Victims of Sudden Impact

I am afraid of my womb
afraid that it is barren
that life will not find hope within me
so I resolved to just not want children
decided that I have no desire to see movement ripple across my belly
because I am fearful it can not
I have an aunt that only wanted baby dolls for Christmas
and had sex with strange men because her uterus was in denial
I have an uncle unable to carry on his father's name
because life doesn't live inside of him
I have a grandmother who lost 75% of her kids
and a sister she knew only inside her mother's tomb
have you ever felt life inside your womb that didn't move when it met air?
remembered the taste of a lost voice in the back of your throat
There is something so broken about being the survivor
there is something so beautiful about being broken
about feeling life running through your fingertips like grains of sand
washing the clinging of loss out of your hair after a goodbye
maybe that's why I move like the world is running away from me
like I’m avoiding the vacancy love has created in my belly
is there a name for a fear of having a cavity
where your child should be
or is that just called womanhood?
will we ever be more than ovaries?
& how useless is a fear that I won’t carry a child for the woman of my dreams
how laughable that we sometimes pick names
how admirable that we still dream
still assign features to a child that doesn't exist
your hair with my color
your eyes my lips
our skin
I even dream of the children we never had
all soft skin and kinky headed
praying to mother that look like mutt saint maries
they know our faces from the arms of women who live without fear
& whisper love into an air that feels like our skin
they kiss us with lips that feel like shadows
& hands that hold us like secrets
I’ll tell her they loved us from beneath our skins
on dark nights when we felt life breathing between us
& they left us beneath our words spoken with fear on our teeth
hiding behind ivory plates that could not speak our reflection
they will probably say it was because we were two women in love
but maybe it’s because I was afraid
and there is no room for life where fear manifests
or maybe it was just because there is a hollowness that sleeps where our daughter should be
©, 2012, Tiffany "Spokenheart" Shack

Dandelion Dust

dandelions roots hang from ceilings with petals like pigtails in dead girl's hair
words fall like hypocritical stones and petals scatter like prayers
lives blow into the wind
o father you've done it again
forgotten that dandelions werent built for weight
&& there is only so much one can take
before they scatter
how may lives will it take before it matters
before people stop thinking its just oversensitivity
how much awareness does it take to end kid bullying
how many casualties have to be muraled on walls or souls before we stop teaching hatred
and start teaching acceptance
quick to wound maybeits true that all humans are born into petulance
and then taught to be good
what other reasons can we find for dandelions that are never understood
just dismembered by the winds of our mouth
we just teach our kids that the real world will eat you up and hang you like moss
if you dont sharpen your tongue and harden your fist
if you dont consume hatred and speak death out your lips
sticks and stones can break our bones but we all know it is words that will slit our wrists
that will tie our nooses and dance pills cross our lips
how is a 10 yr old suppose to understand that life will get better
that bullies are just one of life's storms if they can just make thru the weather
all seasons must come to a past
or maybe it is us who dont understand that dandelions werent meant to last
but to scatter and plant seeds
send messages and leave
simply built to be captured by wind
while mothers are forced to lend
their wombs to God's examples

©, 2012, Tiffany "Spokenheart" Shack

Marrow Soup

Its feels like my bones are emptying out
marrow moving through my nose clear as breath
does blood smell like tears when marrow looks like carbon dioxide
i wonder whose closet i will rest in when my veins empty out
or will you hang me from your ceiling and learn anatomy first hand
my grandmother's feet ache on my ankles at night
sometimes all the way up to my thighs
& i knows its just her leaving me all over again
i see her everytime my sister has a child
& wonder if she sleeps in my womb as well
i even forget like she did sometimes
look in the mirror and ask whose daughter i am
whose child on a milk carton not bothered to be aged?
maybe she just didnt want to come home
maybe im just stuck inside my flat footed heart
have you ever come knocing to see if i had finally learnt how to be still
or are u just waiting to burn my empty bones
& place them on your mantelpiece like a conquered trophy
i wonder if my lover ever tastes my marrow i leave on her lips
if she ever scrubs my residue off her face when she feels i am never leaving
if she will store my bones in a canvas bag tied to the ceiling
and call it a treasure
fingerpaint them & call them ancient relics
i wonder if our bones will ever meet in the same body
her fingers on our daughter with my toes
or our ribs in the next life creating one being
mine always too big of course
always too full of air
and never able to breathe
like even my body expects more of me than i can give
searching for air in the joints of my bones
always needing more space from myself
im sure if i could regenerate my hands would be the first to go
as my heart packs up in the middle of the night to flee to my lover's chest
afaraid my feet wont understand the pleasures of just leaving sometimes
& my bones just lie there leaking out a new beginning

