A Poem a Day for 7 Days
Writing in the throb of the moment each day to share the inner workings of a poetic breakdown. It is a lovely challenge to write from honesty about the multiplicities of a wired mind. This includes the reflections of womanhood, experiences from social encounters, pain from the body, panel discussions with fashion leaders, and inspiration from my favorite musical acts. Take a peek inside.
Lemonade
Rotation of silver lids
spinning cups, ladles, and kettles on every limb
she is a witch in the kitchen, concocting out of your sins
Trickles ticking, drip dropping
I smooth my lips over the rim,
just enough to drink in,
what wasn’t given
...but taken
Leafy on the branch, a twitch of sticks
before falling face first into mouth
seeds and all
cooking up the fruit for a seasonal dessert
Squirt, Squeeze,
pleasure seekers
bitter bitches bite and tease
Gnaw at flesh,
the skin of citrus
whose porous rinds clench between jaws aligned
Sour spit
sip and swallow
suckling onto the teet of the fruit
life giver, she took in what she could
an open mouth, eyes roll back to wash it all down
Coming to completion
like the raw fortitude, you both suffered for
plucked from his grip, go get yours
Sweet to the senses
you filled light right into these lids
It’s lemonade, darling
for you and the fetus
for my nectar runs deep.
Her
She walks into the room
like she is walking onto her stage
length in limbs that stretch through the ceiling
a v-neck blazer the color of a soft tongue lays against ochre skin
“Power is confidence in all that you are”
Her as the Influencer.
She is a Sudanese scientist
the daughter of refugees, a millennial born into midnight skin
a silvery picnic dress wraps her in auric light,
she wants every woman to have a skin tone palette that matches their own shade
imagine a world where every girl is seen from the shelves of a drugstore,
telling her she belongs, she has purpose, and she is not one color
Her as the beauty industry disruptor.
Silver links studded with Swarovski crystals binds her blonde neck
a face on full display
her bomber jacket, the color of ballet slippers worn with force
she sits on the board with men on either side
philanthropists for Hollywood’s finest forces,
she is part financial, part business, part presidential with a global heart
Her as CEO.
The image gatherer sitting behind the lens
she captures the circadian portraits of the women who work in Ethiopa and Togo
the women who sweat and sing, the women who are awake
the women who are unseen from our media
Her as the photographer documentarian.
Decorative jewels are cuffed around her ears
defined in gold, secured into a cotton jumpsuit
Mara lifts her chin to the bulbs above
“We should never underestimate putting beauty into the world”
What if sustainable advertorials asked us to invest in her art?
Her as the eco-conscious fashion designer.
The colors of the Female
tell us to champion the women now, for they are waiting
Planet Mother
A drop in the ocean
one against all.
When you are the eye in the storm,
you see everything for what it is,
a natural disaster may just be the fear felt from within
a tunnel to see the world from above, a perspective that loosens the falsities
you can't see it all without a little destruction.
Tsunamis kick up the truth across a city that doesn’t sleep,
the crack in earth, a torn fault line
is just the awakening for new ideas
c h a n g e
is the only consistent forcefield
bowing down to H E R is the only practice
Restore
Do I need to take three days to sleep?
to catch up on days spent idling in dissonence.
Deliberately setting aside stimulation
for the internal recovery,
or maybe that’s the secret to meditation.
A mantra lies deep in my pillow,
each night, I listen,
cuddled up to the idea that there are solutions under the covers.
The world seems so far away sometimes
it is safe beneath these silk and wool textiles, a blanket fort on the edge of reality.
Sometimes it feels like the only way to turn this off is to lay down and sleep away the day,
a date with her daydreams.
I wrestle against illusions behind eyelids,
sleeping in to swim with lucid thoughts
manipulation of the subconscious.
Is it real, am I submitting to a languid retreat,
or am I being covertly accomplished?
Suffering doesn’t exist unless I create it.
So how cozy is this bed?
It is exactly what I make of it.
Omitted
You tell me to sit,
and I sit.
You tell them to tell me, to stand
and I stand on wobbly knees.
You whisper through the digital crack
meeting me with a toss of the hand, reminding me of your lofty position.
You look me up, down, then look over my crown
and remove me once again from the conversation.
You are at the top and I look up from my chair down below.
You made that ranking clear, you set that bar
I have never felt lower, but I continue to grow.
Thank you for pushing me away,
your negligence with my temper
is the reason I search deeper for my inner sage.
Thank you for looking down,
it is my prowess beneath you that will shine from this same crown.
Someday,
I pray you see my power before your resources all drown.
Re-Birth
A whistle from the window
indicates spring has peeked its bald head from the pit of winter,
a fleet of emerald parrots beckones to be heard
all perched in order on these telephone lines.
Spring debuts her undercoat
with thunderous waves sending an echo across the valley,
lingering sunshine on the horizon
meant to keep us wandering further more.
Her stench is of sulfur and honeysuckle begs for
big breaths in to drink her release.
People start to shed their second skins,
pushing out their bellies and letting down their hair,
All for the chance to be bathed in the newness of season.
Like sunflower heads, we lift our chins,
pupils gaze hard until our retinas soften.
Petals of past days no longer show signs of fading,
we brighten under the birth light,
of spring's glittering spotlight.
Untitled
The last day of school is the first day of the rest of our lives.
The skirts of school girls show hems cut to release the angst,
pinched grins against golden skin as if aging never existed.
Nothing to fear but grown ups becoming men and women,
becoming the sins of their adolescence,
for these rebels know not of summer haste.
Their paper mâché cloaks were made from moonlit dusk,
when sprinklers on the horizon line bounced off bare chested 20-somethings,
and watercolor bled down their legs revealing rain-freckled interiors and glitter-filled veins.
Rolled another joint for the sake of staying up and it was something to do.
The niceties between ex's lit up in the thick of the radio waves,
between you and I, they were never going to last.
Falling first for their playlists then secondly for fervent lust,
sex really can manifest from boredom when the days refuse to end.
Summer calls,
we gather at the hemline where women sew fringe onto denim,
stitched from their regrets and risks in the hopes they will last through next three months.