I imagine your lips searching mine
for answers that only my heart can answer.
Your staccato-ed eyes try to assess any tell-tale signs
of my body betraying my truth.
But I will keep silent; my words will never utter
how you make my heart leap with
anticipation…each time I see you.
You have unfinished business with another,
so when those ties are severed…..
You will learn in time
that I love you.

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Photo credit cuny.edu
Here are four poems that I’ve loved for years because each has taught me lessons that I needed to learn during a particular time of crisis or happiness in my life……
1. Nikki Giovanni’s “I wrote a good Omelet”
I wrote a good omelet…and ate a hot poem…
after loving you
Buttoned my car…and drove my coat home…in the
rain…
after loving you
I goed on red…and stopped on green….floating
somewhere in between…
being here and being there…
after loving you
I rolled my bed…turned down my hair…slightly
confused …

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When you promised me your heart,
You didn’t promise your soul.
When you promised your devotion,
You didn’t promise that we’d be joined at the hip.
When you promised to be faithful,
You didn’t promise to become a slave to my insecurity.
When you promised to love me,
You didn’t promise to consume me.
When you promised to trust me,
You didn’t promise to be indifferent.
When you promised to honor me,
You didn’t promise pedestals from which I could easily fall.
You promised a sweet, tender love that seemed so foreign …

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Sometimes when I lie in the bed alone
Imagining you beside me
Like you used to be
And still catching a whiff of paco rabonne cologne on
Your pillow brings
Smiles
And somehow I still feel you
Tugging at the quilt
Tickling my feet and telling
Me that the blueberry waffles that
You made were going fast
So it was now or never
I still remember our solitary
Time
Away from the kids
Thinking about blessings
Never dreamt of
Just a short time ago
I see the brush on the dresser
Once so lovingly used as
You’d call me to …

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Bless those whose once soft, downy pillow has now morphed into the cold, bitter concrete.
Shelter those whose homes are now a tattered mosaic of cardboard boxes and pieces of plastic sheeting.
Watch over those who no longer live within the safe confines of a warm, loving home.
Sustain those whose stomaches growl as they search desperately through the city’s refuse cans for anything that once resembled food.
Dry the tears from the faces of those who stand on the precipice of losing all …

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…. to two empty arms longing to hold a sweet baby girl with beautiful brown eyes.
Whose smile gave great clarity to the true meaning of my life
…. and whose tiny fingers clinging to mine, held me up when I thought I would falter.
You are no longer a child now, you have become a young woman before I could prepare myself for that
Inevitability
Shy, though confident in your own way….I watch you grow .…apart from me…but
happy still…I hope.
Over time, it is you …

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I first loved you as a girl who told herself that your luscious lips, though surely carved by God himself, would never dare touch mine.
The ripples from your well chisled chest made no grand impression on me even as I pictured it pressed gently against mine in a loving embrace.
I scoffed at the idea when you said that one of these days you’d ‘catch’ me, even though your muscular thighs could make Adonis question his masculinity.
I never even noticed how …

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We didn’t talk about the almost month of Sundays when we would be separated by an ocean or two, instead we talked about what we’d do the moment our eyes caressed one another again.

We marveled about how we’d sit down and discuss the ‘must-haves’ for the new house that would accommodate the things a sentimental fool like me couldn’t bear to part with.

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