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Don't tell me I'm pretty
Tell me that I'm passionate
That I have drive
Tell me that I make you laugh
That I know how to make your day better
Don't tell me I seem nice
Tell me that I'm kind and compassionate
Tell me that I'm not afraid to dream and to dream big
Don't tell me I'm perfect
Tell me the you love me despite my flaws
That you want to spend the rest of your life with me
Don't tell me I'm beautiful
Tell me that you'll be faithful and forever true
  May 2018 Ifeanyichuku Okoro II
Laina
The room sleeps
As I lay awake
And as the sun rises
I want to reach out the window,
shove it back down and
Give myself a few more hours
With the calm rise and fall of your chest.

I don’t exist outside of here,
Only between the posts of your bed.
Fabrication
Needing constant validation
From your touch.
And if the morning never comes,
You’ll stay here
And I can pretend to be
What you need.

If time runs
Then I should be able to dam it up
Like a river
Stop it from flowing
Freeze it in place.

But time is greedy.
The moon is too weak
To stick around.

When light fills the room
And wakes it from delirium
The dreamer stirs
And I disappear.
Am I just a dream?

When I’m gone there is nothing.
Just time.

One word from your lips
And my body reanimates
Dances, breathes
then lies still again.
Finally awake.
But alive? Real?
The room only knows.
Post slumber
Nothing changes when I reopen my eyes
Your smile and gait
Same puzzle piece reverie coming together
Like coarse bark and smooth leaves of walnut trees
Or your articulation and my weak knees.
Even when the road ceases
Let my affection not be a sojourn of the mind
But an embraced destination, instead.


Ifeanyi N. Okoro II - © 2018
When?
Pt. 2
Remembering nights when feet talked to asphalt
Making the way to nowhere fast
Just daydreaming in the time of tribulation
Even that seems against the law

But this is the season of desires
Wishing for the sun to catch up to the moon
Or for blazing June to date breezy December
Her presence
Hotter than July
So Stevie Wonderful
That vision fails to relay perfect captions of captured view

And heart rapidly repeats beats like winged mockingbirds do

And voice drops sonata when cantata is through

I realize I'm flirting with danger when thinking of you
If you are the heavenly hazard,
Just who am I casting my flirt to?

Ifeanyi N. Okoro II - © 2018
Pt. 1
  May 2018 Ifeanyichuku Okoro II
Atoosa
The pen is poised in hand engaged
Awaiting rhyme or sage
Thoughts to give it motion
Absent the flow of love or rage
Unmoved but exhausted it lays down
Crisp blue striped sheets turn brown
After what seems an age
Dust completes the task of covering the page
Ideas unexplored, untold emotion
An eternity passes by
And possibilities unborn die
Sometimes, wouldn’t you rather wield a sword than a pen?
I think
as artists
we owe a lot to pain.

Put on
a robe of thorns
and write

about the nice weather outside
and that delicious burger
you had today.

Write about happiness
when you're in pain-
beauty.
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