Phot oby Zen
I used to destroy white babydolls
because they destroyed me
with their overlong palomino hair
their glassy arctic eyes
their shirley temple complexions
their putrid plastic skin
they’re s’pose to be so pretty
ooooh soooo cu-ute
they made me ugly for no reason
with their strawberry smiles
and canyon-like dimples that echoed:
Niggers ain’t shit!
* * * * *
Tonya Michaels is writer and a nurse who lives in Houston, TX.
This poem is a part of Soul Portrait Magazine’s “30 Days of Poetry” to celebrate National Poetry Month. If you’d like to participate, please submit a poem.
Tagged as:
tonya michaels
Sometimes I feel as if I need to die
To make the world a better place to live.
I am not asking to be crucified.
I have only one life to give.
I do not want to be a Messiah.
I do not want to save anyone’s soul.
I’d rather be spit on like a pariah.
Eternal life has never been my goal.
I do not profess to be the only Son
My blood will not guarantee salvation.
Touching my garment’s hem will heal no one.
A black man’s death is no revelation.
Sometimes I feel as if I need to die
To save the world from the pain I hold inside.
* * * * *
Antonio Parker is a poet and a philosopher.
This poem is a part of Soul Portrait Magazine’s “30 Days of Poetry” to celebrate National Poetry Month. If you’d like to participate, please submit a poem.
Tagged as:
Antonio Parker
Standing at the edge of bliss
Hanging in the thickest mist
Infinity dropping out below
And in the distance sits our goal
Mocking from the other side
Fear between us and our prize
If we fall, we may not rise
Who can know if we can fly?
Some of us just wait and see
Something will happen, hopefully
“Possibly, they’ll build a bridge”
“I’ll learn a trick to conquer this”
But others seem to know the deal
They see their goal and know it’s real
Without a pause. Without a break.
They step right out and stand on faith
* * * * *
Rahsheen Porter is a musician, social media and new media enthusiast, health & fitness coach, consultant, early adopter, and father.
This poem is a part of Soul Portrait Magazine’s “30 Days of Poetry” to celebrate National Poetry Month. If you’d like to participate, please submit a poem.
It sparkles through the stained glass windows,
through the dawn, through angel’s hearts.
It rises through the dark habits of flying nuns
and descends through the gallows of thieves.
It swells in the morning air like a blouse on a clothesline
breathing the crisp aroma of the lingering night,
conveying its nakedness to the virgin sky.
It acknowledges bitter love
and colors it with the waking voices of yawning men.
Like bloomed night spring, it brings drooping love –
washed rich blossoms that rise to pointed pillars.
It remembers the days that steam from heaven.
It drips from the rugged cross to rinse away all the wrong
and echoes through the midnight hills like the green recesses of a song.
It withdraws into the settlement of a song…
* * * * *
Dexter Montrose is a writer who lives in Kingston, Jamaica
This poem is a part of Soul Portrait Magazine’s “30 Days of Poetry” to celebrate National Poetry Month. If you’d like to participate, please submit a poem.
Tagged as:
Dexter Montrose
Photo by Kevin Pratt.
I.
When skies are dark,
Black men don’t wish for rainbows.
They weather the storm.
II.
Like an unskilled thespian on the stage,
The black man lives a life of stumbled lines.
He wears a humble smile to hide his rage
While being embarrassed and undermined.
And if such agony is not enough,
He must face condemnation from his kin
Who do not compliment but rebuff
Tearing his battered spirit from within.
But he keeps trudging through the mire of life
Holding his head high despite the abuse.
He conjures up joy to battle the strife
Still, his burdens squeeze his neck like a noose.
And when the pain becomes too much to bear,
His smile will turn into a deadly glare
III.
There’s ire in his soul,
Yet his heart is filled with peace.
He’s an enigma.
Living the paradox
of being black and proud.
IV.
He wears blackness like an ebony shroud.
V.
Smooth nightstick rhythm
Draws blood from the black man’s skull.
Death seeps into the pavement.
VI.
The black man sleeps beneath the neon moon.
His soul is at ease, his heart beats slowly.
The streets are quiet; there’s no bloodshed tonight.
All that remains is the peace that forgiveness brings.
* * * * *
F.J. Goodall is the editor of Soul Portrait Magazine. He also writes the blogs Mocha Dad and Making It Last Forever.
This poem is a part of Soul Portrait Magazine’s “30 Days of Poetry” to celebrate National Poetry Month. If you’d like to participate, please submit a poem.
Tagged as:
fj goodall
Now that you’re here I was hoping we could have a conversation that brings about mental stimulation and spiritual elation even though the sound of your voice is like a prayerful invocation of desire wanting me to quench your thirst and put out that fire.
As the words from your mouth flow freely like the water in the Nile, I’m mesmerized by your smile, hangin’ on to your every word all the while wondering about the taste of your nectar filled center and how many licks it would take before you let me enter that place seldom visited by any man.
See, it’s more than the shape of your lips and the curve of your hips. There’s just something about the way you say my name that penetrates my brain and makes it hard for me to keep my composure around you. At times I wish from these feelings I could refrain, but my mission is to maintain so I can reach those unchartered places in your mental domain.
Yeah, I’m trying to get all up in there, shooting lust filled lasers in your atmosphere; Breaking down your defenses with a determined stare as the shields around your mind quickly disappear. Got you feeling like Deborah Cox wondering how the hell did I get here?
