When life invades the heart

True art awakens lives.

When truth unravels

Twisted lies

It cuts you like a knife.

Words become the instruments

That carve your flesh and bones,

Define, discard the death of you

Beneath their sticks and stones

Timber creeks beneath bare feet, splintering the silent scene viewed from the weathered front porch. Night’s brushed with hues from Morning’s pastel palette. Bristling breezes echo against the steel-blue drum of the heavens and rustle through canopies of wooden brush drumsticks. Coffee warms like sunlight, piercing beaded rain that dots blades of emerald grass; saturating slow-warming air with the familiar fragrance of the forest’s terpene tonic. Pine needles crackle beneath the hooves of elk, dining on foliage lacing the gnarled branches of manzanita trees. The screen door squeaks and the elk freeze — watching me, watching them.

i watch from the window

as the crippled sun rises

from its shell

clearly as reluctant as i am

to bring its body up from the ashes

spreading its wings after the long night

letting it go as if it never existed

as if we had forgotten about it

all together.

He greets the dawn each morning

Smiles, behind a fresh bouquet

Sweet songs, hummed, serenading

'Side the bed where she long lay

Devotion, spanning many years;

Waxing a century,

Shedding youth and countless tears

Entwined; their destiny

Early on in married life,

They struggled — poor as dirt

So young, they, looking eye to eye

Exchanging vows, rehearsed

Surviving war and hardship

True love, enduring time

Even when to sleep she drifts

He's right there by her side

Caretakers expect him

For he's never missed a day

And, Sunday's with the Lord's hymn

Sharing scriptures as she lay

Some wonder, as they watch him

Seated there, in his lawn chair

His lasting, strong devotion

Beyond weather, fierce or fair

"She's never died, my bride,

You see, forever, we are married"

Soft spoken; tearful eyes

Fixed on the grave where she lay, buried

A careful watch he'll keep

Endless love for his dear bride

Until he finds her in his sleep

Beyond the other side

Attention prose your girl is going to be performing At poetry slam that is world wide for the first time ..but here’s the thing ..I need y’all to let me know if this piece is slammable ..yah yah I KNOW I SAID I wasnt writing on HERE ...y’all are where I started ..y’all have seen me grow As writer as a person ..so Who better to tell me like it is ...SOOOOO COULD U HELP Me and please don’t get out of your body and say some reckless crap to me because I will put you back into your body and bury you in a coffin if u come at me disrespectful ...so here’s the piece ... I am sooooo scared ...

#myariel

_response to the #notariel -on hailey bailey playing the little mermaid

When they say a black girl can’t be a mermaid 

don’t they know are ancestors bodies own these oceans

Dump us in these waters 

as if we don’t know how to swim 

as if are lungs aren’t filled with water 

I am still gasping for air for my 

great great grandmother 

as if dead bodies don’t know how float to the surface 

as if we are not the sirens that yall write about 

girls luring men to death 

as if they forget their was a time 

when a black woman could get a white man killed for loving us 

as if we dont know what it’s like 

to drown 

see we use to feeling like we can’t breathe 

because being black and alive 

is just as dangerous as being dead

see I woke up in a whole new world 

when I got my legs 

i started to run 

but society took the voice 

because You can’t have freedom 

and be black 

because black is loud

As if they forgot we are the seven seas 

Are mothers name us 

Something memorable 

Because we are use to being printed memorials 

And you will say my name 

Because you will not forgot 

I am no hashtag 

I am the mermaid 

From the ghetto 

See we black girls 

Got red hair   

Too 

It’s the type of red 

That bleeds from our hairline 

It’s generations  

Of fighting 

Its

That pulsing vein 

In and out 

As our aunts braid 

Self love in our hair 

Until we learn black is the eptiome of magic 

See my Ariel 

It’s not your Ariel 

I dont expect you to understand 

What’s it like to keep swimming 

In a world that tries to drown you 

See my Ariel 

Belts her voice till she ripples water like change 

See my Ariel 

Turns sea witch’s inside out 

See my Ariel 

Is a cavernous connoisseur 

Of a tragic romantic 

See my Ariel 

Is black 

Yes black 

See my Ariel 

Is thick tongued 

And shoots  words 

Like bullets for a gun 

See my Ariel is black 

See my Ariel 

Doesn’t wish to be part of your world 

See my Ariel wears her hair in an Afro 

See my Ariel is black 

Yes black 

Offvensily loud and proud 

The hurt comes in waves

Tonight there was a hurricane in my mind

Each thought dragging my head in a different direction

Left, he left you, he left you because you weren’t good enough

Right, they’re right, the voices they’re right

Up, you will never live up to the expectations set upon you

Down, I am falling, falling down.

Fifteen,

Running a shower to drown out the sound of my tears as I wash the blood from my teeth,

Screaming in the kitchen, trying to tell him that this isn’t the first time I’ve been beat without actually saying anything,

To explain that this shit doesn’t just feel like a sport to me.

And his fucking response, to sabotage our relationship, to breed enough hatred, that my fists would land with a little more cruelty.

And I guess you succeeded.

Every day, I worked for hours trying to release that anger,

And since then I haven’t put it away,

And since then I haven’t been able to cry.

Beat me in a fight and I just might,

But I really wouldn’t recommend you try.