label me poet, label me truth

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"The blue flame cannot exist in my soul. It burns my flesh from underneath and causes me to think things that mustn't be. Like I want to tear up your face with the many whips of heat you cast on me, make you feel your own burn and fiery uproar. But that isn't love."

Regina k. Pride

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12/7 Poem #33

You were the perfect stranger that shook my hand.  I couldn’t see the future, but I knew we were doomed. You would fall off the map of my world and I yours. I would never inhale in your close proximity. Your smile wouldn’t brighten my day or the next sixty years. I wouldn’t stand beside you in photographs of us and our children. We wouldn’t fight over which child looked more like the other. We would soon forget about each other, but before you go forever you should know you’re beautiful.

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12/7 Poem #32

He hit the breaks too fast and my heart crashed through the window. Tiny little thing tumbled onto the icy road and I never saw it again. Who knew love could make you feel this, an inescapable death that brings you to your knees. Snow raining down on your face, cracked glass caught in your entrails. Stopping traffic because your heart was too big but not big enough to support yourself after he fell out of your skies. Forget about him little heart, forget he ever existed, forget his hands, his fists, his angry quiet. Forget your tears on your pillow, forget walking back to your car alone, forget pretending to smile at the sun. Forget him little heart, forget the entire month of December. Forget the winter season, forget huddling around a quick fire to warm your purple fingers. Forget covering your body with coats, sweaters, hats and scarves, forget your snow boots at his house because they remind you of him. 

-label-me-poet-

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11/26 Poem #31

11/26 

I’m complete by the sea whose waves wash over my body, caught in the middle but I’m not drowning. I’m somewhere high above the clouds the moment before The Lord takes me home. And he tells me child you shall be calmed. 

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12/5 Poem #30

One day some girl will call him on the phone while he’s at work just to say I love you and I hope she will love him loud. I hope her love is the only noise he hears in a crowded room. His thoughts intertwined with her thoughts, his hands gripping the small notch of her knee, massaging the bended joints like an aphrodisiac. That’s one thing he could never do with me. I heard it from the mouth of someone else. Immediately afterward I wanted to cry but at least he said I was nice.

-label-me-poet-

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12/4 Poem #29

If this is oblivion then I am wiped off the face of the earth, my feet are no longer padded with flesh. I am only a spirit lurking the dark shadows that pass me by. They are no longer haunted with my memory. I am all and forgotten. Their faces are a vague familiar of absences. Watching them, I should feel happy that they aren’t sad but I wish they thought about me. I wish I was at least at the back of their minds dangling off a thin wire waiting to be rescued. 

-label-me-poet-

[silly-luv]

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I would love to go to New Zealand or Canada or South America. Those places would be mind blowing and would definitely shake my little world.

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Free Write Poem #28

Ashes to Ashes

We spoke on the phone*, conversations made from stone You found me in the blank pages of some book, where that was the last place you could look but you were not looking for some winter storm but some fortress around the bend that would form if we so wholeheartedly tied down our hands and plucked the feather from mortal strands. We spoke on the phone but you were not home so I left you a message said I would call back but you never picked up, ‘twas commitment you lacked. And the universe told me you would be no good but I ignored all my knowing and believed that you could sacrifice all the bright lights in the sky for a portrait of mine. Brisk winds, they said, were coming and my destiny with you was something I could not possess but possessed us too spirited away, left me standing in the hall way with nothing to say except “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” there’s love in this world but it isn’t for us.

*from writeworld

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[coffeestainedcashmere]

The city orbits around eight million centers of the universe and turns around the golden clock at the still point of this place. Lift up your eyes from the moving hive and you will see time circling under a vault of stars and know just when and where you are.

GRAND CENTRAL poem by Billy Collins [b. 1941] (via coffeestainedcashmere)

[labelmepoet-blog]

Why do you write?

Oh wow. First off I want to thank you for asking questions and looking at my blog. Your interest in what I have to say makes me feel warm inside.

