Maya Angelou Short Love Poems

Maya Angelou Short Love Poems

  • Beloved,
    In what other lives or lands
    Have I known your lips
    Your Hands
    Your Laughter brave
    Irreverent.
    Those sweet excesses that
    I do adore.
    What surety is there
    That we will meet again,
    On other worlds some
    Future time undated.
    I defy my body’s haste.
    Without the promise
    Of one more sweet encounter
    I will not deign to die.
  • Her arms semaphore fat triangles,
    Pudgy hands bunched on layered hips
    Where bones idle under years of fatback
    And lima beans.
    Her jowls shiver in accusation
    Of crimes clichéd by
    Repetition. Her children, strangers
    To childhood’s toys, play
    Best the games of darkened doorways,
    Rooftop tag, and know the slick feel of
    Other people’s property.Too fat to whore,
    Too mad to work,
    Searches her dreams for the
    Lucky sign and walks bare-handed
    Into a den of bureaucrats for
    Her portion.
    ‘They don’t give me welfare.
    I take it.’
  • Your hands easy
    weight, teasing the bees
    hived in my hair, your smile at the
    slope of my cheek. On the
    occasion, you press
    above me, glowing, spouting
    readiness, mystery rapes
    my reasonWhen you have withdrawn
    your self and the magic, when
    only the smell of your
    love lingers between
    my breasts, then, only
    then, can I greedily consume
    your presence.
  • When you come to me, unbidden,
    Beckoning me
    To long-ago rooms,
    Where memories lie.Offering me, as to a child, an attic,
    Gatherings of days too few.
    Baubles of stolen kisses.
    Trinkets of borrowed loves.
    Trunks of secret words,

    I CRY.

  • Curtains forcing their will
    against the wind,
    children sleep,
    exchanging dreams with
    seraphim. The city
    drags itself awake on
    subway straps; and
    I, an alarm, awake as a
    rumor of war,
    lie stretching into dawn,
    unasked and unheeded.
  • She came home running
    back to the mothering blackness
    deep in the smothering blackness
    white tears icicle gold plains of her face
    She came home runningShe came down creeping
    here to the black arms waiting
    now to the warm heart waiting
    rime of alien dreams befrosts her rich brown face
    She came down creeping

    She came home blameless
    black yet as Hagar’s daughter
    tall as was Sheba’s daughter
    threats of northern winds die on the desert’s face
    She came home blameless

  • Televised news turns
    a half-used day into
    a waste of desolation.
    If nothing wondrous preceded
    the catastrophic announcements,
    certainly nothing will follow, save
    the sad-eyed faces of
    bony children,
    distended bellies making
    mock at their starvation.
    Why are they always
    Black ?
    Whom do they await ?
    The lamb-chop flesh
    reeks and cannot be
    eaten. Even the
    green peas roll on my plate
    unmolested. Their innocence
    matched by the helpless
    hope in the children’s faces.
    Why do Black children
    hope ? Who will bring
    them peas and lamb chops
    and one more morning ?
  • Petulant priests, greedy
    centurions, and one million
    incensed gestures stand
    between your love and me.Your agape sacrifice
    is reduced to colored glass,
    vapid penance, and the
    tedium of ritual.

    Your footprints yet
    mark the crest of
    billowing seas but
    your joy
    fades upon the tablets
    of ordained prophets.

    Visit us again, Savior.
    Your children, burdened with
    disbelief, blinded by a patina
    of wisdom,
    carom down this vale of
    fear. We cry for you
    although we have lost
    your name

  • A Last love,
    proper in conclusion,
    should snip the wings
    forbidding further flight.
    But I, now,
    reft of that confusion,
    am lifted up
    and speeding toward the light.
  • Byways and bygone
    And lone nights long
    Sun rays and sea waves
    And star and stoneManless and friendless
    No cave my home
    This is my torture
    My long nights, lone
  • I start no
    wars, raining poison
    on cathedrals,
    melting Stars of David
    into golden faucets
    to be lighted by lamps
    shaded by human skin.I set no
    store on the strange lands,
    send no
    missionaries beyond my
    borders,
    to plunder secrets
    and barter souls.

    They
    say you took my manhood,
    Momma.
    Come sit on my lap
    and tell me,
    what do you want me to say
    to them, just
    before I annihilate
    their ignorance ?

  • I keep on dying again.
    Veins collapse, opening like the
    Small fists of sleeping
    Children.
    Memory of old tombs,
    Rotting flesh and worms do
    Not convince me against
    The challenge. The years
    And cold defeat live deep in
    Lines along my face.
    They dull my eyes, yet
    I keep on dying,
    Because I love to live.
  • Your skin like dawn
    Mine like muskOne paints the beginning
    of a certain end.

    The other, the end of a
    sure beginning.

  • Give me your handMake room for me
    to lead and follow
    you
    beyond this rage of poetry.

    Let others have
    the privacy of
    touching words
    and love of loss
    of love.

    For me
    Give me your hand.

  • They went home and told their wives,
    that never once in all their lives,
    had they known a girl like me,
    But… They went home.They said my house was licking clean,
    no word I spoke was ever mean,
    I had an air of mystery,
    But… They went home.

    My praises were on all men’s lips,
    they liked my smile, my wit, my hips,
    they’d spend one night, or two or three.
    But…

  • There are some nights when
    sleep plays coy,
    aloof and disdainful.
    And all the wiles
    that I employ to win
    its service to my side
    are useless as wounded pride,
    and much more painful.

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