Hurricane
I love you like a hurricane
My Poetry
You Left Me In A Lumberyard Last Night
rustle rustle goes the night
rustle rustle goes my knees trying to get right
goes my arms trying to steal warmth
goes the snipping critters looking for a bite
you left me in a lumberyard last night
cuddled up to wet kindle
heart splintered like a useless piece of wood
shrapnel in my hands and cheek
industrial steel covers for sheets
night creeps
discarded trash speaks
i think, voice box cracked
weak
from calling your name
that I am lost in a manufactured dead forest
waiting for you to reclaim
me
if I am solid the creatures that be
won’t find the hiding place
I miss your quiet face,
still like wood
scavenging through the dust & debris
I will make fire
let the wood face cook the cold away
it was cold when you left me
chuck in chunks of my lumber prison
I guess I’ll call this yard home now
this & that petrified stack
will be the bedroom where the moon used to make room for you
I thought I mattered more than a tattered doll
forgotten and ignored
left under humble rubble
rumble rumble goes the night
rumble rumble goes fear’s appetite
goes rowdy, rough boys looking for a fight
i shiver into a corner trying not to be seen
im scared and alone
in this processed jungle
needing a way out of the fallen log’s bowel
I’ll build a tower of babel
with reconstructed self esteem
as an escape
Limber up hacked limbs of timber
the timbre clanging as I climb to the heavens
to find you
ring ring goes the night
ring ring goes the alarms of my flight
goes my resolve
goes my hemorrhaging heart from love’s sight
Alarm Clock Blues
I opened my eyes and not to my surprise
My alarm clock didn’t ring
Stapled to the bed my body slept
When thoughts into my head crept
I just wanted to crawl back into the
Somberness of sleep
Feel my fantasies come alive
Without the actuality of living them
10 minutes too early I hear imaginary ticks
1 minute in the questions roll in
Thick as the goose down blanket
I used to block it out but the
Feather thin questions keep slippin in
What are you doing?
You are half awake in a world that is comatose
Why do you insist on an overdose of their sedatives?
Why don’t you live and take your dreams with you?
Minute 2
I survive the first attack and make a quick move
But my whole body is a 10 bowling ball sack
Forcing me to list to more what if’s and maybe’s
What if that little girl running down the road
Understood that when she woke up her life was to erode
Into the military violence forced on her by the Sudanese government?
Maybe in her sleep she’d a heard her mother’s muffled screams?
Heard the Janjaweed Janjaweed shout?
Saw another way out before the devil horse ran her down?
Its about 3 minutes now
How could he sitting on his pillow soft cotton bed
Wake with the singular thought to put a gun to his head
Call his girl on the phone tell her he missed her
Then pull the trigger?
Did the red bandana dye seep into his mind?
Tell him bloodshed is the only way to serve his country
Minute 4
What are we fighting for?
Will a black president
Set the precedent for success
Or will the excess lies
That were ostracized
During Bush’s reign
Rain on his parade?
Minute 5 arrives
Why did God wake me before the alarm clock that lies by my side?
Does the Lord know that I tried to hide during the night?
Will I always feel as warm as these orange stripped covers?
What if my best is not the best?
What if I rise so fast that I fall like bricks?
Minute 6 only minute 6
Why are these ticks not clicking quick enough?
Why don’t you just stand up? Or should I kneel & pray?
Should I live for Him? Or should I live for those who won’t live for Him?
7 minutes pass in this hellish heaven
Someone had to have woken up in love this morning
Right?
Minute 8
Can’t the suffering wait?
