Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
I am torn galactic
evolution in your pocket
the fight for fight’s sake

born and we immediately
start to die
this piece of us
of the divine in us
is giving
the order to burn and change

giving colourfades
to cut clear our own path
but chained Andromeda
dear
they may never believe you
unless you can tell them
where
this would be embodied

if it were real
and ask the monster in the water
ask me
to rip apart everywhere I might touch
were we wrapped together
I would

the side of your ribs, your thigh, your shoulder

were we wrapped together in womb or in worship
Cigarettes aren’t hands to hold
And bottle mouths aren’t lips to kiss
But it’s much better lighting yourself on fire when you’re cold
Then giving someone else the power to burn your wrists
Because I’ve seen it all,
What love does to pathetic boys and girls who fall
It forces them to build castles in the clouds even though they've never believed in happy endings
And it makes them bleed out their organs and break their bones when they’re pretending
Love, it always comes. So sweet. So innocent. So delicate.
It tickles you pink and makes you believe that it’s all real, all definite
But it’s not. It’s just raw and confusing and most of all sappy
And if it’s all of that, it’s bound to be messy
And you can’t leave a mess, you have to clean it up and make things right
And when you do, Love will leave you.
Leave you standing alone on a rainy night,
Leave you crying on the bathroom floor,
Leave you chopping out your heart because it resides in your core,
Leave you wishing that you were dead instead of burning alight.
Love does that to you, it comes and you think its job is to save you
But all it does is destroy what you were, making you numb and blue
So I’d rather sit alone and hold my cigarette
And kiss my bottles of amnesia that let me forget
Because I know, I know they’re made to **** me
My demise is something that I can always clearly see

*~{Love’s a liar. And a cheat. But most of all, love’s a beautiful catastrophe that makes you fall for the pretty and forget about the mess”}
Umm, I think it's important to point out that I don't smoke, neither do I drink, I was simply inspired by the thoughts I have on these things
 Jul 2016 George Anthony
Sofia
let me paint you a picture
in shades of black and white
in shades of those who ****
and those who fight
this is what racism looks like
black men with paper hearts
armed with cardboard swords
white men dipped in ivory steel
white men born armed with skin
it's a black man with hands
raised to the heavens
and seeing hell as his last sight
this is what racism feels like
it's your black breath
being ****** out of your lungs
by white hands of white men
dressed in blue gilded in gold
this is what racism sounds like
it's an 18-year old's last words
it's a mother's cry at a police station
it's a bullet racing through the air
this is what racism is
it is not poetry
it's a black man wearing a red shirt
and getting shot six times
this is no crusade
there is no holy purpose
this is the star-spangled truth
a flag drenched in black blood
this is the truth bared in ink
and no poetry can save it
this is not the time to be silent.
 Jul 2016 George Anthony
Nik
Sometimes, I am in love with myself.
I force them to witness my love for my melanin
because they would love for me to hate my melanin.
I know that I am seen, but I want to be heard, 
The first amendment allows me to speak, but they refused to hear a word-
that comes from my mouth.
My lips stereotyped as too black.
My diction too proper to act like this,
yet my slang is too ghetto to act like that...
Sometimes, I wonder what it's like to be white.
I hate being stared at when I speak in Spanish.
I never know if it's in disgust or in comfort, 
because the sound of the double "r" rolling off of my tongue
sounds like the ricochet of the bullets they fire from their guns.
Since they no longer can enslave us like animals, they slaughter us
because, "if I can't have you no one can."
I refuse to be put down.
I refuse to shutdown.
My brown skin threatens,
and you all should be afraid.
Because I will banish your negativity with my Latin American flow,
speaking in Spanish with the Bachata tempo filling my veins.
My Ebonics is iconic, 
and I refuse to be put in a box when the world is a sphere.

I... am more... than this.
I am 17 years old and I am afraid for my life.
i will never know the black mother’s ache,
but i imagine that if the phrase “adding insult to injury” had a feeling,
that would be it.

i will never know the black mother’s ache,
but i imagine that it sounds like “hands up, don’t shoot,” like “i can’t breathe,”
like blood hitting a pavement that seems as though it was built
to catch those droplets.

i will never know the black mother’s ache,
but i imagine that it tastes like skittles and arizona tea,
four years old but still carrying the fresh sting of a wound just opened.
i imagine that it tastes 
like history repeating itself,
like seeing your son or daughter recycled each week
on every news report, on every tv station.
each time it is a different body, 
but it is always the same hand pulling the trigger,
the same black blood being spilled,
the same cries left unheard;
we shout “black lives matter”
and yet, still,
they cut them too short.

i will never know the black mother’s ache,
but i imagine that it looks like a web of lies too thick to cut through — 
every strand another weapon that he did or did not have,
another order that he did or did not follow,
another sin that he did or did not commit;
the only black they care about
is the color of the ink they use
to draw your angel-headed boy
a set of horns.
i imagine that it looks like evidence hidden,
like sparknotes-type skim-throughs labeled “thorough investigations,”
like another unindicted officer walking freely atop the cries of those 
who charged into a battle they knew they would, but hoped they would not, lose.
a battle they have fought too many times before.
i imagine that it looks
like an empty chair at the dinner table,
like cold-blooded ****** disguised as justice
with the help of a blue hat and a badge.

i will never know the black mother’s ache,
but if you listen closely enough,
you can hear it
in every cautious goodbye she says to her children whenever they leave the house,
or in the silence that those goodbyes used to fill.

can you hear it?
you will have to push past the shouts
of the big bold letters that they want you to believe.

somewhere,
somewhere in there,
a black mother’s heart is crying.
it is a gentle, hushed cry 
that the world does not want to hear.

but the tears are still just as wet.

(a.m.)
#BLACKLIVESMATTER.
written 7.6.16 in honor of alton sterling, philando castile, and all the other black men and women who have lost their lives to similar injustice. this is no longer acceptable. we can not allow the people who are paid to protect us to continue getting away with ******. something needs to change.
Next page