here in this bed

not a sleepover

nor a slumber

but wide awake

with one another

count your sheep

tighten your covers

we'll lay here still

as if together

this must stay hidden

this can't be known

we'll keep it quiet

adjust our tone

there once was love

it turned to lust

left bodies thirsting

for more, for trust

here in this bed

we rest our bodies

                  here in this bed

we wait for sun

we wait for years

we wait

                  we're numb

never knowing

the end of pain

this inch between us

cuts like a blade

this inch between us

grows every day

and though we know

it's not forbidden,

we need permission

before it's written

we need assurance

we need acceptance

but what we needed 

                     were second chances

there's no grace

but we're disgraced

about something

                    so commonplace

we blanket attempts

try to save face

our hearts, our feelings

incredibly broken

likely unkempt

and so, why worry

why lie and why lay                  

as if we care

i'm over here and

you're over there

there is no voice

to this lack of reason 

they'll say it was sudden

as if it was an easy

                    divorce.

_____________________________________________
Writers Write Poetry Challenge Day 2

Prompt: 

Write a poem about something that is considered forbidden.

http://bsharisemoore.tumblr.com

the night will continue

the night will continue as the day pursues us

forget the darkness now

            division

dust                 dawn

wait for

my existence to catch up to the persistence of

your inevitable departure

pace my self as to continue the forward motion

            keeping in step            but splitting poles

narrow paths

creating the

            division

            balance

            symmetry

            duality

within worlds tilted, in order to spin faster

it’s physics/it’s factual

and it's only been [##] dayswithyou

            (re-membering together, but I do not recall)

but sometimes

            (yesterdays are better forgotten)

it seems the future becomes irrelevant when the now yearns so desperately to be loved

sometimes, yesterday isn’t worth the memory

                                                                        tomorrow, I'll think differently

yet today under the moon, we are gods/the night will continue

but today with the stars, we are gods/light from the sun spread thickly over our moons

             in air, burst, reappropriate ourselves and resume breathing        
             in the present

            the deepness that is us becomes shallow
             in our place between  time and space

           
you are infinite

                        remembered            worth the memory            forgotten

…and so am i…

separately and together, we are

the entirety of this universe known

and

unknown, like night skies

dark, far, untouched but

present.

___________________

Writers Write Poetry Challenge Day 1

Prompt: 

Write a poem of at least 15 lines that includes the line:

Sometimes, yesterday isn’t worth the memory.

The line can be placed anywhere in the poem.

http://bsharisemoore.tumblr.com

Black City, Julie Mehretu, 2007

Introducing Andrea Noel

The Apple of God's Eye, 2008, Andrea Noel

sequela (words series)

i read that word somewhere in the heaviness of the concrete, steel plates and patches of brown grass. the sky was blue in hue when i saw sequela and thought of you

beautiful. graceful. following your heart to the end of its passionate beatings to the beginning of its descendent atrophy

every prized moment in our time
every gifted treasure of our togetherness. all celebration lost with the dying of your heart

sequela, you are the consequence. you are the after. you are the non-existent recovery. you are what follows the disease bred in the dark.

"martha promise receives leadbelly, 1935"

           

when your man comes home from prison,

when he comes back like the wound

and you are the stitch,

when he comes back with pennies in his pocket

and prayer fresh on his lips,

you got to wash him down first.

you got to have the wildweed and treebark boiled

and calmed, waiting for his skin like a shining baptism

back into what he was before gun barrels and bars

chewed their claim in his hide and spit him

stumbling backwards into screaming sunlight.

you got to scrub loose the jail time finger smears

from ashy skin, lather down the cuffmarks

from ankle and wrist, rinse solitary's stench loose

from his hair, scrape curse and confession

from the welted and the smooth,

the hard and the soft,

the furrowed and the lax.

you got to hold tight that shadrach's face

between your palms, take crease and lid

and lip and brow and rinse slow with river water,

and when he opens his eyes

you tell him calm and sure

how a woman birthed him

back whole again.

- Tyehimba Jess