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Tanisha Jackland Oct 2016
I wear my skin as a test,
that god is my witness to
how you treat me.

I wear it like a cross.
my crucifixion though
I could save the world.

I am the secret
of the night come
risen from its womb.

Ordained by the Sun,
My skin is a test and
I am warm inside like you.
Tanisha Jackland Oct 2016
She is tired

Hearing footsteps

The knocks at her door

But he has eaten her again

Devoured her from the inside out

The skein of muscle the drool of blood

Left pieces of her between his teeth

And now he is going for the jugular

She has been done a million times before

To forsake her would have been easier

To lead her to her own betrayal

Into this scandal would have been good enough
  Oct 2016 Tanisha Jackland
Elaina
I know you feel
Intelligence flows within
Thanks be unto you
Tanisha Jackland Oct 2016
You follow me
faded dream after
faded dream

Your face was
not your own
perhaps you keep your
secrets away from me

Perhaps you want some
part of me
the freedom of being alive
hand in hand
lips to lips

Like lovers do
how they feign
the loyalty of dogs

they betray each other
they always do

But in the after life
there is no pretending
just the abyss, god and
the cold living nothing
  Oct 2016 Tanisha Jackland
SE Reimer
~

prelude.

did you know that English stands alone as a written language requiring the capitalization of the word "I"... yet makes no similar provision for “we” or “us; a sad statement of self inflation.  it was after learning this that i abandoned the rule in my own poetry.


~

my i’s averted,
lowered, diverted,
reduced in size,
an exercise of
large proportions;
breaking down the me-isms,
finding room for we-isms,
to take the larger place;
create an i for seeing,
the case for simple,
smaller being;
no need to punctuate,
instead eliminate this
compulsion to inflate;
’tis my i-drop moment,
my i-reducing ointment,
these pupils are dilated,
deflating i and me,
enlarging we and thee;
finding that in i-reduction,
the eyes are widely opened,
thus to better see,
what i really need to be.
Tanisha Jackland Oct 2016
I've bled
not because
I am a
broken sinner

I've bled
because I
am woman
harbinger of
new moons
and unspoken
mysteries

I've bled
life into the impermanent
landscape of the mind
like gravity
holding you down
in spite of the spinning

I am the fierce
darkness
traversing the
universe
barefoot

In this
black moment
I am forever
I carry
this womb
with the honor of
mothers before me

Now I am woman as a crone
ushering in the new world
of infinite love and magic
Tanisha Jackland Oct 2016
Days like these
I am the fool
who remembers you

Like a phantom wind
you come from nowhere
to haunt me

This futile struggle
I get caught in

This mess of me
gets stuck

I am nothing
but the rain singing its
sad and heavy song
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