Raw Poetry

Twin spirits

I liked her and she liked me,

This our one reality,

For which no explanation came--

Two bodies

One spirit

One breath

One name.

 

Lock and Key

The Key Maker had her in mind,

In shaping me, the one she’d find:

To open doors of happiness,

Locked in her chest--

My loneliness.

The key would be set free,

Inside the lock, deeply.

 

Too many words?

Can one’s heart beat too many times?

Inhale exhale too many rhymes?

The cries of stillborns are too few

For the mother who wished she’d only knew.

 

 

 

Honor (1)

She laughed the scornful tone

Known by those who hear

The jeer.

He would not be taken lightly

He killed her for his

honor.

 

Honor (2)

He awoke

Having not choked the one who laughed.

The dream, one paragraph,

In his murder mystery.

She slept, the smile on her relaxed face,

His disgrace.

She dreamed of the morn

In which she’d laugh him to scorn.

 

Honor (3)

Both wake.

She waits for the perfect moment.

(Timing, the key to comedy, when the joke is you.)

True words behind jest make pain the best.

Yet he remained unmoved.

“What happened as he slept?”

She wondered, sadly.

 

 

Alone

The sun touching all,

Touched

By

No

One.

The moon’s light reflection

In the morning,

Gone.

A blue shooting star,

Unseen,

Unknown;

Without their Maker,

All,

Alone.

 

Feeling Strong

To know what I am talking about

No doubt

Truth released

Unleashed upon someone

Who would bathe in the pool of my wrongness

But instead float dead

In their own.

 

Being an African in America

In the sixth grade I decided I’d create a comic book. 

How would the heroes look?

I imagined the characters.

The Heroes.

Then a voice rose in my mind

Asking me,

“Why are they all white?

Even in your mind?”

I could see the beauty in them,

But wondered if they could see the beauty in me.

One day in class an Irish teacher said,
“There used to be a time when only the blacks ran to see fights.  Now the whites run too.”

Torrey looked at me.

I looked at Shaquel.

All three of us remained silent.

I vowed never to do so again.

It was clear I was an African,

Not an American.