Why? Well there are a lot of reasons why I write. I write because it’s fun to me. I enjoy creating poems and piecing words together. It’s almost like a puzzle. You have to find the right words to fit and connect to each other. It’s not the easiest thing to do. Sometimes it’s a bit time consuming, but I make time because writing gives me hope. Plus it’s very therapeutic. I vent a lot in my writing, I ramble. I get all the thoughts pent up in my head out and I finally feel like I can breathe. I also want to be an encouragement for the people that don’t have a voice, the people with small voices. I want to be there for anyone that has a problem. I want to help.

Thanks again for asking a question. I believe you are the first person to do so. Thanks, it really means a lot! <3

-label-me-poet- 

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Free Write Poem #27

She stands beside herself, shadow of a forest green, but the dark clouds are rumbling in. She drops her flower, the rose petals are red wine, her skin a chilly white but the blue in her eyes are oceanic, rocking the weak ship side to side. She’s skipping through an empty meadow until he finds where she separated from her shadow to buy time to breathe. His breath smells like absinthe and she remembers remembering. He is the base to her ground underneath her halo, he is singing to her in the noon time light sparkling and glimmering but there are no stars in his eyes he is only a dream of hers when she was young and naive. Reality is where the rose was dropped and the dream rebuked. If she finds her shadow she’ll find it alone before he learns to step on her toes.

-label-me-poet-

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Free Write Poem #26

My blackness is like ink to the pen My sultry soul is like sweet lavender and tender kisses about the nape of my neck. I tread lightly through life tugging on the very clothes too tight to breathe in. I stand in the mirror and sing my song, everyday the same melody. I’m in love with that girl’s soul, she smiles at her problems wishing they would fall away from her but they never do and though she hopes the frenzy of many rapids will float away she continues her singing. In the bathroom tub she is a mermaid and fantasy waits underneath the depths of the water. Should she choose to lap up the soap suds and splash she will drown her sorrows for all the world to see and she will never come back up again. Her tongue twists and turns in her mouth as she battles a moth caught in the inner workings of her painted body, painted beautiful and mysterious she wants no one to remember her too well. She wants her body wrapped in a cocoon like those caterpillars and hide before the darkness consumes her on the inside. And in the spring her blackness comes out, a radiance that melts men’s hearts. She is something to be feared and studied for only time can tell when the ink runs dry does she stay who she is or do her yellow petaled roses wilt?

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[buttonpoetry]

Neiel Israel - “When A Black Man Walks” "WHen a black man walks, he is always hunted, he is always animal, he is always standing out like a living corpse." Performing at the 2014 National Poetry Slam. Subscribe to Button on YouTube!

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"When a black man walks, think of it as a masterpiece, a beautiful song you may hear only once."

[twloha]

Today I will do my best. If I have a good day, I will be proud of myself. If I have a bad day, I will not dwell on it, I will forgive myself, I will put it behind me and I will continue to move forward in my recovery.

Unknown

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(via twloha)

