born from the blood, sweat, and tears of slaves
and you expect me to change
created in the path of dirt trickled to mud down shoulder blades
and you look at me strange
brought to life with sun rise on cracked fingers and aching bodies
what can i possibly rearrange?
that burn, deep haunting hollow, in the middle of my eye
speaks with words they could only whisper
and you don't understand my refusal to bend my back and my challenging stance
that survived hundreds of years, across oceans, in shanties and shacks, master's whip lashes, and a neuse
that's what you want to abuse?
dogs. barking dogs, swamp bottoms, mulatto babies bowing to siblings and being renounced by fathers, treated like cattle
and you call a misunderstood dance in the street a battle
being free institutionalized, working for white wives, scared when the sun goes down 'cause that's when they come out,
having to protest what we knew we were meant, sharp stares, and judgements
and you think I expect you to be able to say my name?

searching for an echo in the hollow of my belly
the place where life began and the decrepit monument to the heathens that bore me stands
shouting questions at clouds that answer with heavy tired snowflakes
waking harvesting the weight on my chest
and crying to kill the lump that lives festers in my throat
wondering how everyday accomplishments are ever given effort
my legs tree trunks that have disowned their rotted roots
praying that my being could curl itself into a ball and watch as my body lived life
listlessly singing, smiling, laughing while fresh showers drown me inside
feeling everyone knows the joke except me
proposterous the idea of the few bright spots i'm blessed with
vile, wretched, base, criminal, felonious to my insides
who hold fast to the memory of good deeds while surrounded by the flesh of a tragic heroin
living in a world where only the strong survive by walking on the backs of the righteous
lingering on that reward will be swift and merciful
clueless to why wrongs magnate themselves to my heart
a broken vessel floating on a sea of dignity awaiting the final plunge
a heart that just needs to be cuddled instead of beaten
falling on tiny spikes that i lay carefully strategically out for myself
crying for the deep dark blood that flows in miniscule streams that carry my fickle soul
ripping shredding tearing out hair psychotically laughing
medicating myself through a sexy stemmed glass with intoxicated pimento pitted olives
flinching in my sober moments awaiting the attack
pleading with myself for mercy and hell
sliding down a hill full of putrid mud clawing for safety
throwing mud in my own mouth
staring at a face angelically flawed eyes averted
wondering what fresh hell just walked in

Dear God
This mockery you're making of my love life...is playin my heart like bass strings. Sittin here thinkin of all the moments we have been through that are only embarassing for me, makes me wonder. Did I ever really have a love life or was it a fuck life. Maybe a like life. Maybe I'm-kinda-into-you-but-I'm-just-not-that-grown-yet life

i look at you like
how could you leave me behind like that
how could you push me from your mind like that
you didnt see me lookin 'cause she had your heart tooken
love all dazzlin in your eyes
and the shine in mine
forgotten
'cause she made what we had look rotten
and i've been spottin you peekin at me lately
i just try to keep myself from hatin you
makin you think it's cool you stomped my soul to the ground
i'm lost lookin for found
while you're found lookin for lost
i wonder the cost
because i can see the price
but my cold shoulder ice i dont give it to you
scared of freezin the reason i believe i know love
and you see doves floatin in an area you think is ours
but the hours i spent crying kill all things floatin in between us
i mean it 'cause my heart is torn
i've never known shit like this since i've been born
i am dyin inside
everytime i see you covet that broke down shit by your side
my pride wont let me say i love you
no matter how many chances you give me to shove you in my direction
your erections make me crazy
make my days seem trivial
like all the shit i been thru
is nothin compared to you
but i am born and bleedin
so i need to see the heathen in you
to get back to the breathin in me
and instead of tellin myself i'm better
i need to understand it to weather this hole you left
unwarrented theft

My Story Pt2

You wonder where my mother was? Working too many hours, drinking too much, crying, silently dying because none of this was what she wanted...I'm usually more than fair, close to lying, when I speak about her to strangers. She is honestly one of the most selfish and lazy people I have ever met. I'm thankful for this because without her shortcomings I would have never found my strengths.

