Life in the Third Person

We have all wished to be covered // After everything explodes

2019-08-01T05:17:00.003+02:00

In Texas a Baby is Born Without Skin.

We have all wished to be covered.

You dare air. So there are surgeries

for you. Peach fuzz. Leather.

A hardcover's dust jacket. We try growing some

for you in the lab.

Underneath the carpet

lives a kingdom of dust. You sneeze.

And in an old house

the roofslates keep sliding down

while we worry that the sky is falling.

The sky is falling.

A landlocked country celebrates this,

their hands upturned to the rain, their prayers

answered. The sky

is falling. Above the Arctic circle

a hole grows in the ozone. Its air is pretty.

Beneath it, the ice glitters wetly. A wound.

You cry. You are packaged by nurses.

Your organs are canvassed by bandages.

Your colours bloom like a cracked mirror.

You are opened. You are three-dimensional.

We sink our hands into you.

There is something inside you,

and there our eyes are

swallowed. A beaten samurai's blade

finds himself and his colours too bloom.

Like you, he is opened. Was it choice,

to find oneself peeled? Was it your hands?

When you were packaged by your mother,

where were your hands?

What were your hands?

Where were your hands before this air seeped

into your fingers? And the hurt, from where

this roaring hurt

of knifeless cuts, of groundless scabs

fresh with falling? Where

were your hands before you were

first found, glittering and bloodless

as a seashell?

You were waiting. Tinned.

A sonograph questioned your contents.

Then beneath your mother's legs,

strange shore,

your small feet waded. You leap.

You are born and on the news.

***

Will Everything Be Okay In The End?

After everything explodes or

after everything implodes when

all seven planets line up

perfectly together straight and

bugs transform into bigger bugs and

begin eating children and

embryos rip out of wombs with

baby nails like talons and

my head ceases

its clouds, heavy and weird and

grey-- After all of this, will everything be

okay? The missiles, will

every one of them making their way

steadily into intergalactic

atmospheres of war, will they turn

into birds instead? And jobs, will there be

enough for everyone because robots,

so clean, so ready, take

Mondays through Fridays off to write

poems instead? In the end,

will everything be “alright” or “just fine” or “it’s no big deal” or be

glitterier

or just “meh”? Whatever

screams or silences of screams, will they become

like music, or like the memory of music

and be resolved into floating, like air, like struggles

of vapour after kettles, or like children

blowing into plastic circles, soapy

with effort-- And there. The blowing goes

as spheres as crystals

as long as seconds before

the quiet bursts.

A Blue Song/Wine Poem/Kaguya.

2018-12-31T01:17:00.000+02:00

A Blue Song.

Oh yes, but this song is for empathy. For the grasses'
leaves' greens being yellowed. For when winter
says, "Hello": A song as this might add to its start with an opening
chord or two. Oh (yes), but this song is for me: Hello.
A greeting is an affirmation of one thinking thing
to another. I greet stones. Tie them to my feet when
I jump into my own blood. Drown for a bit. Wait
for a response. The stones don't say anything. Flowers
do sometimes, inspiring a heart to do a little lilt
within itself. So much to speak of about flowers: Thick yellow grasses
swirling around like the sounds swirling within a severed ear.
That's a good painting.
But that painting is yellow. Blood is red. Water is
blue, or the sky is
blue, or our minds make them
blue, so where should I jump? Upwards towards the birds
or downwards towards the fish? If human embryos look like fish
then wombs might be oceans, but amnion fluid is yellow: Like
sunflowers. Was Van Gogh a yellow man if he had a gun? And am I
blue because words
sometimes sing?

Wine Poem.

Go, small song. Make yourself
known. Stretch your arms as sunlight,
glow. We humans’ leaves’ greens need you,
so, will you love us as our ears do you?
Wonder with me, throat, as you say
your notes and lengthen their dull to
soft nevers. The crowd still hears you
tomorrow, the last song before the final
closing of the eyes before godless sleep.
Coffins vibrate with your enthusiasms,
corpses know remorse, finally, like a
cracked ancient bell with some something
left. String me as niggers
screaming in pillow fields. String me
as hazardous Lazarus sinewed neck-string
plucked as flowers, as slave-ships docked
upon the shore with gentle endless thud. We’ll
keep singing spirituals forever, we’ll keep
saying things about skin. We will win. Win
like mirrors lastly seeing smiles. Come with me
as stars die and are still witnessed. Inscribed
as pride in a mother’s voice with small
black boy joy, with tears, first cries, blood,
water
and the mother’s song mountain-heavy
and living.

Kaguya.

friend, I'll miss you like a plastic water-bottle in an ocean

floating away, emptied of message like hollow mouths somehow

making some work of our tongues’ clay this shape, that,

a word

or two, some drinks as well gliding down the canals of

our throats, the same chambers of breath, of the grey

inhalations from the paper-white cylinders we burn

I say I only smoke on special occasions, so, you

when we take the paddle-boat in the park and the ducks'

brass laughs are knowing, I

spin us around in circles as my

other hand is a little stronger when I

try to push us forward I'm

sorry, I'll

miss you like water in a bottle trapped by its lid

turning into air in the sun, then whose gas will hit

its plastic walls and then return to dew, I'll miss you

like that, I'll

miss you like how the Great Books school you go to feels

of where we were then and where we were now which,

no matter how much chance, the pictures poured into

our palms through our pens— beaming now from crystal squares

with which we take our photos— are still seen by our eyes:

remember our eyes, I'll miss you

like that, I'll

miss you like when the big man upstairs said

the "darkness here and the light there”

and when to see that already the world was created

into two– a generous deep split branching out forever

into a meeting point we can only assume

is somewhere behind us and behind our eyes—

is to be inside oneself — you would never

smash up your head like that, would you?

just for the nerves of it? — and when

to hold yourself and to see that pink decay of yours

filled with memory and now several smokes

is prayer I'll miss you like that I’m sure, there'll be

whole twittering stretches of string-song like bird muscle

to say so, but that pink thing in your head I won't miss you,

no, not like that. I'll

do this now then when I think of

you

I'll feel the thing in my chest like

you

I'll look for a song that looks like

you

to match this thing in my chest and

you

won't suddenly appear and I'll pretend that that

you

is good enough because it won't be

( )

my friend, I'll miss you like the paddle-boat spins, and the wood

of the boat against the wood of the dock, and

our hollow mouths sounding and our feet finding earth.

2018-06-28T03:50:00.000+02:00

Poem.

You see everything and then it is gone: lightning

in a dark moonless night: you before everything

it all happened at once and then never.

Carefully Waiting for Carly Rae Jepsen to Knock on My Door and Whisper, Muse-like, "Run Away With Me".

2018-02-15T10:18:00.000+02:00

Run away with me. We

Could glimpse at new starlight. Stretch

The cold world into hand-hold. Kiss

Like that first album of yours I hated. Love

Like the second that is my life. Now

That we are into each other, we fold. Into

And like fresh life, we gasp at our newness. Young

And with the green betwen our heels. Heel

Kick like Annie Hall sings. Before

That fatal touch, the revelation. We

Might be different and less dark. You

could ask me first and I would say yes. I

couldn't say no and my hand. It

wouldn't move without you. Your

Golden archaic eighties Apollo. Torsos

Like yours dance timeless. I

Must change my life. Rilke

Would agree with me. He

Would write about your beautiful. And

How beautiful you are. And

These headphones another Helicon. My

Pen another. Song.

Poem.

2018-02-06T20:14:00.001+02:00

Are There More Beautiful Things Than Solange.

2018-02-06T06:04:00.001+02:00

(after Morgan Parker)

The sky, the fucking sky, she says, and I say
But she is the moon, so of course the sky, the fucking sky

To witness it is in itself communion is holy a blessing
Yes, the mouth is a wound, but the air is canvas

A cruel vermillion you put upon it, haematite kiss
To close the distance, this is where I will find you again, sister

-- If you move like this one more time then of course I'll come
Join you. My sterile feet don't flow like yours; soaked

In so much bleach like clean, clean teeth: white
Is the cruelest colour, this we know and knew

But I loved them all the same those pale Gods, Godivas
Their songs with strange universals like the sky, the fucking sky

And since you said that I am sure I understood, I am sure
That when the black of you is heavy I can see your slowness

And yes, that sky, that fucking sky, because it is not heavy
And it was there in the fields with the cotton the snow and your blood your hair

"I'm omw"/"where inadams areyou"/"Plus Christmas lol"/"but if you don’t want to i totally understand"/"Perfect this story requires tipsy because it’s so white, privileged and dumb"/"IS THIS SEXY IS IT NOT I DON'T KNOW YES?"/"It's been snowing all day"

2017-12-13T09:43:00.000+02:00

Poem (for W).

Snow: the gentle magisteria
that we crumble by, fighting
and flinging and fluffing about before
the touch-- of ice, of each other-- the same
thing
gathering about in the utmost
dust of things that were. Water
is in between us all the time, but
we couldn't possibly notice until we do it,
the touch-- of ice, of each other-- the same
thing,
y'know? Y'know what I'm saying? We talk
about it constantly. Flinging and fluffing
about before that
thing,
the touch. There you are. Hello,
how are you?

Some incompletes.

2017-11-21T02:31:00.001+02:00

Glenn Gould Plays Richard Wagner.

I. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Act I: Prelude

Shall we set forth?
There is the great big blue
for us.

The way it calls is uncommon.
My eyes were captured
by the all above.

We should never return.
The world is not worth our mirth.
There is so much glitter,

let it collapse into your pupil,
sparkle towards a nothing,
we should not forget the mirrors,

the sliver linings. The clouds.
What breathlessness, what air.
I like dying like this it is easy.

***

Motion.

I had all the focus on motion

Got on my feet, stepped out the door
Stretching my heels on the floor
arms to the sky so I soar
Heaving my chest so I roar
breath in my body and I am just walking
but feel like I'm running that just my locomotion

I had all the focus on motion

Now none of y'all telling me nothin
This story the instance of boy be becoming
man with the come-up who grind 'til the sun up
til Mama be calling and she saying kana
go rileng, ka goreng wa gana go letsa?
nah Mama, let me try and paint you a picture
my dreams splattered blood red on the canvas
dedicated to the art til my mind frantic
I'mma make the world mine, I got it, I have it

I had all the focus on motion

***

A Film That Richard Brody Would Like.

I'm too in love with the things I've already seen.

[ ].

My sister was right all along.

One day I'll kiss boys.

***

Gravity.

I'm sorry, but how?

Onanism.

Spilt-milk.

Half a breast: age or cancer.

The pretty girls do not dance the same

anymore- undergarments gather like snowflakes,

they sort of melt with each passing intimate, away.

Cut to the next image, maybe another night, goodbye.

The urine misses the doctor's cup

by quite the margin. You're fine,

says the little e-mail the morning after; nothing

melted into you too. Where is the other half?

Snow-angel eclipse, sun-body, somebody

else feels like the moon. You. I am not

quite myself lately, she says, as the white

gathers around your light. It is cold.

Two Poems.

2017-10-01T08:10:00.002+02:00

Poem. (in A, w/ A)

If nothing ever disappears, you've seen it once;
not at least, once. Your fragmented, fragement
moment was something once; isn't it forever,
at about this time: now. Now was then
by the way, after was then, then was now, which,
was the by, was after. Though it lingered only
in the sense
that
it hadn't in the first place, nor, the
last race to space will mean anything if all, all
is dust, dusty, dusted the globe; saw it, it
disappeared into your back, I touched it, in, in
your spine momentarily a lip, lips (lisp), were
a globe, a fugue was a song (vice versa (versa-vice
(nothing is meaningless if you play long enough)); I
am sorry about all meaningless; I wish how,
how,
to heal I knew, know, might; will?
Nonetheless.
Nonetheless.
Nonetheless.
A back.
A back.
A spine.

***

New Hampshire.

People are so nice.

Eyes.

Grass.

I don't want to use drugs to write poetry.

How many artists has the world destroyed.

Formal logic is a piano transcription of an orchestra of language your legs.

Do not tell me what you think of this with words.

Lord I can see things I can't see myself.

I am so otherwise glad I met you.

I have an ink stain on one of my jackets because I think too much.

Maybe I shouldn't edit this.

Cohesive into something.

Behold:

(Anyone can write. None can edit.)

Who
What was wonder then
When were we we and
Where did they sing last
Why
How do things come to be
Was that useless
There are beaches in New England
is that so surprising
Are either of us normal

Abstraction is all possibility

Because specificity is boring

And we all [ ] what that particular

particular

means anyway.

I mean. Thank you. Otherwise. For those journeys.

They didn't/ need/ to/ go/ anywhere you/ know/.

Black Convocation/Ramen Shop.

2017-09-11T06:27:00.000+02:00

Black Convocation

Poem.

~~clarity about this very real figment~~

~~of my imagination is~~

~~not possible,~~ (pigment)

actually, I don’t want to think

I don’t want to think about this

~~these problems never go away~~

I’m not black my name’s OJ

~~okay~~

I ~~can’t~~ breathe

~~okay~~

Poem.

Not everything coheres.

Remember: not everything

coheres

Poem.

Regret is such a useless thing

I’d so prefer it, if

you did not, look!,

at me

that very

, if

regret is such a useless thing

why preface it with the word

(poem)

why preface it with eyes.

I will never forget the word

-even if it messes my head.

Poem.

I mean, yes, of course, yes

I’m so, so hungry

but I will not eat you, no, not

no, of course, not like that.

I otherwise like you,

I promise.

Poem.

A few more words about: coherence,

it doesn’t exist for me, I’m so hungry

for everyone else and their platitudes.

