across the Atlantic
And on up to Spain
Where the ships of Tarshish came first

But you will never know of it
Not when you see her standing there
All tall
And full of pride
her petals are soft and delicate
and burning passion like the sun
But I won’t forget
I’ll bottle her scent and carry it with me
The history of her children
The memory of the hanging tree

Brown Skin

Mississippi lips

Lousiana tongue

West African shaped nose

Skin kissed by the sun

Israelite Culture

American Captive

Egyptian Color

russet brown

seal

dark puce

blue black eastern man

blue black woman

symbols of authority over her head

natural beauty no longer dead

hair like sisal rope

braided

coiled

nappy

strong

prayer hands that crack open the sky

from the place of the rising sun

to a land that sought to shackle their tongues

run aways

slave ships

cotton fields

those days

share

croppin

jim crowing

freedom ridin

no more hidin

Mississippi lips

Lousiana tongue

West African shaped nose

Skin kissed by the sun

brown skin

I’m Sorry

death
it’s sting
produces a humility powerful enough

to find itself a home
even inside the heart of the one

who holds the cup of “I’m sorry’s”
hoping their voice is sad enough

to produce the kind of sympathy
that peels back the brick

that found itself a place

inside the gut of the bereaved
the lump
waiting inside their throats
is this “I’m Sorry” strong enough?
“I’m sorry”
makes me feel guilty
because I know that it is not enough,

in fact
it almost sounds cliché
how can this routine “I’m sorry”

ever guarantee the sincere apology I feel
for the woman
who lost her husband in the hands of doctors

with spines like jellyfish,
the inconsiderate “I’m sorry”

floating out the window of the hospital,
where his breath left it’s good bye on the table

without warning
didn’t want to wake her sleeping gorgeous
so he left in the middle of the night
just to see her smile one last time
for he knew that she would smile

in her dreams

Or the man
who lost his brother with the split of atoms
like storms breaking through to the clouds
like a mother’s arms spread wide enough

to capture his smiles in a bowl

but aint no rainbows today
cause grief
it convinces us that the world

has ceased existing
and molds its rotations to the contours of our hearts

“Why are you sorry?!”
screams the confused silence of my bones
or the unflinching expression of a man’s face

after a life-time of catastrophes
tainted love
chocking dreams

and memories like the scenic route to civil wars
& he wears it all

with a walk like a stone cold killer

and a face fit for poker
but his heart is pale with grief
I know
cause I heard it in his smile
he laughs
but only because his body weeps
too weak internally

to die physically too
so when he grieves
and when she grieves
when their pain is too deep

to find alongside the outline of their faces
too far to find within the pages of their past
but close enough to smell in the sorrow of their loss
in these bags
filled to the brim with all their stuff
what do you say
when the air isn’t pure enough to breathe
and a routine, “I’m sorry” is simply not enough
to convince them

that the world

still spins