Black Music

Ears black like leather, he could hear my every move. As quiet and as humble as he was, he rode the bus to get use to himself. 

     Said he had never seen a lady quite like myself, said he had never heard a tune so smooth. He shuffled his fingers into my hips, he played me like I was his guitar. 

        He wasn't as hard core as rock, more mellow like acoustic. He said I talk good English, I speak good. He had eyes as deep and dark as my soul, no yet rotten. 

     He would holler: "Ay, yo brown eyes, would you be my blues?" Flattered, I let him find all the right places for his fingers in my hips, I was his piano. No other woman could confess and make home out of the hallows in his chest. 

      Though I could never fill the hole of the lost of his son, a touch of my body insulated his soul so he wouldn't be as drafty, he blamed me for why he didn't get drafted into the NFL, he said: "You be too music for me. If I left, there would be no reason for me to scream your name everyday, it's like I almost stopped singing." 

         Your sway is a melody, your vocal cords wrap around bodies, brown bodies like bags. Will you let these rings wrap our fingers? Be my broadway. He sang to me like I was his microphone, the theater and the only one who'd listen when Def Jam was too deaf to listen to his mix tape. 

          He had ears black as leather, lips, black as an oil slick and I had hips and body he made music with I was his instrument. 

       I was the grammatically correct talk between his stutters. I was the incorrect one to mess with cause... Momma ain't raise me to be no fool. She said my daddy was black like sam bow, he be half white. 

        But black as the residue from week old crack infested teeth, black like you, him and me... Even though according to Granny I be yella. 

        According to them if I'm darker than a bag, I'm not eligible for their society. I'm black like his ears. My daughters will be black like his ears, their daddy will be black like his ears. Their daddy found the ridges of my hips past my belly, I was his piano. 

       I was his wife, we could never afford a car so we rode the bus. I was his instrument. We could never afford a car so we rode the bus. He strung my heart strings. I was his guitar. We could never afford a car so we rode the bus... 

     He said it was how he would get use to himself, he being black as an oil slick, me being light as pencils, I wrote his music. 

Beast pt.2

I look at you and imagine a beast. But I am the beautiful. The red in your corvette which is really a bus card I gave to you. 

   

  You stumbled on my door step and demanded I mend you back to health. Heart all flustered I did it anyway. Jumped off of cliffs into hell for you and I still lost. 

     

  And all you said was "Sorry." Not even face to face, but through 

e-mail. I cried out your name in satisfaction, frustration, and even hope but I refused to put any of that feeling into my text back, so I didn't reply. I don't know how to be anything other than truth. 

     

     I could never get into the habit of lie like you. 

  I never could have lived knowing that I didn't share with you all of me, didn't know what you didn't love on me nor did I care. With out a care I gave you all of me. 

       

So beast, why'd the rhythm in your love change? Pressed against stone walls on winter nights you made an oven out of my back pockets. To the world our hugs appeared innocent. 

   

   And in a sense I believed it. 

  You be enough fiction to believe yourself. You look nothing like innocent so I never suspected your loving be good.

   

   I wrote about Beauty's kiss and the beast's transformation. Pushing away my gay I prayed you were Prince Charming. 

     

    Like truth in my heart, I'll be that missing punctuation, you need to finish your sentence when you're much too broken like dialect falling off lips from under developed countries. 

This affair hurts worse than 17 hours of labor and coming home with no baby, I gave birth to your heart prematurely. 

 

   Never imagined a soul I could tell, too afraid to be stoned by sinners. They threw stones and hid their hands when this earth to God is like glass houses, he saw everything. 

So pretend like you didn't love me all you want. 

God has seen, even I have seen you on the nights your speech was too drunken to witness me in the middle of your heart like drunk drivers, stop signs and oil slicked roads. 

      Everything about me said stop. But, you couldn't.  

Had all the signs, but you couldn't. 

Couldn't resist having me whole bodied 'cause part of me wasn't enough. 

     I traveled your heart like serpents on hallow roads, I am the beauty of your beast. We be like beauty and the beast.