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Free Write Poem #25

Mother taught me all the ways to be brave, running from man to man; it took a lot of strength just to say no, She never found her soul mate but she could follow the north star to her destiny. Every word she spoke was a prayer and she asked for peace one quiet night in hibernation while the whole world went up in flames. My sister and I tucked underneath her skin and fur. Her scent was cocoa and warmth and it never felt like winter. I think about those days often, pray that these feelings never go away. Mother taught me all the ways to be brave when she rushed me out of the nest and told me I could come back any time I wanted to. She taught me the ways of the Galaxy that hard days would come, but I would never be alone. Sometimes I see her behind my shoulder warning me not to go down dark alleys. But the rebel in me wants to try everything at least once, I want to ride on the tail end of a rainbow to see where it could take me, but I know there isn’t a pot of gold at the end. Perhaps it could be something as equally terrifying as falling from the sky. Then again I’m better off guarded, tucked deep under a billion of blankets where my scars are even hidden from myself. My mother taught me all the ways to be brave when she spoke her mind to whoever would listen. I heard her often and sometimes disagreed with her. She didn’t care or she thought she was right. It was her opinion I didn’t mind but it was a question of mental stability, my own, something I should clearly know more about than her. For one second we were centuries apart. Then I decided I would reel her in slowly, get her to see the bigger picture. She was still braver than I who drank up as much liquid courage I could before making the choice to call her that dastardly night I needed a mother’s love to calm my screaming head; no walls held her back from saying what she wanted to say. We will never be as close as I want us to be, we will never even sit by fireside discussing our past woes and what made us stronger. Sitting in the car alone we won’t even revisit that conversation over the phone when I told her about my six years of hell and how I almost got away with murder. Instead she tells me to say my prayers everyday and repeat my scriptures over and over again until they’re burned into memory and can be dictated like the old psalms. I guess that’s how I learned when not to speak up and how to keep my ongoing predicaments stuffed under my bed like old smelly shoes.

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Free Write Poem #24

Death’s knocking at my door. He’s entering my room. He’s breathing his hot and dank breath down the back of my neck. I wait in isolation to hear the floors creak, to hear the bottom padding of his shoes squeak, to hear him speak to me the best way he knows how. He’s nothing like the stories or the pictures. He looks an awful lot like me or what I would look like if I were just bones. He reminds me that I had a dream last night where I could never find my way back home but only I could’ve known about that, so I’m terrified in the corner of my bed, watching as he surrounds me with his ghoulish shadow. He sits on my bed and continues to tell me all the thoughts in my head from years ago, how for so long I did despise my sister for her outward beauty and it wasn't fair. I tell him things have changed, that I am no longer that girl depending on jealousy to survive. As he gets closer I start wailing, screaming out for someone to hear me. He tells me no one can hear me now. He tells me I’m already dead. This was all just a dream. This was all just a dream, he hears me repeating it, but then I touch myself just to see and I’m met with a cold stillness harder than ice. How can this be I ask and he laughs. You asked for this he says, wailing in your bathroom, on the floor shaking. You asked to escape that world.  I remember those long nights when I drowned in a pool of my own salt and saliva. How easily life could’ve been shattered, but I told him I’m moving on, gaining friends. I don’t want to escape something I’ve just barely experienced. I feel just shy of a breakthrough. He laughs again and calls me a sinner, calls out my high school lust for more than a book reading, how when the guy I liked opened his mouth I aligned each word to cater to me or I twisted every broken syllable to fit into my emptiness and now I complain about obsessing over things not seen. I tell death that that’s no longer who I am, that I don’t need a man to get me through the day, that I don’t need an idea of a man to get me through the night, that I now dream about family and the things that matter most. Death grabs my hand and pulls me out of bed, he says you’re coming with me, just because you’re changed doesn’t mean you’re forgiven. I ask where I am going, where are you taking me? He says, you’re going to hell.

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Poem #23

Body Afterward there is no she No soul to mount a bicycle And ride without training wheels Nothing to link arm in arm  Or grasp handle bars Fingers are motionless at her side  Eyes don't wander like they used to There's no word to describe what I'm looking at But it's not her Not her smile, not her face It just isn't her I remember conversations we never had Think about those we did  And wish with some regret  I knew her better.  It's not enough to ask why of all things Only to be returned with no good answer "We don't know." All I want to hear is the wind. -label-me-poet: I wrote this after I saw the episode of Buffy of the same title a couple of months ago. It got me rethinking my life and I created this. The episode is arguably the best one. All emotions are captured beautifully and I couldn't stop crying. It sort of hit home but in a different way. *spoilers* My mom isn't dead but our relationship was dying at the time and I needed to do something to fix that. Right now we're in the process of building that relationship up again but it is going to take some time before I can say we are really close.