Perturbed

Today I have no poem about love or Victory or coming out or my girlfriend.
Today I am very upset. So I can’t write about sex,lovemaking, licks, kisses, massages, touches or orgasms.
I am VERY upset! My joy, my merriment, even the love I am enjoying so very much is invisible today. My eyes, blinded by rage, pain is sharp in my soul, my tears wet, stinging and burning like the turmoil within me.
I AM UPSET because sometimes it feels like the world hates me. Not me KishaLynn. But Me, the lesbian.
They hate me in Virginia, where the civil union I don’t even have yet, might mean nothing. Even the medical power of attorney, I might have gotten, so I could have her by my side, should I fall sick and prepare to die might mean nothing.
They hate me in Michigan, where some asshole doctor, might CANCEL MY APPOINTMENT and refuse me care, because I sleep in the arms of a woman each night.
They hate me in Rhea County, Tennesseee, where they tried to ban me from living in a place I wouldn’t even stop to take a SHIT in!
And they certainly hate me here in Georgia, where So. Ridiculous. 595 is the reason my girlfriend told me that my desire to marry her one day is a joke.
I AM UPSET because if I were a sperm donor to my partner, I could HAVE automatic parental rights in the absense of a contract stating otherwise. But if I am an egg donor to my partner, I have no rights, and no child.
I AM UPSET because my evangelist aunt was visiting and ASKED for a place to stay and when I told her she could stay with me,
but just know that I was gay she said thanks anyway.
I’m upset!!
Really, really pissed off!
I’m called a dreamer a lot but how can that be. Surely all I see is a nightmare!
SO WAKE ME UP!
Because I don’t want this slumber of upset anymore.

Contemplation of a Dream

To wake up next to her
Each day
Is an answered prayer
From a broken
Confused
Childhood
Adolescence
Adulthood.

Verbose supplication for
God’s demonstration of
True love
In the physical form not just
Spirit.

Her flesh
A testimony
Christ
Has heeded my call
And awarded my diligence.

Freedom to love
Free me to love
My Cry
Love me
Her cry
And I do.

Sweet Lord do I love this woman
Whose touch is
A succulent symphony
To my skin and
Whose radiance is
From beyond the sun
Or any light.

She is mine and the
Nightmare
I have lived for 23 years
Has turned
Into
A dream.

Asleep my fears
And doubts and worries
And insecurities.
The former insomniac of my tortured mind
Sedated by the dream of
Real love
Looking me in the face
Soft hands reaching out for my body
And grasping my heart.

Dear Lord shall I awake and
Return to the nightmare of heartbreak?
Shall newfound freedom
Give way
To the imprisonment of
Loneliness?
Or is she mine?

The celestial whisper
In my ear
As I drink of the
Nectarous fountain of her essence
Is
Unto you I have given this gift
of her
who is like god.
And as you love her
Closer to Me you grow
So sleep My child
And never awake.

She is
As I
Yours.

I’ve Learned

i have learned…
to never judge a yahoo profile
by its weed references.
thank god i really didn’t know
what “toking” was, or else
i might have never messaged you.

i have learned…
to never get pissed when chatting
because the girl you are trying to get to know
is being standoffish and bitchy
she’s just testing you out
because she suspects you’re a guy.

i’ve learned that it’s okay
to let a person call you
after a week of chatting because
it could lead to countless nights
of hours of talking and laughing
about everything then
hanging up the phone in sunrise hours
to trip into dirty jeans and a t-shirt
yawn through the morning commute
stumble into work
then snore happily in your car
during your lunch break
clutching the phone in your hand
just in case she calls you again.

i have learned never to take the words
“i don’t want to have a relationship”
personally.
just do your best to help heal the wound
that some angelic
or lying
bitches left
by loving her like she’s never been
loved before and watch her
walls come down and the love
grow and flow freely.

i have learned
NEVER, EVER EVER
have a rum & coke
gin & tonic
3.5 regular tequila shots
and one
hot ass body shot
plus 2 nyquil at the end of it all
and expect to feel like anything but shit
in the morning.

i have learned to always give
a second and third chance.
and a fourth if necessary.

i have learned that it is possible
to be touched on the inside parts
with one, even two fingers
and not feel like your body
is being torn into 2.

i have learned that
tongue rings do make a difference.
and so does ice.
now, explain halls to me again?

i have learned that it is possible
to strain your tongue muscle.

i have learned that truly
love sees no color
age
religion
belief
or musical preference.
love only sees the heart
and all it finds in mine
is you.

thank you teacher.

