Black Poetry : Discolored Places

PoeticShae

Active Member
REGISTERED MEMBER
Oct 16, 2003
25
0
I.


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the smell of spaghetti sauce hit my noise
warm grits and hog maws roasting like fine spun silk
all enclosed in this yellow building,
discolored in mixed dust levitated, then deflated
by the shut doors covered in the I-don't-cares

the brown paint our maintenance men only overlaps,
once a year to cover the smog filled walls
can't wash out the stale fog
arched in our passageway
i-close my eyes and wish it all away

honey brown bar had another shouting,
ms gloria, busty eyed, voluptuous saw everything
the scrapped up shot glass, the clean sweep
where the cops leave no trace...no evidence
anything ever happend, seconds pass

the news hits my building like a piece of paper on fire
quick-quick the washed chalk lines presistent
embroider the side walk, the only time the streets around these parts show some color.


II.


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the court yard where my friends and i made cardboard
box-treehouses on the cements grounds
we wished--hard, we found a place where trees bloomed over the thick fences to keep us in.

we got penny candy from green's store
up the hill on the corner between hamilton and bruston ave
our pony tails fanned out,
biker shorts that skimmed up our knees inspired by our youth

when youth inspired us to live who we were
we played 7/11 in high glasses behind el court
where everyone knew us by name
we painted fingernails and jumpped hop-scotch
only to leave our marks too...

my home-place can be seen from the spit shine boots
that get dressed just to go downtown
away from welfare lines,
sun-crumbs that were never promised
to ever be anything more, but, the ghetto
not in me-just influenced, pushed like a nasty taste

flung on my lungs and lasting here in this place


III.


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i can recall our skips on sullied texile lush embracing
wondering in openings, where light isn't present, there
we could not pop the bubbles that kept us in refuge
our minds capped

the windows like bar wire hits my wrist leaving imprints
i imagine myself stuck behind here...forever
chained like my ancestors
exchanged from plantation to ghetto
never finding a pink opening

wondering,
will i be the woman who still believes
i can be sweep to a different place, under a carpet , lifted in secret
my bags of dimes rolled under the top of my stalkings
the air full of steel-blue tucked in the straps of my bra

something has gotta be better than this
the nights where mama held us under her belly
while the mice played patty-cake in our living room
i erase the urban out my mind, scared straight to never pass it to my children, the memories or shadows still angled in warm breezes

away from us chocolate know-nothings that run free
the haze transformed close but watch, never open
don't exist, forget, brainwash,
until home-wood is a distant line on our tail bones
 

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