Your mouth holds secrets that hide between people's legs, in the crooks of their elbows, in their napes of their necks
You, hide keys under your tongue that I may unlock
You are so used to
Harboring cold
Even though you are cold
Open
Your legs
So I can stay inside
So I can come inside
So I can *** inside
We will stay warm together
We will stay in heat together
In this house
In this body
In this husk
Twitch
Twitch
Switch positions
Move yourself into me
Move yourself around in me
Why are you shivering
You're too cold for all this warm
You're too quiet for all this loud
Hold your lip in place or it will fall off your face
Exploding all over the room won't save you now
Splatter paint only helps when there has been no prior activity
Stand back and watch me flutter all on my own
Stand back and watch as the tremors ripple through my body
Smile, and hold it for me
Right there
Over the ****
*****
Stick your ****
Stick here
Stay here
~~a.s.f.
May 27, 2016
May 27, 2016 at 12:53 AM UTC
They don't tell you that it feels like fire--that it feels hot, like magma, like smoke and fire alarm and get me out of here. It feels like I Need To Get Out of This Room, but you're the room and you're also not the room. They don’t tell you that everything is melting--including you. There are holes burning in you, and it's not in a trendy way to make you look vintage; you need to be stomped the **** out. It's becoming more and more difficult to hold on to things, since your fingers flammable, ready to strike a match. Everything is so excruciatingly hot and it seems like folks will use your flames to make s'mores, or worse, to light their cigarettes. You can't step outside for air because even fire thrives with oxygen. You're a building, crumbling to the ground in your fiery demise, almost in slow motion, and it’s okay, because you weren't up to code anyway.
They don’t tell you how underwater it is, how slow moving and in space it is. They forget to mention how it feels like you're drowning all the **** time while everyone is above water. Your head submerged, everything is in slow motion, frozen. Everything needs to be stared at or it will float away and disintegrate. They don’t tell you that everything is blurry to you and only you--no one knows what you're talking about. You're not watercolor--you're a watery, diluted, goopy mess. You sit there, in a puddle of your own demise, sad and soaking wet of your tears. Don’t even try to mop yourself up because the bucket is already overflowing.
What they don't tell you about anxiety disorder is that it is a silent killer. No one wants to help you--they don't want to sit next to you. You make everything sticky with your insecurities and the unknown and you're a mess. You may as well write panic across your forehead because it is emanating from you regardless.
~~a.s.f.
Mar 15, 2016
Mar 15, 2016 at 9:31 PM UTC
• because I was questioned for calling Beyoncé a god
• because I was told Beyoncé is overrated
• because some white lady I don’t know touched my hair before she learned my name at my place of work
• because one of my white friends made a joke about crack houses when we were watching fake anime and eating fried dough…in addition to making that joke, he made me uncomfortable
• because a white friend of mine agreed with someone who said cis white men are the most oppressed group on my campus
• because people still tell me “ALL Lives Matter” and ask me “why isn’t there a WHITE History Month”
• because “I don’t see color” is a “less racist” way of saying “that isn’t my problem, so I don’t have to get involved”
• because girls “like me” are fetishized
• because girls “like me” are seen as the **** of jokes or just the ****
• because I’m the only non-white passing person of color in my dominant friend group
• because #Lightskinned is still a way to humiliate someone for being fairer skinned and having feelings
• because #Darkskinned is still a way to demean someone who is darker than you and painting them as *****
• because colorism exists in every racial group, but no one wants to talk about it
• because someone argued why a white person should be able to wear dreads and black people are kicked out of institutions for wearing the exact same hairstyle
• because black on black crime is still used as some sort of crevice you try to shimmy yourself through
• because somewhere, a white girl is teaching tutorials on how anyone can have an afro, and no one is stopping her
• because Facebook exploded when I expressed that I want to be respected
• because everybody wanna be a ***** but no one wanna be a *****
• because I didn’t know what to say until I couldn’t stop speaking
• because we are twenty days into February and Black History Month hasn’t been mentioned by ONE of my professors
• because of ******* course I’m the angry black woman
• because I’m essentially the backbone, which means that it’s easy for me to break, right?