It must be nice to avoid existential breathlessness.

I like that word: breathlessness.

I resent that platitude: existential.

I am not bitter, I promise.

It’s just that the air…

it tastes so…

…(blue.)

Poem.

I don’t believe in you but

your face.

***

Ramen Shop

Poem.

Tomatoes are nice

fruits or vegetables, I like them.

I eat now. It is nice.

Cheese has a fullness.

Meat a warm blankness.

And my tongue-

The business of living makes me be.

And it is often simple,

I would cry.

Could, but can't,

I could.

Poem.

Okay, so, that didn't bother me that much

anyway, people are nightmares,

but that's okay, okay?

that wasn't even the problem.

I think it was the gleam,

ass-light.

People think that there's a sun,

a whole ball of it,

up their asses.

So, yeah, it's hard to say:

maybe you should stuff it

maybe you kinda suck.

There was another light.

It wasn't so bad.

I sort of liked it.

It was nice.

It didn't wake me too harshly.

How can I explain:

stained glass, church

small solution, math book

small ocean, vagina

curved shaft, penis

that sort of thing. I guess.

the perfect sunny of not giving a fuck.

Poem.

People are enthusiastically boring

I wish I could get more sleep

Sex isn't interesting: neither are my hands

It doesn't matter when you cum

I believe in the Bible once

Physics doesn't make much sense to me

I'm saying that I tried

I don't like the sort of questions you ask me

Ask better questions

Maybe one day people might fit together

until then, please, ask better questions

Poem.

I'm like, one person

How is there never enough space for me

You talk and your mouth is...

listen, I'm like one person

The air sort of passes by

from time to time

sort of how

your mouths do.

Whose mouth was first on whom?

I thought it would feel better.

You asked more than once,

if it feels good. Stop

asking questions that aren't

good. Stop,

no, not like that. Yes,

maybe like that.

Several Poems That Ought to Have Been Raps.

2017-09-03T16:37:00.002+02:00

(1).

Poem.

Poems, bars: people, stars

Eyes lookin' Life on Mars

Boy wonder looks at mirror- Blackstar

No time for jokers cause I keep it Nightwing

Fly 'til early morning, next day, coda, swinging

Pendulum, swift; please acknowledge the kid,

even though he skinny like Syd

What a future: even if it Odd

Grimace in my face like I'm General Zod

But I keep it Clark Kent with the moral sentiment

Merriment when I'm flying over all Metropolis

Heaven sent? God bless. Still stressed.

Still flex. Morning breath. Kinda fresh

I guess with your skin under your dress-

aaaaah, where was I again?

Are we having fun anymore?

Not really? We still friends?

I'm sorry we not talking anymore.

Sorry, who are you?

Voice to void to void the void

annoyed but buoyed by white noise

helps to take the fact that there no point

as given, what difference with man with boy

he toys with himself with eyes closed

eyes opened: it's the same, she broiled

and her breath fuzzed like... white noise

fizz-fizz, hiss-kiss.

Dorchester St. Quartet

//Yum Yum, No Vacation//

Such remarkable running you did there

You look like you're out breath, where is the air

You carried around yourself, air-bending monk

Heaving this way and that like you're in a funk

Yeah, I know, promised to never comment on you or your look

No more, at least to myself, but, baby you shook

Like how you shouldn't be, like someone like me saying 'baby'

Please, I trickled down your throat- gravy

Maybe, if you wasn't lying to yourself, life would be gravy

But then again- my mind is hazy

Maybe, if I'd been more faithful than lately

We coulda ended more stately but that's just a maybe

I like to deal with certainties so if it ain't that physics

I gotta ask why, where and when is it biting me

My space and time aren't hyphenated I'm not prepared to give

Myself away like that- so, can I live?

(Eh, you prolly didn't like me that much anyway

Eh, it doesn't bother me that much anyway

Yeah, writing past that call me Hemingway

Blam, end of a verse just like Hemingway)

II.

//Beach Bummer, No Vacation//

Oh wow, what weather indifferent is difference

Hello Boston, with your moodiness, how is you feeling?

I'm doing fine cause I'm doing me

Shower with rain and ice, movements in your symphony

Sympathy wasn't no nothing I asked from you

But double negatives ain't mahala so hala with sunlight akuna mathata

Lion King if you really wanna know

Roaring on so bitter with this flow

You really gon' try play me out of this Simba

Like Mufasa didn't gift me that rhythm marimba

Whatever homie, they don't even know me

Way they actin' up, they could win a Tony

Bummer- and I thought I wasn't good enough

I'm good, getting out of my dreams, getting out of my seat

Good- like the only house concrete after a huff and a puff

Summer- only time the lyrics get done- sheesh!

III.

//Biking, Frank, Jay, Tyler//

Watch what you say to me

Watch pretty clear to me

Tick-tock til' next drop you don't mean none to me

No more if you play me, see

Soft boy, hard heart if need be, breathe

Not just for next stroke, left strokes, knees

Don't get weak, leave dirty sheets hang in breeze

Last whole night b, don't mean I'm happy

Pretty nice problem if you asked him

Little boy playin' 'round Invader Zim, where his friends

at? act like you - don't care

act? act -you do- so scared

Of dying lonely, crying won't be done

Nothing welled in tear ducts since fifteen, no fun, so done

with this shh... where the catharsis

Hamlet complex: the rest is shh... silence

IV.

//Fourth of July, Sufjan//

O, when the crickets clunkered and thundered

I thudded against myself- mind against skull

Bruce Banner in Incredible Hulk, whisper in bulk

Ghost in the Shell, heard sorta mumbled

Skip a few weeks later she breathes on my neck

Same thoughts really I don't like how I see me

I mean, I like myself, I hate my body

Or rather the idea of a body, microphone check:

Can I finally hear myself? Am I still stuck in myself?

Can I get outta myself? Can I please get some help?

I like living and touching and I like what she did there

But imagine if could disappear into universals and share

the same space as numbers and shapes

with none of this creaking and yearning my body it makes

I am a corpse in the making- and so is she

No matter how long we keep at it I am still inside of me

I didn't finish

I didn't

(2).

Poem (after Chanel, by Frank).

Whether or not you could've foreseen it

Whether or not a nigga had dreamed it

I dreamed it, somewhere, possibly

dreamed it, multiverse hypothesis

-dreams, of course, are a common pornography

catch dat alternating history, it is a discography

of movement of movements from Romantic to Classic

fuck it, I know I went backwards

I'm backwards, because, I never look forward

I'm bored, oh god, it's already the morning?

oh god, it's already the morning?

I die pretty like a girl

Ophelia

I die pretty like a girl

Ophelia

Poem (after Chanel, in Shanghai).

Way my pockets were snug- dick print felt like a hug

Know that you like it and liked it like that

No need to be mad, a nigga spitting facts

Fax- obsolete but scan and send me, fly like a bug

Cockroach, black Beatle, K-West, bald eagle,

with hair, long like Samson, no bitch Delilah

Delilahs flowers mysterious powers in the pussy print too, even after the shower

Not golden- just clear like water: breath and drink and devour

Let's pause for a moment and think about that

think about that

pause for a moment and think about that

think about that

Poem.

Thoughts are so reckless citizens feckless still

Society got me buggin' but thumpin' doe

If I'm gonna dance let it be in this hell

If we gon' romance, can it just end well

for once it'd be nice to hit it and smile, fill

you up and sip-sip all off of that cup, mo'

drink, drink water in the fountain of your legs

where the youth, youth going, no more shots from the kegs

for me, no more, no more

'ready drank too much- what else is in the store

for the night, is it nice? is it Nike? am I right?

be my wife? Not tonight, but I'mma hit you with dat spice

Yeah let it all go let it all go go

let it all go let it all go go

Poem.

Breathe- don't matter if air is fresh

Colour of my lungs- canvas is flesh

phleghm look like thick paint- god, cigarettes

you hit a blunt a lil' much, rather just sweat

out the toxins 'fore problems prevent more mopping

you promised you wouldn't puke again on floor, 'member Mama's calling

She says your sister said hello- is everything great?

said sure- just as soon as I remember where my mind is at again

Poem (w/ P and S, after Alicia Keys, in Hangzhou).

I don't write love songs no more

You then ask what is this for

I said that I really don't know

But either way would you come home

come home

....Yeah yeah yeah yeah

Yeah yeah....

Baby I got it and no not ironic

The way that I see you go way past the logic

All of the girls in they summer dresses

Got me rappin' without none of the stresses

Blessings on blessings I'm countin' them: Chance

Sonnets to hip-hop that modern romance

Fly me to China, I teach you Setswana

Drinking that wung zai 'cause batho ra tshwana-

Pink: pretty girls like trap music

Think: of who got dat music make movements-

That's me, that's real, any other nig gotta deal

got 'em feels, give 'em tissues, take no issues, under heel-

Step on 'em: let 'em know that I'm only one

Tell on 'em: got the screenshots say I'm the one

Did on 'em- right damn I hit 'em with dat beat

Pretty picture model sisters never follow through like you

See I got you boo

Like no one else luh you

Some people want it all

But I just want you

Yeah, I got you boo

Like no one else luh you

I also got dem views- and damn-

all of dem views's you

What was the joke that we thought was so funny?

Can I hear it again? Can it touch me at night

and make me feel again?

***

Two Long Poems.

2017-06-29T21:37:00.001+02:00

They're old and unedited. I wrote the descriptions a while ago too.

Headspace.

'Headspace' was written for a spoken word poetry showcase back home at my old high school in Botswana called Verbal Emancipation. It was the first time that I tried to seriously bring in elements of rap (and trap!) into a spoken word piece, and I tried to be as faithful to those genres as possible while adding in some philosophical ideas that I was working over at the time. At the time of writing it, I liked saying that I was making 'intellectual trap', which is both ludicrous and pretentious to say. For me, it felt like a very ambitious undertaking since rapping without a beat is difficult. I also felt at the time that I could not find adequate examples in mainstream hip-hop culture of pieces that dealt with these ideas in the way that I wanted to hear. Also, it's unbearably long. In fact, the piece ended up much shorter than I wanted it to be. I was hoping to eventually make it vaguely symphonic and have different 'movements' with different ways of rapping being used to convey different ideas and pseudo-philosophical struggles. Maybe I'll do that one day. I hope I can do more stuff like it in the future. I'm rather happy with how it turned out, though it isn't easy to perform and one needs a very specific type of audience for it to work as a spoken-word piece. Context: the theme of the show was 'Life Inside My Head'. Also, check out 'Don't Like' by Kanye West, Pusha T, Chief Keef, Jadakiss and Big Sean prod. by Kanye West and Young Chop to get a gist of the type of feeling I was going for, along with T.S Eliot's Four Quartets.

I'm at it again

Don't really have time for let's-just-be-friends

I go in again

No band-aid ever go bandage this pain

I'm at it again

Pretty clear by now my mind through the bends

I go in again

Don't really have time for let's-just-be-friends

Never call me unfocused

No time for that bogus

shhhhhhh- that all the rappers be rappin'

Pretty clear who's trappin'

I just wanna say I made it

Wanna say who's the greatest

Man it's pretty clear who major

It's pretty clear who major

, I

start a conversation with my own mind

'bout living this life, how to be on my grind

but I find, all the time, that this rhy-thm and rhyme

is its own kind of prison- I won't even lie

but that's fine, that's the game, I won't even complain

it's a shame, kinda lame, that I'm 'ready feeling drained

it's deranged; barely even started with this talk

with my brain and I 'ready feel like I should walk

away, and sway, like I walk the walk that I talk to talk

as I balance these thoughts, in this vault:

the proverbial cerebrum in a jar

that with my eyes through a mirror I gaze at from afar

I look at my face and the thoughts that I face

say grace to a God that I know plays games

I pray: if I have a daughter by His grace He may

never in a moment when he floatin' feel like Odin

gas himself up, shoot my neurons up with lightning just to show 'em

a vision, in my cerebrum: go to the mountain

go make an altar and pray at the fountain

of the tears that your daughter Isaac gonna shed

As I lift the knife up and strike her in the head

Though this time, 'cause I ain't no Abraham;

this time, 'cause I have forsaken Him;

this time, no angel be stoppin' the

fulfilment of a prophecy where blasphemous philosophy is

punished;

a hunnit

waters be flowin' and chokin' even the ocean

I barely 'member the motion of showin' that ocean

I know how to breathe

I scream to the heavens and beg for redemption

how many of a Hail Mary I need?

To remember the motion of showin' that ocean

where bodies be floatin' and showin'

I know how to swim,

but heaven replies, know now you will die,

Noah will live and you are not him.

