Advice for Future Lovers

1.

When a woman is prepared to grant you the desires of your heart
Consider it with the seriousness of staring down the endless barrel of a loaded gun
Do not speak words of love, if there is uncertainty in the forethought.
Loving is a decision, not by default.

2.

Young mortals are on uneven ground with Goddesses.
Do not attempt to make her your own because you are enchanted.
If you cannot accept her as a woman when her glamour becomes flesh
Leave before she falls for your humanity.
Its easier to daydream than live with her in reality.
The Queen could not crown a royal bastard King
When he did not recognize his own reflection
No matter how many times she offered the mirror
All so broken and unable to live in peace.
Sweet beds do become bitter battlefields.

3.

Be grateful to leave a woman without scars.
If she has allowed you to leave with your dignity intact
Respect her.
Let no strange women speak or treat her carelessly.
Honor her enough to keep her good name whole.
Whores are not for the keeping of company
Or you will find yourself despised and outcast among those you once called friends.

4.

In the event you should grow into a man.
Find yourself and discover the world outside of you
The next time a woman offers her heart
Be ready with open palms
Know your own mind
So that you do not confuse hers.
Be a rock and not the shifting sand.

5.

Remember this poem
When you suffer your first real heartbreak.
When you wish for comfort.
When you miss the warmth of a sincere embrace.
Think back to the haven you left
To find your manhood.
Thank God for being able to feel and finally understand
That all things worth having require sacrifice
Especially when it hurts.

PAD #23: For "It Girls" (Women in the spotlight)

When our pain becomes so good to others, that it eclipses our true purpose...

The masses will worship us
with fawning gazes and saccharine praise.
We are most beautiful when we are
broken.
Brilliant when the pain sings
the ballad of a betrayed heart.
Our struggle is a splendid wine,
sipped slowly.
Savored between lips
that eclipse all truth and spin
us as fantasy.
Our flesh and blood is not
sexy enough for real life.

It's the price we pay
for being ingenious.
Goddesses beaming upon
the poor souls too blighted
in their ignorance.
Indifferent to the blows dealt,
to shape these Earthen vessels of desire.
Enamored with our grace
reaped through suffering
that births humility.
Finding our witticism sparkling
Never understanding the edge
has been honed by our inability to cry anymore.
So we laugh and make light of life.
It's too hard to weep, when water
is bought at such a high cost.

We accessorize agony
with charming smiles and wicked stilettos.
Strut with burdens balanced
on our supple spines.
Align our shoulders with the stars
and wear the shimmer casually.
Only a diva could be so carefree
with worry eating at the wounds.
Encircling our womb like a granite fist.
We spit gravel on mics,
and you call it shine.

Our love is a cage of azure peacock feathers.
Fury a forked tongue shrew
french kissing your soul.
We make heartbreak look gorgeous
decored in bloody velvet and lace.
Convince you the reason
you are here is to receive.
But we are possessing your minds
and spirits as collateral.
Profiting from your pathetic attempts
to gate us with expectations.
Of course you dream of us.
Sirens stealing your heartbeat.
Words tongue tripping each
vertebrae until you call ours names in the dark.
We saw you cum when we were not there.

Tasting your oily adoration.
You attempted to mask the musk
of your jealously.
Deliberately, we fuck with you.
Each stanza carves at your mind.
The prose penetrates your private
places.
This violation is good to you.
The way you wish your idolatry were good to us.
When you applaud our pain.
Ignore the pleas for compassion.
Disregard our humanity and sup
from the table of our damnation.
Our troubles delight you,
and you snap your fingers and demand more.

We are the word whores.
Place pennies in our pussies
and it will produce rainbows.
Wrap you in golden swaths of light.
Transcend you, and for a moment
you rest in nirvana.
Mary Magdalene of the moment.
The "It Girl" radiant, in your
narrow spotlight.
We make you clap for it.
Yearn for it.
Spend five bucks every night for it.
Bankrupt your brains for it.
Our head game is Freudian mixed
with Nietzschean.

How else can we serve you?

When the moon blows out and the stardust settles
We are a fragment of that ethereal being
Women of fragile bone, and resilient heart
Wanting nothing but our voices
and to be accepted as

Ourselves.

PAD #22: Today

For two days I have neglected
the world.
Turned inward and regarded
the mess that has become my life.
Part of me, does not know
how I got here.
Another, knows damn well
I have been a long time crumbling.

I am not broken,
but there are fissures in my soul.
Fault lines waiting to widen
with the next hurt.
Emotional meltdowns when
my hands and mind are not busy.
I tried to avoid home,
and found myself standing on corners.
Crying.
This is when I lost myself.

Tears come like intermittent downpours.
I am never prepared.
I can't stop the spills,
and maybe many more will fall
before this is done.
Stage faces were meant
to be washed off at some point.
I look very human right now.

I will stop apologizing
for all that I am not.
For having feelings.
Stop listening to those
who are not inside my head.
Take this one step at a time.
Reclaim my life and remain
brave enough to be this woman
whose blood is a river of fires
searching for the eternal sea.