• because this **** happens to me every **** day of my life and it will continue to happen to me every **** day of my life
• because you made it that way
• this poem does not have an ending
• this poem is the abyss
• why do I make it about race?
• because this poem can go on and on and on forever
• and I’ll still be talking about the same thing
~~a.s.f.
Mar 15, 2016
Mar 15, 2016 at 9:24 PM UTC
All I has: tight.
My life.
Hard times,
rip.
Are ****** up.
If us, he, we; be light.
ok - are ill i?
***** we gon' be alright."
"Na, we gone."
Ego light.
Hear me, eel? Web right.
uh?
feel me?
Hand
recognize you. look in at me. or he.
Bind my side. We look in at you; from the ace. Own
11 with the *** Own
mind, you, my life.
On me in the light.
What? ***** and jamin' is the highlight.
Well, I love herb. is what I like.
Or now, 20 of i, he.
Tall to come and get. In everything I sow, my arm.
Heave; no -- hear.
So my cord and my mother, king, can stand in silence
for the record.
the world I know is too late.
A girl think? Cray.
A fight, my vice. Day
Won't you please lie when I say?
Now, been hurt, been ow.
Pride? low, look in at he, world. "here we go."
Ate, ill, us in the street.
Mat each door.
Knee get weak; gum blow; we gon' be light.
What you want?
40 acres and i?
Hinge my name. Mad?
Other, you can live all
the evil, I can tell it. I know. It's ill.
Don't think about it, deposit. very hero.
Kin of my partner, the candy. paint it. he regal.
Dig my pocket, profit. Big enough? to you.
day, my logic. Get another doll just to keep you
In the presence. Your chic.
Id, talk about it. Be it. I see cool.
I got it then, now. Reach.
Shut the back.
I'm black, on track and rest assured.
My rights. I write. I'm right.
My head high,
eat and hope.
In me is complicated.
Afraid.
light and you: favorites.
Remember? You was conflicted.
Using you sometimes. I did the same.
Sing my power.
Sent me into a deep depression.
Found myself. Scream in the room.
I wanna self destruct. Evils was all around.
So I went runnin'.
~~a.s.f.
Jan 8, 2016
Jan 8, 2016 at 7:50 PM UTC
1) (insert dessert name for skin here)
2) mysterious hair goddesses
3) the back wall of a hip hop video
4) temptresses of your own design
5) the entire land ruled by drama queens
6) your lowkey fantasy
7) your direct blame
8) the subset of a subset of a stereotype
9) the loud and proud
10) the celestial bodies walking through your neighborhoods
11) the only magic act you can see again and again and still not know how it works
12) not the Madea or the Precious, but somehow still the Madea and the Precious
13) trees banding together for the sake of their own leaves AND to sustain the forest
~~a.s.f.
Jan 8, 2016
Jan 8, 2016 at 5:26 PM UTC
after the body has decomposed and decayed and is done being with being a body, the insects feast on the flesh, desperate for nourishment.
1. after: the close of
decompose: to separate into parts
decay: to decompose; to separate into parts; to rot
done: to be finished
feast: any abundant meal
flesh: the sweet, outer coating of a body
desperate: having an urgent need for nourishment: something that is necessary for life
First came the blowflies, then the maggots. They attacked you while you were breathing. They thought you were done: to be finished. They crawled in and out of your nostrils, through your gaping mouth, down your throat. Your body took the phrase "being eaten alive" too far.
2. maggots: legless larvae of flies
attack: to set upon in a hostile or violent way
nostrils: holes in a face that helps a body: the physical structure of a material substance breathe
down: on or to the ground
throat: the part where insects run through and burrow and live in the not living
You're imprinted into the ground now, your ribs a perch for vultures to peck upon your carcass. Your skull is laced with sand and other sedimentary rock as a nice garnish. Bodies are strewn here, peppered with dynasties of dust, ancestry of asphalt.
