A Reckoning

daughter of thunder · A Reckoning

Tip-toeing atop my gut,

The cock crow echoes upward

and out.

An ordinary rooster could never:

Look me square in the face and label me liar—

“You’re one fraudulent claim away from

bragging rights at recess.”

But an imposter is nothing more than a

Sheet of black ice imposing on a truth;

And how slippery this bird that won’t perch!

Always an ill-fit flit of wind and ransom

 bargaining with my blood

(Even now with my stake bubbling bruises 

purple and red;

How many times can one woman cheat death 

before her Lord

And you ask me to deny him?)

First it is the serpent’s slander

“Is it really so?”

When we both know

The rooster won’t crow come morning.

About// hope

Postscript// bit of a spin on Peter’s denial at Mark 14:72

The Unwitnessed Fall of a Forest

daughter of thunder · The Unwitnessed Fall of a Forest

The cynic in me feels a storm raging on a cloudless day.

Said day begs me to see its potential:

“I can sift the silk from the spider”

Said day swears.

Of course it cannot.

The tree in the forest has fallen 

Whether we’ve acknowledged the rot in its stump,

Weak roots pulled taut and tired.

The branches are barren

And still we are demanding silk of the spider?

Still we are waiting for the devil to do good.

Perhaps it is the silence

After every bough has bowed gracefully in solitude 

That the whole earth will remember 

What it really was

And what it was not.

postscript// if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it...

Conjunctions (on Giving & Receiving)

daughter of thunder · Conjunctions (on Giving & Receiving)

At what point in the history of black women 

Were we burdened in blaze?

Did not wake up this morning itching to emasculate

and then spontaneously combust.

Would rather not understand the sharp edges 

of miscegenation, 

how that which is meant to coalesce 

Could cut so vividly and deep.

No, but 

I, too, crave unicorns, 

kisses the beat of butterfly wings

and other elusions.

Allusions not rampant with sex or slavery

But commas in the flesh;

I mean, living, breathing semicolons.

A man threadbare and ready.

Hands wide open,

Why would God be a Black woman?

daughter of thunder · Why Would God Be a Black Woman?

It’s catchy?

Paints a human

 supernatural, 

All fairy wings and scintillating breasts?

I guess?

God only knows how I, 

All snot and sweat and eye boogers of black woman

Could ever.

But deep down, you knew that already.

Knew this flesh and thigh and rib bone

Could not save you

The same way you knew a blue-eyed baby Jesus 

would not save you

and yet he was painted just so.

The sun of Israel never stood a chance.

The half-blood of an Asian?

(Yeah, but that God-half though…)

Is the Most High

(kicked-back over the Amazon,

Fork-tailed woodnymph interlaced between his toes

zephyr and orchid crawling round his ankles—

his glorious footstool)

Is He not a spirit?

Or will you fight yourselves to the death trying to prove Him otherwise?

John 4:24

About// we live in a world so offended by truth that it is labelled as enemy. there is no superior or supreme race, but then, deep down you knew that already.

Oil and Water

daughter of thunder · Oil and Water

Look! The mountain drip slick with metal

Drip bullets drip bodies drip blood

Raw iron

Ironically 

Is unassuming at best

Silver hands in his pockets, eyes unfixed on everything in particular 

Even from here I can see that he is dreaming

But when finally is concentrate 

Would annihilate nations at the flick of his flint wrist.

From across the valley, clay dust scales the mountain’s peak

Bentonite drinks whole all that surrounds it.

It is parched of reason, brittle and breaking at every conjecture

A nonmalleable god fit for the furnace.

At a distance one could mistake the iron and the clay 

To be friendly— smug branches of the same vine 

Brothers even, a genetic clone of the other

But

Magnetize and magnify;

No, I mean really hold the weight of the mountain in the palm of your hand.

Do you see it?

How repulsed they feel by their own byproduct?

So clay says to iron, he says:

“If only I could purchase our final dissolution”

“Indeed. How many peoples would pay the price

For our disaster?” Iron smelt.

Iron smelt death closing in,

hooves of a white stallion 

reeked of their own free demise.

About: the dual Anglo-American world power

Daniel 2:34

post script// of course, this is just a poem; for a detailed explanation of this bible account check out the source Jehovah has provided! 

Two Perspectives on Privilege part 2

daughter of thunder · Two Perspectives on Privilege Part 2

 II. 

Everywhere I go 

there is a drooling man

demanding I fall in love with him

and I can’t for the life or death 

of me figure out 

why

If you have never been raped before, it is like this:

some poor swine bound to the slaughter

by a noose, heartless for sport.

There are no strawberries or ranunculi,

just the hunter chock full of cock-knowledge

That what is necessary, what is inevitable,

is within his godpower to accomplish.

about// rapists, demons and the whole self-entitled breed of people

postscript// people who choose to ignore the problem are often worse than the problem itself

Two Perspectives On Privilege

daughter of thunder · Two Perspective on Privilege: Part One

Part One

Woke this morning to a ballistic missile lodged 

between the bed frame and dura mater membrane. 

It had no right!

The nerve to insert itself, uninvited,

into my bedroom and before I’d had my coffee.

Naturally, I knelt outside of my body, 

carpet burn on both knees trying to

pull the elephant by both ears out the room.

Each time I got a loose hold of the arsenal, 

Dribbles of sweat at my fingernails would drive

the lost thing deeper until wedged into webs of the subarachnoid.

(And isn’t that always the case?

The most indelible is irrefutably the most tragic?)

Shrapnel shards were not what I feared most

but rather the eager rage— how quickly it wanted to become a part of me.

So we battled there for hours: 

my human against this metallic carnivore

until night began to break free from its cloudy reign;

The half moon’s eery glow over the carpet, 

wet with the weight of warfare.

Luxury is only one click away away 

(conveniently blind to a young mother

breathing a bulwark over her infant)

with a hand

Whole and changed as the window into my bedroom 

about// the privilege of despair I feel as an onlooker of televised war.