Ode to my Anger

I didn’t want to write this poem, I didn’t want to be labelled the “angry black girl", but I am angry
I’m angry because you say I’m pretty… for a black girl, like that is not something magical in itself
A club many can’t even approach
I’m angry because I don’t see enough people who look like me on TV playing main roles, not just the sassy best friend
I’m angry that my skin has to play a factor in each decision I make
I’m angry that the “angry black girl" is even a stereotype like we have nothing to be angry about
Like we don’t see brothers dying every day
I will never be ashamed of this anger I feel inside, I was born into it, shaped by it
When will the world realize there is a person attached to this black woman?
I do not wish to fiercely hold onto life, only dance through its seasons
Dance through life
I want to write odes to the black boys who die just to get their lives on track, odes to all the black girls who aren’t pretty… but beautiful
And perhaps the world will listen
I know I am feared, my grace, my excellence, my intelligence
When you put an angry black girl in this world, she is a force to be reckoned with
The next time someone tries to break me with their words, lips drawn and calls me “angry" I will just laugh and thank them

On Humanity

I will still try and write about this world even when my hands shake
My father, my brother, they don’t float like they used to before
They were too much body, too much bone , too much laughter, too much skin, or too dangerous, too much thug, or too suspicious, walking, driving, living, being
When will they be enough?
Or not be too much?
How can this “Black" blood be so cavalier yet graceful?
I still don’t fully know what privilege is, but I believe this skin is a gift, I just wonder when others will start to see that

- For George Floyd

My Brother and Father left on Wednesday Morning

I woke up on a Wednesday morning to the world running still, the rain was shy as it fell from my window
My mirror was exact yet broken
The dust that rose from my wry windowsill swallowed me whole, drowned me in the sound of missed laughter
I tried to rearrange the small things that laid in my room, those inanimate joy givers
Yet my bleak curtains that day would not move
The sun would not enter and maintain my morality
I walked onto the broken step, and it cried louder that day reminding me of my weight
Each room, silent filled with cobwebs and stories of past lives
The room beside mine was cold for it belonged to a man who once was
I went to my parents room to try and find my own hero’s and isolate them too with a scope of my own individualism, but when I go outside and look above this empty little house I see the sky, with pale clouds offended that there are no crowds left to come and see
Yet that’s where my father and my brother explore
Where they can be men, or maybe say they are being men, I don’t quite remember
But then, I must return to my own room 6 meters away from this unknown force where still, the curtain has not moved, but my bed has been made

Ode to my long poem

When will my poetry be enough but not be too much
When can I write to make a point but not take that point too far?
If my poem is published, is it still mine?
But if I write a poem and nobody hears it, did I even write it?
So when can I just spill my body onto the page?
Let the words trickle from my mouth like honey
When can I stop writing my poetry for the award, the show, the expectation and start writing for me?
Perhaps there will be a time where I can write a poem as long as I want
A manifesto of the human spirit or a eulogy to the person I once was
I want to look at my poem and not become an instant critic for your eyes
I want to look at my poem and never have to count the lines
So maybe my poems are too long, or too short, or too boring…
Does that mean that they aren’t art anymore?
Are they not good?
Are they even poerty?

A conversation with a poor boat

Teach me how to sink like you, I said to the historic wreck
The Weeping Lady capsized and sank in 2001, washed away without a trace
Teach me how to disappear, to make people feel something, to make people love the idea of wretched wood and disassembled doors and Baltic ballrooms and scattered sails
The disgraced boat let out an anguished sigh
“why must you sink? Are you not human?" she asked me
“Don’t you have this ability to stay afloat? With those powerful lungs and kicking legs, are you not aware of the buoyancy of your own heart?"
I have decided to sink
I told her that I am tired of this shore, getting caught up in this tangle of people’s lives so I must leave and sink
The boat laughed “Is this the only shore you have seen?
Is this the only sea you have swam in?
You, human, do not see how lucky you are, how much freedom you have
I was brought up a poor boat
I wept each night and disguised it as waves
I was engulfed by my only love, swallowed by the icy cold water of the ocean I once rejoiced in
I have lived here for 19 years collecting skeletons and singing siren songs
How dare you come to my floor and ask me to teach you how to sink?
How to do something I haven’t even taught myself"
The boat uttered “you are human, you are not a boat, you are not sinkable, you contain multitudes, you are a poet, so write, write sonnets and odes and eulogies, write until the ink in your pen has run its course
Write about worlds where you are happy, where shame is banned, where love is the air, and you are free to breathe deep
Write everything, and then write more, just write and live, live by the sun and don’t listen to my moody push and pull
Do not sink, do not sink, do not sink"

