.
BIO
Uzomah Ugwu is a poet and writer. She is a political, social and cultural activist. Her focus is on human rights, mental health, animal rights and rights of LBGTQ persons. Her work has been featured in Prelude Magazine, Tuck Magazine and Wild Word and is forthcoming in the Angel City review and Voice of Eve and Scarlet Leaf Review. She is the Contributing/Poetry Editor for A Tired Heroine Magazine and Contributing Interviewer for Interlocutor.
“Self Infliction”
A constant victim
Of her own self infliction
But does that still make her victim or just a
Knowing and foreseeing victim
The fresh wounds that fulfilled
Its intent on wondering Constantly
Foreseeing certainty so she could be at peace
Looking in the wrong eyes time after time
Has made her blind to the design god has
Laid out for her too concerned with
The perfect picture image that
She cannot stop hating long enough
To see her life in god’s beautiful light
A constant victim
Of her own self infliction with lethal intentions
She has cried wolf so many times
That those around her who claim to love her
Run to help her but never ever fully save her
For in their acceptance
of the darkness she saves that has
Got her now making
all that come around her causalities
Aren’t they knowing causalities?
Locked in her past that she was never able
To come close enough to live past a pain
That with no design in mind crossing
Her wrists
to the point where
She could be able to say she was a could have been
Or should have been
For she has been losing to this opponent
For so long that embedded in her
And has begun to fully end her
All by her own hands and
Her own self infliction
A victim is still a victim
Making it hard to weigh
What is more important knowing the cause
Or solving the effect
A constant victim
Of her own self infliction and
I feel glad that she is not me
Cause that part of me can finally rest
“freedom projects of his words”
I found him the hour,
where dreams escape
the present and waking mind
His character outlined everyone
of my words that I dared to use in order
To reach his being.
He said softly he had been waiting
some time for me to finally come
I left him with paragraphs that were
placed upon each other like bricks to a great
Foundation of a literary home
where he could stay and
let his intellect wonder
from any thought,
he could not only imagine
but create
his eyes glazed at
my every movement
only to later state
That they did not match my words
for I was confined to a different slavery
the one where one thinks they are free
until the metaphysics of the actual reality
that surrounds them confronts
their mental aspect in complete ruin
on their future days.
He said I had a great design,
it was my application that would fail me,
he would see me through it and all things
I would go through once I understood
his past statements
for at last all he had were words
bound by an experience
that never let him
either be truly free.
Too Soon
Always kept the socks
Maybe that’s why I found my wall
Hard to step on when reaching the ceiling
And walk my illness down
The treatment wasn’t right and we all knew it
But insurance made me outbound in a hurry
And it was just another political medical miracle
So away the doctor signed first delayed
Discouraged with the customs in the way
Of stale paperwork
His so called treatment team
let my socks rock trails around the tv room
Like I was writing a off broadway
show made for television\ leaving my
mind running limitless acts of delusions
my Well being they were an enemy of
They wanted me stale like the food they were feeding me
The nurses and techs hated when I asked for new socks
After I took a shower like they did not have more
And had to have extra for the war
\the pills they dispensed went down my throat like
Expired milk thick and gross
making it even harder to choke
But I had those socks with
those little traction on the bottom used for
pacing on Paths of confused mornings
nights and afternoons
But I was leaving soon
Maybe too soon
Forgotten Stage
There was a dancer upstairs
He stayed on his toes
Not even heard as he stroked
Across floors that told his story silently
But never did he cross bridges or was he
With visits from outside his door
He appeared to burn bridges
made of unprotected wood down
He danced out of closets with fallen hangers
In the brightness of the afternoon
Where his costumes were unable to be held
Or the musical pieces that accompanied them
He yawned at many dawns when out of tune
With his shoes glued to his feet
and the rhythm that they sought
Though dawn left no visible moons
He brought cats soup instead of milk
That is what they only knew and began to ask for
But no one asked why and what he danced for
Nor did he hear a clap
On the way down in perfect form
Floating through steps of stairways in his head
That he touched with a certain flare
he took a bow
For an invisible audience on a forgotten stage
Because he never left the rooms of his apartment
*****
Image Credit: Alexandra Haynak
