Wrong Label

And the Poem-A-Day Challenge continues... today the 21st day with the prompt "what I am" and/or "what I am not".

And here we go...



Wrong Label

What I am, nobody knows
Where I stand or
where I go
nobody can see.

Not even me.
Because I transmute
often, I change route.

You think I am what you see
but you know nothing about me.
You are part of my story
belong to my inventory
but you never fought my battles.
You didn’t rebuild my castles.

You just fantasize.
And you envy my paradise,
you vaguely see my treks,
you don’t know about my wrecks
and yet, you judge my acts.

You don’t know who I am
and you don’t give a damn!

You know nothing about
what’s in and out
of my changing views
from the lowest grounds
to my highest hills.
From my spring valleys
to my pitch-dark alleys.

And you label me,
anyway. As if I were
a box of Lipton tea.
You are unaware
but I am not
what you thought.
I am not a finished product,
ready and packed.
Me, you cannot predict.

Where I am today and where I go
remains an incognito.
Who I am now won’t be tomorrow
that’s life’s sweetest marrow!

I am the expedition –
offbeat,
unique.
A special edition.
Or the expeditionary –
unpredictable,
mystical.
A visionary.

No delimitation
or definition.
There is no end of me.
I am just free to be.

– Rosangela C. Taylor

Only if I still loved you

If I still loved you

I'd write you another poem.

Not like any of'em,

but a poem about you.

And about us.

The rise of a sentiment,

and the so imminent

destructive fuss.

We took risks in those days,

remember?

January to December

jumbling our ways.

We were kids inside

and we just followed the heart.

We knew the art

of going with the tide.

The poem would gather

our moments of laughter,

the magic during and after

the bliss of being together.

Your boyish personality,

your strong passion and desire

for more life, more fire.

Your best quality.

One verse would be like this:

Among all the experiences

and despite our differences

we lived in true bliss...

And I'd write about your smile

and the way you'd look at me

how you'd make it easy to be

so alive, so wild in a little while.

The poem would refresh your mind

about all the things we lived for:

burning desires, love, fun, and more.

It would remind

you and me

that we might never find

a better way to be soul-free.

I'd write you a poem,

if I still loved you.

- Rosangela Taylor

How can I not?

How can I not?


You show me the bad
you try to change my act
you think I cannot think
and I turn you off in a blink.

You – you rob me,
straight face!
That is not a fee,
there is no trace
of liberty;
it’s not my free-will
participation
or collaboration.
It’s a bill
for distortion.
Corruption.

You lie when you say
this is the land of free.
Nothing you know about freedom
when you abide to a kingdom.

How can I not resist
to this huge farce?
How can I exist
like a harnessed horse?

Rosangela Taylor
(for Writer's Digest Poem-A-Day Challenge, April/15 - Theme, "Resistance". Photo also by Rosangela Taylor)