Minute 9
It’s a clean slate
No thoughts
Just wavering sleep
Feeling the density of the room’s hands
Pressing on my back
Moving up the sheets
to where the intrusive
alarm clock rings
Chlorine Splashes
chlorine splashes
dirty blue
untold secrets in this dirty pool
his eyes stare
cold blooded
hands bare
touching there
his hands in her hair
helplessly i stare frozen to the stair
i feel our eyes touch
children need not see
the ugly truth that be
Tension so deep that the water sleeps
he leans into her more
the terrace shrinks
with chlorine splashes
he’s out
I don’t scream
stupid
why don’t i scream
they leave
count the stars to quiet your racing heart
the sky
the world
a salty sea splash of dirty blue
drowned with untold secrets
Redeemption
no no no
all i hear is screams
the knife
the bat
the gun
lay on the table
all i think of is the screaming
the knife thrust to the stomach
ripping, tearing
the swung to the torso
breaking, crushing
the gun shot
blood blood is on your hands
he slowly leans to the side
breathing his last breaths
my nightmares haunt
make them stop
it wasn’t me
please
High School
These hallways resound
the sound of our breath even when we are not around
to gasp at its fluidly tight air
Our buzzing energy absorbs into every
cinder block
giving spirit to the walls even when they are empty
We give life to the building
of dancing dreams
Circling our fated decisions like Cassius Clay
we enter a vertical, hollow ring
I dodge shoulders on the way to class
Remember to get a pass to see Ms.… Thing
Combinations or Permutations 13 42 13
Certain I can’t finish 2nd’s homework in 1st
First begins with a teacher who didn’t respect me previously
Now works frivolously to see my good nature. What…
We and these hallways are backbiting, jealously warm family
bound together by laws, plaster, and bricks
The longing anticipation to bust free of it
is only so strong when your kin is close
This building builds us up like Big Mama’s hugs
simultaneously
changing us like father’s hate/love
And sibling rivalry seeps into our souls when we past each other in these halls
playing in unrecognizable blood
Friends and hugs Smiles and PDA
I need to get to class Get out of my way!
Oh wait it’s you slow down we still cool
We have time before it rings to talk over some things
Ringalingaling… Guess not
We are jungle
Wild and unkempt
These corridors are society’s attempt
To refine and reprint copies of itself
The walls
Enclose us and hold us
Cradle and mold us
We willfully unwillingly are apart of this building
This cold concrete Mother
I am always surrounded by people and still am alone
I want to go home
No more tests or teacher’s hissy fits
Girls screaming from how hard rumors hit
Am I the only one who’s sick of it?
The mouths move that sit behind the desks
I’m hungry…When’s lunch
These halls will shove us into the Un-
Known
Foreseen
future
nipping at our memories like starved fledglings
heartbroken that we have flown
Bottomline
I can’t wait
to graduate
But I will miss
this
place
Ring… Ring… Ring…
Bordering On 5 AM
It is bordering on 5am
here I sit
fully awake
listening to the mundane hum of a ceiling fan
filter into the sounds
a house makes
when no ones moving
A white spider crawled from the depths of the couch
cross my sheet
& still I didn’t flinch
I simply sat
I sit here
memorizing every piece of furniture
staring at the ripped out stitches of an old couch
until the unexpected gut urge
to seek pen & paper
begin to twitch my fingertips
its an idea
premature obscure and cloudy
but as my search narrows
the
fog becomes elaborate clods packed with words
my eyes would not shut
my mind would not stop placing the words
seeing them in my head as if I had already written it
They floated there for hours
through the background of
headphones TV and conversation
until even now as day breaks into night
with nothing but my heart beat
to remind me that I am still alive
even that seems to thump words
as I conclude my search
when my eyes finally rest on my notebook
Divinely inspired is what he calls it
The peak hours allow sufficient silence
as I think at times my thoughts run so deep
that consumption ensues
I begin to feel every story I breathe
life to
from the time it enters my mind
to the moment its on the page
it is me
invented or not
the characters have faces that I can see
& I must write their story
There is a reason
for sleeping late with scribbles still swirling in my head
for sitting here
to know that now bordering on 6am
sitting here blankly staring at the floral patterns on the couch
isn’t crazy
I write to fill a void
I write because
it is the only remedy
for a long sleepless night
of ignoring a force
that commands me to write
even now
my eyelids sink & I feel sleep
meaning my thoughts may rest
knowing they are held safely within black binding
later to be shared
with those who are willing to listen
Brooklyn Chronicles: Ch 18
You gunna help me out
I ont want no trouble
Juss trynna get by
You knoe.
Change?
