#luzolo poems on Hello Poetry

maria Nov 14

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

maria Oct 23

marigold

this... mourning!
what a complicated gift to bear, Father.
how is it a treasure to hold, if not a treachery of the heart (my own) bare and unashamed of its overflow?

i think to myself desperately, at a perpetual fault: it will never be enough. Oughtn't i to be mangled up and down by spurs of marigold scented linens and funeral roses, to wither and meet you in heaven?

in your stead, every night my head swells and my mouth falls open. if this is a prayer i let go, then make it a cool balm to my fevered soul -- heart alive.

if my Lord's own head bows toward the earth, then the blood flowing through my veins too is yours to claim for however long this hurt is immaterial. i miss you the most, just tell me how many years.

#luzolo #freeverse #grief #ofthebodycollection

maria Oct 26

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 26

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

maria Oct 23

i tuck my skull between my knees

As she twirls the rope of hair
in her nail tip, she’s not delicate.
It's round in shape, like the way
her missing brow furrows
: a charging shade of brown.
Dark, weighted, barring.

“Ms. Rita! Ms. Rita!”

She scares me still.
I sit down beside her and watch a twitch.
Something in the corner of her mouth.
Her lips: romp and pink.
As she moves them slowly,
girthed gape in the wake of a reprise;
she doesn't chirp or grin out loud,

She smacks!
She doesn't look happy.
She never does.
She calls my name.

So:

I tuck my skull between my knees
and burst brown the deep auburn.
As her eyes fix training on me.
She calls me to the front.

On the board.
White and then green.
Powder, powder.
She lends me the stage,
to which I bear only fright.
So I shrink.
I shrink.

ms. rita was my math teacher in elementary.

#ofthebodycollection #free #verse #luzolo

— The End —