You admire pieces of me
Soft and beautiful
For the pleasure they can give you
You condemn my capability
Practicality and spirituality
You claim I can’t have it both ways
I can’t indulge my senses and hold power the same
Divine femininity has become synonymous with delusion
In a modern world that will never love me
I am aligned with the moon
I am in tune
With the rhythm of the waves
And the passage of days
You don’t know what I feel
How it is to exist in a world not built for you
Every living soul
Assigning your worth for what you can’t control
All of mankind is built on the principle
That my body was built for your enjoyment
That my life belongs to whatever man finds beauty in my eyes
And peace in my silence
Of course I turn to the tides and the trees and the breeze
To find comfort in their embrace
When you can’t hold me
You mock me for connecting to something bigger than my body
Loving Mother Nature more than the woman that brought
Me into this world
Yet you reduce my strength to beauty
Tell me I am too weak and small and simple minded
To understand a world you built
Out of fear of me
My divine femininity

The Same Table

We are all sitting
At the same table.
Some of us have more food,
                               more guns,
                               more oil,
                               more everything.
Some of us will laugh more,
                     will cry more,
                     will sigh more,
                     will feel more.
Some of us will die young,
                      will die old,
                      will die willingly,
                      will never live properly at all.
Some of us wear red,
                     wear blue,
                     wear black,
                     wear all the colours of the rainbow,
Some of us have light skin,
                     have dark skin,
                     have smooth skin
                     have scars criss-crossing our bodies,
But none of us
Sit high enough
          To look down
     On anyone.

With a clean duster,

the maid goes around the house --


waving like a queen.

Between star and night,

between black skin and white skin --


our fire is burning.

The sun never rises here, the moon never falls,
despite the nightly intrusion of thoughts
that never seem to expire into the current.

Two birds screech above but I do not listen:
“Our religion is one of love,” they tell me
while they slam the door in my face
to go and vote for a straight man elated
to erase the love I have for nobody but me.

“Church is the only path to Salvation,” he tells me
after a night spent in my hometown bed;
hypocrisy is the root embedded throughout the forest
of Fatherly Love, created only to benefit those
normal enough to write the rules
before anyone else could…
                                                  How convenient.
Our Father makes no mistake
and carefully creates us all,
yet my love is seen as a ******* painted onto
a blank canvas thrown across a rusted floor.

“A genetic error,” say the men who later imagine
the ache of my nails digging deep into
their rugged, tightened backs;
the wedding ring on their finger
refracts the light of the bathroom mirror
as cans of crushed beer pile high
in the trash strewn
on the ground behind them...
                                                  So many frauds.
I live my days on the edge of whitewashed insanity,
yet forever closing my eyes to darkness
is a life I wish not live:
the mothers who birthed us to fade into the grave,
the love they lent evaporating upon expiration,
our fathers who protected us far removed,
their eyes forever closed, their life no more.
I cannot fade into nothing, this I won’t believe…
                                                                                      So hopeless.
The God I love does not punish
those defying the rules He’d always known
would one day be certainly shattered;
He does not make me love men
and sentence me to die in the same command
despite the thousands of hymns I whispered
in the solace of my childhood room.

He does not send men to sleep at night
and force them to question what they feel—
tossing the sour taste into the background,
ignoring the truth of the real me…  
                                                             How cruel.
The God I know made me the way I am
and is proud of me for taking it in stride.

He does not wish to see me change --  
He frowns at the men desiring revenge
on us who wish to be left alone --  
we do not need your opinion,
we do not need your love,
we do not need your thoughts or your prayers,
for the God I love welcomes me with open arms
unlike the multitude of others I no longer remember…
                                                                                          So unimportant.

Lumpenproletariat's                     
Comprise the population
Revolutionized, new variants
Attempt consolidation.
Socialist experiments or
Anthropology's deviation?
Avoidance- societal detriments of health:
Classism's obliteration.

Why people see potential in me
When I feel I am so empty,
And unworthy of warmth,
I cannot conceive

How fortunate I can claim to be
Of the love I have received
That has been held in reserve
For far too many

And it starts with you and I,
Cause I've got love to share
And you can help yourself
Till you've got enough,
Cause I care

If you need a hand,
That's something I can lend
If you walk shoeless
You can have the ones I wear
Forgo crumbs, break off a piece of my bread

What price is too high, for a just world that's fair?

White notions of superiority
Blessed under white lights
Souls sold
Between punched holes
Ring binders brim-full
***** overfills
Scripted words
Meals of rotten platitudes.

Here is my grateful smile
Here is my pleated skirt
Here is my servitude

You did, you said: I.

How dare you! What do you think!


That you are something?

You did, you said: you.

As if I just have to be --


obliging to you.