napowrimo #23 - haiku

You, conservative,
my one source for black wisdom,
read my poetry.

napowrimo #22

Dizzy like tomorrow's plan,
this life is nothing but fierce;
you must hold a door open
for some fresh air to push its way
through the crow of your heart:
the black open ditch
where you place sins
stack them like grocery store cartons,
sins spicy as peppers on death row.
Before you fear the rust of time,
before you flinch at red lights and panic,
plan for tomorrow.

Imperfection - napowrimo #21

You gave me my hands,
that snag easily like sensitive silk;
you gave me my mind,
its moods are hard to tame, like mother gorillas;
you gave me my lips,
they pump out heavy words, like a bag of peaches;
you gave me my heart,
it carries memories like blood on the loose.

Hero of Mothers, napowrimo #20

She drove me to auditions, to high school,
to play practice; she drove me into fights
that lasted as long as the years it takes
to get into the college she prepared me for.

She is beautiful still with short, wild hair
that exists like bamboo, a thick survivor
on the curb of her moods, our moods
mixed together like butter and salt

We're zipped into each other; both of us
studying in college like concentrated chefs,
both of us worrying about the inside
and what it looks like from the outside.

With infected blood, she still kisses me
goodnight, still drives me home from school,
gives me what I need: new glasses,
a can opener. She is the hero of mothers.

napowrimo #19

With a moment as bright as a southern
California morning in June, I sip
icy water and breathe in like I'm starved,
starved for an answer:
why such angry nightmares
and sad dreams?
I suck in the fog from sleepless images,
count to three, and believe in three
nightmares;
divorce, adoption, death,
and then jaw-locked anger
bit down.

napowrimo #18

Like the lionness, I crave a good fight,
one with family stamped into each blade
of grass, sharper than my white as milk teeth.
The pain to protect is fierce like feminism,
climbing up any tree planted by man,
claws digging into the bark like jackhammers.
The children, my precious cubs, roll in my paws,
I watch them show teeth I don't want them to use.
A good fight is always prey over the cubs.
Like a good lionness, I rule like a king.

napowrimo #17

born as fire
born into fire.
Hot as a piece of burning newspaper
in the family fireplace;
unforgiving and unforgetting as boiling water
fallen onto a human hand.
twisting and swirling like panicked tornadoes,
the fire within me attacks my mood
and feeds me