But I jump in the ark of the gaze-at-from-afar

of my eyes through the mirror- my brain in the jar

Jump back from the flooded heathen stream of my thoughts

Just in time for y'all to hear this chorus drop

I’m at it again

No band-aid ever go bandage this pain

, I

ventured towards the woods one day

looking ahead to find you and say

I haven't forgotten that heat you were droppin'

Before I went looking for new ways to live

I did, mistake the trees for the forest

Though if I made it it would make my honest

I promised, to write you many a letter

You promised too but we didn't know better

I came to the States for the trophy to get it

I'm coming back home so they know that I got it

I tried to be humble but now I'm not confident

You only mumbled that I'm still on top of it

I should admit it: I am a hurricane, not just a zephyr

But if I go live it, I know you go livid, I don't put the effort

to try and remember your name on my mouth

but the truth of it all: your name stuck on my tongue

even if I am up North not the South

This is the problem, this is the paradox

This is my heart, this is the box

that I long put it in, in favour of mind

I have to say sorry if that don't seem kind

But I know that my heartbeat don't follow these lines

of reasoning, that I am reasoning, why I've been reading

and meaning to be leading a nation that be

not so brainwashed by the media, why I just heat it up

with all this debate, and fools I been beating up

in the arena of thought which I know we forgot

where the greatest human spirits lay in our thoughts

yet all we do is

feel without thought,

breathe without thought,

kiss without thought,

dance without thought,

kill without thought,

rape without thought,

rap without thought,

just time for y'all this beat drop

I go in again

Pretty clear by now my mind through the bends

, I

drifted apart into more than one piece

hoping that I could find some kind of peace

in these dreams, in these dreams,

restless all night all because of these dreams-

where the feet of my body aren't firm on the ground

where my mind is my body and I am unbound

but this is not sound because I am bound to snore

myself awake, and make mistakes, I can't retake

the fact that William Blake must paint the shades

of grey away to make his Songs of Innocence,

to make his Songs of Experience, of which I'm inexperienced

but the point is even a vision Romantic as his

is bounded by pages as crumpled as this

attempt at exploration which seeks what can't be found

because even a meditation has my ass on the ground

and even when I wasn't hesitating God wasn't around

to hear me ask Him questions- He didn't make a sound

(God...

That's that sh.... I don't like

That's that ... I don't...)

The silence of the universe isn't anything new to me

The songless Muses of time and space are never in harmony

The gift of the gab isn’t much of a jab to Nature’s Mother

So why I am bothered by one failed Our Father

Who Art in Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Name

Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done

On Earth As It Is In Heaven, Give Us This Day

Our Daily Bread. Not this silence instead.

(God

That's that sh.... I don't like

That's that ... I don't...)

So I went to the Buddha and asked him what's up

Said to him God wouldn't say what what was up

Is there a heaven and is there a hell?

Is there a way that I could tell?

How good is my karma, how bad is my mana?

How do I go and escape this samsara?

I'm tired of thinking, I'm tired of breathing

I'm tired of questions that seem so misleading

Give me an escape without all this debate

Enlighten my soul and relinquish my fate

past the ignorance, past the suffering

tired of feeling like I'm not in motion

tired of feeling like I'm always buffering

waiting for a moment, waiting for Godot

waiting for a way that will lead me home

waiting for even a place I'll call home

cause I left it behind for the trophy to get it

I wanna come back so I show 'em I got it

I wanna write letters to an old friend

and know better this time, that me and my friend

Are not that misguided in all our misgivings

Tell me dear Buddha how should I be living?

Don't tell me that you, don't know the answers

I know that you made it and you are the master

Don't tell me that you, don't know the answers

I know that you made it and you are the master

Don't tell me that you, don't know the answers

I know that you made it and you are the master

What do you mean that I don't understand it?

(GOD that’s sh... that I don’t

That’s that... I don’t

That’s that...I don’t like

That’s that... I don’t

GOD that’s sh... that I don’t

That’s that... I don’t

That’s that...I don’t like

That’s that... I don’t)

GOD- if I don't understand it or like it then I will just rap it:

I'm at it again

Don't really have time for let's-just-be-friends

I go in again

No band-aid ever go bandage this pain

I'm at it again

Pretty clear by now my mind through the bends

I go in again

Don't really have time for let's-just-be-friends

Never call me unfocused

No time for that bogus

shhhhhhh- that all the rappers be rappin'

Pretty clear who's trappin'

I just wanna say I made it

Wanna say who's the greatest

Man it's pretty clear who major

It's pretty clear who major

, I

***

The Romantic Era.

This...was the result of having one person impossibly stuck in my head for nearly the entirety of my first year in America. Often, this was offensive to me. Very often, I didn't even have the space to have my own thoughts without the spectre of this person suddenly appearing and challenging me about my mediocre thoughts on reality. I was further confused as to why said person would re-occur to me in this way so frequently. We weren't even talking then. I think I understand it a bit better now, and I think I'm slightly less scared of it as well. Though she pops up less frequently nowadays (Edit: even less frequently now; I find it difficult to imagine whether or not this is sad or not). I've learned that some people just enter your lives in some simple and violent explosion and you're just not quite the same after living through it. (Edit: This is probably true, but I'm inclined to now think of this as somewhat of an exaggeration). I now regard this as something that's rather beautiful, if not bittersweet. It's pretty cool actually. I think the form of this poem is, well, questionable- but I'm genuinely happy with how packed it is with thought and feeling. Even though dense poems are so very often self-defeating-the point of verse is to make bare the paper, not aggrandize it with endless splatters of paint- I love writing and reading them. So I can't help but have a soft spot for this poem. And for once, just once, I was honest, or almost honest, and that's more than enough for me. ~~One last thing: I'm a dick, so I think that the font changes are clever instead of mean.~~ (Edit: I don't care much for this type of poem anymore to be honest. Poetry without regard for form and structure isn't really poetry at all- it's just typing out your feelings, which is neither novel nor interesting. Even so, I still think that the intention, that pure sensation of feeling of which I'm no longer fond of, as something that was and is beautiful and I suppose that that's enough justification for putting this one up, aside from writer's block. It may not be novel or interesting, but it is still undoubtedly the product of something that I care about. This, I suppose, is enough.)

I knew it.

I knew that I fucking didn't lose my calculator.

It was hiding under the grey coach. I just needed

to pull up the seating cushion to the far-right.

Most hidden things require such actions: pulling

up shit hidden beneath under other shit. And then there's

thoughts of you still clutching my neck after midnight

and I struggle to breathe because those hands around

my neck are really fingers around my heart. Not

clutching, just grasping; entertaining thoughts

that I shouldn't bother having any more: thoughts

that I'm sure should've been piled up under other

shit. Under the grey coach. Under the seating cushion.

To the far right. On another cushion to the far-left

I am holding an essay on the true nature of reality

in my Buddhism class and I write your name down

next to an interesting thought but I scribble it down

lightly because, ironically, I want to respect the notion of you as

something separate from myself. I scribble it down

lightly because I'm afraid you'll become palpable

and I'll finally have to say all the things I've been

meaning to not say. But maybe if I did things would be

different.

You knew it.

You knew that you fucking didn't lose yourself.

It was hiding under a camera filter, a Polaroid,

an Audrey Hepburn poster, a few notes of Ravel;

a few raspy whispers of French under the covers

of your dreams, a few desert sand dunes in the

Middle East, some hilltops of darling tea-leaves

covered under the snow further East from there,

some acacia trees added in for measure somewhere

in the Sub-Sahara; Paris, New York and other foreign

things that aren't foreign anymore; more midnight

mysteries with a boy as stubborn as you are but,

unlike you cannot bother saying the word 'I'

without making it a joke; patterns in the sky,

the sun, the moon, other stars; words, words, words;

a seating cushion on the far right of the grey couch

where I imagined I'd find you when I needed you

but I've checked so many times for you that I never

have until I needed my calculator for the math homework

that I'm not doing now. 'There's this girl..." I say to my friends

and I hesitate to finish my sentence. There's this woman?

What is girl? What is woman? What is she? What are you?

What is a rose by any other name and what is the East

and what is the sun and what do I mean when I say that you and I are

different.

My new Honors Humanities teacher showed us a painting

called 'Two Men Contemplating the Moon' by Friedrich

and played us some music from Pandora on a playlist

titled 'Mozart' but it didn't sound right. There was no

self-righteous dance of structure and the numbers

weren't adding up right: in short, I loved it just as much

as I dislike Mozart: quite a bit. I was shocked at this little glory

of life until I asked my teacher what the name of the Mozart

composition was and he told me it was Prelude Op. 32 No. 12

by Rachmaninov and with that I began my formal study

of the Romantic. Before the snow had begun to melt into Spring

we were studying the great works of the Enlightenment in

Europe and the words of Shakespeare's Hamlet looked too much

like the mirror in my room that I've learnt to artfully ignore.

Whatever: besides the ironies of Hamlet I loved the staunch

beliefs of these Renaissance Men: Man is the great intermediary

between Heaven and Earth, and through our minds we can know

God. The philosophers! The mathematicians! The Michelangelo!

All little glories of life that I love: so why then, can Adam

not touch the index finger of God in the Sistine Chapel paintings?

The Romantics claim that there are some things that we cannot Know.

That this is where the Beauty of the world lies. That the Sublime

is to be discovered in the wondrous spontaneity of life, in the darling

buds of May, in the flights and fantasies of the individual, whose

authenticity of emotion is the Supreme measure of artistic merit:

that it is through this unKnowing that we are to discover our own Truths.

God how I would Love to shake the Wordsworths of the world out of their

silly little heads but during our next class, when I try to talk about

why

I love the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony so much

I struggle to find the words. There is a brief thought of the inexpressible

beauty of the Romantic and how Beethoven was a bridge between

that and the world of the Classic. There is a brief memory of the inexpressible

way in which you both fluttered into and conflagrated my life: And

you always did love the Romantics. I liked to pretend that I didn't;

that it was some mere coincidence that most of my favourite artists

were not interested in dividing the world into bits and pieces of meaningless

intellectualisms in search for some new thing to call God. God

happened to be hiding in a dark theatre one day in Grahamstown

when, on a maroon-lit stage, streams of human bodies become ephemeral

and floated in and out of our consciousness and reality to the steady heartbeat

of Ravel's eternity, perfectly and strangely captured in 'Bolero',

and where there were all sorts of inexpressible dances happening between

our fingertips- which by some mere coincidence were a bridge between

the Classic and the Romantic and between me and you and let us go then,

you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky- in the theatre

in the everything everywhere everyone everywhen everyhow

encapsulated and clutched between the unioned hands of two teenagers in the dark. God,

was it really that simple?

If so, then I am annoyed. If so, then I am in love.

Eternal Ramen.

2017-05-02T20:53:00.001+02:00

I did finally make it into said literary magazine after actually completing the comp. This piece is from the first round of round two of said comp. As for how I'm feeling now... lol, things got worse actually, but that's okay. Again, not edited, so pardon what follows.

Eternal Ramen.

Can I talk to you about something?

There was once a time, not too long ago, and by which I mean less than a month ago, in which I would tell people that the only thing I truly loved in the world was a Japanese noodle dish. Ramen. One day, while watching the first specks of snow descend outside my dorm-room window, I had an epiphany. Ramen is the only thing that makes me want to continue living. Perhaps it was during one of those days in which I was late for my Japanese class and hadn't yet memorized the words that would be on the ever-impending vocabulary quiz. If it was one of those days, then I most certainly skipped that class, and that quiz, and ran wild across the street to go get ramen. I hear people do things like that when they're in love.

"Believe it!"

I want you to know that I wasn't always like this. There were other things that I used to love besides noodles bathed in steam-water. What were the things that I used to love? That slow time in the world, back home, when my old music teacher asked me a question at a parents-teacher conference.

What's your most favourite sound in the world?

She listened.

Soft piano keys.

I think that day it rained. The soil squished soft and new. Perhaps an even slower time, it felt quicker then, with another old music teacher. The marimba band was playing in assembly. I heard his voice croak soft and new at the back of the stage. He cha-cha'd with shakers in both his hands. If the skin of the shakers split, his palms would have been filled with dried fruit seeds. Not too long after- those hands, those palms- he turned into soil. When was the funeral? The slowest time: the present: a different country: the hot fog of noodles in my face. The chopsticks dive into the boiling spring. I don't want you to ask me how many times this month. I wasn't always like this. I promise. Maybe I was worried about turning twenty. Maybe it was because I started college and college is hard. Maybe it was because, after more than a year here, I still don't understand you America.

"Believe it!"

America, did you ever watch Naruto? It’s an anime about the number-one hyperactive knucklehead ninja, Naruto Uzumaki! He lives in the Hidden Leaf Village but wears a bright orange jumpsuit. His name is Japanese but he has blonde hair and blue eyes. He starts off by being the worst ninja in the Hidden Leaf but works hard and becomes the best ninja in the world. His favourite food is ramen. On a little box on one of my college applications that asked, 'Who inspires you the most?' I skipped through Obama and Einstein and Aung San Suu Kyi and Socrates and Buddha and typed up, quietly, 'Naruto Uzumaki', clicked the 'submit' button and gave a little fist pump and felt my eyes glitter. During that slow time my sister and I were visiting my uncle and aunt in Toronto, who both haven't been home for god-knows-how-long and their kids don't know where they come from, and spent the weeks before the application deadline watching Naruto with my twelve-year old cousin on his bed. Outside, it snowed and snowed thicker than my dreaming eyes could process. Inside the Netflix world, Naruto is fighting Gaara, a lonely emo kid from the Hidden Sand Village during the Chunin Exams, the qualifying process for all aspiring ninjas. Both of them grew up without parents. Naruto has turned the pain from his orphanhood into an unshakable desire to make his whole village recognize him as a great ninja, despite his incompetence. Gaara, meanwhile, wants to kill everything he regards as weak and unfit to bear the pain of life, of existence itself. For him, this includes Naruto, who he is beating to a bloody pulp across the little laptop screen. With their fists, two prepubescent boys debate the philosophies of men. Gaara stares coldly while Naruto lifts his frail, crumpled body from the ground to keep fighting. The number-one hyperactive knucklehead ninja says something to the effect of how he will never give up. How he will become the best ninja in the Hidden Leaf village. He gives a little fist pump and his eyes glitter. He then says those magic words, the words that we hear in every episode, but still my heart and my little cousin's heart murmur in inspired acknowledgment. Believe it. The episode ends. I imagine that a few episodes later he will return to the local ramen stand in his village and slurp his noodles in triumphant victory, as he must. Naruto resolves to never give up, to always keep fighting. My little cousin and I resolve to go get some ramen.

