To Be A Child

I would like to be a child again
I have lost all recollection of what it was like

To scream for my fathers hands
To pick me up and lift me into the clouds
To cry for his chest
To press my cheek against
To be a child

I would like to fall into billows of everything I cannot remember
Every place I will go I'll take a piece of it with me
I will protect each one and keep them mine
I will not die and leave them alone
Because they will then they will forget

They will have mechanical failures inside of them
They will ask to be children again
To be pieces of something bigger
They will cry out for their fathers
To hold them during the night

But they will have no chest to rest their cheeks on
And they will become parts of the billows
People will fall into them
Asking for a chance to convince them that they had a past
These pieces will cry with us

We want to be children again

i miss my blue and blonde.

I am Part of the Tornado

My brain is empty
There is nothing left within this walking carcass
I have become a part of the tornado
I sleep inside of it's whirl winds and I pick up houses and bicycles with my bare hands
I eat on tables I've stolen from the kitchens of innocent families
I am empty
and translucent
and ghostly
But I have the power to damage
To destroy
To take away all of the courage the world has left
Trembling at the thought of an empty terrain
Without life or houses or bicycles
I am part of the tornado

Mental Notes

I've been taking mental notes
Breathing in the dust your hoofs have left
And yes, i'll comb your hair
So thin
Brittle, like your sentences
Keeping lists of when you were lively
Will you blink for me again ?

So still in your stall
Lifeless among your hay
I love you, dear
Don't be afraid to die

The Cold Breath of an Arctic Demon

Wouldn't it be beautiful to find something we thought we had lost ?

Consider the snow storm I am standing in

Like the cold breath of an arctic demon, the wind will blow so hard that I will start a whole new world war with myself

I will stuff my hands in my mittens and pretend it's time to trade my goods again

I will give up my wife 

and kids

and horses 

horses, horses

None of them were ever mine anyway

I want to give everyone everything 

I will never say no to the skies that will open up for me

I will stop bathing in rum, I promise, I promise 

I Want to Live on the Tongues of the Human Race

I want to live on the tongues of the human race

I will give children lollipops
And I will become the sweet and sticky sphere resting on their tongues.
Seven years old at the zoo with grandma
Who will point out the many millenniums of daffodils and Geraniums
Yawning and crying

I will be the cough drop sucked on with a passion for health
Twelve years old, reaching for the ceiling of adolescence
Tip-toeing on the floors of innocence
In a white night gown

I will be the small strip of hallucinations when they have turned sixteen
I will send them into a dream
A dream in high lighter colors
Where everything is bigger than it usually is

I will be the white pill from the orange container
I will be placed in the back of nineteen year old throats
I will descend within and rid these heads of their chemical imbalances
Curing the shaking of legs and tapping of finger tips

I will be the powdered cylinder with the letters "AZT" on the trembling tongues of twenty-five years
Sliding into blood cells
I will not fail them
Providing life, I will

I will be the green straw on the center of your tongue.
With the pressure of your clamping mouth, I will spit rum down your throat
Burning you, and you'll bite the edge of me
Slurping away at forty years old, business dinner with your boss and his wife

I will be the thermometer placed in your baby's mouth
Drenched in the spit of a sickling
You're fifty-four
She's just shy of six months

In the hospital bed next to her
I am the tube stretching into your chest
You have given her your sickness
She's dying
You're already dead

Been Searching Through the Deserts and the Caves

Clothed With Your Lips

Your smile feeds into the pores of my skin
A bare figure I am, but clothed with your lips
Your finger tips create the fabric of my garments
A kiss compiling every stitch

I'll stop you
And pull you closer
On top of me
I'll ask you to feel me
Touch me
not with your hands
But with your heart
Not with your kiss
But with your eyes

And with your mind, I'll ask you this;
Be free
The ocean of your thoughts must calm its waves.
Allow it to be a gentle crash of liquids.

