Dressed to Impress

That was you, right?
sauntering up to me
With a pseudo concerned look in your eyes
Looking for water in the valley of the dried pride

Telling me, "Now I know you’ll never be a superstar
But it would suit you well to raise the bar."
"Come," you say, "I
must tell you this
I just don’t believe that your wardrobe preference fits
My preferred style of appropriateness."
"Or maybe," you said, "If you just did your hair like this
You'd be a few inches closer to a yard
closer to the woman that I see fit.

Besides, as we can all see your material is coming up short."

That was you, right?

pushing
And poking and
prodding
Picking and the prodded and picked
About how I wasn’t that and I wasn’t this

Tried awfully hard to make me believe
I wasn’t presentation worthyof gifts already received
words you spitIn my face
Erudite flight of syllables through
time travel

Fists that used to make my brown eyes blue
When my abusers said, “Who would ever want you?”

I stand at the crossroads
Wondering which train will come first
Valley or height

But wait a minute, I see something………That was you, right?

Standing there coquettish
Leaned to the side
Tempting every bit of me to clench my fist and let you ride?
Thinking you’ve been diligent in duty cauze you've done a good thing
All the while .......coveting
Everything I’ve been conditioned to believe
Nobody would ever want
From me

See, sometimes the attack is a sprint, not a jaunt
in the deep abyss of varicose want
that keeps on peeking through, no matter what they do...

Blisters break the blessings
And blessings breaks the skin
And the skin opens up on contact
And the contact build a callus
So that no matter how many stings and arrows the enemy throws
You never lose your balance

Out of your mouth insert a size nine knock off Prada
capable of attempts to tear down those in your path in leaps and bounds
so talented...
Not far behind are a renegade band of dirty verbed outlaws
All designed to make me pause
For your cause

Apple red lips perch and pitch
rouge insecurities
with no liability accountability or responsibility
hoping for a home runbut still hitting foul

No one said anything about the many different times
That as the object of your despise
I protected your six
And your seven, and eleven
While you were hitting me on my three
Wishing you were on my five

Smilin' all up *in* my twelve

That was you, right?

Well then,
You must have mistaken me
For someone who took up a hobby of
Dressing to impress you
Dressing to upset you
Whispering words of weaponry
An object of disrespect for you to be

Hoping against hope
Praying against faith
Betting against love
Forgetting that Sunday school lesson:In my Father’s house
He takes all
So instead of saying eff you
I say bless you
Forgive them Father for they know not what they do

Quite apparent you haven’t a clue
About what a real sophisticate student haute couture style can do
When you focus on the inside instead of the outside of you

That was you, right?

And in case you forgot,
The clothes don’t make the woman,
The woman makes the clothes,
And because I am a woman
I won’t undress your shame
I will address you as a woman who knows From whence she came
I will give you the dignity I wasn't afforded
and call you by your rightful name

I will dress you with love
I will dress you with peace
I will dress you with hope
I will dress you with patience
I will address you with gentleness
I will dress you with class
I will dress you the way God dressed the lilies of the fields
Solomon’s beauty in all its splendor Could not surpass

I will dress you with kindness
That you must have never knownI will dress you
with the blood of the lamb who hung on the cross
That didn’t think it uncouth to be caught dead in A bloody loin cloth

I will address you as a human being,
that deserves to be treated with respect
because that’s what I wear when I’m dressed to impress

audacity indeed

i.
in the shadow of an unborn hope
is possibility
black and looming
running from the past
past, past, past
but is it really?
past?

ii.
behind the pulpit
and the pews
sit men of God
different hues
different views
different shoes
but one faith
and one baptism

'membering how Jesus wasn't a brother
til he'd risen

iii.

the audacity of a hope
that lasts
beyond the last porch light
in a world that is content
with darkness

Congratulations

Hey baby,
congratulations

I heard about your new life
shiny, brand new and tight
the life you breathed to dream
but didn't mean to
you inhaled only to calm your raging lungs
red with screams
of too little air and space

but look atcha
now you walkin' like you own the place
And maybe you're scared that a tinge of hate may be
sitting on my shoulder?

