In The Rain

Your eyes are like Summer rain on a sunny day.

And I love you.

I do.

I do.

But I’ve forgotten; I cannot hold you.

The Lover

I can only think of you.

In ways that only a lover should’ve….

The Bluest Eye: A Compendium of Poetry

                                                                  Toni Morrison

                                    Freestyle Poetry

                                        “Beauty”

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

What if it wasn’t true?

We could live in a beautiful world where color or race does not exist.

We could be happy.

In the year of 1941, I was a black girl;

I was of color.

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

What if it wasn’t true?

We could live in a beautiful world where color or race does not exist.

We could be happy.

Most misunderstand me.

I am mostly disliked by the color of my skin.

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

What if it wasn’t true?

We could live in a beautiful world where color or race does not exist.

We could be happy.

I have but one question;

Who are we really to judge a mere child by the color of their skin?

What is the perception of true beauty?

What is the lie?

God created man equally.

So why are people including children of color misperceived as ugly?

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

What if it wasn’t true?

We could live in a beautiful world where color or race does not exist.

We could be happy.

                                                ***

                                                A Tanka

                                        What truly is beau

                                        -ty? And what does it mean pri-

                                        or to the fact that I

                                         am a colored child?

                                                                                                                                                2.

                                    Freestyle Poetry

                                    “She is Black”

A black child is shot almost every three weeks in a month.

The child has a family to go to.

A white supremacist has the gall to take three seconds to pull out his gun,

One second to cock it,

And a second to pull the trigger in a drive by shooting.

She is seven years old and at a birthday party.

She is black.

She will not grow up.

She will not experience life’s ups and its downs.

She could have grown up to be successful.

She could have been somebody; somebody’s wife; somebody’s mother.

She is black.

Who is to blame?

Why is being black or colored, so different from white people?

In a corrupt society, we face racial injustice.

A black woman gets on a bus and gets called “nigger.”

“You shouldn’t be here!” A white man yells.

“Go back home nigger!” A white woman yells.

She is laughed at and is told to go home and get off the bus.

Little does the bus driver know, she is on there to get to her children.

She is single.

She is black.

She cries.

She has to walk now in the rain.

She is not beautiful.

She is not helped.

She is black.

Most women are victimized when they are colored.

For their natural hair or the color of their skin.

That….

Is WRONG.

                                                ***

                                    A Haiku

                        She doesn’t need blue

                        eyes. She is perfect from be

                        -ginning to the end.

                                                                                                                                                3.

                                                            Tanka

                                                “Case Scenario”

So you are black. Em

-brace it. You are beautiful.

You do not need to be white.

Not a white ass sheet.

                                                            ***

                                            A Brief Prose Poem on Beauty

Beauty does not lie in the eye of the beholder. You are beautiful regardless of what you misperceive about yourself and others. Stop trying to be like others. You were made in this world for a reason whether it is to show your strength in your words and in your thoughts.

Beautiful and pretty are modifiers but are only unconcise words. What is ugly to one person is beauty to another. Black is beautiful. Black is what made you. Do not overthink it and just relax. Beautiful and pretty are the lie; the misconception; the judgement that portrays racism and racial injustice to prejudice.

                                                            ***

                                                        A Tanka

                                                   I am beautiful

                                                   No matter how dark the co

                                                   -lor of my skin. Beautiful’s

                                                   a misconception.

                                                         ***

                                                A Haiku

                                    I want to be beau

                                    -tiful. But I already

                                    am. I will love… me.

                                    The Bluest Eye A compendium of Poetry

            All my poems are based explicitly on this book and are about racial injustice and the knowledge that a black woman should accept herself. In these enduring times where Donald Trump was letting violence against our black communities go, and become a trend; I’ve invented case scenarios (well, only one from the news,) for my freestyle poem “She Is Black.” “Beauty” was based on solely the novella. It is about loving yourself and your identity in these times of existential crisis with racism and people of color, and so are some of the haikus and tankas. It focuses on Pecola’s existential crisis on how she was just looking at her doll and the hatred she felt or projected about her skin color. The others just focus on racial injustice over black indigenous people of color in light of Toni Morrison’s novel.

The Wolf

That night, as the clock struck twelve,

He was wild and he was fierce.

Nobody owned him.

He; was like a wolf.

Interesting

I find you interesting….

The way your raven eyes full of galaxies bear into my soul what one should never bequeath.

You know every way how to stare into my soul.

You’re like a puzzle I’d wish to put together.

A mystery I want to solve over and over again.

I find you interesting.

The way you walk and waltz into a room.

The way your dances make me weak to the knees.

The way you look into my eyes as you touch me grating slowly into my soul.

A complicated book full of words I wish to read.

A compendium of notes with words that had never existed.

But O! How I wish to swim in your pitch black midnight eyes.

To see how you see me in them.

Oceanic Eyes

I swim in crystal

blue rivers inside of you

through your onyx eyes.

I Turn To You

The rivers turn to the sea.

The seas turn to the oceans.

As I turn to you,

and your eyes of black galaxies.