Declaration Of A Body Of Love is my first book of poetry. In these pages I include poems that encapsulates all my life as a black man with a disability. I tackle topics such as disability issues, family, dating, my relationship with God, my national heritage, and sexuality. It is definitely a page-turner from front back. Please purchase your copy today.
Links:
Link to book: http://amzn.to/lmcleod
Wall
This sharp clawing at the back of the neck
loneliness clutching my throat
I suffocate from the emptiness I feel alone and invisible
my friends and family
say they want to hang around me
I hear whispers of them in the breeze
I can't use my 3000 dollar lightwriter as a paperweight
a tortoise tries to crawl a race with a bullet train
the word-prediction capabilities
don't shield me from the impatient faces that tap their toes
their eyes always wander looking for the next novelty
they need patience
but my cell phone goes deathly for hours in the day
can't we just find a fiber optic way
to hook my brain to the machine
so my thoughts can be electronically voiced
over twelve-inch speakers
So we left with a clear wall
made of shards of ice and glass
I can see this barrier everyday
the sun glinting off its clear reflection
everyone acts as if it were not there
and does not see me cut my hand and feet
as I try to knock this wall down
I kick and punch until my feet and hands
are oozing with blood
I yell myself hoarse like a bullfrog
but I cannot get my family and friends to get close to me
so they really know
my dreams, thoughts, desires, and feelings
I shiver behind this clear wall
and wait for someone to notice me
wait for a chance to speak
By Lateef McLeod
I am too pretty for some Ugly Laws
I am not suppose to be here
In this body,
here
speaking to you.
My mere presence
of erratic moving limbs
and drooling smile
used to be scrubbed
off the public pavement.
Ugly laws used to be
on many U.S. cities law books
beginning in San Francisco in 1867
stating that “any person who is
diseased, maimed, mutilated,
or in any way deformed
so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object,
or an improper person to be allowed
in or on the streets, highways, thoroughfares, or public places.”
Any person who looked like me
was deemed disgusting
and was locked away
from the eyes of the upstanding citizens.
I am too pretty for some Ugly Laws,
Too smooth to be shut in.
Too smart and eclectic
For any box you put me in.
My swagger is too bold
To be swept up in these public streets.
You can stare at me all you want.
No cop will buss in my head
and carry me away to an institution.
No doctor will diagnose me
a helpless invalid with a incurable disease.
No angry mob with clubs and torches
trying to run me out of town.
Whatever you do,
my roots are rigid
like a hundred year old tree.
I will stay right here
to glare at your ugly face too.
By Lateef H. McLeod
A Smile for Strange Fruit
Was it his big, dark head
that drooped on his prison garbed chest
that gave you comfort?
Or was it his once firm, hands
which swayed weightlessly from dangling arms
that put a grin on your face?
Was it the way he apologized,
for the loss your father, brother, son
but still proclaimed his innocence,
still looked you in your eye and said
“I am not the one”.
But still you smiled,
as they strapped him on the table
and stuck that needle of death in his vein.
Was it the fact that other people believed him
like those pesky protesters outside the prison,
and the Pope,
and the NAACP president,
and thousand of people world wide
who wanted to halt this process
make sure you had the right guy?
Was it the fact that this process had been halted
three or four times before?
Most of the witnesses recanted their story
and the two who didn’t, well...
one is dead
and the other
may be the one who shot your family member.
But this does not phase you.
You know you got the right guy.
So what if all the evidence against him is shaky at best.
You got the whole Georgia police force behind you.
this will set precedent.
you cannot let one of them shoot a police officer
it is bad policy.
much like when one of them
stole a hen seventy years ago
a tree will soon have a strange hanging fruit.
People will cry out for justice
especially his family.
because they too lost
a father, brother, son.
but you will still smile
for you know
justice will be like it should be
in the good old South.
What She Does to Me
She wraps me in a cocoon of her love.
Insulated from the thorns in my side
that want to leave a blood stained trail
on the crevice where my hips and thighs meet.
She is the balm that heals the gashes
from stones thrown from life's many assailants.
I find respite in her bosom.
My body perceived as broken and useless to others,
is her model of Adonis,
the object of her intimate desire.
My arms become a natural enclosure
where she can rest her weary head
on the glade that is my skin
like a doe deep in the wood
secure from a hunter's shot.
We exhale in each others bodies
comfortable in each others naked gaze.
Sharing each blemish and scar
we have on our own skin.
We strum each others hidden organs
and make a symphonic harmony
of our melodic moans.
The cacophony
is a lullaby
that aides us to sleep.