Well, baby, I'm happy for you.

not because what went down wasn't foul
but because when it all comes rolling down
hill
and time stands still
in unrequited moments
I could be one bitter witch
and scratch that itch
to tell you all about yourself,
but who would that help?


above all, I am about results,
so resultingly,

I want peace more than I want resolution
and I want release more than I want attachment
and despite everything

I want your happiness
more than I want you.


I made it a policy
never to attach myself
from somebody I couldn't extract myself from

and you're case study number one.

And if that sounds cold
understand if I made in my eyes
a dream that lived or died
with out my hero by my side
God forbid the hellish end I'd live

It was my bad to recieve my cleave from
those that merely breathe
air and eat seed
and return to dust
just to satisfy my lust
for a few words
like "I love you."
when I didn't even love me.


I made it a policy never to attach myself
to someone I could not extract myself from

but ah, what has become of the one
who only knew the moon then saw the sun
and now I run because it seems no matter how hard
i try to shake this feeling, it is there

and so I've learned to accept the things
I believed I couldn't bear

I'v got a part of you in my skin
and I can't begin to tell where
I start and you end

so instead of ripping myself stitch by stitch
I've learned to be a quick mend

and I can live without you
while loving you
enough to let you go

so, congratulations, baby

I am truly happy for
the music in your eyes
the smile in your step
and the laughter on your lips


even if I didn't put it there
Even if I never see it
even if I never know it
ever again

forgive me my faux paux
I'm learning
to mend

joy

...to accept the things that I cannot change
change the things I can
and the wisdom to know the difference

I close my eyes and say a little prayer
hoping that after ripping heartache
my laughter is still there


And for the life of me I cannot figure out how
I let loose conversations and practical conversions
distract me from my joy

Where is my joy?
did it wander away from me
panic sticken with separation anxiety
or was it just longing to be free
from someone who no longer paid it any attention?


in the inner eclipse of time
I find myself sitting out too many nights
standing in front of the sun
blocking my own light

spoiling for a 1,2 fight

getting sucker punched by life

why you always in trouble to be in a hurry?
barely kissing 30

selling out late night dreams
to turn in early

fit to be tied to a life
that you don't really want and can't afford

playing one upmanceship on a rigged board
betting on park place
but living in leftover lane

unwittingly outgunned
unaware it's all the same game

but tonight I'm going to look my life in the eye
and tell it thank you
gonna look myself in the mirror and say
I forgive you

gonna look my joy up
in the directory
and tell it I've got your number
and I'm coming to get you

I'm coming....

twin souls

i did not realize how wide the wound was
until it spread through my past
huddled in the footsteps
of love
walking death row
to a secret hide away
named abandonment

them always leaving before coming
me always loving before trusting...

I did not realize how wide the wound was
until it showed up at the door of my lips
smiling sweetly

until it reached over through my hands
and touched her
my sister, my best friend

she is love; i am peace

together we slay armies of enemies
with the Word wound tightly
between us
our souls knit together
tow breaths into one cool evening rustle
the most meticulous hustle --- life
by a calling of the most high

and i realized God placed me in her life
to be her eyes
you are my first friend, my first love
she says...her eyes darkened with the stain
of the fists and ravaging effects
of those who took the pearl of her small womb

and strung them coldly with other hurts
in a tightly packed collection her beauty shines
only matched by the innocence

that remained untouched by the plundering
princes of light takers

She sharpens my own fearful sentences against me
saying she has a word
"it is about your mom.."
I freeze, stuck in my own heartbreak.

She holds my hand with such a grip
that my soul stills,
but my mind pealsaway from her
raw with requisition

I feel as if I am a starving man shown his last me
alI tell her my fears, couched and cowering.

Her eyes grow wide and raw
"Please, her hands say, the grip tightening
don't.
Don't take away my home..."

I didn't realize how wide the wound was
until it touched hers
twin souls, we sit

waiting for the small greatness of God's grace
to heal the warriors who will
heal the world

the late watch

Sometimes our hands are all we have

The clenched face
The bent limbs
Battered by a thousand hurricanes
Of bullets

A single broken blade of green

"…broken femur…transport…black male…seven years old..."