3. ribs: curved bones shaped like armor to protect the heart and other vital organs
carcass: a human devoid of being
skull: the bony framework of a head
laced: the lightly draping of a thing
garnish: the supply with; to decorate; to lace: lightly drape a thing
ancestry: generations and generations of sediment forming into people forming into lives forming into experience forming into decay: to separate into parts
~~a.s.f.
Apr 4, 2015
Apr 4, 2015 at 10:58 PM UTC
I am sad, Dad. EMPTY.
ELEPHANTS don't forget, Dad.
I'm an avalanche, a hurricane, a natural disaster; I crumble.
Hold the magnifying glass over my new car and watch it BURN.
YOU DON'T GET IT!
I traveled to another country all by myself!
Brick by boring brick, dad.
I feel a hailstorm coming and it's named after your daughter.
I feel like I'm blowing up like dynamite.
Understand, dad, stars aren't supposed to feel like empty sweaters.
Feelin' like a sculpture right about now...fancy, but not enough to be alive.
Dear ol' dad:
Jan 28, 2015
Jan 28, 2015 at 11:52 PM UTC
It'll be alright, darling. You'll find the spaces in between and curl up, and you'll finally be comfortable. Honestly, it will be okay. Stop pulling your hair out; she loves you too much.
It'll be nice, okay? Find the sun and other planets, put them in your back pockets like marbles, and be on your merrily way. Look in front of you. Your beloved it already with you. Stop looking around the room. Your neck is a small stick, what with that lollipop head of yours. It will all work out, yes. You took to the skies on a big mechanical hummingbird and went to another world. This is something you can handle. Revive your body; GHOSTS
Jan 28, 2015
Jan 28, 2015 at 11:47 PM UTC
The way your lips look after we've been kissing for too long.
No, no. The color of her favorite flannel.
No, the way angry cartoons look.
Let's talk about b l o o d.
oozing, flowing, going...
Let's talk about roses. Shiny, sweet, beautiful.
Their thorns invading my skin
when they ***** *****
picking the berries
sweet juice, ooze your
way onto my body,
s t i c k y...
stick me, stick a needle
in me, it's supposed to help,
NOTHING is helping.
Tell me my heart is bright cranberries,
an oozing scab;
not a rose,
not some kind of victory
to be celebrated.
Yes, an oozing scab, festering with dirt and
dilemma and dead
and dead
and
d e a d.
~~a.s.f.
Jan 27, 2015
Jan 27, 2015 at 2:47 PM UTC
A Letter From Glasses to Girl:
**** girl. You keep me so ***** Don't you care about me at all?* The things I have been through are not what normal glasses go through. Do you not want to wash the memories away? Some of them need to be discarded and forgotten and washed away. The crust on me is a constant reminder of how late you stay up to study night after night. Take me off and let us both have a rest.
Letter From Hair to Girl:
**** girl. You keep me so ***** Don't you care about me? Aren't you worried about how I look?* I'm pretty sure there are bats or cacti or stars in me. He's into the unkempt, ***** look, right? I am ocean. People get lost in my wrath. Lookin' like some kind of natural disaster, tornado, hurricane, I am. Fix me the **** up, or don't, and get out of bed.
Letter From Body to Girl:
**** girl. You keep me so ***** Don't you care about me at all?* You need to understand that I am trying to keep us together. I don't hate you; I hate what we've turned into. Stretch marks shaped like hands are reaching up from the bottom of your stomach, begging to be let out. I am a hollowed version of you. Understand that I am a skeleton without you. Give me life.
Letter From Hand to Girl:
Yeah, I get it. I'm small. I'm dainty and fragile, but I can flip people faster than anyone. Don't let the lines fool you; I will **** you up. Listen, I have galaxies, and cosmos, and planets, and his back under these fingernails. I am so powerful. We are so powerful, you have no idea. Harness that energy and we can move mountains.
Letter From Girl to World:
I AM...afraid. Of you. I am afraid of myself. I have the potential to move mountains, though. I am a mountain, though. Humans are mountains. You know what? We are pulsating, living, breathing, alive. I can take you on, world. I can devour you, world. You taste of smile and pollution and gross and...flowers.
~~a.s.f.
Nov 22, 2014
Nov 22, 2014 at 11:00 PM UTC