She was second seat on the NCSU Tennis Team when she found out she was pregnant with me. A junior majoring  in computer science, her and my father had been together for around two years. She says she tried to leave and go back home to her mom, who sent her straight back to my dad. She has also said several times with a distant sad look in her eye, in the middle of one her drunk rants, that she wanted an abortion. She sings the same sad song about how she had made the appointment and my dad convinced her not to go. This is where their stories differ and where my childhood is lost. My mother says he started getting more and more evil and began to beat her, which I believe. I can't remember one of my father's girlfriends or wives who hasn't said the same. My father says my mother got lazier and lazier and didn't want to take care of me. However it all happened, it ended the same. My father left my mother for his future wife, my little sister's mom. My mother I'm sure hurt and broken came home to them taunting her with her things packed on the steps.

I don't know how long she had me before MamaDean convinced her it was best that my mom let her keep me until she got on her feet. No one will say or even acknowledge it. All of this is a collection of different stories I've heard from different family members and glued together by my speculation. I don't know how long I stayed with MamaDean, Puda and Charmell- she had been collected too. I remember the day she came to get me and they told me to hide and not make a sound. They told me a lot of things and I always heard adults talking because I rarely talked so they let me sit and listen. My little sister was always shooed away because she was busy and needy. I was left alone because I didn't know how to ask for things or that I could. I didn't know I had the right to same hugs. I assumed no one liked me because that's how they treated me. Should I actually be sad or hurt MamaDean would've fought the devil to get to me. She was there when I absolutely needed her. I would hear MamaDean say, "Yea that chile has to stay with us now 'cause her mama on them drugs and have men runnin in an out the house. Hardly even feed the girl." Same story for every child collected. The day she realized I wasn't a puppet was the day she brought the social worker to speak to me. I was asked if my mother fed me. I could see MamaDean giving me the gal-you-better-say-what-I-told-you look but I told the truth because she did feed me when I was there. I thought I was going to lose a quarter of my ass for it but I didn't lie. So back with my mother I went after a trial and few fist fights between her my new step-mom.

i am

tender
with practiced rough edges
hardened face
with guarded cries
smiles
smothering tears
nonchalantly caring
until the breaking point of the heart
self-depricatingly confident
on tides of depressive happiness
beautifully deformed
to society's eyes
happily lonely
loneliness cried
courageously wrought with fear
bent
to the point of splitting
yet stoically standing
i am whole
i am here

My Story Pt1

I have been cheating you. I promised I would open up about experiences in the hopes of helping another. Instead I gave you poetry. I have so many boylike tendancies...

I try. I do. I sit and think where to start and what story to tell but they all sound like complaining to me. Or maybe that's what someone said when I was little. Most of the way I perceive situations I learned before I was twelve. I grew up in a family of characters so full of novels me and my sisters rarely watched tv. I only knew two of my sisters then, Charmell who is nine years older than me and Crystal who is two years younger. We all have different mothers who all hate my father and each other for various reasons. My Grandma, who could wilt roses with a look if you called her that, was the only we saw each other. She was not related to me by blood. She was actually my father's adoptive aunt. She collected many things but her favorite was children.

She couldn't have any of her own. They all died either during her pregnancy or at birth, so I forgive her for her steely resolve and bitter trespasses. She adopted my father from his alcoholic parents when he was small. My grandfather loved her enough to know that he was willing to sacrafice his morals for her, so he shut up and never got in her way. He was a large dark-skinned man with a broad nose and arms like cannons. I can count the number of times he smiled at her on one hand.

I have so many theories as to how he could love her like I would die for and never want to hold a conversation with her. Sometimes I think his heart broke too many times with the death of his own seed and her continuing to grow colder. Sometimes I think she was his ideal woman but not what he needed mentally. She was stunning. A yellowish red skin tone, tall, and thick like 1939. Her cheek bones sat high like they were holding court on her face judging all ugly women mercilessly. Her hair was silky and black layed perfectly around her shoulders. Full lips and catlike eyes finished a face that looked at me with the most mercy because I was quiet and already broken as a child.