snapped by a sedan rounding a corner
a crossroads well traveled

their blackened boots and brazen stares
accessories
the hardened giants walk
silently into a tiny house on a holy night

it might as well be
made of straw and sticks

a cop lifts the boy up in his arms
holds him to blue skin
and brass
caresses the lithe arm
as the EMT's strip him bare

uniformly human

the tinsel tossed lonely limb hangs loose and limp
Wet with silverish sheets of blood


the fish have no air
they flit like faith
tendrils of red
floating falsetto
high above the greenery
in the darkened
fish tank

impressions of tiny fingers paint
the officer's forearm radioflyer red

Today, the breath of God is thick
and foggy with weight of the cross
adorned with the jingle of cuffs and change


a snowy chill capping
a mountain of a man
as he holds
small clinched fingers
like the last star waiting for Christmas
white and wanting
as sparkles and snow

The Clean Break

Break
Day:

you were in my ear
holding the whisper of my thoughts
shifting through the mountains of my mind
in quiet caverns

Break
Dance:

explosions of sizzling heat dressed in dazzling beams of yellow brick road dreams
but they look better on you than I thought


Break
Off:

tumbling through dusty dreads
that I must cut
because the words I love you are no longer a consent form
for me to carry you over this bridge of my back


Break
Pump Yours:

The adrenaline of 144,000 words in a love letter
flowing from the heart of God
poised and ready for battle
with the truth their only defense

Break
Heart:
the adrenaline of one word
pierces it.

Break
Leg:

the break is a clean one, or so they say.
little bits of it
matriculating in my mind
hard and pointy
reabsorbing mal memories

amazing analogies
break is to day
break is to dance
break is to off
break is to pump
break is to heart
break is to leg

Break
Through:

I am reforming
bone on bone
clean and positioned

maybe even on the mend.

a final test, from God with love:

break is to through
as me is to you

the calling

at night I thirst for you in
my dreams

will you step or swim

step across the gulf
between languid hopes
and stallward desparation

are you a mire of a man or a myth
that my mind has cut and chopped
and minced into a balm
a salve for a heart bruised from battle

or are you my air?
my imagination, my destiny bequeathed to me from
a time where I can no longer
look my fate in the face
and say
I dare you

the silence between our breaths
at times seems to span seas
with continental breath

it is this knowingness
between the myth and the dream

that seems to make the journey
through a weary land worth it.

and I cannot wait to dive in
soul first

Please Do Not Remain Silent (2000)

One of my published pieces.

After going through a myriad of personal difficulties and losing three black women who were mentors/sisters/guides to me, I began to doubt my faith. I thought myself to be doing everything as best as I could, and nothing seemed to be going well.

I never doubted the existence of God; perhaps even worse I doubted that my pleas would be heard. I started crying and thought to myself, "If there are no answers, and God chooses to remain silent when we beg for understanding, what a cruel and pointless thing life is." I prayed," If you hear me God, please do not remain silent."

It was raining outside. I went out in my clothes with nothing to cover me and sat on my porch as the rain soaked through my clothes. I noticed that next to me there was a plant that I had given my mother after a difficult period in her life.

The plant had been dying slowly for weeks. It was a beautiful brilliant mini-rosebush when I brought it home. The leaves and the blossoms had fallen off and it had been browning for weeks. But now after the first storm of the season, the browning plant was growing green again and tiny rosebuds were blooming.

I realized, like the rose, faith needs nourishment. If God did not forget the dying rose, surely I wouldn't be forgotten. At that moment a burst of rain came from the clouds and the streets filled with pouring rain. Then a small still voice said," I am never silent." --- Copyright © 2000 Michelle Milam

japan

****
In Japan, everything was small, except her. Descript and stingy streets leading to small posh but cramped living quarters. She wondered how anyone here could make love in a bed that barely allowed her to sprawl her legs over the edge.

She marveled at the lives of people spending their lives spent staring at sparse eggshell white ceilings.

She spent the first two days deciphering how to unpack all of her things and rearrange them so they fit in her tiny flat.

But Barcelona welcomed her Barcelona, which had the benefit of a beautiful Spanish style balcony,

Even the isles in the store Missing Bootsy’s banana pudding, she left the small streets and stores in search of an open air market.

There is only one way to tell if the if it ripe, he said.

Perhaps it was the way that he cocked his head. Or that his blacked palms reminded her of the overripe banana. Maybe it was his wide grin, open despite the missing teeth. Whatever it was it moved her. The marketplace glossed over with tears.

An awkwardly comforting wrinkled hand took hers, and patted it.


Suddenly, she knew.


****