So with your kiss, find me
With your hands, notice my faults
With your eyes, follow me
with your heart, be with me

Navel

Born,
and not by the milk of your mother did you feed
Soft and slimy and baffling to the eucalyptus plant you have woken up on
Sipping from the sun,
The lichen on every solid rock,
The nitrogen in this atmosphere doesn't help you stay awake
Appendages stretch among the soil
Below the canvas of blue
Above the life beneath you
Do you have a navel ?
No
Not stripped from the only connection to your dear mother
Not starved from the fluids attaching you to life
You were placed here
On this eucalyptus plant
Wet and drenched in controversy
Debate
Debate
Debate
Adam, you have confused us

"Bill liked to pretend he was a prism. Like things could pass through and be beautiful."

Wooden Trees Wooden Eyes

Sly and consistent
Wooden eyes and marble hands
Glitter stained glances thrown at me
And I'm not afraid anymore
I am pure and honest,
and my ocean eyes stare at you
Minty breath
A kiss of conviction
Laughing at the trees
The wooden trees

The Blue Inside of Me

Will you stand next to me ?

What are you willing to do to feel the night ?

Will you slow your breath ?

Meet it with mine 

Let's make our hearts beat in unison

Let's board up the walls

Let's write checks to ourselves

Wake up with me,

and you are the blue inside of me

The blue that flies up and down the hallways of every finger tip

I'll work for you

I'll work for us 

We'll be blue and feel the night

Heart beats in unison 

Leathery

Purple like an eggplant 

and leathery with the scent of your perfume 

and sticky and thick

whining to be picked up from the ground 

pleading to be cracked and analyzed

put under a bright light

you should change

turn into something good

wake up without wanting to die

pour her morning tea and spray her scent among your apartment

open old books, dusty and thin

screaming to be picked off shelves.

You're Lucid

let's drop ourselves into palls of black and white
and let's confuse ourselves
talk of each others accomplishments

let's fucking lose ourselves within the wind of tomorrow
but wait
oh, wait.
you're lucid

you're not real

I'll Stand Kinda Pushed, Kinda Bent

Home work Home work Home Work Home Work Home Work Home Work Home Work Home Work

For History Class

The bolded words are those we had to define and use within a narrative.

I emailed my teacher asking her if i could write a poem, rather than a narrative, and this is what came of it !

1914

The French colonial rule

We were birds

We flew and watched the Italian colonies in Africa

And that is what we did until we died

But before we died, we lived 

All over the plains and cities

We watched it all

We followed that family of four

The decolonization of our souls became a trend

And soon enough 

Our hearts became a single party state 

No one else was permitted to create its beat

We were the only leaders

Our indirect rule was all we had left

Our decisions to fly

No one else

Posted on our branch 

Over looking the Volta River

The dam taking over every rocky shallow surface 

“Fly to the Gold Mines” 

Thats what our neighbors told us 

We refused 

We wanted to see what everything would become 

Francis Kwame Nkrumah built our home 

He lead every bird around

Every bird beside us

The Convention People’s Party followed his lead, too

Independence is what they wanted 

To watch is what we desired

So many leaders 

And they all made a difference to every bird in their uneven flight

Antonio Agostinho Neto

Fredrick Gordon Guggisberg

Robert Gabriel Mugabe

Nana Ageyman Prempeh I

Political flags posted on metal poles

Dug into the soil and was put in the sky

Replacing us

Stares at ZANU, ZAPU, and UANC

No one looks at us anymore

Not even Kipling 

He wont write about us

We’re just birds

We just flew

And watched

And that is what we did until we died 

Know

I let you know me
and you let me know you
and together we know what we allow each other to see
Which is us

I Did Not Die

Your Mark on My Skin

Your mark is on my skin
Sitting on my neck
Begging for a glance from you
Pushing the memory into your face and crawling into your mouth like the kiss you stained my sheets with
I am breaking
You wont fix me with your bloody knuckles
Mending your broken heart with her hands
Not mine
You didn't give me the chance
You're leaving me
With your mark on my skin