Natural Hair Haiku
winter’s ice lowers
branch disappears amongst the
kinks atop my head
© 2015 Nortina Simmons
No Holds Barred Poetry Writing Challenge: Day 20
Tag: NHBPWC 2015
No Hold Barred Poetry Writing Challenge: Day 19
Each morning
I wake up angrier,
although I don’t know
why or with whom,
only that I hate my life
and all who inhabit it,
and this pair of scissors
is dying to end it.
© 2015 Nortina Simmons
No Holds Barred Poetry Writing Challenge: Day 18
He says I’m not the relationship type
because I have cold hands and feet,
the tips of my fingers and toes,
just under the nail,
a purple-blue tint—
a lack of blood flow, a lack of oxygen.
My heart beats to a different tune
opposite of the symphony he composes
for our love.
I’ll admit I feel nothing
when I touch him—
my senses numb to his warm affections.
“I love you” tastes like hot
mayonnaise on my tongue.
His kisses fail to thaw my icy lips—
frozen in a pout, unwilling to smile
to his presents and poems.
I’m sorry I couldn’t be the meek
lover you desire of me,
but I don’t need a king to save my heart,
and I’m too independent to let a man
be the key to my happiness.
© 2015 Nortina Simmons
No Holds Barred Poetry Writing Challenge: Day 17
Love Tanka #1
when our fingers touch,
sticky and salty from the
Coke and popcorn, I
know our teenage love will last
at the back of this theater
© 2015 Nortina Simmons
No Holds Barred Poetry Writing Challenge: Day 16
Love and Other Words . . .
I love my husband—
honestly, I do—
and even as I wrap
this cloth napkin
around his neck,
I wish he’d sweep
me up into his arms,
whisk me off to our marriage
bed, and make sweet love
to me on this Valentine’s Day.
Instead, he screwed his
23-year-old TA.
So I pull the ends
of this napkin
and squeeze the
ungrateful, unfaithful
life out of him.
© 2015 Nortina Simmons
No Holds Barred Poetry Writing Challenge: Day 15
Love Haiku #3
rain pelts my forehead
as I raise my head skyward
and you kiss my neck.
© 2015 Nortina Simmons
No Holds Barred Poetry Writing Challenge: Day 14
My Opinionated Love
What is a good guy? Bitter.
A manipulator. A scam.
Ladies, you’re tired of being
punching bags, sex kittens?
Don’t be fooled
when a good guy exchanges
slaps for kisses,
fucking for making love.
No Holds Barred Poetry Writing Challenge: Day 13
God made dirt, dirt don’t hurt—
the blind blessing we recite
over spilt food on a dirty floor
before placing it back in our mouths,
swallowing with the confidence
that because God made it
we cannot die.
But did God not create people,
people who hurt us every day—
break our hearts,
steal our loved ones,
abuse us with manipulative words
to satisfy their selfish needs,
shoot us, stab us, kill us, rape us?
Shall I eat this peanut retrieved
from a floor on which a murderer tread
dragging a family of corpses behind him?
God made him, right?
He cannot hurt me…
© 2015 Nortina Simmons
No Holds Barred Poetry Writing Challenge: Day 12
Our values are misguided,
corrupted.
A life is meaningless
against a car,
a phone, a pair of shoes.
A seventeen-year-old boy
faces seventeen years for
strong-arm robbery.
His loot: a pack of cigarettes,
deodorant, a toothbrush—
the victim still breathing.
Seventeen years under the parenting
of murderers, rapists,
bigoted prison guards—
if not mistaken for a
murderer, rapist
by bigoted police officers
with loaded guns and a profile
before his trial.
© 2015 Nortina Simmons
No Holds Barred Poetry Writing Challenge: Day 11
Red Roses and Bloody Fingers
I leave a red rose on her doorstep
every day for the month of February
in a year divisible by four.
The stem wrapped in a bow
the same color as the blood that
drips from her finger when she
discovers the ribbon conceals a thorn.
On each ribbon is a note:
Nortina's Writing Inspiration Well 