Musical Protagonist

They listened to music prescribed especially for lovers/ Little did she know, he only listened because he loved her/ The beat of each bar and each empirical lyric/ was his music, his vibe, his movement, his spirit/ She was strong in her stance as she flowed to the rhythm/ of a song that was built on abjection for women/ The lines that she drew with her hips made him wonder/ if she knew that her beauty was something to be discovered/ His stance was quite different, more menacing, more threatening/ convinced that his posture read, “I am strong black man.”/ In an attempt to introduce himself as, “Strong Black Uhuru”/ he fell back, like a soldier in fear would do/ As she mimicked the words her lips slightly quivered/ he watched, now attentive to the fullness of her figure/ she wiped sweat from her chest, breasts slightly exposed/ heavy breathing, body heaving and stuck to her clothes/ When the beat came to close and her body was still/ her dress rejected composure and danced at will/ With all of the courage that his heart could muster/ he breathed deep with intention to introduce to a sistah/ a warrior like visage, with impeccable spirit/ trying to find words of flattery even though she didn't need it/ he approached her with avidity, when he was interjected/ by the beat of a song that he never expected/ he fell back once again like a small child, dejected/ his glass full of whiskey and his manhood...affected.

Genesis

I should have ringed you up,
Sealed and clamped you,
Pampered and stuffed you up,
Watched you bulge and subside,
Cocooned you:

The product bound and packed with love.

I owe your soul: 

untouched.
You snatched mine

It was mutual.
The stain: etched on the mind, the linen, the soul,
That loss: a step into an age
The hurt and delight, clipped to memories.
I treasured the genesis.

Should you journey back to that era;
Perhaps lose yourself in these arms,
Maybe feel the tactile spasms
Rippling through my spine.

Paralyzing.
If that was sin, consider another plunge.

This is for My People...

The long arm of the law turned into the tight fist of oppression/ I remember hanging on to that arm, but that was way back then/ I now reside in the land of free speech and liberty/ while maintaining close ties to the ones left struggling/ as I try to keep the faith and ink spills from my pen/ I cry rivers across oceans and say a prayer for them/ fragments of me float away with the breeze/ “Amandla ngawethu!” we must believe/ Umkhonto weSizwe buried deep in our hearts/ Thandanani bantu bam’, uThixo uzas’sindisa.

Unmeasured Words

My perception shapes your intentions and 
your attention evokes my affection. 
Shifting sands of impulse transform into rock hard emotions
no longer worn away by the falsities of uneven tempers. 
We are rooted in organic nature.

My heart breeds fruit that contains sustenance 
to keep this dream alive. 
We dance behind conspicuous lines but our lips never meet, 
although our minds collide with alchemic intensity:
always on the verge of something bigger than us, 
bigger than me.

Although I am taken by photography, 
pictures don’t incite me to the point of this revelry. 
I crave the muscle without the flesh; 
there’s no going deeper without depth. 
My lens stays focused on my tangible efforts:

To reach you, to read you. 

The fourth time’s a charm for a misconception so deeply rooted in scars 
and anguish and angst and aggressiveness 
that once had dominion over my consciousness. 
The bitter fruit of my heart is made nectarous 
by your loving hands. 

Since our form of communication is unspoken, but related, 

we make music that makes sense. 
Blues notes flow willingly from my soul to yours 
where they are translated into complicated melodies.
Untitled tracks float around us until we create the perfect beat. 

But until the point of acquiescence, 
my truth is quietly dissolved in this ink and through my hands. 
Cold and dark, I hold your shadow’s hand 
until I dare risk reality for a dream. 
Sparring with time and levels of comfort, 
my blues lay heavy on my shoulder; 
but such is the burden of being in love.

African Foreplay

Last night,
I tried to fight myself.
Mind over feeling;
mind didn't win.
This morning,
 I smelled of you.
Golden imprints of your hands
pressed against mine.
Last night,
 I saw the silhouette of your lips,
you kissed the Africa in me.
Did you taste my Sun?
Like wine I dance in your glass,
rouge face flushed.
My spine-

we divine-

multiplied.
I want to drown in this,
the this-ness of this:
this vast continent of emotional interplay
that has my mind orgasmically inebriated.
I am open wide like the vowels you wished your name had more of...
maybe you can have mine.

Chalice of Thought

Dress me in honor. 
Paint me in colors of the character I am; 

for my pen sings dear in the eyes of billions.

Roof me golden in voices of my readers; 

for the crown has championed my title.


I am a word-sewer.
These waves of twisted hope inject my

Veins with inks of philosophy,

Yet sustain my poetry with carats of melted diamonds.


Pilot me higher
Without any account of events.

I desire to stand tall.

Before I close the wealthy eyes of my last page,

Sing me not, let the world sing me better;
For my words are pasted on your lips
That kiss my poems in verses.

If I'm in miles of touching your heart,

Let my poems, in magnet, adhere to your spirit.

Esoteric

It’s hard to think of you in this light

because when I lie down and close my eyes at night

I’m vulnerable to senses that leave me senseless

and maybe since this life is sin-kissed

I should care less about the questions

that plague my consciousness.

In this syntax of mental contact

pernicious acts bring us back to the fact that

love is twisted so we reject it and then expect it

to be electric and travel forth with 

righteous content and spiritual conflict

when we raise stakes and then we forfeit.

