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UZOMAH UGWU - POEMS

8/7/2019

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Picture
Uzomah Ugwu is a emerging poet and writer, that still hand writes everything including prose and essays. She is a political, social and cultural activist. Her core focus is on human rights, mental health, animal rights and rights of LBGTQ persons.Her work has been featured in Prelude Magazine and Tuck Magazine and Wild Word and is forthcoming in the Angel City review, Voice of Eve. She is the Contributing/Poetry Editor for A Tired Heroine magazine.

​“dreams that are not mine”

​Loud bridges crossed
These waters that were set on fire
Wheels driven off
Course left with
Dead horses
 
Each ride carried expired dreams
Arriving at the same time
Of common grief
Of this fire
 
Burning rubber tied to streets
Made to break spirits
Let souls die all while the
Sun turns its eyes to be brought
To principles that were not
Of heaven or mine
 
I left the crying out of silence on
Bridges that yelled
 
What were dreams for
If they were not mine
 
 
 

​“John’s silence”

​John did not say much and I do not think
It’s because of the conditions that brought him here
 
But that he had conditions on what he would say to anyone
Painting broad horizons with ease and focus of his eyes
Examining each movement that passed him by
Dedicated to the exit and the clock,
his mind was somewhere his body did not want
and his mind agreed on this reasoning
 
Groups  were more like quiet time at a day care
When his turn came  round
He would not even try to utter a response
Yet he was paying attention the whole time
He would just look off into the ways in which we
All would sit in a herd with horror filled minds
With excess spit from the medications side effects
 
Always rubbing his hands against his legs
I thought with enough friction he might start a fire
And burn them off and be better off
 
One day he sat by me and opened his mind
In physical recognition then asked why I spoke
Up so much in group they do nothing he said
I said because I have nothing to say actually
 
We both laughed and I felt his soul echo back at me
Until his silence called him to come along he got up
And touched my hand and lit  it on fire
With the friction of his words only spoken to a few
 
 

​“wishful winds of a sparrow”

​Around days where  if being human fits
It would fail leaving a state seemingly like anything but dry leaves
Where any friction can set it into flames
Wanting to be bagged  up and tamed so full of shame
Hard to contain its lifeless form only moving when
The wind forcefully moves it  along with time
 
Crumbled by lawnmowers who needs rakes
Felt in the tips of fallen branches
Visible like the sores in the mouth wide opened
Struck like a spot on the clock the hours
Have forgotten about life that was once there
Fresh in spring and drenching with sweat in the summer blaze
 
On trees hung strong for years, decades, even centuries
But not the leaves they resemble the low tides
in the off season of oceans with
waves toasting to match the skies with
The wind questioning the sparrow’s
 intent and direction with time ill spent
The wind wonders where and when
will the sparrow get the weathers hint
The seasons are changing
off on a limb a sparrow lifts its chin
To the wind and resides where it began as an egg
In hopes of seeing its mother again
As leaves drift from branches and
fall to the ground like ashes
the sparrow
 loses its home
along with anything that it can hold
 

​“burnt out spots in a confused mind”

​Bringing down thoughtful riots that are muted on occasion
Their intentions are to destroy
these mental pearls revolting inside of me
Burn this rebellion in the essences of my being down
 
In need of more assessment
They gather around me
like a pack of wolves one by one
Observing me like the next meal
To them either way I was a meal ticket
No different than the fees earned
for every head counted in the jails at night
 
Lazy with one of my eyes
Fighting constant injections round
the clock filled with their legal dope
 
Maybe with my sedation they can
find an answer to my equation
Locked in a rhythm less thought process
My jar is dropped, with a mouth
full of liquid from my body
Falling onto a pool that looks
like my chest is
 
Unable to get up dropped on the ground
 layered with patients before me stories
 my mind swung into a direction
That failed to mention that as young as I am
I would be better off with dementia as a diagnosis
 
For I do not even remember the hours I had before
Realizing again I was in the same place
Before all this occurred
Begging to exist beyond these walls
Fighting for better days I lay in horrid nights
 
With the sounds of broken arrows aimed at my heart
stumbles  mid air and falls apart to a harden ground
in the nurse’s and doctor’s chart but I am still caged here
 Still Marked as another target,
my bed remains a coffin
for any thoughts once flowing
I was alive only to breathe their medically induced air
 

​“give in or let go”

​Rather than coming too soon
 He laid late and stubborn stuck at noon
Staying in  blasted peace
Should have given in or finally let go
 
Children yelled for the revolution
Adults cried for their future
While the aftermath rested
In graves of deserted evolutions
 
Cushions that held borrowed bodies
Used as toy soldiers in wars
No one could find a use for
 
He broke me, left me
Flying below whatever I was above
The love left in a stove
Past dinner time where it remained
Burnt by his stubbornness
Questioning whether to give in or let go
 
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