All Things Poetic

So You Think You Bad?

Well well well. What you up to now?

Oh I'm sorry. Did I interrupt your flow, your game, your hide and go cheat? Naw baby don't mind me. Please proceed to kick that, hit that ball out the park and into my lap so I can wake the fuck up and see your misrepresentation of a lover gone flat.

I don't trust you as far as I can throw you and Lord knows I can't throw.

Shit, I'm not gonna lie. You was crafty and for a minute I regurgitated every word,every trick, swindle and rouse I allowed you to force feed down my heart which was stuck to you and what I thought was good love.

But you're addicted to that one, two, maybe five deadly sins 1, 2 steppin' round the truth, lies and let's go to the video tape.

Oh yes. It's documented how you said this, then did that. Expressin' love and how you got my back when really you had her up against the wall actin' like you was all that.

See, it was your world I lived in. I believed I belonged. Inhabitating your planet, taking on your Dogma, learning your style as law.

Now I look like a fool to stay. Losing sleep sleeping with the enemy who imitates the life of someone else by day performing drity pretty things at night.

Trust. These are lessons learned and never repeated. Cuz like Erykah, "I'm cleva..." and I'll show you how I roll.

Solomente. Uno. Me subtracted from you, times two plus somebody else's lover cuz that how you do it.

Don't tell me you salty cuz I found me the right stuff?! Let us not forget you were the one face to porcelain not one month after you was mackin' with what's-her-face at the club.

Yeah I know about that too. But no need to worry Boo, I'm all set.

I've checked out of your hotel for good. No refund please, keep the check.

Tiffani C. Powell
Copyright June 2005

No Such Obligation

Tell me again how strong I am.
The chameleon doing what it does best. Adaptation at your command.
Milk spilling and spoiling on the floor so what's the use in crying?
It's over, its done. All there's left to do is press send.
Be careful what you wish for cuz you might end up on Crystal Rock with the girl, the burdens, the cat and a one way ticket to life inside the airport. Always leaving with no destination.
Love...let me count the ways I can throw myself against a wall to remember how to leave when they've handed me my hat. And my hat is most certainly in my hand.
But then reflection is deflected and rejection is the objection that I don't want to rule guilty for. And I am guilty.
Guilty of 2000 thread count the bed was made with.
It's over. It's done.
But what price do we pay? Who's head is it on? Because I feel as though I can't afford the reward to get it back.
Who is responsible? Who will stand up in front of the class and recite the declaration?
Tell me again how strong I am. Tell me again how everything happens for a reason and I'll take off this mask and accept the obligation.

Tiffani Frost Powell
Copyright June 2004

Uneducated Assumption

Uneducated Assumption **You'll find this poem on my CD On Her Own

I am so over labels.  I am so over people defining me, confining me, box me in, seal me up, packaged addressed and ready to bought by the consumer.

What is it with people trying to tell me who I am?  Does it make you feel better or less threatened to know that you’ve lumped me into a category?

Check this box if you’re Black, White, gay, straight, American, Christian, terrorist, Buddhist, ghetto, racist, feminist, Arab, left or right wing, ugly, stupid, rich or poor, homeless or heartless.

And beware because the side effects include: nausea, diarrhea, mood disorder, conformity, genocide, idealism, abnormality and a slew of other adjectives that rape us of our individuality.

And isn’t that what its’ about?  It meaning life.  It meaning you and me?

Be you!  Be free!  Make love not war, peace not hate now wouldn’t that be great especially if you were selling it on a T-shirt?

But life is too short to categorized.

So what if I once was engaged to Jim then fell in love with Sue and three years later turned around and decided to do Enrique.

Am I gay or straight?  Am I dammed or am I saved?

Okay what, I get it.  You need definition.   It’s you who are insecure.  And maybe just maybe, if you stamp a label on me, nutritional value included, you’ll have a better grasp at you.

Shit I don’t know you.  All I know is me.

I like cats, my favorite color is blue, when I was five I loved going down the slide, I suck at Math and occasionally I’ll go out for Chinese.

But that don’t make me a lion trainer, free falling blue faced Chinamen with hopes of an MBA from MIT now does it?

So why you pressed to mold me with the rest?

Yes I write.  Yes I dance.  Yes, believe it or not I am 100% Black so don’t ask if I got Indian in me cuz you think I got good hair.

Yes I was in love with a woman and yesterday my boyfriend made me breakfast in bed and I still suck at Math but I’m smart enough to know that your numbers don’t add up.

There is no expiration date on this one folks.

So generalize me in the simplest of terms.

My name. 

That is the only label you need stick me with.  And it’s Tiffani.

The rest you’ll learn once you remove those blinders and take an educated guess.

Tiffani C. Frost

Copyright 2004

Generic Prescription

Self-medication will only get you so far my dear, better get you some right in the head quick before fate passes you by.

Won’t do you no good communing with the Devil marooned on the island of desperate depressions, it never happens to me, my childhood was lacking this and that… heard enough to know that you whacked!  Yes, it takes a village to raise a child but sometimes the offer ‘aint so good.

Makeshift living is not worth settling for-topsy-turvy misusing your own life.

Get over yourself cuz you’re one in a million Americans who suffer from anxiety, dry mouth, my daddy didn’t love me and I have issues with rejection.

Time is ticking, sinking fast 10,000 leagues under the weight of the world on your shoulders and brain and even though you grew up inside a circus, three ring and all, there comes a time when you must take on the day.

Please be advised; that is if you can find time within your busy schedule to relax, relate and release past, pent up emotions and delusions of grandeurs, you’ll find there is a whole world out there.

Put the wheels in motion for the stage of the chrysalis. Actually do away with those coping mechanisms and do something.  Strip clean and become at peace with this genetic make-up, freak-show so-called life is in your name; sold bought and paid for.

Piecing together this girl’s life comforted by the sound of the cork popping, pills spilling a drunken stupor of promiscuity has gotten old.

Real old.

So ditch the first idea and go with Plan B. Be trigger happy in group therapy. Direct your inner-child to the reference section and fasten your seatbelt for the cleansing ride of your life.

Try something new: Drown yourself in functionality, semi-normalcy and open up the blinds.

The sun is shinning in for a change and today’s a good day to be alive.


Tiffani C. Frost

Copyright 2005

Check Your Watch

Loosen up those buttons; give way to that lie you stole. 

Thick molasses my cup runneth over 70 degrees without snow. 

Do you know where you’re going to?  Mahogany dreams for a penny, drop wishin’! Don’t nobody know what war we’re fightin’ or whose side is on empty. 

A buck eighty-nine will no longer fill your tank or stomach when it comes down to peanut butter & jelly for dinner adding to the statistic aptitude test.  Wait!  This is a life no grade please my guardian is deaf. 

The administrator boasts the clock is ticking but are you competent casting out demons from above, below and inside with intent? 

Roll it, pack it, smoke up, and ingest yourself to purge that nasty complexity that once was the name slash identity. 

Profound in my findings I find me incapable to relinquish what you gave me. 

Money is not time well spent to this 90 minute session of digression twenty years may be overdue, take a peak, close your mouth, listen. 

Now I know you’re dressed to the 9’s high on what you think is reality.  Dripping, drowning a mess can’t nuthin’ cover up that frailty. 

That’s why I move at the speed of light before it’s too late to climb out of rock-a-bye, rock that lie, keep on, keepin’ on that front. 

Cuz before the winner is announced; intermissions over and you’re still out to lunch. 

I don’t know what else to tell you. 

The sun rises in the East, so check the time zone for a complete listing of-get to know me.

Tiffani C. Frost

Copyright 2005