ePoetry

The Perfect Man

You are tall as a mountain
You are short as a stump

You are skinny as a pole
You are fat as a lion

You are in between.

You are my Black man.

You are young as a baby
You are old as time

You are intelligent as a scholar
You are illiterate as can be

You are my Black man.

You are strong as an ox
You are weak as a butterfly

You speak the truth
You lie like a rug

You are my Black man.

You are as dark as coal
You are as light as can be

You are a giver
You are stingy as hell

You are my Black man.

For all that you are
And all you dare to be
One thing is for certain
You are the world to me.

I see you for who you are
Who God deems you to be
For He makes no mistakes
In His creativity.

I am to you what you are to me Together we are The whole of
What God deems us to be.

We forgive our mistakes
We understand our flaws
We accept our humility
We respect our cause.

You are a lover
You are a friend

You are my ally
You are never my enemy

There is no in-between.

You are my Black Man.

Bag Lady

(Inspired by the artist WAK)

God blessed me with a beautiful bag
Before the time of my conception.
He said I would carry this bag with me through life.
How glad was I to know
That I would be given a goody bag
To fill up with wonderful treasures
As I live out my days here on earth.

As a little girl, I filled it with lonely days
And hard nights.
I filled it with the big hands of those that touched me
Before my time.
I filled it with those that snuck me off
To a clandestine area
And forbade me to tell a soul.
I filled it with the tears and screams
That bellowed from me when he hit my mama.

As a teenager, I filled it with the hopes
I began to establish for myself
Because when I grew up
I was gonna get away from all that stuff.
I emptied out some of those hopes when I was eighteen
To make room for my little baby girl.
Then I emptied out a few more hopes to make room for my other baby girl.
Them I emptied out a few more hopes to make room for my son.

My bag began to fill with struggles beyond my wildest dreams.
I placed the man who became my husband in my bag
And we emptied out some more hopes
To make room for my other son.
Now I have four children
An ex-husband
And a heavy bag.
Little did I know that the bag could hold more.
Because the bag began to fill with
Work
School
Painful relationships
Bad nerves
Bad credit
On and on.
Now my bag is heavy
And as I drag it through life
I have come to realize
That the bag is eternally mine.
God gave me this bag to store the essence of me.
The good, the bad, and the ugly alike.
Therefore I have room
To find my hopes
And put them back in my bag
And never again take them out
To make room for anything or anyone
Because this bag was made to hold it all.