©, 2012, Tiffany "Spokenheart" Shack

Plankin'

It's not offensive, it's funny!!!!
like nooses hanging embarrassment in the closets of my ancestors
as long as we build those nooses out of ignorance
and claimed innocence we can be the jesters
of a history that has always been a joke
so lets laugh it up in black face wearing yarmulkes and big noses
eating watermelon in striped pajamas
with numbers replacing our names and stars on our clothing
chuckle as we play cowboys and Indians
and paint our clubhouses concentration camp red
call ourselves immigrants
wetbacks, niggas, problems
because we are a country built on humor
did you see that strange fruit hanging from that tree
wasn't it funny to watch a man die at our own hands?
didn't you laugh when Tyler Clementi's sex tape debuted across your computer screen
and even harder when his obituary appeared in your newspaper?
Yes! we are the laughter that gets stuck in lungs causing them to collapse
we are the gaps of breath that sneak into veins and stop hearts
funny how laughter tastes like overdoses on pain pills
how it smells like pools of emptied veins
how it sounds like guns cocking in mouths
how it looks like dead bodies stacked up not worthy of graves
how it feels like WANTING TO DIE!!!!!
its what makes us different
our laughter
the way we can use it to strip souls of their worth
the way it sneaks into our egos & silently birth desires to fade into it's echoes
to be forgotten when it ends
laughter has always been hatred's best friend
as they skip to the lou
hand in hand whistling tunes
that sound like the melody of crackling wood crosses
so forgive me if your caricatures of black people as monkeys don't tickle my funny bone
if i don;t chuckle at your stories of conquering lesbians with your penis
or your planking on balconies doesn't double me over in laughter
my sense humor has always been a bit dry
my smile a bit strained
my laughter laced with paranoia
wonder how many ha's it takes to get to center of pain
how do we build our laugh tolerance to learn to take things at face value
how do you convince a poet that words just are?
how do you convince a people that actions are meaningless
how we rip apart things that should be seamless
like emotion and laughter so that we can get the joke
learn to separate the fire from the smoke so that we can understand the fuel
never mind the blackened lungs and blistered hands
caused by pulling apart ourselves in order to understand
or maybe we should pull out our nooses and untwine the rope
stare in a mirror until we find ourselves in the joke
then we should be able to play our laughter in reverse
and recognize the muffled cries in out varying pitch
taste the death on our tongue before it rolls off our lips
feel the pain in our hands before we unclench our fists
or we can keep laughing through gnashed teeth and dead eyes
hiding beneath our bandwagons and lies
because as long as somebody can laugh
its not offensive!
it's funny!
RIGHT!?!?!?!?!

©, 2012, Tiffany "Spokenheart" Shack

Sestina Attempt Take 2

I remember when you peeled back your ribs
& showed what was always missing
your skin unraveling like a blanket
never knowing a bruise
til i taught you how to breathe
even when you are lacking life

i remember when you told me the secret of life
could only be found in donated ribs
it escapes every time you breathe
it is the definition of what we are missing
we carry it around like a banana carries a bruise
exposed, enveloping our skin like a blanket

i remember the smell of my grandmother's blanket
it smelt like the beauty of a life
that never hid a bruise
it smelt like Adam's ribs
always resting in the wrong Eve, missing
never truly learning how to breathe