The inevitable progression of season

She opened her gentle eyes and was surrounded by July
Its blue skies soft so sure of themselves she looks up to them and asks for advice
The peaches dripped in honey hang from lame trees asking me to pick them
The sun so effortlessly turns the girls hair blonde, and the boys get lost in hour long games of football
But not her, she has begun to write in the back garden, the trees with their lanky and unsure arms tell her what to write
But alas July loses itself and turns into chilly August which trickles into September
Those beautiful July leaves get too vulnerable and begin to fall
The moon starts to feel more confident
The girls have cut their hair and the boys stay at home
Now each September night feels like Sunday stuck on repeat

The unexplained science of teenage girls

I still don’t know what it means to be a teenage girl
All I hear is contradictions
What is a teenage girl supposed to look like?
Are my knees supposed to shake with insecurity
Do I swoon over celebrities, whisper with my friends about the people we pass by?
Why is it men who laugh when I do these things?
Call me girly
So, I stand up straight with confidence
Spend my time writing, spilling my thoughts onto paper, I keep a straight face with my friends
But those same men who still laugh, call me bossy
So, what is a teenage girl supposed to look like?
And why is it men that get to decide the answer?
The science of teenage girls will remain a mystery
Today I will question everything about myself but tomorrow I will continue to grow
Perhaps I am just that, a contradiction

1985 in the south of France

That summer smelled like peaches and honey
I remember we cycled through the rundown streets
You had your arms out and danced in the pale air
There was something immersive about your skin, like it was painted by camera flashes at each moment
You spoke to me in broken English, and it felt just like a song
When you sang to me each night on that balcony, I called it love or maybe I called it life, I can’t remember
In one moment, you said you loved me, and the sun kissed my skin, and I could smell those peaches and I could taste the honey almost like it tricked from my mouth
And in another we jumped into the cold sea, hand in hand
Never coming back up for air

A conversation with the stars

Once in a while, I like to leave my small town and sit on the outskirts of the city
I watch cars drive down the motorway under the dim of broken streetlights and in that moment, I am filled with a glance of solitude and bliss
In that moment, the stars try and understand the enigma that is me
They compare me to the moon
They say I understand what I feels like to be untouchable, an unbounded conundrum no celestial body could grasp
The stars, they thank me for giving them a chance to shine brighter when I am not feeling whole
You are a kind body, they say
For even when you are deflated, you let us show off our glow
You give us the opportunity to hear wishes and sirens from those who are smart enough to believe we are listening
You let us fall until we find where we truly belong in this beautifully chaotic mess, we call a galaxy
Is that not what unlimited possibility is about?
They ask me, where to next?
And I can only think of the path that is discovered
When my jagged pen hits the paper
It is on that path, I can truly find my way home

I am the love of my life

My body will soon leave me
My soul will be left exposed
I won’t have these buckling knees and shaking hands
My body will soon leave me
I will lose my heart
I will no longer feel stone cold
Perhaps then, I will be the love of my life

In defence of scary movies

The world is full of contradictions
A movie meant to frighten taught me about love
How loneliness makes us do crazy things
I remember hearing the shrill screams on the big screen
It reminded me of lust
Oh, to be that high, to have my heartbeat that fast, to feel adrenaline, feel something
In defence of scary movies, they never told us this isn’t how we should love
No matter what, he always gets the girl, they always end up entangled
Is that not what love is?
A series of moments, just like a movie

