Sexual impulse is the severest of human reflexes

Limbo

I love the concept of a question. I have often asked myself a lot of questions. That is a silly statement – because we all ask ourselves questions. But I truly love the idea of a question, an inquiry, a search for more than is obvious at the time. I love the question, more than the answer.
But I love the answer too, the witty answer, the right answer, the wrong answer, the stupid one. I love them all. Why? Because they bring me questions. I love that question, - why? It is so…so sufficient.
Why? Why? Why?
A rose by any other name will smell just as sweet – but a rose is a rose is a rose.
So many questions.
I have often asked myself, who is this girl? What is this place? Where is this mind? Where is that soul? Who are all these people? There is also this question – of essence, of universality and diversity and equilibrium in this anatomical marvel –actually, not actually?. But still.
I ask about leadership – those people, these people, our people, their people, your people. Whose people? I love that question, even better, which people? Those by your window at night –listening. Those at the podium – speaking. Those at the table – judging. The leaders. I ask a lot about these people sometimes. Particularly at these times when I am inclined to inquire. I love the idea of a question. To question.
I question them. I question me.
They are those at the podium – not listening. In your bedroom – not speaking. In your face – still judging. I love these judges. Okay I do not. But they do intrigue me. These ivory tower princes. Royal thieves. Simple leaders. I love the intrigue. The concept of the conquest.
I try to discern with these limited, perhaps infantile means the concatenations of these cataclysmic anabolisms – constructs of clearly feeble, fearful, insufficient, uninquiring minds. I peek. Another way to question. Suggestion. Suggestive?
Of what –
The ladies with no knickers. I saw them naked. Silverless and cloudy.
I saw them, the sires with faulty wiring. Wippity, wobbly on their old mares.
I shuttle between consternation, think of constellation, and then return, perhaps revert to the idea of the irate old man interjecting “what about our homes?” What home. I caught myself, enjoying the idea of a question. Tried to hide it with that period. They do it too. The final labeled tentative. The ephemeral concrete jungle.
I see no dreams here. Frosty milkless cerealed ambition. Cotton picker!
Black soul. Dead soul. They are not equivalent.
White soul. I hate the idea of imagery and connotation. Bad white soul. Irate. Inot. IU. This is cheap, cheap like the fruit of a transvestite loom.
I see you too.
Then I remember the purpose – they have failed, have they not? They are bad, are they not? I wonder. Another question. Another question. Because I see you too. Do you never ask the sufficient question, will you, can you, are you?

Petal

I remember how lovely you looked, cheerful too
So neatly wrapped in those lifeless things
Transparent thank goodness
And you were beautiful to behold
So many of you
How come
Born of camaraderie, appreciation, love?
Tighter sealed
Held closer together
These creases barely showing
You were special; different
Chosen specially
Wilting regally and prematurely
Disappeared first, wasted away
The deep blues wouldn’t hold you
Not much longer
I could see it all fallen
So crestfallen I let you go
Only two remain
Looking apart
From each other
Diverging at a crossroads
Love? Camaraderie? Appreciation?
I cannot tell which to call you, how to mourn you
You look apart
You too crestfallen
Soon, you shall have to go too

Sticks and Stones

Break my bones
Hurt
You lied

What is it that makes them
Different
Me

Fixed it
Lives a life of love and meaning
Drops it

Breaks it
No
Can’t break broken bones
Indeed you can
Mend what’s broken
Break what’s broken
New tools each day
Wreak the havoc

Just listen
Please

Princeton

Tiger with a Crimson heart
Nay Crimson neither novel nor art
Coursing blood –ubiquitous
Yet striped and healed, remarkable
Us

Candle wax

See this bright light,
Look into my eyes.
burning from crude thickness.
Keep breathing.
And on that candelabra it rests, now tall.
I, am never leaving.
Thick wick residing in oil waxes,
This exists in forever.
Bright light.
Keep looking into my eyes.
You can see the love can’t you?
Deep and passionate

Eternal

Oil wax melting,
On the numberless sands staring into the ocean,
Such unbounded vastness,
Perfection, don’t you think?
Perfection.
Oozing and dripping in limbless majesty.

And the energy,
all of that existing from one infinity to the next
no birth,
no death.