"Believe it!"

When one is about the same age as my little cousin, it is easy to believe that the life trajectory of Naruto is realistic and replicable. I suppose this is why, for him, our venture to go and cop some ramen would merely be finding a fun, anime-inspired meal; whereas for me it would feel like a pilgrimage. There is unique logic that supports this. He is still young enough to hope that the world will be filled with the possibility of constant ninja-like self-improvement. The bowl of ramen in front of him, the same favorite food of our shared hero, is a signifier of this possibility. If it exists in that world surely it can exist in this world too. I am a little less young enough to see that these worlds don’t quite intersect in this way. But. For me, the ramen bowl is not just a signifier of a world of ninjas- it is the world of dreams itself. For me, somehow, that bowl is everything that exists only in the world of possibility, all at once, never again. It exists in that world, but it exists only for a moment in this one. This desperate feeling cannot be experienced through the two minute sachet-and-packet variety of ramen. It is only available through ramen prepared by intensely sweating Japanese men-amongst-all-men. And once I slurp up the last noodle, gulp up the last swallow of lukewarm broth; there is nothing left to believe in. Nothing at all. Not even you.

“Believe it!”

I did America, I did. I did believe in you. I believed in your skyscraper skies the same way you believed in your homeless, who beg for dreams outside the ground floor lobby. I believed in your children the same way you believed that your guns would save them, though they shiver under their schools desks while waiting for the bullets to run out. I believed in your technicolor screens the same way you believed in my monochrome skin, the blackness of which we will both always misunderstand because of how we are made to see it. I believed in you the same way I believed in a certain number-one hyperactive knucklehead ninja, who was written to keep dreaming, no matter what. No matter what. I believed in you the same way I believed in a bowl of ramen, which I can’t possibly afford another bowl of, but still I slurp, slurp, slurp. Absurd, I know. But.

Would you mind if I talked to you a bit more about it?

One can think of ramen as a metaphor for the world. How far this metaphor goes depends on the type of broth or the size of the bowl it is contained by. The broth of being is much. Consider a few examples. God and the snap of his fingers, or the Big Bang and the four fundamental forces of physics , or the relentless march of evolutionary biology to produce the all-perfect all-environment surviving species- these can all be thought of as analogous to the mighty, universal taste of ramen broth and the way it is made. You toss a bunch of pig bones and salt and boil for hours and hours and hours. God created the world in seven days, the Big Bang happened about 13.6 billion years ago, the first homo sapiens evolved into being about 200 000 years ago- it takes a bit of time for things to turn out the way that they do. How long did it take for Beethoven to compose Symphony No. 9? Years of ego-filled crescendos that beat his ear drums into a silent dull, in which the eternal quiet of deaf nothing consumed him. And then a fight to conduct the scream of a choir unioned with an orchestra that he could not hear. How long did it take for Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling? Some time arguing with the Pope that he was primarily a sculptor, not a painter, and then a war with the French and then after all that, four more years and a few assistants. It takes a while for ramen broth to develop its beautiful and characteristic full flavour. Sometimes as long as eternity. One must wait until this broth is ready to transition from meagre soup to life-affirming meal. Only then, America, can you add the noodles.

There exists approximately 220 episodes of Naruto and 498 episodes of its follow up series, Naruto Shippuden. The anime has been running since 2005. The manga series it is based on consists of 72 volumes of 700 chapters and has been running since 1997, the same year I was born. You, America, have been around since 1776 and have gone through 44 presidents. There exists no clear date of origin of ramen, though the date probably lies somewhere in the early 20th century. Remember: God created the world in 7 days. The Big Bang happened 13.6 billion years ago. Homo sapiens first evolved into being about 200 000 years ago. This is the broth of the world. I don’t know when to add the noodles.

***

I just want to point out the somewhat obvious absurdity in the sentence "Ramen is the only thing that makes me want to continue living." At the time of thinking that, I did mean it, but not in the sense that the absence of ramen meant the genuine absence of life for me. It's painfully melodramatic, and is therefore supposed to be taken as a very bad joke. I think I'm funnier than I actually am; I'm the funniest person I know.

Words, Words, Words.

2017-03-28T23:10:00.005+02:00

The most obvious note to self is to never do anything for the wrong reasons. Yes, moral relativity is a thing, but I think, intuitively, deep down within us, we all know what is wrong, what is right, what we really want. I don't know if I want to be an artist- do I honestly have the genuine temperament for it?- but I have words. And I think they're for the right reasons. Here's a few, this time a few raps (not that I haven't already said this before, but I can) instead of the usual written poetry. Oh, and Vince, if you just happen to be reading this: I was the guy wearing the yellow 'Adventure Time' beanie. It was nice to meet you, and thanks for checking this out. What a wonderful talk you did at Harvard.

Spirit Tree [Working Title]

I.

Listen to the glimmers of the solar system
Simmering murmurings stretching cross the universe, this is my vision
as a poet as a prophet with the lyrics man I copped it
caught a wave, detected it, and to this beat I drop it

this is the knowledge I want you to acknowledge
the mystery the history delivery don't stop it
the project of this poetry demands your attention
so straighten up your back as I take to you the 4th dimension

did I mention? did I mention? did I mention?
the marvelous sarcophagus of symphony I'm resurrecting?
bread that I'm baking and breaking; body be aching and shaking
savior's blood split into cups of wine the earth is quaking

fall back for a moment 'fore I go rogue like a ronin
cut you up and dice you up as smoothly as I'm flowing
fall back for moment 'fore I go that rolling stoning
inevitable, impenetrable mass of mass an ocean

a poet be a force that's mysterious
words stretching to the heavens is what constitutes a lyricist

a poet be a force that's mysterious
words stretching to the heavens is what constitutes a lyricist

A poet is a prophet
A rapper more than profit
the paper that I trap for
for's this canvas boy that's honest

A poet is a prophet
A rapper more than profit
the paper that I trap for
for's this canvas boy that's honest

II.

Take a wave of light and pass it through a double slit;
What do you get? A world that we don't comprehend
Forget about it let's just go and cop those bands again
Money chasing 'nother way to stop asking ourselves again

Who are we? What is the space around me?
Pretty selfie on Instagram, we frozen dead we're zombies
Look at me, I'm not the captain, but I'm tired of these captions
What are we hoping to find in a world where we're the only thing we capture

Rap is the start of rapture; turn to the last chapter
Revelatory thoughts on this spacetime and matter
Wanna talk 'bout things that matter, not to ourselves flatter
Wanna make like a butterfly and metamorphosize and shatter

Our fake expectations and statements of the haters
Turn our shamelessness and fecklessness to breathlessness with paper
Talking' about dat poetry I talk it over beats
This is the end of fake news and the start of real philosophy

a poet be a force that's mysterious
words stretching to the heavens is what constitutes a lyricist

a poet be a force that's mysterious
words stretching to the heavens is what constitutes a lyricist

A poet is a prophet
A rapper more than profit
the paper that I trap for
for's this canvas boy that's honest

A poet is a prophet
A rapper more than profit
the paper that I trap for
for's this canvas boy that's honest

Image credit to whoever the hell was the fire photographer at Verbal Emancipation, thanks for making my Tinder profile a tad bit more interesting yay.

Verse from 'Lesson in Oppression'

Young black brother from the motherland
Who plays stereotypes for Ariel Heights
Folk as they touch my hair and treat me like a no man
A nomad, who ventured to America through flights

(Leggo)
I spit all these bars 'hind systematic bars
And I spar with the fates of my stars as they spin
They spun years ago as they span ‘cross the skies
Navigating slaves ships with ( ) no oxygen
The blades cut yesterday, the wound bleeds today
Historical precedence don't simply fly away
When the winds of time sway only one way
To the moment when only through a song we can say

That all the paper stacked by the rappers and all the ballers
Is all blown away by the wind at the end of every autumn
I'm still recalling when the floods of Katrina had strange fruit falling
From the tops of houses to escape the waters
Then broke and drowning in their surroundings
Yet, still can't breathe when there ain't no mountain

High enough that we can't climb
High enough that we can't climb
All year I been on my grind
All year I been on my grind

They be lookin' at me crazy
Like my mind is hazy
'ginning of the year they called me Black Slim Shady
Never in the heads did they ever understand that who I wanna be is a young Jay-Z

But rapping's what's expected of someone as dark as me
Truth be told no respect from y’all 'til Harvard called me
But complaining's what's expected of someone as self aware as me
Truth be told half of y'all have eyes but can't see

That I've got a dream but I struggle to fulfill it
That I've been to the mountaintop and found that they still killing us
That to be judged by the content of my character
Only brings about laughter of a judge holding a gavel
That is clearly labeled 'master' so I been running faster
To kill slavery of thought so that I break apart this vault

(Here's the actual track courtesy of my friend, Audyo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJzfAZPo_NI . Check out the rest of his work here: https://www.soundcloud.com/aodillard ) Also, shout to Audyo for getting me back to rappin' after nearly two years off it. Shout out to my current work partner Marcelo for getting me back to rappin' for nearly half a year off it. Let's see how long not off it I can make it this time.)

And thus concludes our brief interlude of the Ivy League wannabe rapper who still has overdue essays to complete.

Drafts.

2017-03-05T07:35:00.000+02:00

A quiet and systematic torture

through an assortment of digitized

life vignettes called your Instagram

in which I find your uncondensed

beauty which reminds me, in every

image, why I hate myself, or if I don't,

why I should

I am foolish and my ancestors are slaves.

I am often not proud of my blackness.

I imagine your boyfriends will speak

French and smoke cigs and will be

worldy. I will be none of those things.

Just me. Unwholesome and dark

and colonized in the mind to think

such things, Achebe didn't quite

reach me at the very end of it all.

Diapsora children know not what to do with their dark, dark skin.

Unambigous,

it rages

discontentedly with itself: the selves

that correspond to its surroundings: the dreams

they wished to knew. Many first-world citizens

would never dream of their basic pleasures. But

what wonder is it to be lost to the depths of the world's

oceans

without waiting for the waves to buffer before they

hit

you. Modern internet makes it even easier than airlines

to be lost

in places you don't know.











you all know each other 

in ways I cannot
imagine.

my friendship with the
darkness

is brief and
meaningless. maybe

I shall fashion a poem
or two out

of them. But for you
all, you need

not even speak with one
another

and there is an
acknowledgement

of some shadow that
lingers beneath

your very own. I stare
at mine for a 

moment and think about
how 

I cannot jump into it.
You have fallen

many times and often
wonder

if you will ever step
out. These 

are things my eyes
cannot say


but theirs can and will
and must.




this summer 

we experimented on the lsd
of personhood

and were shocked 

when it
led us together 

without a single instance
of touching






My friend Joseph took the pictures yo. In case you're wondering about the font, I save all my draft work in notepad files and they tend to show up in some form of Courier bro. The same friend also borrowed me a typewriter yo. I'm pretentious bro. I also apologize for the spacing issues. I can't quite figure out what's going on without going through the html code of Blogger, and I'm not about to that. I remain too stubborn to switch to the superior Wordpress or Tumblr.

Maxwell's Equations

2017-02-18T23:54:00.000+02:00

This is the first features piece I wrote while trying out, or as students here say, 'comping' for one of the literary magazines at my college. I made it past the first round, but didn't have enough time to start, let alone finish, my next piece for the final round. I'm giving it another shot this semester and I'm hoping to write about ramen, a beautiful Japanese noodle dish, which just happens to be my only true love and joy in this world. To be honest, this is a draft more than anything else and I intend to revise it someday, but, for now, here it is posted as it was first written. I didn't bother to remove the double-spacing. Here we go America.

Maxwell’s Equations.

The following are a series of false analogies concerning physics which you do not understand.

I. Gauss's Law

The electric flux leaving a volume is proportional to the charge inside.

You were told that your dreams could not fit within the borders of The Continent. This is why the ground beneath your feet has shifted, and why the grass is no longer a parched yellow, but a nourished green. When you were younger than you are now, you dreamt of flying across the Atlantic to come here. The West. You wished to stand under vaulted, collegiate Neo-Gothic structures to breathe the thoughts of long-dead old white men. Now that this has happened, it occurs to you that you might have been trying to age into one of them. This does not equate. What is equal is the following. To the left of the equals sign: in The Continent, the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet are not the same colour as the rest of your skin. To the right of the equals sign: in The West, the rest of your skin is not the same color as the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet.

You try to explain.

First, you expand the terms on the left side. In The Continent, the palms of your hands stretched towards the sun when it glowed orange towards the evening and swiped across the sky as it purpled. You had shoes, but for some odd reason memory says otherwise, so the soles of your feet dance with the dust as you tried to awkwardly help your grandfather herd the cows home. Your grandfather sighed because the rest of your skin screamt ‘city-child.’ Second, you expand the terms on the right. In The West, the rest of your skin is actually your body it its entirety. This body is yours, but for some odd reason memory says otherwise, so your palms pick cotton and your soles dragged across the Atlantic through slave-ships in the the water instead of commercial airplanes in the sky. But you say it took you three flights to get here.

You try to explain.

You were taught that your thoughts are electric currents that flow through your neurons. From this you decided that the beginning and end of your everything must reside within this electricity. The electric flux leaving a volume is proportional to the charge inside. Your everything is nothing more and nothing less than the strange happenings between positive and negative charges. This is why you try to explain your home, your body and your skin with physics which you do not understand.

II. Gauss’s Law for Magnetism

There are no magnetic monopoles; the total magnetic flux through a closed surface is zero.

There are North poles; there are South poles. They pull together if they’re different; they push apart if they’re the same. There is no such thing as a North pole existing without a South pole; there is no such things as South pole existing without a North pole.