This was my constant. Grandpa, who we called Puda, working silently in his body shop or around the house, only speaking to me out of the whole family and Grandma, who insisted on being MamaDean, ruthlessly ruling but sparing kindness for me.

I will let you in more...I promise...maybe...

pop the cork pour the champagne

i'm slipping from my grasp
i've lost touch with myself and i'm not sure i care that i'm dying inside
i'm not sure anyone notices
smiling popping pills smiling popping bottles smiling
eyes glazed glassy frosted fake and smiling
the core turning changing breaking down rotting slightly so my mood stinks
but my hair is still cute my outfit still turns heads
poshly drifting floating away
empty in the middle cause the space i want him to fill he can't see past her
smiling as he holds me in her absence
smiling as he sweetly climbs on me
planting kisses on my frosted cheeks
popping pills smiling
and maybe just maybe i'll stop caring
smiling pop the cork pour the champagne
smiling he whispers dirty lil nothings
smiling she walks in and evil eyes me and my glass flavored eye turns careless
and i'm smiling
what the fuck does it matter in the end anyway

love poem

i've been trying to write you a love poem for eight months now. i've written over a thousand pages on scraps of paper, toilet tissue, recycled paperbags, napkins, envelopes, bills, cigarette packs, dollar bills, in water spots, with ink, pencil, crayon, paint, lipstick, eye shadow, and anything else that leaves an impression. they all seem to come out wrong, full of rage and sadness. at times i wonder if i'm insane. i even tried buying pretty pink fuzzy notebooks, flowered ones. today i realized the problem. i've been writing about how you make me feel, not how much i loved you. so here. here is your love poem.

i've been dreaming my days away, thinking of you and when you would get here in random spots and all wrong times since i was tweleve.
i had you pictured wrong but i've always known you
i waited all of these years just to have you hold me one time because i knew it would be the catalyst to my relationship with love
i even knew when i saw you that i was already falling
i knew you would mean something and you weren't a constant in my life yet
my memories like a photo album, i have my favorites
and i flip through them to remember something so fleeting like watching sweat dripping from the top of your nose
the feeling of your arms pulling me closer in the bed
the top of your lip when it's shaved
and the small barely visible twinkle in your eyes on the days they paint me beautiful
the moments that make my heart rise and my temperature beat, i play like movies
always wondering how to go back in time to do it again
like the very first time you ever let me see you look me up and down as i was getting in your car
it was dark and you wore your scully like a crown to your manhood and a tank top your robe
i think about you every five minutes and i say your name every two minutes
trying to remold my tongue to only say your name perfectly and not giving a damn about any other word
i keep a special spot warm for you on your favorite side of the bed
i even turn to espn sometimes by accident
i slide away on the thought of how it feels to hold your head to my chest
the simple feeling of my palm resting on your curls and my fingertips on the back of your neck
when you made yourself vulnerable enough to let me love you in my unique way
i worship the times you would crawl to me broken
we never had to speak to understand
fitting perfectly into grooves made before the stars
neither of us having to change at all to make the fit
respecting the differences as distinguishing beauty marks
and hoping for a glance every once in a while
we have the sexiest sleep life ever
me tossing and turning
you outstrecthed like a lazy lion
one of us moving and waking the other
you grabbing me closer
me absent-mindedly kissing you
over and over until morning
sex on breezes with candles
turning our skin into a renaissance painting worthy of a wall in some art museum
i often get the feeling our eyes have conversations our mouths are unaware of
and that's where the glue to us lies
our eyes fell way before we ever did and coerced the body to follow
now they're smitten
so much we can't help but touch each other even grazingly at times
i always see you watching me loving me in my pure moments
as if you can't help your addiction
resting
resting with your head on my thigh stroking any exposed skin you can find
always adoring me to the point i almost feel worthy of you
drunk mornings play fighting and gently nibbling on one another
and knowing THIS is proof life isnt all shit
because your eyes can cure a hangover
i could fall apart and recreate myself in your arms
caring for you so much i give in on my silent treatments because they break your heart
wanting to kiss your ugliest of scars
and praying EVERYONE experiences something like this just once
because its funny
funny how i can write you a love poem
now that you're gone