And now that I’ve got your attention should I just hit you with my most superb lyrical gift using words that are interchangeable and swift? Or would you just see me as another player and instead of revealing yourself you’ll do like in winter, cover up and add another layer.
The more we communicate I sit and contemplate because there’s no doubt it’s your body I want to penetrate but right now I’m having too much fun as we mentally formulate those things in the physical that will for now just have to wait. So I guess we’ll just have to be satisfied with the way we mentally copulate, besides aint nothing wrong with a little mind sex ma, aint nothin’ wrong with a little mind sex.
* * * * *
Aqiyl Qasim is Consious Elements. He is a writer, poet, and spoken word artist.
Cipha Publishing © 2k10
This poem is a part of Soul Portrait Magazine’s “30 Days of Poetry” to celebrate National Poetry Month. If you’d like to participate, please submit a poem.
Tagged as:
aqiyl qasim
Photo by Josh Hunter. Used by permission with a Creative Commons License
They crucified Him with rhetoric,
wrapped His dingy body in swaddling lyrics,
And buried Him in five feet of iambic pentameter.
But on the third day, He wrote.
Guided by a harlot muse, He rose through a fiery lake
Of charred souls and dancing satyrs
Sisyphus held the rock steady
As His voice resounded through the valley:
“Behold,” He said peeling away His skin.
“I make all things new.”
And their white eyes popped,
Their scaly flesh seared,
Their icy blood melted.
And this was good.
He wrapped the skin around His head like a turban,
And conjured Dante from the inferno.
Sophists and poets burned like kindling
In the recesses of His naked mind.
The sea gave up the dead that were in it.
The ground spewed forth the living.
He showed them a river of crystal water
And led them to the lush Elysian fields;
Sounding the first trumpet of the apocalypse
Through a broken whisky bottle.
* * * * *
Antonio Parker is an engineer and a graduate of Prairie View A&M University. He has published a chapbook of poetry titled “Kingdom Come.”
This poem is a part of Soul Portrait Magazine’s “30 Days of Poetry” to celebrate National Poetry Month. If you’d like to participate, please submit a poem.
Tagged as:
Antonio Parker
Photo by Josh Hunter. Used by permission with a Creative Commons License
the drum resounds within the womb
the rhythm implies that black men don’t cry
they only die to live again
in another life
on another day
I heard a griot say…
hell can’t be much worse than living without a life
and heaven is too far away
black men die a thousand deaths
in another life
they might survive
or wake up alive
some other day
I heard a griot say…
they bear the scars of weathered years
their masks can’t hide their pain
one day their kingdom will finally come
in another life
on another day
to be continued…
* * * * *
Xavier Alexander is a poet whose work has appeared in Artistic Pedigree, RED, Black Tie Magazine and Eclectic Literary Forum
This poem is a part of Soul Portrait Magazine’s “30 Days of Poetry” to celebrate National Poetry Month. If you’d like to participate, please submit a poem.
Tagged as:
xavier alexander
You walk with rhythm
Poetry lives inside you
You speak without words
* * * * *
Rico Devante wants to be the first poet on the moon.
This poem is a part of Soul Portrait Magazine’s “30 Days of Poetry” to celebrate National Poetry Month. If you’d like to participate, please submit a poem.
Tagged as:
rico devante
April 1, 2010
“Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!”
- from Yet Do I Marvel by Countee Cullen
Inspired by the success of Black History Month, the Academy of American Poets established National Poetry Month – a month-long, national celebration of poetry. The concept is to widen the attention of individuals and the media—to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our complex poetic heritage, and to poetry books and journals of wide aesthetic range and concern.
The purpose is to increase the visibility and availability of poetry in popular culture while acknowledging and celebrating poetry’s ability to sustain itself in the many places where it is practiced and appreciated.
I have always been a huge poetry fan. I have volumes of poetry on my bookshelves and I’ve been known to write a few verses from time to time.
All of this poetry talk, makes me think about my college poetry professor, Dr. Jon Woodson. He was an eccentric, intellectual who taught us how to deconstruct a poem in order to really appreciate it’s merits. He also taught us about the creative process that goes into writing poetry.
On the first day of class, he told us to pull out a sheet of paper because we were having a pop quiz. We all groaned and reluctantly pulled out our notebooks.
Dr. Woodson reached under his desk and puled out a brown paper bag. He placed the bag on his desk and said, “Here is your quiz.”
We all looked at each other puzzled. One brave student asked what we were supposed to do.
“Tell me what’s in the bag,” said Dr. Woodson. “You have five minutes to complete the quiz.”
We all looked around the room still unsure about what we should be doing. We wrote answers on our papers and passed them to Dr. Woodson at the end of the allotted period.
“Now I will read your answers aloud and grade the papers,” said Dr. Woodson.
“The first one says, ‘Your Lunch,’’ Dr. Woodson said. “F!” He went through a few more papers that said things like, air, some pens, and a few more lunch responses. All F!
Finally, Dr. Woodson found a response that made him smile.
“Finally,” he said. “This paper says, ‘Pink Cadillac.’ A!”
I will always remember that exercise because it made me think differently. Many of the poets that I admire, Sonia Sanchez, Haki R. Madhubuti, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Pablo Naruda, e.e. cummings, and my all-time favorite poet, Langston Hughes thought differently about poetry and about life.
To celebrate National Poetry Month, Soul Portrait Magazine will publish a poem a day. Many talented, contemporary black poets are languishing in obscurity. This April, they will finally receive the credit and attention they deserve.
Peace and Blessings,
F.J. Goodall, Editor
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