We’re in a pub.
The rain has stopped, or at least settled now into a fine drizzle.
You’re on the phone to a relative, your sister –
she wants to know if we’ve had sex.
I watch as this exchange takes place, remembering your face last night
in the dark
eyes like droplets of space, open, plump lips
the full length of tooth exposed.
A face only known between lovers.
oranges fresh oranges. sweating glasses full of ice. pulpy juice spills over the brims. the orangeness accompanied by little green leaves still attached the stems. fruits rolling away. downhill. smashing or getting smashed by mediterranean-blue cars during the rush hour. hurrying towards other kinds of hues. something colder in order to avoid the citruses.
–– I get obsessed as soon as I see a hardcover with oranges on it. knowing that italy is next. italy on ice.
with orange juice poured over & espresso & gelato &
more ice &
round heavy ripe sicilian harvest.
& anything to get high on
day after day until the waste the peels start to pile up.
I stumble on them
drag my face on the sticky sweet-smelling floor.
the fruits now turning white & mushy &
later blueish green I
gently blow on their soft surface & off flies the powder-like substance that
tickles my nose while I
lay on the chilly kitchen tiles.
meanwhile so effortlessly. the sunlight covers parts of the body making them disappear. the body transforms into an idea of having endured the conditions. gone further gone towards an abundant distraction.
professor says,
“picasso had a blue period, which was later followed by a rose period.
people tend to associate the blue period with melancholic sentiments.
& the rose period, with its opposite.”
but professor, i sense lingering melancholy
in his rose period, too.
need money? get naked.
need money? don’t paint.
1.
“red is light, red is love”
but why is the red-light district the dimly-lit
alleys where sex workers eye their clients,
& where sex shops sell dildos that
you know your parents never bought?
& why is moulin rouge so heart-wrenching?
2.
papa, red is the color of your leaving:
a blow i could never bandage. but it was
cadmium red, like my buttcheeks after a spanking
from you, for not getting math equations.
i get it—
you said life isn’t fair, not all sunshine & roses,
but i tried to leap over
the other side of the equal sign, over
the crimson massacre on the page, from never finding x
but i found x in the xena that you made me.
if you saw blood,
would you ask if it hurt?
3.
self-portrait as picasso,
heart on a montmartre easel
googling the going rate
for a titty pic,
painting portraits
of my patrons,
picasso, gertrude stein,
me, my father,
who pays so i can make
still lifes of red-distilled worlds,
sans a red-light district visit,
yes, i’ll paint a portrait,
of you, papa,
in infrared, or blue
on this scar, you etched
& will never ask about
Sometimes my depression and erratic emotions derails my motivation and crashes into my thoughts, swallowing the entirety of my day and I’ve fallen into a void, floating away.
Before I know it, my day has disappeared in the blink of an eye.
I don’t write very often about my own emotions nor about my life personally, it’s a strange thing to write about– the mercurial emotions of a writer are quicksilver, always shifting from happy, dropping to sadness. When I feel something so strongly, the words flow easily into my mind and spill out from the tips of my fingers in chaotic scribbles. Words typed, stamped in black font on my screen, thoughts to be untangled and picked apart by the reader.
How can you proofread your own emotions and thoughts? Can you correct the mistakes so easily? Mark them out with whiteout, jot quick notes in the margins of your life in a red pen. Can you read the notes, fix everything you wanted to–
Can you offer advice for the broken child of yesterday?
Can you fix the mistakes of today’s struggling adult?
Can you ease the pain of tomorrow’s elderly?
Can you tell me, it will be okay in the beginning and end?
The middle between the past and future, I will be present when you are ready to tell me your answers and I will tell you my stories.
Today
I’ll watch
as you spin glitter from glass
pausing on the meaning of
Alchemy
?
“that which stays the same but has also been transformed”
Even within a still night
Life will emerge.
silence shattered with cries emerging from cherry-stained linens.
surrender
to movement.
shake my hand;
A contract
to form the other.
It takes a village
to sculpt a mind
~offer a palm~
Say a silent Prayer you will be a vase
and not an ashtray
Cracking
In the kiln.
To be crippled
at the thought of being permanent
permanently shifted. No longer a pure substance
Now
a scrapbook
of global proportions
Sitting on the precipice
You prefer to stay suspended in the air
Though you’ve long since leapt from solid ground.
Of soul stirring words,
Of the creation of hallowed grounds;
In the mind.
Of expanded intellects,
And sparkling gleams of the Black forms eyes.
On toward higher planes of intellectual existence.
Of a refined mental and emotional disposition.
Of, or pertaining to, the manifest destiny of the Black beings preeminence.
Laboring though the harsh birth of a “New Negro”.
The contemporary representation of that which came before.
Broken out of the chains that kept it close to society’s hegemonic floor.
True to its divine form.
No longer lost in the labyrinth of a lesser mind.
Burdened brows raised to see the message;
That God gave Noah in the rainbow sing,
No more water,
The fire next time.
Fearless Bucks
Releasing spears they are supposed to chuck.
Raised up on the hope that floats
Forcing society to lower its motes.
Maternal captives,
Captive maternal.
Captivating hearts and minds.
Igniting the light of the intellectual infernal.
Her ebullience
silently erodes
my acrid emotions.
The scent of her roses
fill me to sway from my notions.
An epistle of love
will never be enough,
for my love to show
and how buried I am
like the plant in snow.
She was with another man
whom I call a friend.
Little can I control my dopamine
with her in between,
in the triangle with a dead end.
She is the queen of my dreams.
Her easy prattle and
our laughter frozen in time,
pop in and out of mind,
yet, I dare say I’m letting her go.
Paint my skin
green.
Color of the battlefield,
where he fell
asleep.
Paint me green, like the pink
of his seventeen.
Dye me
green—dollar green.
Algal bloom of
greedy souls.
I’m sick and begging
you to colour my pain
the colour of spring.
His emerald eyes,
once full of hope.
Don’t eat the food at Uncle Hades’ house
Don’t eat the fruits at Uncle Hades’ house,
Persephone never heard anything else
Persephone was always told what to do,
… never what she wanted to do …
so when Demeter asked why,
Why did you eat the pomegranate in Uncle Hades’ house?
Persephone answered with the truth–
I wanted to get away from you, mom.
because you never let me do anything,
you constantly give me stability and water but–
i’ve lost my spark–my will to live–
i’m sorry but–
my flowers don’t bloom, mom.
I wanna go home
As the dusk rises
With the sun bending down
And thus, staying there
Until it begins to rise again.
In your car
With the windows down
Does light shine dim
And bright shading the
galaxy, the sky.
Racing down the street
Goes the gas smell and
the steam of engine
rolling and curling, identified
by the neighborhood stoop
kids.
We gather,
We gather.
Our baggage is familiar
The song doesn’t free us
It simply rotates in our
Head.
& on & on
with recognition in our
Eye.
We stare ahead at our
Futures down the road
Away from the homes
Our guts have ever known.
It is dusk quieting us down.
We’re silent now.
No singing
Just dreaming staring
At the center.
The core
Like the hot inside of
The Earth.
We burn
Like a towering inferno
Settling into the far
Distance.
Genre : Futures, Youth, Romance, Fear, Moving Forwar
