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 Dec 2013 Jessi S
iridescent
some days i dream that you will carry me home
on the once familiar road again
i recalled how you'd wince each time
my knees came in brief contact with your hips
i never knew why
and you'd refuse to put me down
your lips curled into a tight smile
i wondered what lies behind the creases by them

the path beneath my feet seemed to crack
as i carried my heavy lungs back
to this house of cards built from 52 empty promises
where the summer wind burned our only solace into ashes
it carried your skin away but left your bones with me
i took a gamble and i lost it all
all except your hollow bones

the queen had a ***** in her hands
standing in front of our door
but you were supposed to win this war
i had my stakes all on you.

and as my feet got tangled in the cobwebs
i almost mistook them for medusa
prying my eyes open to the hearts we carved in the trees.
"give him back to me! he's mine!" i clawed.

oh but isn't it funny how the scars on the bark remind me of
when i touched your bare hips for the first time in the dark.
 Dec 2013 Jessi S
Andrea
Interlude
 Dec 2013 Jessi S
Andrea
It’s December and
I tried to explain to my body
That I need to stay at a constant 98.6 degrees
And that it’s not normal
For those 98.6 degrees to skyrocket
Whenever your bare skin meets mine.
Apparently,
I’d taken a liking
To being consumed by fire
In the middle of a blizzard,
In December.
I’ll never quite manage to grasp
How you make my thighs shake
And my eyes go wide
Each time you’re merely in the same room as I.
Or when you smile.
When you smile,
it looks like all the biblical miracles
Placed into one crooked curve
And you gave me memories
Risque, raw memories that will keep my cheeks blushing and my head spinning
For ever so long.
Although,
I had hoped that by this time in winter,
Something more would’ve sparked.
But you only seem to know of
Pale spring mornings
And sticky summer nights.
I feel like I don’t even know you.
I touched you, I held your hand, I kissed your lips.
You poked and prodded the deepest parts of my tar black soul
That were so beyond your comprehension.
Yet, you don’t seem real, this doesn’t seem real, we don’t seem real.
Am I even real?
It’s December and you’re more of the boy I made out to be in my head
Based on those few blissful moments
Than the boy
Who would warm me up,
To much more than
A constant 98.6 degrees.

*-andrea
 Dec 2013 Jessi S
Andrea
Pure
 Dec 2013 Jessi S
Andrea
She is stunning.
Wavy hair, the color of sand
on a calm California beach.
With wide, naïve green eyes.
Her lips,
the color of cupid pink,
slightly parted with confusion and distress.

Where is she?
She surrounds herself
In a field
of black roses
and tainted carnations.
Her mind is blurred,
Her movements are shaky.
She looks around,
Where can she go?
She wants to go back home,
Where the hopeful daises
and the white lilies lie.

She wants to look at the world,
and see the protective, green trees as she tilts her head up.
She wants to see
the bright, yellow sun staring at her,
with welcoming eyes.

She is tired of seeing
Air filled with smoke and despair and sadness.
She hates seeing the
grass on her lawn,
that used to be so clear and vibrant,
turn to utter decay and an anguish color of
Lost hope and defeat.

She wants it back, she wants it all back.

Little does she know, that no matter how long
she spends contemplating and compensating
in that repulsive field of black roses and tainted carnations,
She will always turn back to those
lovely,
hopeful daises
and white lilies.

