i'm a blessing baby
ripped from the womb of
a woman notorious for
being not so obedient.
my first vowels were
something like redemption's
steady retreat.
my first love like
god's forgiveness and
fuck you
all in the same breath.
i read the bible straight through
i knew it took more
than shiny binding and
blinding red words to keep my attention
so i bought the version
with the pictures
and noticed jesus didn't look
anything ilke a terrorist
but he should have.
i'm not saint
i bless people with words i
don't even pretend to fully understand
but i understand that breathing
takes a hell of a lot more work
than speaking and if
dhaarma taught me anything
it's that we are all blessing
look here
your hand curves and emulates
the movements of god creating
your heart beats like the
drum song that bound
your mother's heart to your tiny hands
that moon you wished on every night
because you knew it was the biggest star
and could afford to lose
a little light
that.
is blessed.

© 2009 Marcea L. Brown. All rights reserved.

prompt 1. august 1, 2009

Prompt: Write a free verse using "sparrows"

they land so easy,
easier than me
or this love
or past loves.
they land on collar bones,
couples that make me jealous,
on fragile wrists
lined with plenty of little branches
to call them to shore.
and when there's nothing to land on
i'm convinced the sparrows
will fly to forever,
finding a safe place
for our hearts to go to
to wait out the storm.
they will sing life
into our prayersongs,
breathe under our wings
and dare us to fly, too.
they are not swallows
or doves
they will not gulp down our grief and insecurities
and bring them back
as moonpearls.
but they dance on air
like dandelions
on a sunbaked sidewalk
to the tune of the ghettos.
they carry dreams to
the lost at home,
fly out with a last hope.
with so much,
you'd think gravity would
take hold and send feathers
tumbling beak over tail
over heavy hearts.

© 2009 Marcea L. Brown. All rights reserved.

not so old. July 31, 2009

on the day i decided to leave you,
you traced a map on my tongue
and told me
it would never be too late
to find my way back home.
we were always lost,
running toward
or past something,
never taking the opportunity
to be.
i wanted to stay.
i wanted to tell you, but
i couldn't lie
so i sat in the shadows
by your doorstep
and counted to 3,
ran to the wind
and haven't looked back since.
your windows
were always open, even
in the dead of winter
when my shivering carpals
were dialing my mother to
send me some sun and orange juice.
you were never good at heat..
you couldn't sleep
without at least one arm
being cold and lonely
there were five million issues i had with this.
one.
was that it was always the arm near me
two.
was that for some reason
that meant mine had to share the
same symptoms of solitude.
my hands were always quivering
in response to your back always turning.
i don't reach solutions
easily.
i teeter between stay
and go and hope
for someone to reach in and decide.
for two months,
i knew that we were
changing our ending.
i knew that the 'happy'should probably be
omitted and replaced
with something more fitting.

© 2009 Marcea L. Brown. All rights reserved.

not so old. July 31, 2009

i was born from metaphors
i'll never pretend to understand,
from sand that tourists
take home in little
tiny bottles with seashells.
sometimes we spend too many
seconds staring at nothing.
once, we stopped on the side of
the byway. our mission:
georgia peaches, rustic sun,
bull god, vertically stretched legs.
i was born to ridiculously mimic
your actions,
like somehow if i believed what you did
we would share the same skin.
we were fishing for things we didn't understand
our pride bulged out like a bullfrog
whenever someone suggested our ignorance.
you were one thing
i could never
figure out
how to go about
taking you off the tip of
my tongue
never tasted fruit like this
like we were biting the flesh
of 'no'
like tonguing the seeds of something
we still dont know the title of
hold me to this
stretch of road where we saved
our last breath
to wish for the innocence
we used to be.
we never wished on time,
never wanted a reversal of being
because being
wasn't something we had a definition for
and if you lose that in your travelling backwards,
how then do you describe it when you long for it again?
there are plenty of poems i left
in gravelways on the road to tennessee.
i planted the seeds
by the cherry trees that
weren't cherries at all
and hoped for the color to seep in
and bite the insides of their cheeks.
i was left knee-deep
in a current that looked me over
and decided i wasn't enlightened
enough to sweep me under just yet.
there
i was born enough to want
to walk on my own,
but not bold enough for the consequence
of simple existence.
i could've taken something then,
could've learned from the people
who'd never seen people like me,
could've figured out from the
hand-touch
that there was more to the story.
could've listened to the bedsongs
in the cherry trees.
we were born from instances
we will never remember
but they'll spend our whole life
attempting to scramble to the surface
and breathe
bluefaced
until their lungs are filled
with windsong.

© 2009 Marcea L. Brown. All rights reserved.