Here are a few poems I figure are better shared that hoarded by my personal laptop. I hardly read these more than every once in a very long while! Mind you, these pieces are truly spoken word, so if your meter doesn't match mine, you might not find the rhyme... but that's okay. We should have more of an artistic community that extends into the community at large. Here is my start of many contributions to come...
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Like Woah
I drank her in like recklessness.
Like: I had my keys in hand, but could not drive the vehicle that is myself.
Don’t mix drinks or children.
She looked around with beady eyes. No surprise.
“I don’t want people to think I’m a racist,” she started,
She leaned in to begin her complaining.It’s always pouring when it is raining.
Her floodgate swung open,As she to the right (me: far left) began to kvetch.
“But I just don’t want to live with a Black person.”
And like woah she began.
But I was in no condition to drive-
This vehicle was not even mine.
Or so I had abandoned it.
Had somebody spiked my fruit punch?
The McDonalds lunch I ate tasted spoiled
And I sat arrested like I couldn’t move.
Why did she choose-To talk to me? At me. Doormat me.
Do I look like a Black people hater?
I would laugh about this later,
But I just sat as an Anglo-Saxon, passive to this massive mess I was in:
I heard her begin.
I was on the phone with my Black boyfriend who- that day-
I had been dating for exactly a year and a
Half of me was sitting there listening-
Taking the girl like medicine-“They’re loud… they’re unclean…
Well you know what I mean.”
“They” who? Me? You? No- we do not relate.
My skin color does not equal hate.
She told me about some girl’s “hair shellac.”
She is obviously not Black.
And I said “oh.” Not “yes” or “no”-
My boyfriend hung up and I wished he was hearing this.
She said her roommate watches “Black TV.”
BET?
“I’m not interested in watching that.”
And, “her phone has this beat- not a ring or a beep-
With someone singing. I can’t understand what it’s saying-
Black people music.”
I was numb. Dumbfounded. Shell-shocked. And quiet.
Her insight was free and I still would not buy it.
Appalling. Confusing.To my morals-
Abusing she was to my beliefs-I was on a bad trip.
She is a good thief.
Who took my voice.
Stole my indignation.
Everyone knows my boyfriend’s Haitian.
Her tunnel vision saw only the color of the skin I was in.
She wasn’t really seeing.
I wasn’t really sitting there misbelieving that this girl was my punishment for being White.
I am tired of fighting the good fight that is not my own.
I was all alone. At a table. Without my Black friends.
Belligerent. But tricked into being an attentive listener.
Fooled into being the bag she threw up in.
These are not the conditions I grew up in.
Ignorant.
But so was I for ignoring myself- Letting her put me on a shelf-
On the Anglo-Saxon’s closed mind.
Hammered.
Plastered.
Wasted: of time and open ears.
What could I say to reverse so many misguided years?
How could I tell her she is drunk and not making sense?
The words she was speaking could cause a great deal of offense.
I must have been drunk too: sitting there saying, “oh.”
When I realized this I decided to go.
I stood up.
And it hit me.
Like a ton of heavy bricks. Now I was sick.
So I staggered away.
Should I have stayed to let her know?
No. Like woah.
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STRUGGLE for Peace
I'm not settling, I'm STRUGGLING-
To find peace. For those who proclaim
It is within one's reach-
Have go-go-gadget arms.
I try to repress the reflux affects of "crazy girl"
A syndrome to which no girl is immune.
No, there's no full moon, this shit is daily.
It's bubbling-
Juuust below the surface of cool, calm, and collected till you didn't call her back and it's ME, Beast.
Fight it, swallow it, bite it back-
Cause he has just had it up to *here* with craaaazy girls.
I'm STRUGGLING to MAKE peace,Where there is none.
To- string together piece meal,
To- gobble up that piece meal of reasonable advice, unsolicited, and to regurgitate that mess into some semblance of order that I can be PROUD of.
Panic attacks classify my everysooften,
though I force them from frequent to few, too-
Tiring to keep up with, mellow me out: marijuana to my speed, crymyeyesout exhausted to my choking tears.
Please cry alone.
Please call friends first, him much later.
Please don't act silly,
since silly is never taken seriously and SERIOUSLY-
you can't risk not feeling validated.
I am not settling, I'm sitting for a minute.
Just to catch my breath.
I'mma go till there aint nothin left.
I always thought my crazy was the most of my appeal,
So he could feel I wasn't cookie-cutter anything,
but sugary sweet-Sometimes.
Mostly, beast.
Without sex my release I pray only for sleep.
For calm.
For reason.
For understanding.
For patience.
For peace.
For those who proclaim it is within one's reach..
Go Go Gadget- arms! (PEACE)
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Micro-cosmos, universe at small
When I wish upon the end of the day’s stars,
Stuck high up in a canopy of faux ceiling-
Remnants of the last occupants’ appreciation of the infinite
I think of how things went wrong-
3 years strong, infinitely weak
And then I think of the water babies
With swollen bellies; the term “hungry” understating their uncomfort,
Unlikely that they will eat today at all; Why didn’t he call?
When I wished upon the solar-conserved star that dimmed
When I would not clap my hands and did not believe in true love-
Tink was the jealous type too, these plastic stars adhered so tight-
ly to the faux ceiling- so disguised you can only truly see them at night-
Hidden from light,
I think of plastic you.
Those children they put on TV, so meek and helpless you get up just
To swat the screen and try to shoo the flies from their eyelids,
Little kids, small sick babies-
Ladies birthing so many since the survival rate is low and
Death pesters the weak like flies,
Until that little baby imminently dies-
Send your money in and for just ten cents a day a child can be squared away-
Or, turn and look the other way.
It’s so easy to say: I love you,
But show you care not at all.
Like disease-stricken babies, hope dims, and stars fall from a plastic sky of
Don’t ask why’s
Because apathy is not a good enough excuse.
For 3 years I suffered your abuse, contentedly
But last night I wished upon a neon green starry night and
Like a firefly trapped in a bell jar, something in me died.
You lent your ear in an envelope marked “return to sender,”
I’m tempted to render you completely useless now to fill my head or my poems.
As I stare at dorm room ceiling stars, not knowing where you are,
I’m tempted to lend my tears to babies with empty-vessel tummies, that cry over justified fears instead;
To babies who learn to count on supernova stars numbered much higher than the number of years they’ll exist before meeting their destiny head on-
I think about these bodies so weakened but still so strong,
And wonder why you can’t think of anyone but your plastic self.
The first and third poems I wrote about two or three years ago. The "Struggle for Peace" poem was written a couple of months ago about how I was beginning to feel "maturity" meant holding everything inside, biting your tongue and swallowing your pride. Which to me, meant imminent implosion and simultaneous explosion, were I not extremely careful. Nay, extremely mature.
(No, thanks.)
To art!
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