optimist?

(because i believe people can find courage to change)

someone recently said to me:
"that's optimistic of you"
that if i've seen the best of anyone
i hold to it
despite their past,
their struggles to overcome themselves
beyond the ways
fear
shackles people to past pain
despite people's inevitable
imperfection
or their fear of change itself
even when it's for their own good
in spite of the ways that living
and loving this way
has burned me

like a phoenix from ashes
maybe I emerge from the rubble
an optimist
maybe i believe
someone
believes i can live to get 80
be loved as intensely as I love
forgive myself for the ways I fail
to change
be as perfect as I strive to be
find others
as optimistic as me.

re verb

i look
he look back
i look away
we see saw
eyes say what
mouths will not
he look again
we get caught
being absent
we stop caring
we be scurred
we re verb

then i call
he don't answer
nigga's busy
he black gypsy
need to be heard
he call back later
i stare at the number
being a hater
i pay back
don't pick up
he wonderin' now
if he messed up
we play these
silly games
we grow closer
we refrain
grown ass men
it's absurd
and these three words
we reverb

we together
we a part
things sabotaged
before things start
needing one another
need our hearts
so they beat
our love sparks
and they flutter
sometimes hurt
and they wonder
why love lurks
left to right
bend and curve
dance like words
we re verb

untitled

(for those who remind me that my smile is poetic)

sometimes
i need to pick up the phone
replay messages
remind myself of the way
the moon holds my shadow
remember the way friends smile
stuttering on my name
the ways i manage to be
missed
remembered
cherised
as beautiful
for just being me.

sometimes
my focus is so locus i'm loco
fail to remember what it feels like
to blush
lose track of those who love my scent
my musky cocoa butta frankincense
sometimes i see life
as so urgent
i trip on my own lazily tied shoestrings
longing for the affirmation
of a main stream
then I remember
at any point in a given day
some 14 year old
prefers being taught, my way
some man or woman
adores the way my eyes smile
someone seeking safety
reads my poem in mean while

so I am learning
to remember that I am the polish
for my shine
my confidence? my magnetism
for fingers that find
and push the tension
out of my back
through a tender embrace
sometimes more than that
when I sit still enough
to shake the worry from my frown
fall into arms that hold me up
when I let myself down

and my passion is a wellspring
of hopefulness
for a life so blessed
my smile is the sunshine
for someone upset
my tone is the lullaby
stumping someone's nightmare
my joyfulness is a lighthouse
for souls lost out there

and i am most blessed
when I forget i am
when the burden of my spiriling
about what I can not change
makes me lose sight of
what I can:

i can claim the happiness
the goodness
i so deserve
and make it so
i can remember i am cherished
when I'm feeling most low