Black

“You’re so black" and just like that the skin I once cherished becomes my biggest disgrace
Oh, repugnant thing! Why must you cover me like this, swallow me whole, leave no room, for light, for pure, for goodness, for holy innocence
Why can’t you make me decent, my must you be a constant memory of hardship, of difficulty
Why must you make me different?
Subject to even more criticism
But perhaps this is most true, this skin so black, acts a shield, protection from the hurt you throw at me
“Big lips" a reminder that I did not choose to be a poet but rather was given these lips for a reason
You must ever wonder why such tender beauty prefers the darkness
How can such “black" blood be so mild and mellow and beautiful
Such golden sweetness, the heavy sun laying itself to rest on our skin
I know your God sits in disposition, this blessing, this “black" magic he graced upon us to wear as skin being called into question
Look how they failed you, with their fluttering thumbs and ignorance, failed your marvellous “black" creations

Learning to breathe on my own

The day we stopped talking I had to learn to breathe on my own
When you kissed me, you introduced air into my lungs
You made me feel whole, I swear I was swimming in your grace
But you left and it felt like I was sinking
I couldn’t stop free falling
I was in an ice-cold ocean, alone
I had to teach my lungs how to work by themselves
I had to remind myself o the buoyancy of the human heart
I try and try to find the silver lining of our tethering
It’s hard to remember sometimes
But you gave me the confidence to love knowing I would it make it to shore somehow

Tired

You ask me “Have I slept in the last few days?"
say I look very “tired"
I shrug and stay silent
The bags under my eyes start to feel ashamed
They try to hide themselves under cucumber face masks
But every so often I tell my bags to show themselves and rejoice in what they are
They are suitcases for the stories my mouth cannot tell
They are stars that work so closely with the moon and the clouds and the streetlights to help me broil up a concoction of words that breathe life into ends so deeply asleep
They are proof that the best poetry is written at night
That some people fear the stillness and sorrow that 3 A.M draws out
That the glow of a kitchen oven and the ticking of a clock can be deafening
So, if you talk to me and I seem “far away" it is because I am
I am merely imagining a place no dream can bring me
A place where that ticking clock is a radio blaring the most freeing music
Where love is the air, and I am breathing so recklessly
A place where that oven glow is the sun, luminous and bright
It’s long days like arms, swaying with me in the streets
You see in this place the sun dances with me in ways the moon dares to understand
So yeah, maybe I do look “tired", but I have a damn good reason to

And what will you say when rapture comes?

What will I say?
How should I explain myself?
What good will my vanity be?
I hope to feel some elation, feel something
But what if he asks about the crimson on my hands, how will I explain myself?
Should I compare my hands to his?
What will I say?
What good will my vanity be?
This pride will have no meaning
My words will no longer carry weight
I cannot use my poems as payment, as protection, so what good will my vanity be?
What if I forget my tongue?
Forget how to explain the moment I broke
I must teach myself to say nothing at all

An open letter to isolation

The isolation speaks to me and through me, asking “Where to little girl?"
I can not ignore the isolation, it is deafening
I do not want to furiously exist, only sway through the motions
When the isolation speaks
I listen fiercely
I still can not answer
I can not find my direction
I will look for a path where I can slowly trip my way back to myself
Rather naively, I wonder some nights, can isolation tell me where to go?

Just friends

Today I will have you around, I will allow myself to write about you
My love for you mirrors the weather, changing from form to form
So indecisive yet so sure of some beauty
My love for you mirrors Mother Nature
She has so much intimacy warmth for a blue planet that is cold with its affection
She graces the sky with these grey clouds, so luminous and dazzling
But how can I describe Mother Nature to a blind child?
To a person who chooses to keep their eyes closed
That day we danced in fields with yellow and red roses taking pictures o broken cameras and then you smile, and you remind me of the sun
I can not tell you what it feels like to be “just friends"
But maybe someday I will understand