maria

maria 5d

Raphael

A rumble elicits before a grunt
Each slit, an inch you maim
Set by a thump: two sets of feet.
Feet slide down your back the same
Tips of fingers on a run: tap, tap, tap.

Your flick bright,
Alabaster like
An unnamed saint
I’d canonise softly, with a sigh.

A sight to see.
Indeed,
You extricate a garden off the earth
A sculptor handling bronze,
Licked in salt and sweat.
Sweetness, melanated girth.

Then you huff, close-in
Nearing my neck as a king
I first feel tired
Kneeling tightly, high, a considerable martyr

At your mercy I capsize.
I am a ship, a wreck.
So Raphael, know, when my ******* drip wholly
Into your chest and into your hands,
So is my soul. So is my heart.

#aboutdevotion #luzolo

maria Feb 18

Deliverance

My Lord in heaven engages me in plight;
Fists my lips open to beware a place way out of sight.
Unspoken for, unaccounted. Unsaid and unseen.
Unsung and unclear. Undone and unkind,

For His hands bestow creation
with no fault of my own. A kiss left on my cheek.
The very corner of my mouth I tasted temptation
To Him, stenography arose, so I have written.
Stammering between a word and the next.
What am I to Him if but a shroud?

Before His own might
This woman is my beloved.
My own being as hot as the earth would ever doubt
by birth at home, limb for limb. Blood and soil.
This place where His hands mound me –

My Lord in heaven hears my prayer:
strike me twice to my death,
for this love of mine won't ever suffice.

All of these words cage my experience,
Even if i burst my head open – won’t You
Put me up with The Choir? Bring about deliverance?

This secret place to
Bite my tongue red
scream away her scent
Mask it with the words You spoke,
I’ll repudiate her plough with a feathered stroke.
I’ll trace a pulse if it lingers within for too long.
Her beating heart shares my own
for this woman is my beloved.

this is the last one for this collection. inspired by sufjan stevens

#ofthebody #luzolo #freeverse

maria Nov 2024

man

This expansive figure loiters afoot my bed.
His potbelly like a pig’s.
He is but a man: A child.

He covers my lithe
With a sheet on the ground
And summons his might
Swings a limb of his in front of my eyes
Plumped with age.
Touches it; asks me to touch mine.

I cried, I cried.

To my mum I cried.
She stirs me awake and asks my hand to hold
My palms swell at the weight of her own.

His,

My mother bends
Beats him too.
With a stick.
A son not of this lock
His sight not to be seen again.

I didn’t know then
I realise it now.

#ofthebodycollection #triggerwarning #luzolo #freeverse

Oct 2024

Eli

the little things

even the darkest minds can drip gold;
pink roses can bloom behind ****** chain link fences,
as leaves can stay orange as they float in puddles reflecting gray.

there’s always stars in the dark.

<3

maria Oct 2024

i wish there weren't a wall

Call it the firmament:
a litany of freckle-like scars
crossing the shoulder blades where you stood.
Gracious.

Unfurling in spite
of your hadean highness.
You call it fickle
Whilst I long for re-aligning the stars.

A sweet sprawl hidden
behind a feign of shyness.
The places your mouth goes,
When you smile - that is.
That place, a sacred one, where your lips curl to meet mine.

I caution your step
and count the pace heading the storm
And your all fills the room
and the air rumples and caves,
accosting a meadow.
I breathe you in.
And your all covers mine.

And you joust, standing.
And your bony hair and your bouncing smile
Take me back
Bathe me in your running wells for another while.

for thisbe

#sapphicyearning #lovepoem #freeverse #inspiredbywillow #andrwrb #luzolo #ofthebodycollection

maria Oct 2024

afterthought

That night I slept on a mattress on the floor.
And had I known then,
I would’ve
Embraced Your Grace to last me late.

Spread open on brawling ink
Tinted and olive in skin
And a breath hot and sour – disgusting.
That night I slept on a mattress on the floor.

And in he came
Wincing glory all purged might
With mirthful spite plus rage,
Employing a tetanus graze on my thigh.

You handle the comforters, force me down.
What I remember, by the grace of God
Is but a raven twilight.
And a single mangled wetting tear
On a blue tiled entresol.

#freeverse #ofthebodycollection #luzolo #triggerwarning #trauma