You are black.

One night you are at party with faces that look like your and those faces are dancing. You are still. Their legs and arms swish in movements that are not intrinsic to you. Their breath fills the air and it is thick, heavy and sweaty. The sound of the music is discordant to your ears. This aural landscape is composed of the following image-associations : hoodies, gunshots, fades, kicks, beats. More than a few girls’ asses are placed neatly in front of boys’ crotches and they rotate around one well-oiled joints. This still feels strange to you. Why? Isn’t the music of the diaspora prevalent in The Continent as well? Back there and then, when the songs of the diaspora rappers and singers spread through The Continent like wildfire, you figured it might be a way of returning home for them. And they were welcomed even though your body did not let you dance. Here you are in the West with your brothers and your sisters who were taken away from you- do you not feel welcomed? Are your faces not the same? Then, are your faces pulled together because you are different, or pulled apart because they are the same?

One afternoon you are in the freshman dining hall with faces that look like yours and those faces are talking. You all talk about what you want to study. One wishes to study Economics and African Studies to save The Continent. Another wishes to study Medicine and African-American studies to save The Continent in the West. You say that you want to study Physics and Philosophy because you’re looking for the true nature and structure of reality. They ask you if you’re interested in philosophy from The Continent. You blankly say that, whether we like it or not, the foundation of the modern world was built by philosophers from the West. There is a pause. You are ashamed. You quickly add that the best way of fighting The West is by knowing their ways of thinking directly and hope that this means and proves something.

One day you and a friend walk down stretches of tarred pathway cutting through the grass. Right by the corner between the big old library and your small old dormitory you find that someone has spray-painted something curious on the black tar. Beneath an arrow pointing forward, the words ‘NO N*GAS’ flash in hasty yellow curls. You lie down next to ‘NO N*GAS’ using your backpack as a pillow , relaxedly place your hands at the back of your head and flash your teeth in an aggressive brace-wire smile. You ask your friend to take a picture of this pose for your Instagram. No niggas. No North poles without South poles. No South poles without North poles. There are no magnetic monopoles; the total magnetic flux through a closed surface is zero. Surely your blackness is the same as theirs.

III. Faraday’s Law

The voltage induced in a closed circuit is proportional to the rate of change of the magnetic flux it encloses.

“Maxwell’s Equations are a set of four differential equations that describe electromagnetism. One might shudder at first at the word ‘electromagnetism’. What a strange unification. The world of charges and currents; sparks, fizzes and flashes. The world of poles and magnets; compasses, maps and directions. Brought together. In fact, the forces of electricity and magnetism are essentially the same force. Electricity and magnetism are just manifestations of electromagnetism in itself. Furthermore, a changing magnetic field produces an electric field and a changing electric field produces a magnetic field.”

So you think to yourself.

From the first equation, you showed that the electricity is the blackness in your mind which is tied to The Continent. It will travel with your forever, no matter what space you exist within, because the blackness you carry with you is always proportional to the blackness you were born with. From the second equation, you used magnetism to relate your blackness to the blackness of the diaspora, the blackness of The Continent to the blackness of The Continent in The West. You discovered that even though they appear to be different, they are the same blackness, because one does not exist without the other. The third equation tells you that the blackness in your mind and the blackness of your skin are the same blackness.

You cannot think your way out of your skin.

IV. Ampere’s Law

The magnetic field induced around a closed loop is proportional to the electric current plus displacement current (rate of change of electric field) it encloses.

“Maxwell’s fourth equation is symmetrical to the third equation. So they basically look the same. If you fiddle around with them a bit, and if the current density J is zero, then you can make them look exactly the same. There is then no doubt that a changing electric field produces a magnetic field, or that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field, or that electricity and magnetism basically amount to the same thing, electromagnetism. Another interesting thing that happens if you play around with the equations: you get c: the speed of light.”

So you think to yourself.

You are surprised and astonished and awed at this physics that you do not understand. From it appears a fundamental truth of the universe, the speed of light. It is the fastest anything in this space and time can ever go, the limit of everything that has been, is, and ever will be. And it is the product of your skin.

How beautiful, how terrible, how fast, how slow.

***

P.S The images for the equations are sourced from the Wikipedia page for 'Maxwell's equations'. They're rather well made...

Writing Again.

2017-02-08T07:37:00.000+02:00

Somehow between the Joburg airport and now I found again those whisperings within me that say, 'Say something.' Ten minutes before my flight I rushed off to the bookstore to buy my first love with words of this nature, 'Ariel' by Sylvia Plath. This collection remains an enduring fascination of mine. Here I am. Some of these, oddly enough, follow readings of Barack Obama's 'Dreams from My Father'. I haven't bothered editing them to make them better and I won't. These are transitional works, I hope. There's another thing: I don't believe in anything at the moment. I don't know why. I wish I did. I should. Soon. The world is moving far too quickly for people who don't believe in things to justify their place in it. There is a right side of history. There is a wrong side. History is ever present.

Many Sad Songs.

There were words once.
Meant to be heard and said across
various distances, sometimes
an eternity, seemingly, continents
pushed together into one, sometimes
a whisper, momentary, finally, lips-
they say things that very often mean
nothing. Nothing she says. What's wrong he asked.
Many things. Nothing at all. You press play
and something sings in your ears and you
wait for another flight to somewhere.
Nowhere feels everywhere at once, always,
which is why we built these planes. Sometimes
out of paper. As a child I did those things.
Watched how they gleamed across the tops
of my eyes- never too far they went.

What the World Looks Like.

skin is a net endlessly catching the school of character-fish swimming restlessly in myself
ocean unknown depth murkily swirling with waters composed of molecules of culture or and? DNA
what does the world look like to such a thing as me?
I am, or was, rarely bothered by mirrors
now every reflective surface is a cascade, a waterfall
in which I collide with myself then part with I
a wooden staff struck furiously to the ground to lead me away from some desert to some promised land
a wooden staff thrown at an emperor and his court of spellcasters turns into a snake-
this is a dick joke.

And Where To?

I hate airports. My father is a pilot, my ex-girlfriend(s)
live(s) in another (other) continent(s). My friends either resent me
or (also) live far away. The movies I watch
are filled with white people. My skin gets darker by the day.
I don't want to be another diaspora poet boy- my
hair coils thick and violent as it is and I can't
manage it with my afro pick (end of handle with no black power fist attached). I'm the only
one from my country here as an undergrad and I didn't apply from home. No one
at home even greets me in my mother tongue anymore (can't speak it anyway).
My mother says I don't try hard enough to keep in contact. Within the space
of three years my father has changed jobs from Ghana to India to Saudi Arabia.
This poet girl I once fell in love with goes to school in a desert with skyscrapers
(it's close to Saudi Arabia). My sister is in Vermont and she's sad. What
is this? It doesn't snow back home. I love it, I love it.
The crisp crunch of my boots in the white. It beats the thorns
and the sand and the stones and the dust in the sun, which is yellow
and orange then red and purple,
but will appear winter white in the clouds once
the plane finally lands. In the fucking airport.

As a Movie.

My jet-lagged self sleeps early,
wakes early, sleeps again, reads.
Having watched one movie too many over summer
I relish the sounds designed above- a click
of a door handle, bare warm socks gliding
across wooden floor, the scrunch of toothbrush
against the rusting metal straightening yellowing teeth,
the few lone cars across the street, that hazy
early sound that only light can make as it
becomes aware of itself in my dorm room. What
kind of camera lens would make this moment more
livable and is it already dead?

March.

Today, we marched, or rather, I watched him,
my friend, next to me dream. Of what futures, I'm not
quite aware. Some orange man has overtook
the american government everyone in their right mind
and heart
cried,
and a square in Boston was filled with lively
dreamers
with placards and gleaming eyes and faces
that said no (./!) not again (./!). A few toddlers
sauntered around the feet of their parents
saying and shouting and muttering and playing
with words and slogans they don't understand
yet in their minds,
maybe their hearts,
in them they know. Next to me my friend grabbed
an abandoned placard and I felt lost. I only
came to watch how the words of the orange man
came alight. I was afraid we would catch flame.
A grey-haired woman had earlier skipped across
the crowd in front of us to show us a different route and
told us useful things- we were fresh I had explained-
and we carefully avoided police but there weren't many.
It was cold. Not the orange man. Somehow we
met my friend's friends and we started a chant
in the crowd below us, perched atop a crumbling
history of a church. Pictures were taken. Instagram.
We dabbed to the beat of Hindu chanting and tambourines.
Muslims prayed towards Mecca beneath Christian statues.
Amazed. I felt a certain emptiness.
Then my friend joked,
'I'll make a social justice warrior out of you too!'
Why am I not angry? The orange man is wrong.
A fool, a jester. Yet our testicles are in his hands.
Sometimes, rarely, I feel a meager sad frightening pressure
between my legs. Some have already been castrated
in confused airports. Accidents of birth have left them
stranded in a great barren womb of this world. What
is a state? A foreign policy? Man? Woman? Child?
How much time do I have left to cum? On whose
face can I do it on? Is the orange man aiming for
mine? Ours? The veiled woman? Is the immigration
counter camera pornographic? What awkward things
to do with one's time. One's body. One's mind.
One's heart.
I am ashamed.
Instead of working, I am thinking. I am lazy.
I spend scholarship money in restaurants
away from the college dining hall so that the noise
around me will be something I cannot recognize.
Still both are the same bubbles of safety. Different
stages of cocooning is all. I am a caterpillar surrounded
by butterflies eating steak and salmon. I am ugly. So ugly.
Nothing beautiful at all.

Ratios.

2016-08-03T21:49:00.000+02:00

I wrote this for someone in New England who is beautiful but does not know that she is beautiful. I'm posting it now because everywhere they are people who are beautiful but do not know that they are beautiful.

Ratios.

Perfect: I used that word once to talk about you
as if you were a doll with limbs made of plastic:
stiff and whimsical and subject to the niggardly
commands of the conscious- yet you, who thinks
as aggressively as any doll-house builder do not
construct your own set-pieces; instead you
pirouette into one carefully constructed day to the
next as you delicately
stride
from bed to shower to wardrobe to mirror to desktop to
window to mirror to mirror to
mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them
all-
and the staid look on your face when the mirror gives no
answer
because it can’t. Checkered skirt, sharp eyelashes, wary
jumper, almost heels. Perfect, you might think
for a moment before your eyes roll gently from self
to mirror
to self
to mirror
to mirror
the self. What was
it that you were looking for if all it does is lead
you back to your skin? Meanwhile, the snow
stutters softly from above as if God had dandruff-
perfect- and it all gently glazes the spongy surface of the world like
flawless coconut icing on some sorry party cake- perfect- and the morning
bell rings impossibly on time like the last
breath you thought was your last- perfect- and somewhere in
America I use words to remind you of the little
unreachables
of perfection that both start and end with your perfectly
snow-pale skin, where somewhere in
America and somewhere on
your thighs perfect ridges of red have formed themselves like
plastic scratches on a Barbie which we both think
are little but we both know
are big
because you are not plastic.

                                               At nighttime our feet
skip on the icy brick pathways that lead from
the dorm-rooms to the library and we shiver
as the snowflakes bob in and out of our bodies
like thoughts
that seem funny but aren’t quite- they melt away
as soon as they stumble upon our skin. From our mouths
cloudy puffs of being flutter out- little butterflies affirming
out listless snowflake-filled minds, sperming out ice-clouds
from our mouths, our mouths, our mouths; birthing friendship.
Breath, visible, is laughter. I trip and swear and momentarily
skate
across a sudden ice-surface as you speak another ice-breath. We
arrive
at the library but dart towards the empty right-side, the science
classrooms. We hope
to examine the thought-skirmishes on your right thigh, to turn
and change this hopeless world-spinning into centrifuge
separation-
make apparent the light from the dark
                        the firmament from the void
                        the flesh from the plastic, the-
here we are as you talk
about your family and I
try my best to look you
in the eye so I
can become
your eyes
even when
normally
I
am
so
vehemently
against

staring

at the soul-gates of another being-
here we are as you talk;
God is still missing from the centrifuge
of the endlessly turning world- your
axis
is your skin yet
you trust it
not. The salads without dressing,
        the weighing scales,
        the taste of bile at the back of your
throat-
all for skin that
       you
do
not
      trust.
All for flesh that you think is plastic
so
     you
     cut.

             Enough
talk because the bell cuts through the flesh
of our conversation. Enough
talk because the world insists on
turning still
and forcing us to revolve
with it. Enough
breathing, enough
snow, enough
life. I remember you saying
that the ratios of your face are wrong;
that certain equilibriums do not exist between
your cheeks your lips your eyes your life…I remember the science
classrooms where parts of you were as mathematical as the architecture... I remember how
you keep thinking your flesh is plastic… You forget how
inglorious the nature of these words is. The problem
with human thought, with the ratios of your face, with the
geometric structures that cut across your thighs, with the
statistical neatness with which your family decomposes;
the problem with our conception of perfect is how
awkwardly it both exists and does not exist for us to
see.
The ratios of your face which you think are broken are
the same miracles I wonder about as you laugh. The incorrect distance
from your cheek to your eye which you think is wrong is the same
lightyear which separates the stars from the planets. The curvature
of your stomach is the bending of a spacetime to accommodate
the way the air must move to let your body occupy the space and time in which it
exists.
The ratios you speak of spring from your own limitlessness, your own
perfect imperfections , imperfect perfections-
strange oddities and unfathomable beauties and yes. Yes,
even the ridges across your right thigh are minute, red,
gasping
grand-canyons of
flesh,
of human, of breathing clay
flesh-
           never
plastic;
            always
worthy.