Even when the light is quenched,
I can scarcely remember the beginning
Drenched wick black.
Do you see an end?
Never.
The candle wax remains.

Off a trajectory

Off a trajectory
I said knowledge is a function of experience...
So I know I can't know everything
But I have neither defined experience nor knowledge

I make statements about the way things should be
Concerning the maintenance of standards and the abandonment of double standards
I speak against unfairness and injustice

I do not appreciate the heavy jumps
Vous passer du coq á l'âne et pour moi, ca c'est complètement inacceptable

Because I have never claimed to be perfect
I have never claimed to know everything
I make assumptions like everyone does...see this too is an assumption
I make mistakes
I can be wrong
I am wrong some of the time
I just choose to preserve my right to be right and right to be wrong
This is paradoxical but not contradictory

if you choose to never speak because you stutter and I don't
Please don't try to hold my mouth shut

Cor prudentis possedibit scientia
et c'est avec la gaité du cœur que je dit
je suis vraiment désolé
mais je ne peut pas renoncer á ma droit d’être

Trouvant et vivant la vérité
c’est ma raison d’être

"If you can explain why it is acceptable to covertly do what you understand and accept to be wrong but unacceptable to blatantly do what you believe is right, perhaps I will be as....great...as you are."

Varnish

I love you because you break me

You pierce through

Ravage

Almost rape me

There's a phantom...spectre

Drapes....

you break me

"It was a destructive love; perhaps the most powerful kind."

Chiral

It's a little strange, a little vague
How things can almost break and almost mend themselves
A little strange
How we succeed ourselves
Pioneers barely dominate infinitely
Greece must give way to Rome
Franchise, monetize....make it valuable
nothing is immutable
On the verge of concluding a pointlessness
Staring at the face of mutability
At the fading morning glory
Who can claim forever?
Period.
A blood clot, sperm drop, speck of dust, lick of sweat
As if it ever ceased.
Period.
Decisive beginnings ooze with the scent of transience
Genesis reeks of conclusion
Drips with uncertainty...


Even reflections are not super-imposable
Yet we speak of cores

Nay, Nigh, No, Noi

My answer to the question “what are we” feels inadequate to them…to me.
It’s just her being
Her
We just are.
If we are, when we are….
You suck.
I lost control and now I’m just this girl who likes the guy who says he likes her.
He’s the sweet guy, the nice guy, the good guy, he’s a jerk.
He’s oblivious to my pain, to my hurt, to my anxiety, to my questions, to my efforts, to my changes
I don’t like him. That is not the feeling.
The urge to say I love you. That is not the feeling.
I’m just grounded. Afraid to let go.
I don’t know what made them think that but I want real too.
I want true too.
I will say I love you.
When it is true.
When you know me.
When I know you.
I will say I love you
When it is true

One Africa

What is the relationship between Pan-Africanism, development of one’s country and continent and oneself?

As much as Pan-Africanism appears a wonderfully idealistic and abstract concept, it is meaningful. We talk about “One Africa,” and I’m sure we’re not the first set of people crying Pan-African!! But perhaps because we are innately selfish, we need to take the selflessness out of that claim.

So no more we: I’m not asking that you care about this continent, hopefully that will come later. I’m not asking that you try to make it better, at least not directly. I’m not asking for a “Pan” or an “Inter” or whatever else connotes “we”, I’m asking that you and me, not “we” make our own paradise. Although this can be about all of us and one day it might be, I’m here asking that you think primarily about yourself.

I want to ask you what your life is like now? Why is it that way? What is your life like now? What are you doing for yourself? What does your job and the other things you do, contribute to you as a person? What does your life now, contribute to your life tomorrow? How wealthy are you, and I don’t mean this monetarily? How wealthy are you, and I mean that how much do you have that you can give and how relevant is it? What are you worth to those around you? What are you worth to those beyond you? What are you worth to those beneath you? What are you worth to you? I must ask all of you what makes you relevant? How have you changed the world you came to meet? Who have you inspired?

And if you are inclined to wonder what all this has to do with your selfish desires? Someday you’re going to look back and ask yourself these questions. Your answers will determine how satisfied you are at the end of it all. So in that regard, I’ll tell you now that whether you are 30, 40, 50 or 60, time hasn’t ran out yet. And by that I mean you do not have an excuse. I am looking at your generation and it is human nature to judge.

