a job description

it is my job
to write about the hurt
the raw bruises still beet burgundy
concrete cascades and tumbles from their lips
this is how i pick up the pieces. this is how
i clean the highway of the rubble, this. is. the.
first. line. of. defense.

my daughter was called a bitch today. and everything
in me screamed murder. not another brown
girl will learn or adapt or accept that name.

in vain, i'll call God a mecernary. if it'll save this
babygirl. this child of breath, eyelashes and every
phrase that told me to rid of her before she formed fingers.
the echoes of a village still dillusional fills my skull
and tickles the memory with a feeling of despair.

light bulb blown, shoeshine, rockstar
too cool to see the sun gave out years ago,
you've been living off a woman's pulse since then,
but this is not about you anymore.

i met three young men and their eyes checked me with
an honesty that says they don't know how to stow their
baggage, so i will write them this poem. prove them i
believe their gender is not the cause of all evil and
anger can't stop the beauty that dissipates from their fingertips.
they are of the moon, these men, with young boy features
stubble still not setting in on jagged eyes of confusion.

they bob their head to the beat, because the rhythm is fat
and the daddy's aren't always wack - sometimes its just easier
to fish without nettings when claws grow inevitably, who will
tell them the truth. that they are love personified and
everyone deserves a love poem atleast once in their life. i
cannot beat them into submission, because it will take their knowing
to fix all the shyt the blowout kids have broken.

i'll ask them "help me place this little girl into
the crook of the truth. show me how to rig the alarm" because
not everyone is like the man that watched us walk away with a
future tied into her bloodstream. as if the phone number to heaven
were hidden on her tongue, it has always been here on earth. in the arms
of a newborn, in the smile of a toddler. in the hug of a 6 year old. in
the palm of a 10 year old. it will always be about the babies. no one
is above the questioning eyes of the young.

so i offer those young men my heart. let this be their love poem.
because sunsets are necessary, and in them i see the sunrise.

my daughter will learn to fight with her name stitched on
the soles of her feet. her fist will toss thunder and she will
always walk like a lady. we are blessed beings. protected by a
man that gives freely like God and you can see the swagger when he speaks,
it is mesmirizing. i will always thank his mother for teaching her son
how to hold a family to his chest, without having to be asked.