PAD #20: Expose

Because you will gnaw my name
between your teeth.
Nosedive into the shadows of my world
in search of scraps.
Hold your breath for my
public exhalation.
Triumph in my troubles
and hope I will break and hide.
I write this poem for you.

You longed for us to fail
from the beginning.
Could not accept our love
for its reality.
I don't expect you to recognize,
what you have never known.
We could not fake the gazes,
the smiles, the love making, and
conversations past midnight,
the hand holding, and touching foreheads.
The sighs and the pain.

Our evidence was too faulty
for the flawed.
You searched for cracks
in the wall of our union.
Our wine was too sweet for
you to intrude on our communion.
Bitter is the woman who covets
the love of another sister.
Guile is the man who speaks
doubt in his brother's ear about his woman.
You smiled weakly in my face,
spoke directly to my man.
Offended he did not waste
a glance on you.
You could never replace me.
My reality would fade you
leaving only regrets that
you are not ME.

I am overwhelmed and juggling
a job, college and a relationship
on the rocks.
When there is love, but it's not
enough to make all things right.
Confused and needing the space
to think and retreat.
I am skeptic of my art and
angry at myself for not
following my dreams.
Not living up to the standards I deserve.
No one has hurt me more than myself.
I am nobody's victim, but I do know
the violation of a public view.

Fuck you, if you believe
I should be more than human right now.
Forgiving to those that mean me ill.
Bury any beefs that deserve to be
cattle to the slaughter.
For believing my consciousness,
means I won't curse you out or condemn you.
It's no easy task to be a Legacy, in a world
of energy vampires and zombies.
Bitch, you follow where I lead
even when you don't want to.

I am not afraid to bleed before you.
My life has always been open.
I grow stronger from your criticism,
and your inability to hurt me.
I am teflon, and you are
the bullets that failed to meet their target.
Adjust your bulls-eye and kill yourself.
Die to the pathetic creature you are,
and resurrect as a life with purpose.
The world needs more of me,
and less creatures like you.
Do the divine math, and see
if you could attempt to balance the equation.

My woes are war stories for women
who fight with teeth and heart.
Victorious because I can write my pain,
and still be open to love.
Not bitter and broken.
This volcano has awoken,
and the smoke is a sign of life.
For you it is a warning.
Be careful what you say,
because lava burns fierce and slow.
I am not sleeping...
I am not sleeping...
I am awake and ready to
Blow.

PAD #19: Back Again (Ocean)

I.

Here we are again,
hurting.
So broken and fighting tides
of bitterness.
Swallowing the axis of our hearts
and colliding in our souls.
A musical tempest.
Harmonies destroyed in the
downward pull.

II.

I fled into your ocean.
Hoping to be swept away from the shores.
Discovering you have been drifting too.
Shattered on the unkind rocks
as the seagulls pick at your ribcage.
The marrow in my lovely bones are chilled.
I needed the warmth of your flesh
to remind me I am still alive.

III.

You are virtuoso at mastering my pain.
Blending the vibrato of our heartbreaks.
Creating resonance from the dissonant beats
and break them into arias in my belly.
Chanting your name in ascending octaves
until I am breathless.
You scaling every arch of my body
Tuning me to your curvature.
Your staff striking my deep chords
My soprano shreds the darkness.
Encore, please.

IV.

The chaotic waves,
dwindle to soft currents.
We become reflective pools
mirroring vulnerability.
So beautiful.
Hearts just like the ocean.
Vast as the hurts we harbor.
Stranded together.
Awaiting the tide
to drown us once more.

PAD #13: The Spirit Beautiful

We have been taught to stand before mirrors
in judgment.
Condemning every curve, roll and dimple of flesh.
Breasts heavy with the yearning to be free
of their burdened hearts.
When was the last time you found yourself beautiful,
Woman?

We are strident slashes on neutral canvases.
These bodies do not fit into ideal figures.
Failing imitations of media mannequins.
Rife with thinner and thicker than thou complexes.

If we are different
Our celebrations are more like martyrdom.
When courage is stronger than manipulation.
Society will grapple our identity, fondle our confidence
and co-opt our sensuality.
Strip and display it like
young women on poles.
Bone, blood and supple flesh
offered to indolent eyes.
Beauty is for the bartering
and there is no self value on the stage.

When are we going to come off the stroll?
Stop painting ourselves garishly or
fade lackluster.
Cease being walking ads for every product
claiming to induce beauty.
Producing nothingness
in the nexus of our beings.
How gorgeous is the girl
who knows her own soul?
Is not afraid to live by her heart
and not in the sight of others.
Radiating the natural glow of a woman
In love with herself.

Naked to no one, but myself
I brave the mirror.
Accept the imperfect reflection,
knowing this body is beautiful.
Battle scars like sacred hieroglyphs.
Soft parts like rose petals on pillows.
An earthen vessel filled with
the wine of life and brilliance unbearable.
The Spirit Beautiful.

napowrimo #11

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