Specifically to my peers, I’ll ask the same question, what is your life like today? Who makes it possible? Do you think that it’s going to be the same a decade from now? Or your plan is for it to be different? Well Whatever and Wherever the case let me just say that wherever you go except where you belong, you will always be the outsider, mo matter how long you remain there, no matter what your new passport says.

This is about you and me, today and tomorrow as well. Later we might need the we, but for now you need to come back to your home and make it. Unless you are content with being a big fish in the little pond that is America, come back home and really try to swim with the sharks. You need to come back and establish yourself. You need to go back home and make sure that you own the big business not some Lebanese or Chinese family. Right now no one needs you to come and heal the world, or Africa. You are being asked to come back and fight for yourself, to make yourself, a big fish in a very huge pond. Most of us have only about 50 years of post-independence history, there’s so much room for your name. The streets have not all been named yet, you could get your name on them. There is no real big business because it has your name, not Africa or Pan-African on it. No one is asking you to come back and hold hands as we sing peace songs, we’d love to but you don’t have to. I am asking that you come back and till your own soil, stop going back to toil on the soil where your forefathers were enslaved or does the slave only know the route to his master’s house? Come and till your own soil! Come and spend your money here, come and build your empire here. We’re even more respectful of tradition, we’ll remember you longer. I want you to immortalize your name when it is still possible to do so.

This is not about we, it’s about me and you. It’s about what makes it worth it for you. It’s about not going back to voluntarily slave where you were once forcefully enslaved. Africa may have done nothing for you and so you feel no need to do for her, but since when did any African become shy to put pepper in any one’s eye. Come back and show us why we should have supported you. Come back and show us.
“Do not willingly make yourself what you were made unwillingly”

Obama may have distinguished himself as a Kenyan and Black American. But he has merely attained the highest office of service in another man’s country. He has reached the highest office of enslavement, and it is not even for his own people. I’m not criticizing him, I don’t think I have the right to. All I am saying is this:

Let us suppose you owe Africa nothing and Africa owes you nothing. What you cannot deny is that you owe yourself a great deal. You owe your person greatness. And greatness like charity begins at home.

Tenses

If you will love me
then
love me now

But you will not
I cannot save myself
If I will fall
push me now
My heart betrays my mind

I am dichotomy defined
I will not.
I will not,
I will…not
I have

If you will leave me then hold me now
The pieces will come crashing hard
Angular and amorphous
Falling
Cutting deep
Injured

Broken down
If you will love me
Love me now

Us

I think I like it deep...it doesn't have to be too long but if it's brief maybe I won't catch it....concision is a gift. Longevity is pricelessly loosening the edges...I'm vague. I know. I'm a person with ruffles not layers...everything's on the surface....I think I like it deep but it never has to be complicated.

Pain is a dust that drains light away

Coma

Tepid and turbid waters
Snaking through these veins
Looping round the obstacles.
It seeps through
Corroding till it leaks through
The orifices.
The weaknesses.
Blooms at the tip of my soul
Dances at the edge of the heart
I am on the brink of consciousness
At the height of brokenness…

Pas...

There are no devices
This is not a case of eloquence
This is an absence of essence
Yet I cannot hide
And the rhythm is haunting

Les hyperboles me manquent
Il n y a pas les ironies
Pas de sarcasme
Tu me manque
Je suis dans une sorte de perdition
Je ne suis pas gentille
Pas jolie
Pas heureuse
Pas moi
Pas quelque chose

Quaking

A yellow midnight quaking over sulfur waters
Lipid bi-layers and expired morphine
Shaking into venomous vanity
Eruptions into volcanic madness

Rowing into strange, stranded places,
Melanin, savagery, a sea of average faces.
Poisoned arrows and toothless nemeses -
Quaking, in a sickled, epileptic crisis.


A sterile, pernicious, penetrable vortex
Razing, stifling, thickening phalange.
Crimea! Creole ! au Prince ! Vela
Senile, spurious, validated altercations

...me laisse froid, role de le roix.
Wafted, rattling, juvenile, delinquent delights
Alternation in the solenoid;
Silver solar, Polaroid flare, plange me derange.