am i too much for you?
is it that fact i have a loose *****, or two, or three
did i really need to see you through for every day you
touched me, looked me in the eye, said the fire will never die
but it did

and that hoodie fills a space between two legs,
square pegs into round holes, binge eating until you
hurt your throat
but you still devote yourself to being
skinny

and that word has plagued me for so long, like a song, like a call, and now i need to know, before i fall, am i skinny enough to be loved? is my collarbone every going to be a wishing well, will i burn in hell for the simple sin of being fat?

but in reality, the only real causality was myself
i force fed myself discipline, hoped someone
would listen, but they never did

even the shrinks said i was crazy
and that i was lazy for not going out, excising until
my skin split and a beautiful butterfly emerged
then i'd surge into battle like a goddess

but when your thighs are thick and you aren't modest,
and when you wear lipstick too thick like a woman
with double Ds and an ache between her knees
you know that if you were skinny, you'd never have
these problems, and if you did
you'd know how to solve them
to be skinny
is to be graceful

even in suicidal rages
that flip through pages and pages of stories before they rip my own
from existence
need to be kept under control and kept at a distance like
a tiger that has the taste for human flesh

but now i know i'm the best, because i have a good ****,
long legs and a pretty face
but i'm too hard to replace in this overpriced world
where girls are told to starve themselves

to a neutral, non-pear shape
until their ******* are the tip of an hourglass
their waists are too thin to last
and their eyes are longing for even the tiniest indulgence
avoiding food and any substance
that would jeopardize
skinny

but then i realized
if skinny was so important
then why did all those who were it
probably also were just a little bit away from going insane
and we were in the same boat, staying afloat together
on the ocean of
skinny

so i wrote this poem
for every single girl or woman
who needed a book or a booking
to make them feel beautiful, and by beautiful i mean
skinny

but beautiful can be skinny,
but it can also be thighs like tree trunks,
arms like rivers
and a body that delivers nothing but happiness to that of it's owner

and my body is not some loaner car you
can trash and get away with
there will be fines,
for i am fine,

but in those times, where
nothing was ever promised to me
i started to see

beautiful could mean
staying up to take care of your kids,
single-mothering and being glad your husband
got rid of himself before you could, because
you can do a much better job without the chain-smoke
and you stay woke
forever
because skinny is a construct

or it could mean
studying in waters of student loans,
feeling alone as the only ******* campus
but working hard to become a lawyer or a doctor,
she will always be her mother's daughter

i'd say words stronger than this,
but there are children here,
but ***** skinny!
i am beautiful,
you are beautiful
and by beautiful
i mean anything you want it to mean.

sometimes the sticky-sweet of baltimore air
is a little too much

and screws pop loose like
bullets out of guns

back before the ghetto,
there was a white man who came here

married his cousin, went crazy
nevermore, nevermore

but now the park were he used
to play as a child is a public housing project

where the only poetry is that of puff-puff-pass,
chalk outlines peeling and melting in the midday sun

and a child who speaks to his murdered brother underneath his breath
as he pulls the trigger on his very first gun

i am a tiger

who's stripes are scars

and who's fangs

are words

this poem might be
the hardest to write ever

because i promised myself
i would be genuine

not exaggerate
not tell lies

so i guess
i should get started

and leave the prefaces to
the famous authors

not the poets
or the lost ones

--------------------

i have something to say to
you

you, who is beautiful
despite every word thrown from

an unknown hand
across a glass screen

you, who is beautiful
despite every scar or burn

or open wound you
inflicted on yourself

you, who is beautiful
despite every raised hand

and every shard of broken glass
in class, the kids with no faces and too much to say

you, who is beautiful
despite note you wrote and crumpled up

you used to write i'm sorry into your skin
but you have nothing to be sorry about

you, who is beautiful
despite everything anyone ever said to you

or anything you ever said
to yourself

you are still alive and alive and alive
because now the storm is over

and it's time for the rainbows to shine

in the la summer,
the heat doesn't whisper
it swells

and the hottest of the places
were the buses
big greenhouses on wheels

but i rode them,
for i had no car
and if i did

it would've been stolen
even though
i moved away from hidden hills

and now lived
on the face
of the sun

after a while,
i found my own
ways to rebel

drink gin out of
my water bottle
on the trip back home,

sit in the elderly
and handicapped
section

and that was what i was
doing when she entered the
bus

she was obviously ancient
and walked with a cane
so of course i moved to the side

as she passed me
the first thing i noticed
other than her skin that was almost purple

was the tattoo of the number
7
across her cheek

and no, this wasn't a young
woman
not the type to spend late nights

recording raps
for soundcloud in the back
of a crack house

we looked through each other for a
second,
and then she said to me

do you see it?

i shook my head
i didn't know what she
even meant

then she extended her hands
and still, nothing
was there

do you see it, she said again
i said no
she sighed

i have so much to tell you,
young woman
so much you need to know

i nodded
because when a crazy
old woman says things like that to you

you nod and smile
so much you need to know
her eyes were misted over

like lakes in the winter time,
cream in the bowl of
a tabby cat

we sat in silence
for a good while,
and then she looked at me again

in the summer, back home she said
when we left school
me and my friends would go drinking

there was a place called the golden shovel
and they had a huge pool table
me and mary would play, smoke cigarettes and

listen to jazz
it was the only time i
felt like i was alive

but when the cops came
mary was there, and i wasn't
they shot her dead

they said the bar was a hideout
for everything good and black
that my mother told me i should stand for

seven died,
and they said the golden shovel
was used to dig graves

i got this last year
she raised a long, peeling finger
to her cheek,

pointing at the seven

the bus ground to a halt as she
put her finger down
i looked at her

this is my stop
she said
before giving me a folded piece of paper

this is a poem i wrote

i took it and opened it, but by the time i
read it, she was already gone

*We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

birds
heads under heaps of wings
suddenly stir

and
the telephone wire
is suddenly alive

with
songbird-gentle
chirps

with
owl-vicious
hoots

with
raven-mysterious
caws

and yes,
i know there are
too many poems

about birds
but you just have to remember
the raven

can mimic human speech
and sounds
so nevermore might not be such a stretch

that some ducks
sleep with one eye open
just like the women who lack trust

and that mockingbirds
can preserve songs
of extinct creatures

with bones too hollow
to stash anger or regret
and eyes bright enough
to see the daybreak
hours before all of us