An Undressed Wound

daughter of thunder · An Undressed Wound

 I.

 What is the point of dissecting an open wound?

I mean, the thing is already weeping. 

Do you think coagulation cares who the culprit is

so long as the clot can form?

What to do when the clot cannot form—

Peel back the gauze and ask yourself why:

By 5 I understood segregation before I could spell it.

More a feeling crept up the black of my spine 

than an abolished amendment.

“Nigger” under the breath by a boy who did not 

understand the meaning of my second name.

The undressed wound pleading: 

“No, but you’ve shaded my stars into night

Can’t you see Ufuoma means ‘peace of God’?”

A teen-aged blade to flesh the way his white friends

eyed-balled my skin

and then his skin

and then my skin.

“Yuck!” being the preliminary verdict before

being afforded the opportunity to justify my 

right to love him.

So by the time I reached 21,

I finally understood the shape of the purple bruising,

Could trace and retrace every bump and groove by

the ugly river it ran through my epithelium.

Were I to count the ways my fellow 

Homo sapiens have tried to inject shame into

who I perceive myself to be,

to pry their greedy little fingers into my consciousness,

Perhaps they would outnumber the melanocytes themselves!

As if another human

could ever discern through physical means what 

God Himself has crowned holy.

II.

While my undressed wound has your attention,

it would like to state for the record it 

did not ask to be here

(is in fact being slaughtered alive by an antibody army 

of its own making)

which is to say:

If there is a wound,

there will always be a healing

Oh if only we would let it.

About: I really believe there are some deep-seated and gangrenous wounds only God can relieve us from, one of them being racism.

postscript: On a slightly lighter note, our immunity systems are fascinating, aren’t they? Scarring by sheer feat of nature.

Brontide

daughter of thunder · Brontide

(Hmmm)

A bunch of hot air— 

Were I so frivolous a creature,

One could forgive all of those electrons’ misfortune;

the expansion and collapse amid a million

microscopic cell-cities.

But the brontide, he’s rolling in.

(Hmmm)

Lesions come lightning, whiplash pour hail!

Or is the smoking black gash

impaled on the evergreen a whimsy of light?

A big magical bang of grand ingenuity,

if you will?

(As if all the atoms in the atmosphere could conjure love)

 And what of the Atlantic?

What contrived power could convince an entire sea

to ripple at the suggestion of sound waves?

 

No, but the brontide, she’s rolling in.

(Hmmmm)

The manic laughter of rain, like thunder,

is seen before it is heard. 

The air swells sick with the sound

(you know the grayishblue your daddy warned you about),

An acidic drip lumped in your throat,

The unnerving buzz of chemical imbalance,

Arthritic chattering in both knees.

(Mmmm!!)

My God,

How many nights could Noah count constellations 

In a dry sky

Before the first decibels of thunder

Cracked the heavens wide open?

2 Peter 3:9 & 2 Peter 2:5

About: brontide (ˈbrän‧ˌtīd) noun— a low muffled sound like distant thunder

 

postscript: wow, yet another metaphorical physics poem from yours truly

I Am Not a Euphemism

daughter of thunder · I Am Not a Euphemism

 

I am a place you go laid bare

Do not look me in the eye holding a brick

And call it a blade.

True, the spade and mortar both build 

But the brick stands only as tall as the blade allows it to see;

Provoke the wall, I crumble at your feet

I am a place you go collapsed

Already a smelling fruit 

Overripe to all of that intimation 

Were subtlety sweet, my juice is run-dry with overflow.

Have been peeled back of virtue,

All the while praying to appear wholesome 

and worthy of your teeth

I am a place you go artless

Is no euphemism for 

this decay

this decomposition of logical thought

a brass polished brilliant from 

friction on friction on friction

Fact: I am a place you go unguarded against love

Raging heart rapid

as the wolf dashing tirelessly toward its end;

Do not look the wolf in the eye holding out bait

And claim it is not three tugs shy of a noose

Tell me precisely what you mean

I promise you, I mean precisely what I say.

Postscript// so much time for self-reflection, self-improvement and most importantly, the giving of oneself to others

Open Letter to a Field of Poppies

daughter of thunder · Open Letter to a Field of Poppies

 Aren’t we pathetic?

The inertia in the stance of our stems,

The solidarity of our collective spine 

tall as the mountain faith alone could uproot.

What the sun-beat calls foolish we consider

resolute come torrent or tempest wind.

And where to begin with our pistils shooting blind into sky?

No, but not for naught!

Always the fruit of another stamen’s labor to 

Remind us of what we were planted in this field to do. 

What a passerine might perceive as 

futile vanity— 

the way our crimson petals pop;

tiny fists of immortal spring—

Is in fact the instinct to survive,

if not gracefully.

 

No winter could defy us our rightful bloom,

no weed, our beauty.

And alas,

Our coat of sepal, 

the wind that drives open the stigma and pushes the pollen down down

The root, of course the root, always thirst and raw lust

Is perpetually satisfied if only we would let it.

All so that we can begin again.

Our river, One River,

our God, one God.

2 Chronicles 20:17

Come Dawn

daughter of thunder · Come Dawn

 

 Villainy is the pitch black nothing.

A dark I inhale yet cannot fathom,

like smoke but not.

The 89-passenger Greyhound railing me over 

 

come dawn

drowsy grasp for conscious thought 

Elicits

drowning gasp in conscious thought 

Every decibel of human hurt?

Green shape-shifting into a pitch black nothing

up the west coast?

(The empty din of a silent massacre)

A howling out from Russian bondage?

What noiseless cry on your bedroom floor?

This too is villainy

The Way He Does Not Love Me pulls the trigger

The Arctic Melt euthanasia 

not one creature soul demanded

We are encircled entirely by enemies;

just look at how the millennia snarl aloud,

licking our ears wet with blood

Light-ning strikes in the sixth hour (dawn come)

Death too is a dying breed

Her demise trembles restless with fear

About: the whole entire earth is crying out

 

1 Corinthians 15:26- The last enemy, death, is to be brought to nothing

The Predicate Revolts

I wanted to bend each word,

As blue waves bend in refraction—

yielding an entire sea of bent over cerulean wavelengths,

That is how I so longed to manipulate the subject into matter.

Wanted to carve purpose into pretension,

Wane profundity into pretty 

like christ-mass but Christ-less

like all frosting but no cake

like run-ons running on and on 

(and where is the point?)

A river running nowhere 

So alluring albeit insubstantial. 

I wanted to bennnd

each wooooo rrrrd;

worried when the army of predicate 

wielded its weapon of mass conception

in demand of truth.

about: purpose over poetry

Choice Weaponry When Waging a War

I hesitate to apologize

Not because I do not feel sorry.
Grief, a tyrant
proves nuclear in its suppressive power.

Unrelenting remorse is in fact

The trusty bayonet I reach for 

When all of my other emotions

deplete of ammunition.

But it is a passing sleet

when the fire is closing in;

what terror can an apology quiet,

what good does my sorry do?

Sympathy cannot be the best way to remedy a mass killing,

Is no tactic to declare a monster abated,

A baited Lochness writhing at the ropes;

Clearly the chaos will plan its escape.

And there I’ll be— hunched over, mouth ajar

when the rifle is unburdened any remnant of rage,

I will quiver my bayonet

More white flag than weapon

Nonetheless,

I carry it with me always,

I carry you with me always.

About: anyone else feeling utterly helpless and ineffective at battling this pandemic and every war it has waged on the human race?