*-andrea
i could write about how you fooled me
into thinking, you were a poet of sorts not in words

you could feel upon my lap for the gun
since I'm driving, just to make our pursuers swerve

we could stop- practice our aim or drive on
still towards the setting sun, see Cali by sun up on a beach
it is said that
a prophet finds no honor
in his own country

hard truths
boldly spoken
are received as a
wretched cacophony
threatening to melt
the caked wax
blocking the closed
intolerant ears of
intransigence

Madiba
once found no
personhood
in his homeland

his people driven
from their land
by Voortrekkers

snortling Boers
gobbling the land
uprooting native
people from villages
they had occupied
since the dawn
of time

spilling Zulu blood
into roiling rivers
of conquest

meeting peaceful
petitions of the
aggrieved with
Sharpsville bullets
splattering
the blood of
innocents onto
hardscrabble roads

redressing crimes
against the victims
by corralling them into
denuded Bantustans
where rivers do not
flow, grass never grows,
game cannot graze;
only the dust doth blow

riddling the captives
with torments of
Transvaal Apartheid,
mocking the speakers
of mother tongues with
the fained eloquence
of bastardized Afrikaans

the dominion of the
oppressors, sanctioned
and affirmed by exiling
a people from their land,
outlawing their language,
dividing the nations into
a fallacy of separate
destinies where a forgetful
history blessed with amnesia
will anoint the conquerors
with the spoils of abundance
stolen from the vanquished

Madiba spoke of these things
and was awarded a prison
cell for twenty seven years

but the hostages of
a conquerors justice
remained destined
to be freed by the arrival
of an accepted truth
set free by the very words
prophetically spoken

prisons cannot contain truth
steel bars cannot imprison
the idea of divine justice

it slips through the smallest openings
like a wafting fragrance of the first day of spring

it saws away at the rust strewn steel bars
like the surest movement of a master carpenter’s arm

it melts the thickest links of iron chains
in the fiery forges that burn in the hearts
of all freedom loving people

the truth of justice
is born and takes flight
on the wings of history
covering the globes
cardinal ordinates

nesting in the most
humble villages
and mean estates
on God’s good earth

truth and reconciliation
can never be separated
planted together to grow
healthy nations and
communities of
trust and restoration

Madiba, you always
found honor with
the salt of the earth
the children of light
who seek to dispel
the darkness of
acrimony and
*******

we continue to
walk your way
guided by your
prophetic visions
we take the first steps
asking liberators to join
with oppressors, pairing
in a magnanimous walk
along wholesome pathways
perceiving the buena vistas
of reconciled communities
firmly established
on foundations
of peace, equality
and justice for all citizens

I caught a fleeting glimpse of Madiba
as he rolled by in the Canyon of Heros
showered under a June blizzard of confetti
and a resounding acclimation of love.

I was a plebe inhabiting a lower floor
Broadway office, yet my station blessedly
brought me closer to Madiba.  As he passed
I was moved by his miraculous smile and felt
the colossal reverberations of his waving arm
triumphantly hailing the sweet freedom of
liberation all hostages of feigned justice
exude in the vindication of divine justice
enraptured in the joy of affirmed truth.

Dearest Madiba
we are enriched
and blessed for
the time you walked
among us.  

You fought
the good fight
my brother.

Rest easy
for we shall resume
the climb to
the next mountaintop.

Well done Madiba
Godspeed

Rolihlahla “Nelson” Mandela
7/18/18 - 12/5/13

Ladysmith Black Mombazo
How Long

Oakland
12/6/13
jbm
winter covers the earth
in a requited slumber
dropping a bleak veil
of prolonged eventides

a sparse season's
dire landscape
professes a chill
of privation, across

frost crusted furrors
crowning cold fallow fields
resting from offerings
of a past season's yield

reaping passages
to the royal realms
the mystic visions of
this twilight nexus

germinating seeds
burrowed deeply in
recurring reveries
of future harvests

our dreamscapes
of abundance, sustained
in the deepest memory of
the advent of new seasons

Music Selection:
Paul Winter Consort: Icarus

Oakland
12/21/13
jbm
 Dec 2013 Jessi S
standingstiill
Find someone who traces the lines in your hands just to feel close to you
And someone who believes the ocean is trapped in your eyes
Find someone who loves the bones in your body
And loves the skin that you live in
Find someone who will help you love yourself
Someone you deserve
I'm here
this was written for me by a very dear friend
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