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.