Love Poetry For Couple

I am a black woman with straight hair trying, I am my brother�s sister with a fist up. He is my brother with his fro down; the only ones in this room of the world with regret? I will not forget how our mother pulled a heated iron comb through her hair, taking out the kinks that used to adorn heads of queens and kings, with the hope of ironing out her life. I am a sister with straight hair trying to survive. My father ran the hundred meters and was first, he picked the shotput of his life in his hands, like a pumpkin, and lifted it to his shoulder, all the while saying nothing. That night we would eat. I�m a black woman with straight hair trying. He never said anything when the Englishman looked down on him on the street or at work, he would type letters, write articles for the office and classify them in the right places, as all the time he swallowed his bile to place later at the bottom of the stack but in a separate file. My siblings have kinks in their hair, hard

�after e.e. cummings I like four-five like he is nobody, it isn't quite new a thing; like as in why the way his necktie hangs; O half-mast in a pair of pants at the memorial of a soldier, and to a world that is of girls, world of boys, small-hand trick to shock unspeakable face addressing the when of our world with a what in the lumps of his duds� the unbelievable warts of it all, of slow horror coming from the sea, photo of despair showing who you know, the oddity of tweeted speeches even as his base comes over in the flesh chanting: four, maybe more. I like four-five. I like his hows. And, possibly, I like the thought of y'all collectively with friends against why under him so very few.

1866. Who can't like the way Courbet painted women? Jo on the bed with her head thrown back, as Gustave fiddles with brush and palette. That is how it ought to be, for heaven told us to call the sun when in trouble, call the wind, raise rivers off their floors. But is this iron lung mine? Plastic heart mine? My face can no longer be stretched. Am I wearing plastic boobs or a rubber crotch? High over mountains, above a hawk that stares with beady eye, above the stratosphere and beyond, no distinct air can breathe. The ozone layer has even fashioned a funnel to shoo shit out; for the world is its own prosthesis. Otherwise breathe under an arm the aromatics of life's smell�for Courbet's painting is on the wall of my room, inside a frame carved from the bark of a tree. This poem is from the book Waslap (2015). It is hardly fair that we have just this month discovered the real name of the lady whom Gustave Courbet painted in 1866. I don't care... I called her Jo because wo

I wonder about the trees. Why do we wish to bear Forever the noise of these More than another noise So close to our dwelling place? We suffer them by the day Till we lose all measure of pace, And fixity in our joys, And acquire a listening air. They are that that talks of going But never gets away; And that talks no less for knowing, As it grows wiser and older, That now it means to stay. My feet tug at the floor And my head sways to my shoulder Sometimes when I watch trees sway, From the window or the door. I shall set forth for somewhere, I shall make the reckless choice Some day when they are in voice And tossing so as to scare The white clouds over them on. I shall have less to say, But I shall be gone. I cannot say enough about Robert Frost . I even had a vivid dream about him once, not too long ago, whereupon he refused to have a selfie taken of me and him. I learned, from him, pace as well as belonging, I learned that it's okay to speak your tongue, the way your folks do. No

solitude was not what I aspired to, living a chemical life just the two of us, or with one-and-a-half children as Sunday parents, our staff having left lunch ready on the table, spoons, forks, knives, to go to their lives. I walk on marble, and wear thick fur, not knowing any more what it's all for. Pindrop Press 2012

When his voice spoke out we knew it and shared it quietly in our homes, it sent birds off into a liberty we'd sought, shook us and made more sense than any bullet could. A shipment of Negroes left the shore into the world, its face the Sirige masks of far cotton fields. From floor to roof his tap root fills my room. Bush lines crease its face, Xhosa hair dots its head. The first time I thought it was a mistake� this ideal he was prepared to die for, but it was there in his voice, joined by others on the island a stone's throw from The Cape of Good Hope. At night when the wind is still you can still hear the island whisper in nomine Patris et Fillii et Spiritus Sancti. Until it quiets down and we go back to work in the morning and return to our shacks in the evening. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

"As American as the blues is, its DNA takes us back to Africa. To Mali, Mauretania, Senegal, Niger, and other countries in what is known as the Sahel, the region of Africa between tropical Africa (Congo, Cameroun) and North Africa. Unfortunately, it was the through the slave trade that the musical and cultural influence spread. Brazil, which got more Africans than the U.S., got most of its slaves from another Portuguese colony, Angola. The U.S. ports of entry for slaves included Charleston, South Carolina and New Orleans. Senegambian slaves were monotheistic (Islam) and either converted or syncretized their belief system into Christianity. By contrast, Catholic countries such as Haiti, Brazil, and Cuba imported slaves from countries where polytheistic religions and animism prevailed. It was also those polytheistic countries that had polyrhythms in their music. Slaves coming to America came from monotheistic, mono-rhythmic cultures. Just compare Brazilian samba or Cuban music with

I have asked my siblings to help me shift the furniture against the walls into an arena, to make more room, her madonna heart is within that room, but there is not only her in there, sitting with that long smile. An angel flies in on one wing: now there's a mockery of life, for there is no uncertainty in the way we acknowledge a loss. She knows the truth behind the world, the surprises it peddles in darkness. In my own room I put my belongings together, for I must be on my way in order to be back. She's in there, now, while night touches itself, its fingers slow and lingering. She waits until her boy comes in and floats to her in that pernicious room, on the morning of which she'll pick her things and pack, in order to come back another day, and wait for night that starts to arrive when she leaves, and the boy flies away. The Onslaught Press 2015