A Demi Dose of Poetry 🌻🌺🌹

Original poetry

[ademidose]

Addiction

I was told that stripper use cocaine in order to build the courage needed to fall such depths

And that real woman hold themselves like the last match on a frozen tundra, they guard their dignity

I didn’t want to see what I’d become— all late nights and cigarette smoke, All early morning and dirty sheets.

—to fall for something so superficial is the scale someone’s whole body and search of your own

So when I walked into your room, I left myself at the door

Couldn’t bear witness.

[ademidose]

What made you go into poetry?

I fell in love with poetry and spoken word when I first watched Love Jones when I was 9— I know that’s corny but that was my intro to spoken word. What made me attempt poetry was Def Poetry Jam- when I was about 15. But I consider myself a novice poet

[ademidose]

Genesis

No one came to my funeral,

there was no repass,

no smell of macaroni and cheese, collard greens, sweet potatoes,

or yeast rolls permeating out of a church basement.

No auxiliary aunties in white orthopedic shoes, walking two-step down the center aisle.

No casket. No pallbearers.

No pastor timing grief in three-minute intervals—

The pastor said we on a schedule.

No coworkers—that I didn’t like anyway—speaking

way too long, taking up everybody’s time.

Shiiitt.

There was no funeral.

I buried myself; picked up the shovel; stuttered through what I could remember

of the Lord’s Prayer, the way you reach

for a language you was only ever taught by pew and proximity,

and dug the hole myself, perfectly rectangular, eight feet deep.

Though I walk through the valley

of the shadow of death, I fear

—the absence.

I fear the ravine

I’ve chiseled

between my loved ones and I.

I fear my

Resurrection.