The crooks

Inspired by Resmaa Menakem's work and teachings ... and a recent podcast he was on

Your body was 

not your own

it served at 

the pleasure of 

the kings and elites

their feasts and 

festivities fueled by 

the blood and 

sweat and tears 

of laborers and peasants

whose skin was 

darkened by dirt 

sun-baked in fields 

you weren't allowed 

to ever eat from

servitude and subordination

a birthright passed 

down through your 

bloodied European bodies

and only deemed white

once you were 

able to turn

that generational rage 

outward, to reclaim 

a sovereignty of self

stolen from you

by stealing the 

land, languages, lives 

of pigmented people 

on a new land 

you would rape

and pillage the 

same way your 

predecessors were on

your own ancestral homelands

--

April PAD Day 7 prompt: villain

Thunderstruck

He struck like lightening, 
brilliant and 

faster than the blink 

of an eye blackening 
silently 

before the thunderclap 

Dead end

It was no secret that
he beat her
we all saw the bruises
heard the excuses
knew she wasn't as clumsy
as she purported
to be

---

April PAD Day 30 - dead end

The brewery

My dad drank too much.
He shot bourbon at bars
and barbed insults at home.

The anger brewed inside him,
a biting mash of memories
aging in rows of barrels

running from breast to bowel,
pickling his insides as he
forced us each to drink

the poison of his past.

--

April PAD Day 8 - peaceful or violent

What child is this

For all the homeless kids in Hollywood

Who are you
that send your lambs
to slaughter

The City of Angels
is no place
for children with dreams

Hope litters the sidewalks
like shards of
the broken bottle laying

at your baby's feet
as he sleeps
on the cold stoop of the YMCA

dreaming of a place
and face that he used
to call home

---

November PAD Day 15 - what (blank)

Going the distance

He thought I would come
to my senses
after I'd missed him awhile

as if distance could make
my bruised soul
fonder of the late nights

worrying where he might be
and who might
be siphoning his angry love




Poetic Bloomings # 51 - senses

Changed

This time it's different. He's
changed, she says.
And she's right. The blood
that once flushed his cheeks
when she said
something wrong has turned against
him. The venom he's spewed
for so long
has finally posioned him, turned
him into a frail man
afraid of the
nearing death that he deserves.


Poetic Bloomings: Changes

Three Word Wed -- fragile, rampant, tremor

THE TREMOR

His was a fragile ego,
the kind you tiptoed around
hoping not to squeak a floorboard
and wake the sleeping giant.

Hers was a living tremor,
the kind of rampant quake that
rattles your heart deep in your chest
and never lets you sleep.