Medusa in Obsidian

My heart told me not to do it
It would tell me things like: Run the other way, that tragically she is not as beautiful as her face



I fell in love with you

Even now when i see you
My joints stiffen a bit
My jaw clenches and eyes squint
But
I do not turn to stone

I am unmoved by your stare
immune to the snakes biting
at my fingers running thru your hair

I look lovingly at you still
And I do not turn to stone

Your poison courses thru my veins
like vitamins, viruses, and vocodin
Your pain makes a criss-cross pattern across
The skin of my back like
A map to Perdition and Penitence
Plotted by a now broke slave master who takes out his
frustrations on stay-behind-slaves
who didn't leave his ass for Northern factories and ghettos

Your beauty has been your curse since birth
And the verdant stare of Athena
that made her hand unfair
Twisting your beauty into terror and anger
Rendering men into stasis

But Not me...
I do not turn to stone

I see you.
Through all of the crimson and color of shadows
I can hear your heart beat symphonies
Over your snarling and the gnashing of your teeth

I know that your gorgeous face
Is just a cap of crusted dirt
covering the throat of a volcano
itching to vomit destruction
Your name is not what's on your birth certificate
It is Krakatau, or  Saint Helen of Vesuvius

But I see thru you like the lies of 4 year old
Your uncertainty and insecurities
Stand out like bumps and dashes to the blind
And my fingertips reveled in reading your epic tales
as they trailed over your skin

I know you are scared
I know you were scarred

And i still stare at you and did not blink
I do not turn to stone

I loved you like a Muslim loves death
I waved love around like a sword
Until you took it from me and stabbed it into my own back

And even as I sat in the dark of prison like Jonah in a fish
Bleeding out your lies into to puddles
I regretted what I never got to tell you

Like i never got to tell you how mysteriously glorious you made me feel
That first day said the single word that began our whirlwind romance:
All you spoke was my name and I  became instantly yours...
Or how when you melted into me
like dawn does the night sky that night on our first date
Or how all the little things from your smile
to the little love notes you'd leave in my pocket
made the most beautiful kaleidoscope out of the stars and hearts that clouded my eyes

I don't know how it all exploded
Like my heart was stepped on by Godzilla
Like when I tried to give you all of me, you gave me the gift of Nagasaki

In purgatory, I used to have a dream where I would wake up and find you sitting at the foot of my bed

Smiling at me silently like Mona Lisa
I would try to embrace you before waking up would erase you

There I have always wondered if I would get the chance to tell you
How as I studied the life of Amiri Baraka,
I noticed his wife Amina look just like you...
From the tilt of her neck, to how she held her kids, how her sandaled feet with bunched up toes 

look just like they walked the entire globe

 looking for me, like a missing puzzle piece that fell out of her heart
How these random things would actually be recognizable to me
was a sign from the Devine
like a sea being parted by a prayer like your arms that I  want do desperately to suround me and drown me 

But mamas are always right

And the hope we gave has sadly turned into hate
Turning ourOur "Love Is" into a "Love Aint"
Our Will and Jada, our Martin and Gina
Into a Brangelina being broken
Now I just want to drag my incomplete heart thru broken glass and barbed wire
until Emmet Till's mother is the only person who can recognize the love that I am missing

I do not know why
that Black church forgave Dylan Roof
I do not know why the brother or the judge hugged a guilty Amber

but I do know
I would be the frog again and trust scorpion on my back for another ride across the river just for another touch of ymy skin on yours
I would let you stick the stiletto of desire into my ribs
To bleed out our possibilities into a crimson river of dream and lovepoems about what we should have and supposed to bes

There will always be that spark that our cheeks light  every time we hug
So I will be the firefighter to your toxic pyromania
I have more blood for you to collect from my neck to sip , slip your fangs in, give me your most painful kiss again and again

Let mekiss you back while squeeze your neck as I 
Inhale deep your butterscotch breath  capture the deepest part of you sweaters part of me deep in my chest

Hell, I don't know what this really is I feel for you

That I feel anything labeled with you is a blessing I do not really deserve

The irony about Medusa is that she was the most beautiful woman in the world
And we Men did what  then what men still do to beauty today

It's What we have always done:

We steal it
We tear it in two,  with my little to no  no apologies 
And  the goddess Athena did to her what we do still to victims
We blame you and made you ugly

And you did what Medusa did
You made your face a mask meant scare love away

I wish you knew how untrue to yourself you still really are
How your pain is are just gauze bandages hiding you like a mummy
How you have weaponized your low self esteem to turn yourself into a minstrel superstar like Candace Owens, Stacy Dash

I do not know why God gave you to me as such a beautiful affliction
But even  now when i wake up, I still see you smiling at me at the foot of the bed

Last night's dream, your feet feet were entangled there with mine

The lesson I have finally learned
Is as I learn  to love myself more
I've  haven't learned to love you less

Even when as I love you at distance we  are still obsessed with each other

You want to reject me and still hold me close  and I remain the one trough every bit of pain 
 who loves and knows you the most

I am your Perseus  who knows hat in order to  be with you I must use 

a strategy of reflection to get  and stay near
And so tomorrow dearest queen Black queen I am going to make you mine-  again and forever,
This time you will wake up in a dream and find me at the foot of your bed
Smiling and lovingly holding a platinum ring...

 And a mirror