POEM: Oil in her hair
At Sunday Poetry at Ellington’s, the theme for the open mic was Mother Earth. Usually my writing process is kinda unorthodox. I write in trees. I’m inspired by nature, I climb down, type up my goods onto a laptop and then edit in stabs in the wee hours of the night. For my poetry, when I get to writing, I never really know what the poem is going to be about. Writing a poem about nature, of which I’ve done many times, but knowing it was going to be about nature was an new experience for me. This is still rough, but I trust you, blog family. Let me know what you think, looking for some criticism. Thanks!
o
oil in her hair [working title]
o
do you dare to stare
at the girl with oil in her hair?
o
black slick rolls off her locks
its thick chokes and blocks the follicles
magnified the molecule of fossil fuel
dead corpses of algae and zooplankton
under heat and pressure and rock
o
she stands in shock,
oil drops from her head as dead
fish float to the surface
in a riverbed of black
o
streaks that leave a track of oil
gathering at the small of her back, broken from
bending and mending, her attempt at tending to
the water’s dark ooze,
bent double, oil refuses to clear
and still she scoops away oil
and hopes it will disappear
o
do you dare to stare
at the girl with the black streaks
along her cheeks, oil that collect
at the very peaks of her eyelashes
o
it runs down her arms, drips off fingertips
and alarms the soil beneath her
oil splashes into the earth, bleeding into the turf
touching roots of trees soon to grow black oily leaves
o
do you dare to stare
to stare at the girl with
the oil in her hair
the girl who can’t bare the smell
on her own skin, to tell
anyone impossible, her lips glossy in oil
her throat gargles oil
she cries in oil
she’s stuck in oil
she will die in oil
o
and desperately, so desperately
she yearns to wash out the oil in her hair
she’s frantic for water, but it’s no longer there.
