Children don't understand (Angelou Prompt Poem)

I don't know why my mom left,
Dad explained to us that mom is depressed,
Except children don't understand depressed.

Mom thinks another baby would make her better,
But dad thought that on top of raising her first son,
Four was enough,
So he went out and got a quick snip.

When mom found out,
She was very unhappy,
Eventually she stopped fighting with dad,
And stopped coming home every night.

Dad found out she was pregnant with another man's kid,
So dad filed for divorce,
Except children don't understand divorce,
And they certainly don't understand,
When mom backs the van out of the driveway,
With your brother in the back seat,
Why she wouldn't come back for six years.

(A/N This poem was prompted by a line in Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.)

Fabergé (Color Collage Poem)

 

Eggs are blank canvas,

But you must handle with care,

They are delicate.

Any way you like,

Small paint strokes or dip dying,

Decorate the shells.

Orange like the sun,

With stars painted like the night,

Decorate them for fun.

(A/N This is a three series of haikus exploring the concept of egg decoration. It is based on a collage cutout piece I added into my personal journal. It is titled Fabergé in honor of history’s most notable Easter egg decorator, who made decorative eggs for the Russian Imperial family from 1885-1916.) 

Paint Chip Poetry

(A/N: The following haikus were based off two separate, orange and a blue tone, paint swatches.)

Orchards

Sunny fruits harvest,

Oranges, nectarine, peach,

Ripe for the taking.

Discovery

Contemplate yourself,

Get lost in those pensive skies,

Do your soul seeking. 

(A/N The following acrostic poem was based on the color swatch Soft Suede. The theme was derived from classic mobsters and their suede fashion, but I decided to drive a more modern spin on the term "gangster" by focusing on the Los Angeles Latinx gang rivalries.)

Gangster

Slicked back hair, loud dogs, gold grills, tattoos on their faces and necks,

Old to new ways, the gangsters traded in their suede for chains,

Flask half full of mind warping liquor, a worm swims in its depths, a joint is passed between their teeth,

Track marks dotting their mother's arms, 

Sour faces and boiling blood, their culture bonds them as a family,

Upkeep their reputation, break fingers to settle debts,

East side represent, selling dope to Suburbia, 

Dead bodies dumped in the allies as a warning to the other crews,

Eternal pride to their lord. 

(A/N: The following free verse poem was based on a green color palette. While the colors bear royal names like Emerald Shore and Island Time the shades themselves are not vibrant at all - they're either very dark or hazy - it's deceptive. So this poem describes a place that is not what it seems, and therefor derives its name from two deceitful sources: a mirage being a hallucination, and the lotus being infamous in Greek legend for trapping people in time.)

Lotus Mirage 

Time on the island ticked by in an unnatural fashion, but no one complained,

We spent every long day on the beach, splashing in the waves,

Everyone proclaimed Lotus Oasis was the place to be,

My family were on their knees begging for a visit,

When our week on the island drudged on for what felt like a month, 

I began to tire of the sun,

But I wished that I had appreciated it more when it vanished behind the clouds,

A tropical storm that no one had predicted was quickly approaching,

The only road off the island was backed up because of the rain,

I stared out the window at the beach while our car sat still in the line of traffic,

The drizzle glazed the sand over like glass, 

The normally blue bay waters had morphed into a pale, brothy puddle that crashed against the emerald shores like a spirit clawing its way from the other world,

Time passed unnaturally on the island, but as we watched the bodies crawl from the water, I wished that we'd never visited. 

(A/N The following Narrative is about scorn and uncertainty. The color it was based off was called Anchors Aweigh and can only be described as the deepest shade of purple you can reach before crossing over to black.)

Anchored

That morning on the docks, he promised that he'd return to me,

The way he smiled under that Navy cap squeezed my heart enough to believe him, but not enough to dry my tears while I watched his ship leave the port.

We knew we were battling cliches, a young couple separated by war,

One of us was bound to be unfaithful to the other,

But I was naive to think us stronger,

Months ticked by, ships came and went from the docks, but never with my love,

So many days passed that I lost the motivation to go look for him,

I started to forget what his smile looked like,

I remember passing by a news stand, and seeing in the papers that the war was over, I flipped his engagement ring around in my palm as I stared at the front page picture,

"Well if the war doesn't kill him," I couldn't help but think, as I dropped the silver into the dirt, "He'd better be dead before he comes back to this town."

I Am Poem

I am...

A Navy brat, middle child of six, with no mother to name.

A vagabond of the eastern United States’ coast.

A child of abusers; not to me, but to substance and themselves.

A second generation American, with a grandfather from Dublin and a grandmother from Sicily, on my father’s side of the family.

A member of the Shawnee Nation, where the only gift my mother gave me in life was her culture on the Oklahoma reservation.

Seen as a mutt to both sides of my family - half white, half native.

My father’s pointed nose and my mother’s high cheeks; my father’s warm smile and my mother’s dark eyes; my father’s curls and my mother’s complexion.

I am…

The persistent glare on my childhood friend’s TV, while we watched cartoons on a futon in her basement.

A pastel orange Tommy Hilfiger parka, just slightly too big to keep my small nose from turning red from the cold, while I played in the snow packed into our backyard patio in the winter of 2004.

A giant stuffed snake my dad won at the fair I would often fall asleep on while watching my brother play his GameCube.

The skateboard my brother gave me when mom took him with her; unfortunately, he wasn’t my dad’s, so he couldn’t stay when she left.

I am…

David Bowie’s permanently dilated pupil and fashion sense from the 80s.

A vegetarian, former vegan, of three years.

Graphite on paper - portraits of the people I draw.

An activist, a feminist, a liberal, a queer.

The stabbing throb of a migraine behind my eyes.