Friend, Almost A Lover
(a merger of original and open mic version)

Friend, Almost a Lover

i see you when honey brown lids cover
hazel eyes
and i breathe the soft scent
of your skin and hair and cigarettes
and am lost in the thought of you
soft an hazy beneath me
it is hard to sleep at night without
your warmth your breath your
touch your heartbeat beneath my earlobe
I want so much to call you to me and make you mine
and each time you are with me
it is like a prayer that you will never leave
my friend
you are
almost a lover.

a curved drum receives the signal
low and warm of a voice
soft and sensual through waves floating
invisibly in the air
a laugh a smile even a word
translates into a slight racing of my fond heart
and i am a rare whisper
while i think of
trickles of your hair on my face
and the vibrative sound of you moaning with pleasure
chest rising and falling
beneath my lips and teeth
hips grinding against my palm
melting into me as i love you
the best way i can let myself love
a friend
that is
almost a lover.

i want to taste you and feel the
depths within your heated
softness
i want to merge your lesbian soul into mine
i want to fall
against your skin
in the absence of all
fabrics
and reach for you across the night
and move with you against Egyptian cotton sheets
i want to feel hot
wet
fluid
motion
ascend into the arms of
orgasm and
surrender to slumber
till the sun lights your ivory face
but i wait and relish
small doses of your sweet loving
through distance
spaces of time
and emotion because you are only
my friend
but
almost a lover.

Friend, Almost A Lover
(as recited at author’s first open mic reading 2.15.04)

I see you
when caramel lids
cover hazel eyes
and I am lost in the thought of you
soft & hazy beneath me
and I want so much to
call you to me and make you mine.
My friend
you are
Almost a lover.

A curved drum receives the signal
soft and warm vibrating in my head
and i think of
tendrils of your hair
spraying across my face
and the silky, milky silhouette
of you melting
into me
and i start to fall
but i can’t because
you are just
a friend, but
almost a lover.

I want to touch you and taste you
and merger your lesbian soul into mine
and reach for you across the night
and Egyptian cotton sheets as my
arms wrap around you to
love you the best way
I can allow myself
to love
a friend that is
almost a lover.

Friend, Almost A Lover

i see you when honey brown lids cover
hazel eyes
and i breathe the soft scent
of your skin and hair and cigarettes.
it is hard to sleep at night without
your warmth your breath your
touch your heartbeat beneath my earlobe
and each time you are with me
it is like a prayer that you will never leave
my friend
you are
almost a lover.

a curved drum receives the signal
low and warm of a voice
soft and sensual through waves floating
invisibly in the air
a laugh a smile even a word
translates into a slight racing of my fond heart
and i am a rare whisper
while i think of
trickles of your hair on my face
and the vibrative sound of you moaning with pleasure
chest rising and falling
beneath my lips and teeth
hips grinding against my palm as i love you
the best way i can let myself love
a friend
that is
almost a lover.

i want to taste you and feel the
depths within your heated
softness
i want to fall
against your skin
in the absence of all
fabrics
and move with you against sheets
sweat
i want to feel hot
wet
fluid
motion
ascend into the arms of
orgasm and
surrender to slumber
till the sun lights your ivory face
but i wait and relish
small doses of your sweet loving
through distance spaces of time
and emotion because you are only
my friend
but
almost a lover.

The Point

It’s really hard to see what the point is any more.
The point of what?
Of anything.
Of being American, of voting
Of bothering to care
Of having a voice, an opinion
Of civil rights, of democracy
Of Democrats, of Republicans
Of liberals, of conservatives
Of loving others, or loving yourself
Of Iraq, of terror, of oil, of military
Of lives being lost, what’s the point
of fighting?

I guess the point is
Change takes time.
I realize that
But why does it have to be MY time, and YOUR time?
I guess for the same reason it was MLK’s time
and Malcolm X’s time and Audre Lourde’s time,
and Susan B. Anthony’s time
and JFK’s time, and Nelson Mandela’s time,
and Harriet Tubman’s time.

The definition of oppression
is convincing others
of the futility of it all.

And the point is…
Whatever you make it
As long as you fight.