left behind

nights blending into one long hour
i'm remembering being right here
in the same spot
rolling over and over
yes it is him again
comfortable familiar
yet i have fallen out of love
there's just the lingering remnants and my regard for him
i can't sever us from me
we have always been one
just now the love is gone
floating all around him in an aura
i want to pluck it from the air and cover myself
but that he would see through
i belittle myself to let him believe i love him
i can bear the pain better than he could
it's less than the look of his eyes, falling from their twinkling status, would give me
he is summer
i am winter
only a fall between us

daddy scarred me

daddy scarred me...
he left me with this need to cure everybody like him
and to covet a happiness that they cant see
he made me wanna take everything broken and fix it
all i wanna do is mend your broken eyes and heavy heart
but for some reason you cant see my purpose
i wanna shout it at you
and make the tears that dance down your face call for me in the darkness
so i can hear and lead you to the light
you see a broken girl all bitter and sad who only walks the same path
never realizing i'm better than the ones who got it all right
cuz i'm strong enough to know where you came from
and how you hurt
i could forget me and lead us both out
but i'm a chance you won't take
'cause i seem diminished in some way?
if only you knew
you're the only thing that could revive me
us.
i would do my all
to keep you lit with a light you shook off 'cause it made you a target
it made you too comfortable in a place where that shit's bought
i know your purpose
i know you're my reason
but you can never see
my heart
my poor beaten heart screams cuz you overlook me
what we could be...
now that mine has given up
what will yours do?
settle?

midnight garden

candles burning a gold tone into my skin
a melody softly playing itself to the rhythm of my ecstacy
his lips caressing my ankles
my mind betraying me ever inch he rises up my leg
thoughts of what's to come

addiction

the innocence seeping out of my eyes and into his skin,
sending tingles in tiny streams.
he's yearning to taste my fragile heart,
fighting himself.
he loves me.
he loves me not.
fingertips deriving whether or not i care.
yes is my eyes.
no floating off my lips.
having lingered he's slipping away on the rivers of my beauty.
it grows inside like a monster too strong to be caged,
escaping from my face.
he has gone melting into me, making an us.
the thing he tried not to do.
lost forever in my soul.
strung out on me.
forever coming back for more.

rise

i've been feelin like the stars spread bright twinkled, my eyes their only.
this is the place i was born and died.
the moment the universe conspired to hold me
and my splendor is unstoppable, never meant to be.
lamented are the tears for those who wrong me
and rightfully so, they only envy a flight so pure their lost souls can never find.
i will always be lovely, cuz thats what i'm made of.
i only hope on my upward jaunt i spread a little of me over everyone i pass
and that they too, for a moment, feel this intoxicating high momentum

lost myself

Lost myself for a minute.
In the way the sun hit the curls in his hair.
I lost myself...in what used to be.
In an old memory I was tryna make new again.
In the freedom we once had.
In the softness of his breath on my neck I lost myself.
I forgot we're not the same and that everything no matter how special or loved changes.
I lost myself knowing it wasn't right and it would end painful.
And when I found myself I loved him more.

lovers' dance

i hold on to my broken crazy and lace him only wth the angel he needs.
praying the fabric holds.
treading softly because we are tender. sore even.
we have broken the skin that holds us many many times.
leaving scar tissue on top of scare tissue on top of scar tissue until even brushing it reminds us of the pains.
i tread softly nourishing it.
trying to heal what will always be seen.
trying to make right our collective wrong.
 trying to make us right.
he follows.
and softly we dance around it.
remembering but not letting it ruin the happy now.
softly.
i take his hand.
now that i have shown him how he leads.
treading softly and softly i follow.

his

And I have fallen again in love with the meek boy he only shows me,
 the huge man that comes out in his anger,
 the nervously gnawed nails, chopped fingertips, dirty talking.
With his almost brotherly love.
With the feel of him on my mouth and the taste of him on my tongue.
That sweet fragrant natural smell that wafts off of his skin.
His insecurities and indiscretions.
 I am his....holding, saving, preserving myself for when he realizes I am all he needs.
Waiting for him to ask so I can pour it all over him and let him marinate in me.