Dark Days

(Inspired by Nikki Giovanni)

I sit in my prison cell,

My first date with a prostitute was my last day of freedom,

Dreaming when my world was alive,

Now I’m in a 6×8 room with a toilet and sink,

I have been here the last 20 years wishing to see my mother,

One more time before she goes to heaven,

While I sit in this cell with a toilet and sink.

Choices

(Inspired Nikki Giovanni)

For Vincenza Antonetta

I had no choice to not be put away in that mental hospital,

With its padded rooms and five-point restraints.

I had no choice to not go insane with those memories of rape and incest and killings.

No, I had no choice to escape from my past.

No choice from receiving those anti-depressants and shock treatments

Cameras watch me 24/7

Nurses wearing those white dresses and white hats and stockings,

There was no choice for me not to go insane—

As I count the pads in the ceiling.

My Black Mother

(Inspired by Langston Hughes)

I don’t want to forget my Black, mother.

She was half-Cherokee and half-Negro.

The old brown radio with all that static played her hymns,

Sitting at the kitchen table all I hear is the static.

Cross

(Inspired by Langston Hughes)

It is the cross that does not break her spirit

The cross is full of despair on her shoulders.

It is the cross of being a black woman in the ghetto,

On her death bed tears run down her reddish brown cheeks,

She has carried her cross long enough.

A Change of Seasons

My hair is gray and my bones crack,

It is time for a new season in my life.

I grow old watching the snowflakes fall from the gray sky,

I remember my childhood as snowflakes land on my tongue.

Spring Rains

The rain appeared from the open sky,

Just in time for my garden,

A garden that was tended to by my mother,

Riding my radio flyer and play Cowboys and Indians alone,

My mother was never too far.

Her love was never washed away in the spring .rains

The Spring Rose

My garden is full of roses;

I tend to them in the spring,

It is after a harsh winter but my roses survived.

Waiting

(For Julie)

I wait like the cursor on the page,

It keeps on blinking.

I wait for that moment when everything turns dark,

And the blinking stops.