I used to write poetry
A few lines a day
My mind always racing
With so much to say
I struggled with moods
They always seemed low
So I started a dosage
My doctor said so
My life changed for good
I could smile once again
But my words dried up
With the sun after rain
I discovered new worlds
A brush and some art
The painting began
I colored my heart
A smile is a rainbow
Through the tears
It offers hope and light
And if you ever doubt it’s strength
Just smile with all your might
Let it touch your face
Let it kiss your heart
Allow your smile to have its way
And you will see, you will be surprised
With how it makes your day!
Every smile has a balancing tear
Every joy is buoyed by pain
Every dawn morphs into dusk
Glaring suns gives way to moon
My heart beats love and blood
My face smiles as it cries
In the stillness this I know
That before my final hour
I am, I breath
I live
I wish for you
A song for each dawn
A melody for each day
Dreams filled with song
A beat for each breath
And music for life
In those moments of pain
When the raw wounds of my heart
Gush their vivid shades of red
I hold out my hands to feel the
Warm pulsing rivers
And in doing so
I allow myself to connect
To my own bleeding precious
Truth
The brutal truth is that
I view the landscape through
Romanticized spectacles
When the reality is an ocean
Removed from romance
In any shape or form
I am dragged from a
Bottomless ocean
To cough out thick
Slime-coated grunge
And as my body is purged
From a suffocating
Ribbon of weed –
I finally –
I finally am happy
‘Neither will win’, the audience says
Now that the contest starts
For black men move without their heads
And white without their hearts.
‘And if one shall advance’, they said,
‘So much as one short pace,
His fellowmen shall shun him then
A traitor to the race’.
‘You wooden men give up the game,
For what are all these squares
But black and white and black again,
The pattern of your cares?’.
The chessmen quickened into life,
For love has conquered pride,
Those that were angry face to face
Are quiet side by side.
Poems and Petals 