              Recently the voices in my head have been getting louder,
telling me all sorts of things about how the snow ought to bury me
in its mercilessness. They mention also that my words bear no meaning,
my thoughts even less so. Assumedly, the ridges across your thigh
carry such spectres as well but, I messaged you before you went to bed
about coming out and having an adventure because tick-tock-tick-tock…tick…tock…tick-
the last bell of the day is going to ring soon and the voices and ridges
will assert themselves again with the bedtime silence, but check your Facebook
messages and come outside and let’s go skipping with your friends across
the century-old polished prep-school brick pathways that smell archaic because it’s

snowing outside and it’s lovely.

Photo credit: cdn.paper4pc.com

Update, 4/23/2018, the poem found a home here: https://postscriptpublication.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/ratios/ thanks to a friend.

Five Stories.

2016-06-09T21:38:00.000+02:00

For some inexplicable reason, I was chosen to be one of the student speakers at the 126th Commencement of The Taft School on May 29th, 2016, otherwise known as 'graduation'. I've been at Taft, which is in Watertown, Connecticut, for about nine months after having spent four-and-a-half years at my old secondary school, Maru-a-Pula, which is Gaborone, Botswana. It's been an interesting academic year to say the least. Here's what I had to say:

"I am going to tell you five stories.

Story No. One:

It’s lights out and you’re not in your room. You know for certain everyone else is asleep. You’ve crawled into the artificial gleam of the bathroom stalls, having creeped out of your bed sheets without waking up your roommate. You are lonely, you are tired, you are hungry, you are sad and the world is some irretrievable thing that you can find only here, with your razor pressed against your thigh. You are a dream you are a nightmare you are human it is snowing outside. You remember that walk to the Health Center when the leaves were still burning and flickering orange and red and yellow between the trees and between your feet. You remember how difficult it was to get into your stride while everyone else walked with some sort of purpose with some place to be. You remember how the mirror tells you that this hopelessness is yours and yours alone, but the mirror can only see what is in front of it. It can’t see everything else- the subtleties of the magazines with people who you cannot possibly look like because their three-dimensional imperfections have been air-brushed into 2-D swimsuit covers; the supreme difficulty of picking the right options at the dining hall because eating well feels like a war of guilt and regret instead of a basic human dignity; and finally, the crude unfairness of feeling that these are your solitary and singular visions and reflections which no one else can see. Yet you are everywhere, nameless but familiar and common and special. You are something, you are someone, you are alone, you are not. You are not alone. You are not alone. You are not alone. You are whole and not just a story.

Story No. Two:

You are new. Maybe from somewhere far away and strange and perhaps even unpronounceable. You walk a little funny, you walk a little slow. It looks like a college, it looks like a castle, it looks like... You are misty-eyed and wonderful and flabbergasted and the polished, grey-brick prep-school pathways smell musky and old and vaguely of cinnamon. It seems very big. You seem very small. You try not to think of stranger-danger PSAs when one of your teachers first offers to have lunch with you. You leave that lunch not with the hope that maybe that teacher will grade you a bit less harshly but with the hope that maybe you can have lunch with him or her again and laugh about that one time in college when he or she did that crazy thing that briefly made you wonder if he or she is really meant to be a teacher - though, everyone is young once upon a time. This is your once upon a time, you think, as you walk across the polished grey-brick prep-school pathways that smell musky and old and vaguely of cinnamon and you feel like anything can happen. You are invincible, you are limitless, you contain multitudes. You are the blue in the sky, the green in the leaves, the red and blue in the school logo- you are proud and happy and romantic and gay and strong and young. Your eyes gleam a little as the sun sets and the stars dance.

Story No. Three:

You haven’t slept for three days straight- at least not quite- you don’t know if what little you’ve had actually counts. Your laptop is in front of you. Your fingers grind away at the keyboard as your write your umpteenth thesis statement this month and prepare to organize your thoughts into five neat paragraphs- you decide that the third paragraph will focus on irony. You are good at this. Your teachers know this, your parents know this, your friends know this; you do not. The cup of coffee in your hand gives you the illusion that you are ready and confident to beat this world into submission, but you are too fast, too steady, and too carefully placed into your corner of this life. You find you cannot fight the revolutions of the world because you revolve with it- and so day turns into night as one paper turns into the next as one quiz turns into the next as one test turns into the next. At the library, you do not explore the bookshelves; you do not wonder, you do not wander into some other journey whose map and compass is not on your syllabus. You sit in your cubicle, you put on your headphones and you do what you are told. You are not at fault- this is just how it is- but things aren’t quite feeling right and you can feel it stirring ever-so-slightly in your chest. You look at your schedule and note the necessities. You are not at fault- this is just how it is- you are breathing but not living. The bell rings. You walk out the library.

Story No. Four:

You are on stage. You dance a dance that no one else has ever danced before. You sing a song that no one else has ever sung before. You make a speech that no one else has ever spoken before. The boys with the collars holler in approval and the deepness of their voices has a resonance that makes you dance with a certain grace. The girls in their spring dresses scream out your name in a way that makes you sing a little smoother. The faculty with their class-folders look at you with a very specific sort of pride that makes you speak with a voice you never thought you had. You are on stage- not some other shadow of self-pity that you thought was you, not some other whisper of self-consciousness you believed was you- You are on stage. And, because of that, the following things don’t matter: that someone who doesn’t love you has touched your hair again because of the way it kinks and curls and revels in its nappiness; that someone who doesn’t love you has denied you of your right to shout I am brown I am wonderful or I am I woman I am free or I am African I am proud or whatever it is that makes your heart beat the way it does... You are on stage and you are loved and you are needed and that stage just happens to be all of this world- where the only curtain that can stop you from being you is your own.

Story No. Five:

It is the evening of the senior dance at the headmaster’s house near campus. You are with another commencement speaker and you are climbing something that you shouldn’t be climbing. There is a wooden board purposefully entangled with chains blocking the beginning of the stairs. You slide over it and make your way up the highest structure on the stands in the football field where they put the overhead lights on. It is dark, it is wonderful, it is spring. You and the other commencement speaker joke about how tragic and funny it would be if the both of you fell to your deaths two nights before graduation. You think it is exceptionally inexplicable you have been chosen by your classmates to speak to them and for them and about them- you are nevertheless honoured and grateful and happy and anxious and proud. At this high point in the football field, the both of you gaze at the distant light of the school windows at night and you breathe in and then sigh. It is both the beginning and the end of the world, you think as you breathe in another breath and then sigh another sigh. It is dark, it is wonderful, it is spring. You ask each other if you know what you will talk about yet. You both say no. You look at the distant lights of the school windows- each window containing its own little story- and you think: You have no big lessons to say you learned, you have no grandiloquent life advice to offer, you have no ancient wisdom to impart- and you are tired with reciting platitudes. All you have are stories to tell and people to tell them to. You are certain that these stories are enough, for people will take from them what they will and what they must and what they need. You are certain that these stories are enough, for you will take from them what you will and what you must and what you need.

I love you all. Thank you."

***

Photo credit to Rob Falcetti and The Taft School

Making Change: Understand More, Fear Less.

2016-03-07T07:08:00.001+02:00

This is a awesome guest post by an awesome girl who has awesome things to say. It was originally a speech done at a Morning Meeting at our prep-school. I'll leave it at that because her the quality and honesty of her words need no introduction. Just read it and let your soul simmer and your heart flutter. And after that, consider how you too can go and make your little bit of positive change in the world.

Good morning Taft, for those who do not know me, my name is Juste Simanauskaite. I am a junior and I came to Taft as a sophomore last year from my homeland Lithuania. During these two years in the United States, I have come to understand that everyone is capable of making a change. Now I am trying to become one of those people. I am attempting to make a change by fighting for gender equality. The story that I am about to tell you is very personal and important to me. By no means, am I trying to make you feel sorry or pity me; my goal today is to reveal the unfortunate reality that we all live in.

My life has truly been a rollercoaster. Going up and down every single day, experiencing the little joys and struggles of life. However, right before coming to Taft my rollercoaster shut down, the controls broke, and I was not sure whether they would ever go back on. I wish I could say that the situation that I have been through was only 1 of a kind; however, what I experienced is relatively common for the 21^st century. So what happened, you ask? Well, here is my story:

Three years ago, I was a completely different person. I was a 15-year-old girl, just like many of you here at Taft. September of 2012, I started a new high school in my hometown. I was extremely excited to meet new students, teachers, and jump right in into my high-school years. It was one of those feelings you get when you wait for something so much that you can’t even fall asleep, just like waiting for Santa on Christmas eve. However, the excitement was soon gone. The more the year went on, the more alone and isolated I felt. I saw all these socially and academically gifted people making new friends, having fun, and enjoying their time there. However, I was not like all those girls who could talk and flirt with boys for hours and hours. I thought I was not pretty enough, not funny enough, not skinny enough to do so; I felt that I was just not enough. However, that was the standard that a popular girl had to live up to, otherwise you would end up feeling just like me, unwanted, unnoticed and unheard. Up until December of that year, my insecurities and thoughts were slowly killing me from the inside. Every day at school reminded me of a nightmare. Nevertheless, no one knew because I smiled through all the pain and got used to the idea of being a nobody.

As if that was not enough, one day, my dad came home with a new purchase of which he was very proud. A brand new scale, with the fancy options to calculate body and muscle weight, water percentage, and what not. Of course, he wanted all of us to try it out: my mom, my little brother, and me. My mom made the first step and I followed. At that moment, as silly as it may seem, my heart and mind were torn apart. I found out that me, a 15-year old girl, weighed 15 pounds more than a forty-year old woman did. That was it. That final factor was the last trigger that influenced my unfortunate, stupid, and unwise decision, which has irreversibly altered my life.

A year later, I was already facing the doom and consequences of anorexia. After the “scale - incident,” I started out by challenging myself to change my eating habits and began exercising on a daily basis – or what I called it living a “healthier lifestyle.” I read all the articles and books that I could find about what was good for my body, when and what to eat, what to cross out of my diet. My head poured with ideas and thoughts of becoming healthy. First, I took out sweets, and junk food. This of course, most of you would agree, was not a bad thing; however, after a month or two this progressed into no bread, no fats, counting calories for every meal, and making every portion size as small as possible. Control, control, control, no cheating, and control – those words were always in my mind. I felt guilty for eating “too much,” I felt guilty for not exercising for one day, I felt guilty if I ate something after 6pm. Nevertheless, the worst was yet to come because I did not realize that my behavior was leading to a dangerous disease. I thought of this as a positive change: making myself healthy, feeling good about myself, becoming more confident about my body because I felt that this was the only way to be recognized and noticeable. Months passed, and I started seeing the changes – my waist was slimmer, my legs were skinnier, my collarbones started pointing out from my chest. I was proud of myself, I was proud that I finally was approaching the accepted standard of a girl that I wanted to become. What was even more flattering – were the compliments from my classmates, especially guys because they also noticed my shape change. “Juste, you look so good.” “Juste, have you been working out?” “Juste, would you like to go out for coffee sometime?” For the first time people recognized me, they wanted to talk, hang out, and spend more time with me. Therefore, after all of this feedback I saw no point in stopping; however, I did not realize what I was doing to myself until the damage was already done.

After a year of living under my “healthy” rules, I started feeling exhausted all the time, my body temperature was never higher than 96 degrees Fahrenheit, my blood pressure was also very low, and my periods were gone. My parents were concerned; however, every time they said I was not eating enough, I responded “I am, you just never see me eat” or “I ate soooo much at school, I’m not hungry” and by sooo much I usually meant 2 apples and a banana.

All of this became even worse. It took me a while until I understood that maybe feeling cold all the time, drinking 10 cups of hot tea during the day and not having the energy to stay up past 8pm was actually not a good thing. This affected my mood, my academics, and most importantly me! People around me started noticing that I was fading away, day by day there was less and less of me left, both physically and emotionally. However, I could not admit that something was wrong with me and I wanted to prove that everyone else was wrong by saying that. So I looked up the symptoms of anorexia, the disease that people were accusing me of because I wanted to prove them wrong. It turned out that my so called “healthy lifestyle” was not healthy at all, rather the complete opposite. I scrolled down through the symptoms for the disease: 1. Skipping meals, 2. frequently making excuses for not eating, 3. lying about weight loss or the amount of food eaten, 4, adopting an extremely limited diet including only a few certain “safe” foods, 5. cutting food into tiny pieces, 6. obsessively and repeatedly weighing oneself, 7.frequently checking in the mirror for flaws, 8. complaining about being fat, 9. wearing baggy clothing to hide small size, 10. excessive exercising, fatigue, and lack of emotion. I was shocked when I realized that I could identify myself with every single one of those symptoms. I felt as if someone was reading my mind. It took me a year to realize devastating effects of my attempt to be “socially acceptable.” But by then I was a 16-year old that had lost 40 pounds, completely damaged her health, and forgot what it meant to enjoy life. All the stress, anxiousness, starvation, self-discipline, and exhaustion. All of that for what?