The Color Question
I wonder what color the trees would be if they weren’t green
Maybe they’d envy the sky and be blue
What if I weren’t brown
What if my melanin morphed into red hot like a corvette red
Give adequate reason to associate me with the colors of devils
Justify why I have been outcast amongst civilized people
So when I disrespect my mother
& cock guns to unload clips at my brother
Just call it the devil painted embedded into the cells of my skin inbreed into future generations
That way you can explain
Sloppy attitudes towards education and infidelity displayed in fiction
Just say red people are born that way they follow Lucifer its true look at the stance
Too proud for any man and those hands Gifted for music
A tool that the Fallen Angel used to sway the masses
Red
Symbolizing the millions of gallons of a blood shed of a people in constant struggle
We fight monarchy democracy colonization
only the evil bite the hands that feeds you
Imagine the initiator of this secular epidermis raising his hand to God among saint and angels brimming with the purest color there is
But having the life knocked out of him as he crashed to the ground he fermented this
Planet with the people the color of death brown
So that is the rationale behind the apartheid and mass genocide in Africa
That is why our attempts to govern ourselves fails
And the freedom of trafficked humans in the forgotten countries on a black continent
isn’t announced on an international scale
Red
The color of demons and whores
That’s why thousands of black men deserved to be strung up by their necks
& women sexually exploited for centuries dignity torn from between their legs
Then I could understand if I weren’t brown
Perpetrating in this skin that reflects the dirt within
You red like burnt apple cinnamon
Nah I’m red like a crimson letter stitched to our dress big bold and obvious
Like yellow stars watched by Gestapo
Fully clothed in villainous costumes we were born standing in the public square
Waiting for the pale heroes to smite us with heavy blows
We all know our color makes us easy targets
how about we vote on another color
Pink is too close to red, purple yellow orange reminds me of something like lemon/cool-aid & I don’t know about you but I don’t want to be known as
the sugary artificial dye #4 people
So how about we name ourselves a color that properly represents the flesh bone and soul
The question was so perplexing that I had to go on a search and look for the definition
Listen
Brown is a natural down to earth neutral
Found in earth wood and stone
Represents wholesomeness steadfast simplicity
Convey a simple feeling of warmth love & honesty
Then it went onto list synonyms
Chocolate tan mahogany oak
Hazel bronze sienna toast
I decided you could call me whatever you please
Because brown looks pretty fucking good on me
© Perception 2011, Ariama Long
I Walk
I walk
Hearts beat slow like molasses
Classes cant teach this
Cold flashes as wind passes
Little faces pressed up against glasses
Intense invincibility crashes
I walk
Through poets snaps
Heads high under fitted caps
Down piss stairwells and rainbow train maps
Past tense strangers as litter makes laps around the tracks
I walk
By gangs of accents that flood these streets
Red and black pleats on the scarves that match the weaves
Heats me headphones spill with fierce beats
Cars breathe
I walk
Seeing encroaching high risers and pushy condos forcing out mom and pop stores
Franchises envying the space across the project mother’s floors
While workers huddle exiled nicotine in front of their doors
Corner hustlers beg for more
I walk
Dreadlocks swing free as sirens sing
Birds screech while fluttering cross musical intersections that play for buildings
I walk
Triumphant stut past soup kitchen line where my father spent some time
Anklet bells chime like inmate shackles as they echo in the officers eyes that watch mines
Pupils black like trigger happy minds patrolling the confines of my borough
I walk
Past Brooklyn roots sucking memories out these trees
Fleets of preachers moving boulders
Africa seats himself amid the sunset on his knees
Praying for the priests in the country of nativity
I walk
Flipping my hair to portrait still water in a writer’s paradise
Helicopter star lights freckle the night hates on my smile lit bright like a torch carrier’s stride the day feels right
I walk
It seems all roads lead to the county of kings
Where drunks marry these blocks children liquor fiends
& conceit glistens off door knocker earrings
The hood stings like
Corruption flowing into my dreams
Like the sound of a smack to the back of the head as it rings
Like 10 000 mosquitoes bites on one of them hot ass summer nights
I walk
Admiring gargoyles that architects took time to chip into existence
Too bad they don’t exist in neighborhoods where copper skin is plentiful sense
Their meant to keep out bad spirits
This painful shutout we spray paint onto the breast of our buildings
Given shades of cool mints and reds so when the sun hits
It sprouts yellows and oranges in different hues
So beautiful that in blissful unawareness the bricks drink our pride
so we are unashamed to walk in the daytime
© Perception 2011, Ariama Long
The Poetry Corner 