I remember when pain taught me how to breathe
when it squeezed my lungs full of smoke, blanket
my reflection and demanded that i realize that I was missing
life
i never noticed that my fake ribs
caused so much pain, now a healing bruise

i remember when i decided the only cure for a bruise
was numb, when inhaling agony was a s simple as breathe
when i dissected my ribs
and dissolved the blanket
that they called life
only to realize it was love that was missing

i can never remember when i was showed what was missing
only the pain of the bruise
only the lack in the life
and the struggle when i try to breathe
but i wear it like a blanket
wondering if it was my father who gave me these ribs

Do you remember the piece that's missing? The one that sounded like breathe?
The one that didn't bruise but held like a blanket?
the one that spelt life like God spelt ribs?

©, 2011, Tiffany "Spokenheart" Shack

Untitled

days like this look like addiction to me

they smell like answers we never know or secrets we keep

&& ur eyes have never looked greener

as corporate America tries to convince me my pockets must be leaner

if I dare to convince u of ur worth to me

but we both know what the power of money conceives

so.....I was thinking this father's day I would write

u a poem of all the words that kite

between us over the past decades

but then I realized it takes

alot more than a pen to translate for mutes

alot more than crushed trees to draw out the truth

we are dear voiceless beings blinded by chance

&& cursed with lame hands

wondering if at time it was ever more

than an exchange of money for sex behind closed doors

more than business that occurred on a motel room bed

dressed in cheap floral spreads

that reeked of heaven with price tags

that looked like the white lines hidden in cash

yes we wonder if life was lost or formed in that sweat

or if lips will continue to not be able to recall the regret

of not being able to forget

that we can’t leave everything behind on the trip

someone has to make use of the unclaimed baggage

we can’t all come wrapped in our neat little packages

&& no matter how vivid my imagination

you will never visit me in the narration

of the dad from Crooklyn with short bread & ice cream

with tall tales & bigger dreams

no, you will never be more than a session

of genes intertwined in domination and submission

we will always be grasping hands filled with space

while I dream conversations within which u will describe the taste

of cocaine and other men

or what it was like to be held so tightly by sin

did it remind you if visiting somewhere exotic like hell?

with a get out of jail

free card tucked neatly under the bills u negotiated as her worth

do you ever look at a condom and wonder what you may have birth

were you careful not to leave behind enough to search?

hoping black women would be smart enough to know dirt belongs under rugs or in closets

in pre frontal cortexes lodging

we are memories never meant to see flesh

&& u r a superhero at best

teaching me the value of invisibility

sometimes wishing I could teach others to see me

the way you do, not at all

or only when nostalgia stalls

you as you open your wallet to pay a bill

moments when life forces you to be still

&& wonder if money ever looks like more than dead men's faces

does it ever look like children that hold traces?

 of men they'll never meet

or like question marks that treat

them all too familiar like mutes

like blind pompous smirking clues

I even wonder if I sometimes catch ur scent in money

if our fingerprints are trapped in the same dollar bill, running

back and forth betwixt us daring us to make a connection

tempting me to start writing confessions

on every note that leaves my hand

Dear John letters bordering bills to the only man

I think would care not enough to read it

probably cursing some old man who would keep it

thinking his daughter was finally ready to forgive him

we are Morse code eyelids double taking at the living

wondering if that was us

or just

another dollar bill in emperor's clothing

you know, it’s kinda funny how u got me to loathing

my origin, always been a love-hate relationship with currency

&& honestly, I currently

hate it for being so obscure

for never holding the cure

for anything I ever saw others looking for in it

including the resolve to a story never finished

or maybe I should just accept it

a dollar bill is all I’ve ever have to represent

ur role in my existence

u were a man who met a woman without resistance

wooed with promises of nirvana && took a trip

then disappeared before she could slip

out of her trance

connect with land

&& reveal ur deepest secret

u left ur souvenir at the gift shop, && she decided to keep it

©,  2011, Tiffany Shack