When I try to think of reasons why I had to change in this way, the only thing that I can come up with is that I was trying to fit in; I was trying to live up to the standard of a woman that would be attractive and noticed by others. Even though I managed to recover, I managed to understand my mistake, and I had the willpower to change once again, only this time, for the better; unfortunately, after going through all of this, I am truly concerned and devastated that I am not the only one.1 in 5 women in the world struggle with an eating disorder. That means that out of the 296 girls at Taft, 59 are likely to be affected by this disease. In addition, 53% of 12-year-old girls feel unhappy with their bodies, 78% of 17-year-old girls feel unhappy with theirs and 95% of people with eating disorders are between the ages of 12 and 25. What do all these numbers indicate? Probably the fact that my story is similar to many of those girls out there. The standards, however, are not only for body shapes, they are created for everything: social media, jobs, ethics, and much more! Therefore, the stories are endless. Women are raised to want to fill the social roles in which society needs them. And unless we talk and become aware of the issue, the outcomes are not going to be positive

As you may have all heard, I was screening a movie here at Taft called “Miss Representation” just a couple of weeks ago. Right after it more than 30 students gathered and discussed the gender issues that we are facing today. Why is this so significant? Well, the more we talk and discuss, the more stories we share, the more aware we become of the current situation. Yes, you may think that Taft is like a bubble, isolated, and far away from the issues and problems of the world. However, I would like to argue that actually our bubble just represents a smaller model of the bigger world around us. I guess, I will only speak the truth when I say that the issue of stereotypical gender standards is present at Taft as well. Right now, I want everyone to just take a moment and think how could we all prevent those stories from happening, how can we as a community make a change? What will it take us to get rid of those social standards and how are they affecting each one of us personally? Just think. Today, my goal was to make you think and realize that we all together, women and men, make this environment a better place for all of us, we can stop the harm of unhealthy social standards, and we can make this change happen. That we can do by listening, admitting, and talking about the problem. My life may have been different if I had seen enough images in society accepting me for who I am. I now clearly see that the roller coasters we all ride in are controlled by us and influenced by others. I hope after hearing my story we will all be more kind to others and ourselves and embrace the words of Marie Curie “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

Find the video of her speech here: https://vimeo.com/155022762

An Adventure with the Buddha in Connecticut.

2016-02-22T22:24:00.001+02:00

Hi all. I had an assignment for my Buddhism class which asked us to compare our journey to The Taft School with that of the protagonist of Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse and also with the Buddha himself. Anyhow, here's a little summary of my adventures in American prep-school through the lens of Buddhist philosophy. Have fun.

An Adventure with the Buddha in Connecticut.

“We know that egotism is a bad thing; we know that all the great world traditions- not just Buddhism- urge us to transcend our selfishness. But when we seek liberation- in either a religious or a secular guise- we really want to enhance our own sense of self.” – Karen Armstrong, ‘Buddha’

Now that it’s started snowing, I’ll go ahead and tell you about my little journey here and somehow link it to The Buddha. Before I begin, I have a thousand apologies to make but I’ll just mention two of them. One: I’m sorry for the horribly colloquial tone of this paper, but the assignment called for a personal response- and, unfortunately, what I feel is far less nuanced than what I think. Two: this assignment also asked about our goals and I’m sorry to say that I’ve already failed in fulfilling the goals of my little journey here... But that’s okay. It’s started snowing and that means I can finally get around to talking about my little journey here, so-

Here we go.

II.

“Then he suddenly saw clearly that he was leading a strange life, that he was doing many things that were only a game, that he was quite cheerful and sometimes experienced pleasure, but that real life was flowing past him and did not touch him”- Hermann Hesse, ‘Siddhartha’

My favourite poets used to hang around in New England, especially at Harvard- and so did a few of my favourite scientists and philosophers. So when I, a Lower-Sixth Form student at Maru-a-Pula School, was selected as part of the US Scholars to come to Taft, I relished my luck to pursue the footsteps of my American legends. I saw it as my great chance to chase the legacies of Cummings, of Eliot, of Ashbery- and even Thomas Kuhn- the radical philosopher of science who graduated from both Taft and Harvard. This may sound all terribly simplistic and hackneyed and pretentious but this was essentially what I thought the purpose of my life to be: just like every other one of my peers that I have learned to criticize for sharing such similar, basic fantasies: go to college, get my degree, pursue a career that I can be violently successful in. For a long time, I deluded myself with thinking that my version of this surface goal-chasing was deeper than everyone else’s- after all, I was dreaming of getting a PhD in physics and/or philosophy and/or literature and becoming a poorly paid academic who would write books and give lectures and be well-known for looking like Cornel West but instead be from Africa. There were a few rare moments where I would pause to think that I was, perhaps, being a raging hypocrite. I figured that craving for success was lofty and admirable because my desires lay in books and art rather than in money and land. I became very good at ignoring the fact that my desperate wanting, my lusty craving to be ever-more intelligent was essentially and fundamentally the same as buying individually tailored suits and trading stock prices. But still! I was coming to the land of Big Dreams, to America itself, and Taft was my orgasmic green light at the other side of the world; the Daisy to my Gatsby and that was all that mattered.

The really sad part is that I knew all along that I was full of it.

III.

“Without knowing it, he had endeavoured and longed all these years to be like these other people, like these children, and yet his life had been much more wretched and poorer than theirs, for their arms were not his, nor their sorrows his... Were they not playing a game without end? Was it necessary to live for it? No. This game was called Samsara, a game for children, a game which was perhaps enjoyable played once, twice, ten times- but was it worth playing continually?” –Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

Underneath my excitement for America was a dark sense of unease. In the land of dreams, people who looked like me were being shot for looking like me; people who didn’t look like me were losing their jobs because other people who looked even less like me were controlling the economy; on the TV screen a president who almost looks like me was wrinkling and greying because all these people still can’t get over the fact that they don’t look like each other. Meanwhile the Harvard website spoke of this strange oddity called ‘opportunity’ while their acceptance rates plummeted annually. I spent more than a few hours refreshing the Taft website wondering whether their words had double-meanings as well and further wondered about the casual messiness of the world around me. In Botswana, I was beginning to hear hints of the same globalized double-speak of ‘opportunity’ as the wealth-gap between citizens increased. I was moving on from one private school to the next, one ‘opportunity’ to the next; and the only thing that I started appreciating about my opportunities was the fact that I only had to theorize about the casual messiness of the world around me rather than directly experience it. But still, even at a distance I could tell something was off with the reality I was living in. Was I so special that I deserved to be given a scholarship to Taft while some of my friends wondered and still wonder how they’ll pay for university? Was I so special that my parents were able to afford the tuition of my old private-school in Botswana which led to my scholarship to Taft when my government’s educational funding becomes increasingly out-of-reach for my friends? And then the biggest questions of them all- my little brother and my high school poetry-prodigy friend both died before they had the chance to be further offended by the ugly suffering of this reality: does my survival make me more special than them? Obviously not- so why the hell am I here in Connecticut watching snow fall on the ground when they aren’t? And how the hell am I supposed to continue living in the nonsensical pain of this meaningless world?

Why is it that we call samsara ‘opportunity’?

IV.

“...he was still plagued by desire and still immersed in the toils of consciousness. He had begun to wonder if the sacred Self was a delusion. He was, perhaps, beginning to think that it was not a helpful symbol of the eternal, unconditioned Reality he sought. To seek an enhanced Self might even endorse the egotism that he needed to abolish.” – Karen Armstrong, “Buddha”.

I mentioned earlier that I failed in fulfilling the goals of my journey here. While my goals changed shiftlessly in the murky wind of my mind, I still failed to reach any one of them. The most obvious (and most pathetic) goal was to get into Harvard. The other goal was then not to care about getting into Harvard or not (ongoing; also pathetic). Another was to make High Honors. Yet another was to finally finish my first collection of poetry, ‘First Adventures in Adolescent Heartbreak’ (also pathetic). Yet another goal was to learn how to forgive myself for harbouring such awkwardly elitist goals while being a self-proclaimed humanist. And then there was the goal to finally kill of my awkward elitist goals so I could become an actual humanist, rather than a self-proclaimed one. I was also supposed to call my mother every Sunday and stay in contact with my friends. Write delicate, philosophical and self-effacing poetry about the trees in New England. Do my physics homework. Hand in assignments on time. Go the gym. Find myself. Love myself. Try not to get over-involved with the black struggle.

All of them: failed.

“But today he only saw one of the river’s secrets, one that gripped his soul. He saw that the water continually flowed and flowed yet it was always there; it was always the same and yet every moment it was new. Who could understand, conceive this? He did not understand it; he was only aware of a dim suspicion, a faint memory, divine voices.” –Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

There’s one more goal that I want to talk about. It was the reason I signed up Honors Humanities, for Philosophy and eventually, for Buddhism. Also, this is the part of the essay where I actually relate my experience to Siddartha and the Buddha. I didn’t mention this goal earlier because I would be lying to you if I said that I came to America with the explicit purpose of fulfilling this particular goal in mind. Rather, I became very skilled at convincing myself that the reason I came to America was for the sake of adventure. Adventure. That’s the word I had in my head when my visa came through and when my Taft acceptance letter came through and when it started snowing. It’s the same word I’ve had in mind with every conversation and every book I’ve read here. I’ve referred to adventure in various forms, all awkward and needlessly intellectualized to make it seem like a bigger deal that it actually is. Last semester, in our Philosophy classed I called this adventure the ‘space between the physical and the metaphysical realms’. This semester, Siddhartha calls it ‘Atman’ and Gotama calls it the ‘Self.’ I chose not to include this goal in the preceding sections of this essay because I earnestly believe that the quest for this mysterious adventure is separate from the samsara I’ve been trapped in since birth- much of these entrapments of suffering being self-constructed. And I really, really, really do believe that this is the case otherwise I wouldn’t have saved this section for last. I wish I could give a better reason than that, but, like I said earlier, what I feel is far less nuanced than what I think. Yet even if feeling is less nuanced than thought (which you know I think I know is true), the unfiltered quality of feeling can be nurtured into thought. The depthlessness of my academic success-chasing still could not kill this implicit and fundamental goal of adventure that I had in my mind when coming to Taft. Even if my philosophical ponderings about the nature of life and being are not the actual occupations of my feelings- for I have spent a great deal lying to myself thinking that they are- they, in essence, remain the true occupation of my feelings; for it is these same ponderings of faith and wonder that have kept me alive in the shameless samsara of America. I don’t know how else to unpack this argument, but this simplification might help: I came to America saying that what I wanted was adventure; but what I really wanted was a Harvard acceptance later; but what I really wanted even if I thought I was lying to myself about it was actually the adventure because that’s the only goal that survives failure because it never ends.

VI.

“He had begun to wonder if the sacred Self was a delusion. He was perhaps, beginning to think that it was not a helpful symbol of the eternal, unconditioned reality he sought. To seek an enhanced Self might even endorse the egotism that he needed to abolish. Nevertheless Gotama had not lost hope. He was still certain that it was possible for human beings to reach the final liberation of enlightenment.” – Karen Armstrong, ‘Buddha’.

I don’t expect to ever reach Nirvana and I’m not trying to. I am, however, curious about whether such a thing exists or not. Does Nirvana look like Plato’s World of Ideas? Does Nirvana have shape or form? Does the ‘Nothingness’ of Nirvana constitute Somethingness? You see, unless I stop asking these sorts of questions, and I promise I won’t, I’m probably not going to experience the brilliant hyper-consciousness hiding away in the folds of space-time. That’s fine with me- I think too much and I’m happy with that. My fundamental disagreement with The Buddha thusly lies here: I don’t want the experience of Nirvana, I want the proof of Nirvana. But then again, that’s what I think; not what I feel.

What if...

Votre.

2015-12-22T08:02:00.000+02:00

I graduated fresh and bloody from my mother's womb,
a gift, greater than any other.
My sister before me too.
My brother after me was swallowed up by Him
mere hours after drawing his last breath his first.
Behold:
This is my unambiguous declaration against
this universal truth: my unparalleled defense
of the dignity of man
against the temperature-empty, relentlessly inhuman
universe unconcerned with these ventures
which characterize knowing it

not. For one day I shall call
my teachers by their first names. One day
they shall call me doctor. This is the totem
declaring the worth of the living and the dead,
my sister and my brother: myself. The totem
of the disenfranchised and barely and disabled
and black. Even also less including I guess
the enriched the cup overfloweth and mighty
and colourless. Our skin and bones and graves
and blood and virgin and lust and chest and
breasts and being and nothing and isness is

beautiful

regardless of everything. It is mine.
It is yours. It is yours.

Votre.

On The Matter of Black Lives

2015-11-19T04:42:00.000+02:00

A few weeks ago, DeRay Mckesson, a prominent figure in the #BlackLivesMatter movement visited the campus of The Taft School, where I'm currently stationed. Another student here, Sumi Kim, and I each wrote an article about #BlackLivesMatter for The Papyrus, the student-run news publication at Taft. Unfortunately, due to spacing issues, these articles were not able to published in their entirety. But I have a blog.

Sumi.

Black lives matter.

It’s a simple slogan, only three words long. Yet those three words are among the most controversial phrases one can encounter today.

The words are relevant. The words are straightforward. And above all, the words are misunderstood. The meaning behind them is twisted from mouth to mouth; they support black-supremacy, they promote racism, they hate the police, they highlight discrimination, they advocate equality. With all these wildly different interpretations circulating around the public, the meaning of the movement becomes subject to the preconceived notions held by the person who encounters it.

The “Black Lives Matter” movement began as a response to the murder of Trayvon Martin by neighborhood watch guard George Zimmerman in Miami Gardens, Florida. 17-year old unarmed Trayvon was fatally shot by Zimmerman as he was walking back from a convenience store, because Zimmerman felt Trayvon was “suspicious”. Since then, the movement has spread across the nation, growing in popularity as increasing numbers of black lives have been unjustly taken by police. The hashtag #Blacklivesmatter was even named the 2014 word of the year by the American Dialect society.