But then your soul sends vibes that transcend

Truth and deepen my understanding of this love thing.

I surrender to heightened pleasure and weekend ventures

That take forever and make love better while we bet her

That we’ll outlast her by making her slower

We will grow her to no measure and just let her make us over.

F.L.O.W. (For the Love Of Words)

I write this For the Love Of Words and to pay homage to ancient rhetoric/While I blast music from speakers that talks about sneakers and the journey from rags to riches/ All this mainstream conversation about the black man’s elation about his emancipation from slavery/ has me questioning my identity as an African Beauty in the land of free booty and technology/ higher levels of consciousness met by lower planes of selfishness cause you to doubt this/ but truth is objective so know that your mind is being tainted by the nature of this beast/ we went from chains of bondage to change that binds us but we choose to call it progress/ we evolved from beatings to beats, cheatings to cheats, and the objectification of our own beings/ we took over the whips, lowered them still, and make sure that our chrome shines bright/ like the stones in our teeth that my people bled for in order to keep the peace/ now the beat that you stole from your African soul is dubbed with foul words of intention/ brothers locked up for the crime that they did, convinced they took what was owed to them/ see, we bow our heads to the kings of crunk and thank them for giving us hip hop/ while sisters lay on their backs and surrender to this opportunistic system/ freedom lost its meaning between the struggles and the hard times so we create a better definition/ based echelons of materialism, welfare and patriotism building prisons in the shape of a prism.

I write because...

...I’m scared to talk (Which explains my mute temperament). Saying things out loud only makes things more real, too real. The problem with silence though, is that it intensifies all my other senses. But just as ink from a pen gets absorbed into paper, people get absorbed into my spirit and there they remain, in an ashen guardhouse. My own Bastille. Releasing them isn’t as easy as turning a key; it’s as painful as dissociating a limb. Even after release, a sense of them still remains and I take their place in captivity. Being my own warden doesn’t justify the torture I put myself through; it makes the punishment more discerning when I break the rules…  

Eros and Thanatos

I dream of us:

Head to chest,

Lips to nape of neck

Fingers to palm,

Eyes to heaven.

Feet to moon,

Heartbeat to heartbeat,

Breath to breath,

 Song to song.

Temperament of gods,

Love of the ancients,

Impious desire,

Mutual surrender.

Perpetual pleasure,

Futile resistance,

Spirit to flesh,
Shadow to light.

Greater Expectations

I’m searching for that place between survival and living, despair and contentment, peace and peace of mind, friendship and infinite love. I’m hovering so far below my aspirations and can’t seem to abandon inertia.

When I was younger I thought life meant waking up to the smell of mom’s designer perfume lingering in the hallway tempting me to follow her, always missing my father and thinking that my brother was the coolest person I would ever know. Although my heart still has a yawning hole made larger with every passing day I don’t see my dad, and my brother is still the coolest person I know, the smell of designer perfume is now an uncomfortable reminder that I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing love in my mother’s eyes. Everything plagues the senses that I should be grateful for.

I need to go back to the source. At 16 my daydreams were laced with ignorant desires to leave the house my parents built so I could live by my own convention, standing on a street corner in high heels and a pencil skirt hailing a cab to an unknown destination in an unfamiliar place. I failed to realize that leaving that haven would mean learning how to build my own. I’ve built a lot of walls: protection, self-preservation, pride, anger and resentment, but nothing substantial enough to save my life.

I realize these words are counterproductive and pouring proverbial salt on self-inflicted wounds. I also realize how narrow my scope seems at the moment, but it’s an honest assessment. On the flip side though, failure is not an option, my best must be better and my life must be lived…

Saturnalia

Breathe me in.

I open wider to you.

Intensity heightened

by simplicity.

We speak.

Words like honey

Stick to my form.

Capacity is reached.

Breath warm on my skin.

Temporary homeostasis.

Bold of me to state this,

Intemperance.

Darkness merges with sunlight hours

Submission ends our expedition.

Longer breaths, lighter steps.

New beginnings.

Doorways

We kiss in doorways
One of us immovable, the other ready for the magnetism
To destroy our flesh and make us simple again.

I am one of us.
The one who resides in this perpetual state of union,
When the truth is:
I am me.

I reject all notions of when we became I.
This euphoria demands the respect of both,
Is diminished by one,
Yet coveted by all.

I lean further into the doorway.
Divine animal instinct nudges me to lead you further
But bare feet and cold tile remind us that once lines are crossed
We become us only when I is ready to be.

So we go back to basics:
The simpler form of us is me.
Two less one is lesser than we.
But I less you is negative me.

The Opposite of Poet

If I were a poet, I would write you on parchment,

Place you where only God could find you,

Wait a thousand years for nature to bind you

And wait a thousand more to be born again

And revise you.

If I were poet, words would be prayers

Floating to the God that made us

Praising every flaw that shapes us

Reminding us we were made for worship

And nothing more.

If I were a poet, I would take your heartbeat

Make it palpitate inside me

Let your cadence guide me

Become one with the synergy

And create perfect symmetry.

If I were a poet, I would be a martyr

For truth and the Father

Reincarnate Ma’at in your honor

Succumb to being the least of two lovers

And become your muse.