The actual heart of the “Black Lives Matter” movement is racial equality. There is no way to disguise it; in America, African Americans are still subjected to institutionalized racism. It is no miscalculation that 80% of people pulled over by police in New York City are either black or Latino. It is no miscalculation that even though anonymous surveys conducted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People have reported that five times as many more white people do drugs than black people, the rate at which African-Americans are reported for drug offenses is ten times more than white. It is no miscalculation that white people are more likely to be hired, to be paid more, or to get away with criminal activity. “Black lives matter” goes beyond responding to police brutality, despite its original intentions; as stated on the official website, “We are committed to collectively, lovingly and courageously working vigorously for freedom and justice for Black people and, by extension all people.”

Contrary to popular beliefs, the movement does not promote black supremacy, or justify killing cops, or justify attacking white people. "Black lives matter" is not saying, "Only black lives matter." Of course, all lives matter and no one race is superior over the other. That is clear in many ways, from the United Nation’s “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” to the principles of the Founding Fathers: life, liberty, and equality. All lives matter, but not all lives are subject to the same prejudice as African Americans are. The amount of backlash that a movement simply highlighting the racial inequality in America has received is evidence enough that all lives are not yet equal.

Despite the simple purpose of the “Black Lives Matter” movement, I have no doubt that some readers are going to come across this article, see its title, and simply skip it due to their preconceived notions of the movement. I’m not saying that the root of the prejudice against Black Lives Matter stems from nowhere; like in every movement, there are extremists. Everyday lives of innocent civilians have been interrupted, property has been looted and damaged, and cops have been killed in retaliation. However, the majority of the people involved with the movement protest peacefully and denounce these violent acts. It is these few radicals that give “Black Lives Matter” a bad connotation that dissuades people from delving deeper into the movement. Even within our Taft community, many students had not been as exposed to the true intentions of the movement before DeRay McKesson spoke during morning meeting, and were pleasantly surprised at his simple yet powerful words.

The movement itself is doing everything it should to be an effective catalyst for social change; the abundant, mistaken prejudice of people who are uneducated about its intentions is one of the only things inhibiting the movement from widespread success. Therein lies the biggest problem facing the campaign: how is “Black Lives Matter” ever going to be effective if people are immediately turned away based on the connotation that surrounds it? How is it ever going to change America if people take one look at those three words and turn their eyes away?

The success of “Black Lives Matter” thus falls onto our generation. It is we who must spread this message of equality and justice. It is we who must educate those unaware of the racial problems still plaguing America. It is up to us, as Taft students, to take advantage of the privilege we have and help our peers.

It’s been 150 years since slavery was abolished in America and yet racial inequality and ignorance are still present in our society. Our generation should be the one to finally end this discrimination, and the “Black Lives Matter” movement is the opportunity we should be taking. It’s time for us to seize it.

Image Source: everyvoice.org

Tawanda.

Every morning, the fresh and green winds of New England awaken them. This wind is the freedom of America itself, as are the possibilities inherent in each gleaming classroom; all gateways to a future that their parents told them could only be fought for- never given. Yet every time they walk into a classroom they can feel their foreignness, the strangeness of their skin being in such privileged space. To be black at Taft is to know the greatest irony of America: freedom for all, where all is few. White privilege, says Aaron Dillard ’16, is ‘white people not having to worry about being white.’ Being black, however, means being the only student of colour in an English class studying ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.’ Even in places of great opportunity such as Taft, men and women of colour encounter ‘the struggle.’ The unexplainable discomfort around people who ‘bump your stuff but won’t love your people’ who also tell you that ‘you’re really beautiful for an African girl.’

And then there’s the people who ask, “Why not #AllLivesMatter?”

The social movement #BlackLivesMatter has been met with only half-opened arms. Republican Presidential Candidate Ted Cruz recently stated that its name is ‘literally suggesting and embracing and celebrating the murder of police.’ Meanwhile, 2015 shows one of the lowest numbers of murdered police officers in decades, and the movement has now become both more organized and more decentralized. The key word here is ‘more.’ Since BLM started, police brutality against black Americans has not ceased. Trayvon Martin. Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Tamir Rice. Freddie Gray. That’s just the men. When one of the leaders of BLM, DeRay McKesson visited Taft, he sparked both interest and controversy. His speech brought to the surface issues of race at Taft. Not only that, but it seems like they’re here to stay and be discussed, even outside the classroom.

Before we go on any further, let it be made explicit that this is an article about the social movement #BlackLivesMatter and how it relates to being black at Taft. It is not an article against white Americans, nor is it an article about hating the police. However, as both of those bodies are inextricably tied to the matter of black lives they ought to be discussed. ‘Why not #AllLivesMatter?’ Because, as the popular Taft saying goes, there’s more than one perspective. Let us recognize this contradiction: ‘all’ in America is not inclusive, for all lives do not, in fact, matter in this country.

One of the biggest things that were emphasized to me before coming to America from Botswana, besides the perennial sleeplessness of prep schools, was that I ought to be prepared for discovering that my skin isn’t just something I was born with. I was told various horror stories, ranging from the comic to the tragic. Not too long after it hit me that I was actually coming here, that Taft physically exists and isn’t some strange abstraction, I started staring at my hands and wondering if there was anything wrong with them. My mother warned me often about the police.

‘I don’t think a white person understands the struggle,’ says Ismatou Bah ’16. She goes on to say that maybe they can understand ‘95%’ or ‘99%’ of it. But never entirely. This instantly reminds me of all the times back home I’d been called a coconut: white on the inside, black on the outside. If I’ve only just recently started staring at my hands, how much can I say I really know about the chaos of being black in America? Can I relate with Makari Chung’s ’16 exasperation when she asks, ‘Why is my hair such a phenomenon?’ When I stepped out of JFK, did I feel, as many black people in this country do, like a ‘target to be hated’?

Explaining the issue of race in this country often gives people more questions than answers. And while my experiences are not, as of yet, as explicit as those of the men and women of colour in this country, I can wholeheartedly affirm that racism in this country does exist. If you doubted before, then there is no longer any reason. I offer none of the biases of America, white or black. I simply tell you, as an unabashed foreigner, that the question of ‘Why not #AllLivesMatter?' is easy enough to answer if one pays a reasonable amount of attention to anything in this country.

Have you been paying attention?

DeRay Mckesson speaking at Taft
Image Source: taftphotos.com

Hermes.

2015-11-03T03:22:00.003+02:00

I haven't forgotten.

Hermes.

I would have rather been Orpheus,

travelling to various hells for you

and singing songs to save you,

as you could not save yourself:

stop looking back. The flames are not worth it.

Let my eyes burn brighter than the abyss.

Just whatever you do, do not turn your face

away Eurydice. Hades will have his Persephone

and you are not her.

It is better this way I guess. I would have looked

back at you and watched you crumble into

a shadowy pillar of salt as did the wife of Lot

when she looked back at Sodom. I am faithless,

which is why I cannot sing like Orpheus. I am faithless,

which is why I would have watched you melt into

a shadowy memory of the underworld even if I could.

Instead, I was a messenger of these strange myths.

Wings on my feet, I raced against the multitudinous

skylines of the worlds I do not inhabit, skipped across

volumes and volumes of rows and columns of planets and

stars written by dead old men and women. They spoke presently

of the voluminous presence their absence had created, and did so

without having known of the secrets of this absence when

they wrote about their respective presents. Presents conferred

to wishful wing-footed thinkers who then spiral uncontrollably with their mouths

to sudden and dangerous depths: Every serious reader remembers

the first time they stopped whispering controversies and started shouting them

without knowing that they were shouting them: Ideas are messy things

that don't need loudspeakers: Decibels violently shudder themselves out

of being the moment you mention to your mother that God

might not exist and Camus said so: Existence itself implodes outwards

like how plants produce seeds that make themselves when novels

start at their ends which are really their beginnings: Children

kill their mothers through birth: Boys with wings on their feet

This is

how

and

where

I flew towards you without a chariot

and found you in your various hells, one book at a time,

and why I would have rather have been Orpheus

because at least then I could have sang you songs

before you ended up retreating back into your various

selves. It could have been my fault then for looking back.

It could have been,

could have been,

could have been

you that was Orpheus. You who looked back.

You being the reason that I crumbled into a pillar of

shadow and salt because, as did Lot's wife, I looked back.

We both did, and watched the whole world invert itself

on its axis, then turn and twist and shift itself

into superimposed images and shapes and dreams

that changed you from muse to poet and

dream to dreamer

and Eurydice to Orpheus

and to Lot then his wife

and to this: which you always were.

Those wings on your feet: When

the librarians changed the positions of the bookshelves-

and therefore our imaginations: our movements

and stanzas and scenes and days and nights-

Those wings on your feet: When

that happened they must have stopped fluttering

for a second. I tried flying again and fell.

I haven't been much of a messenger since.

The Flying Mercury by Giovanni da Bologna
Image Source: http://acircleofquiet.typepad.com/.a/6a0105365c8671970c010536d7ed61970c-320wi

Little Paris, Somewhere.

2015-08-02T21:52:00.001+02:00

I wrote this for (another) friend's birthday. She is very special. Everything else about her can be inferred as necessary.

***

Little Paris, Somewhere.

  I.

When the poet first met her, again,
Cupid tried to strike him with an arrow.
It missed because the poet stared
through her. Not at her.

Yesterday it was,
'Get online loser.'
Tonight she says: quick
give me a description of Paris.

She always says such things.

He says: cold
like the pin-prick
of morning after-skin. Warm
like the shiver of a hand
held soft; of lips kissed.

He always says such things.

He even calls her Honeybear,
Cupid be damned.

  II.

He liked her because she read more books than him.

Her voice always made the sound of a page turned:
Crisp, clear, passionate;
revelling in the present,
but always waiting for the next sentence.

As if a book could actually speak
like a person.

As if the hours
she spent reading alone were not
just conversations with herself.

As if every syllable
was a night-whisper with
the great American dead.

The poet doubted if she ever
truly talked to Fitzgerald because
he was a drunk too obsessed
with one spirit. She'd get annoyed.

But then again, her drink of choice
is also an ungraspable green light.

Paris.

  III.

When she put on her spectacles,
the world became less clearer:
she could only see how far away she was
from where she was supposed to be.
The sharper life's images were,
the surer she became of this.

She had her substitutes for foreign oxygen:
novels, movies, songs, poems;
but they never quite breathed the same.
He tried to force the glasses off her.
Maybe then she could more barely
make out the thorny edges of sun-dried Acacias,
and more fuzzily the general sun-warmth
that he thought was the Kgalagadi soul.

She refused, but when she didn't,
she wore contact lenses. Real,
or imagined, the thin sheet of
dream glass pressed against her eyes
could never disappear. Her soul
was where it was: where it wasn't.
So still all she could see,
even when he smiled vivid,
was a place that wasn't Paris.

  IV.

Somewhere.

That is where she thought she was.
Here, an indescribable place.
Indescribable because she saw it grey. He
instead saw dappled speckles,
and rainbows flickering across every corner.
But he was of here and here alone, he felt
the landscape's beauty in his bones. She
wondered why she should look at
sandy semi-desert instead of gravelled
culture. She wanted pathway upon pathways of
old Europe, lingering in modern cafés and bistros
like an affectionate aftertaste. He
was happy with spoonfuls of instant coffee with
translated copies of a country he would never see.
To him, a French poet in English
was just about the same as a
French poet in French.
He knew that wasn't true, of course.

But the point was to get across the idea of
a Little Paris in his Somewhere. Just as he had an
idea of her in the movies she shared; where
she would awkwardly appear as bits and pieces
of dialogue, sceneries, soundtracks and end-credits
injected into his laptop weekends atop his bed.
He knew her as old romance films on USBs.
It wasn't quite her, but he still liked the idea of it.

He liked ideas, and ideas alone
were more than enough for him.

To her, ideas were restless things
to be beaten into submission.

And so she endlessly beat life's piñata
with a stick of dream,
and hoped to find a plane ticket
amongst the false candies.

She's still swinging.

  V.

He couldn't stop her and he didn't try.
At the very least, he admired her charm;
the zest and gusto of her swing.

But she tired easily. And he didn't want
her to be tired.

Sometimes her laughter would burst into her
and she'd forget about ambition, forget about success.
Sometimes she would just bite into her own sweetness
like if a rose could smell itself. She loved her red,
and was more intimate with her petals than her pulse.
Just as how she knew Paris better
than this Somewhere.

He thought she was crazy.
But so did she.
And they argued about this because
She thought he was crazy.
But so did he.

And so,
they disagreed about agreement
every day.

On a good day she would present a vicious smile,
the next paragraph in her never-ending thesis
that he doesn't intend to stop reading,
but somehow hasn't even started.
He never will.

On a bad day... well, a bad day
would lead to the end of a verse.

  VI.

They would always eventually get over a bad day.

Coldness takes effort; warmth does not.
The knew this, but warmth often became
an uncomfortable singeing of their safety.
They ran at the thought
of such possibilities like tiny girls
from tiny spiders. Neither wanted to put
that eight-legged flame into a jar, but
somehow they both expected butterflies.

The ecosystem is such for good reason,
and that reason is balance.
Spiders and butterflies both constitute
that effortless, life-affirming warmth.

They dance around that truth as it is a bonfire.
Sometimes they even look bright at it. But never,
never do they touch that little Paris, that little flame;
their little flame, their little Paris.
Because that love is meaningless meaning,
and neither of them wants to be, or feel, wrong.
Even if they'd be wrong together.

Their hands never meet in that fire.
Their souls never burn in night's ecstasy.
And they are almost never born,
until tomorrow, when they smile once again,
and dance.

Come online loser.

***

(Special thanks to Rishi for the lovely cover image :D Also, this was originally posted here: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1140352/little-paris-somewhere/)