I Am Black

A dark silken veil
Over a sturdy frame.
Dark
Like rich sands of rich Africa
From whence my fathers came.
Hued like chestnuts, ebony wood,
Raw clay, cinnamon, drying blood.

I carry it as though a battle flag
A shielding shrouding mark.
I provoke basest passions just ‘cos
I’m so ex-quis-itely dark.

This veil is my beauty
Formed round a tower of strength and mystery.
A sign of a kindred  who’ve seen out
A terrible and troubled history.

They’ll teach you to despise
What you refuse to shield with knowledge.
And I wear all this like a crown
A bronze monument I daily polish.

I was born with a beautiful covering
It provokes yet protects me from attack.
And I’ll protect it from the wounds of the earth
‘Til earth takes me back.

I am black

Love Language

I’ve met many linguists and noticed

All the best ones were in love with someone

Belonging to the language they’d chosen to learn.

And I wondered if this was because

When you begin to love a language, you begin to love its culture,

And when you love a culture, you have to love its people,

And once you fall in love with its people

You must fall in love with one of them.

Or maybe those linguists’ skilled tongues

Were simply the fruits of ardent desire

To well communicate with the one they love.

I could understand this.

If my heart were taken by French hands,

Or some man from Martinique, Cameroon, Senegal

Yes. I would devour the French dictionary

To find the best words.

I would take all the grammar classes,

To ensure I could offer him

Ripened language.

Not half –formed sentiments

Stumbling and unready, as a child’s first steps.

I would need to paint with the brush

Of his mother tongue,

So I’d know I was uttering

What was real enough and sharp enough

To penetrate into the thickest part of his heart.

I’d bathe in that language.

Drunk with my bold amour.

We’d wrap our lips around those words together

Blooms in a forest where two souls come to commune.

True ‘art’ of conversation.

Social Phobia

Your tongue is difficult to move.
It is thick.
Heavy and swollen with all the words
You can’t manage to say.
And the noose around your throat cuts into your skin.
Each coarse fibre made from so many unfounded fears.
Your eyes cannot fully take in the room. And the people.
In front of you, the glass pane of realest terror
Makes everything hazy.
And you are battered into submission
By little cudgels you’ve formed for yourself.
All the ‘stupid’ words you are sure you're going to say.

Your own cogitations betray you.
Along with each muscle in your body;
Your constricting throat,
Your heart-beat, syncopated,
Behind taught chest.
Swaddled tight with ribbons of relentless anxieties.
They press in your lungs
You're finding even breathing a labour.

And everyone knows.
Look at the disgust on their faces.
They all know
You are failing so pathetically
At the performance.
The performance of ‘normality.’
So you stand there and ache for
This whole thing to be over.
When you can be away from these other bodies which mock you
And their thoughts which condemn you.
Back to your safe haven.
Where you can find some rest from this beast.

The Immigrant. (Poets United prompt: Food)

It’s cold here.

Daily each sense is assaulted

Reminders that you will find no belonging.

Smells and tastes and sounds

Offering  you threats instead of comfort.

People are cold here.

No warmth, as back home

Where unplanned friends traced your smile with both hands

And mama’s bowl ignited sweetest incense within you

An altar where you’d offer up a loving savour

Borne from most sacred spices.

You feel so cold here.

And when the evenings close most bitterly

You resist tears with stored thoughts.

Of warm nights blessed by warm hands.

A small congregation round a table

Of many small dumplings that melted into your throat

As though they belonged there.

And soups rich with all the flavours

Of the land around you.

And small meats roasted on a fire

And chattering mouths

Glistening with their robust juices.

You’re still cold.

You hold a few cold coins in your cold hand.

You exchange them

Seeking q consolation close to the warmth of home.

You find something hot and lie down filled.

But it feels like treachery.

There is no deep sweetness

Or warm and smooth fire left at your throat

No comforting hum from a field of summer spices.

It feels there can be no satiated soul

When you are used to the warmth of another world.

How I Fell in Love

Silent and invisible.
How could I see it coming
It was un-welcomed and uninvited
Just as all the things which insist on arriving
In our lives
To show us we were not created
To control the elements.
And it must have been the way I started to see your skin
As a land full of promise.
And it must have been the way your voice kept
Some of my darkness at bay.
It must have been how you took dominion
Of my imagination.
I think that’s how.
You’re gone now.
I see you from time to time
But you’re gone.
She has hidden you away.
And the heavens in their sweetness know I’m not mourning.
Because they gave this love to me
So my cup runneth over, and over
And this new universe I discovered within me
Can be home to someone chosen

Morning Message

Morning Message

Good morning. I hope your day has beauty. It probably won’t be beauty-full. Most days aren’t. Most days are mundane and ordinary ones that we’ve lived a thousand times before. But I hope you find some beauty in it. I hope someone smiles warmly at you and reminds you that your place in this world brings joy. I hope a family member does something that affirms you’re woven into a tapestry of unchangeable love that you’ll never escape. I hope you remember to look at the sky and find awe. I hope you won’t miss the small and beautiful things that pass you. I hope when you get home from work you rest and are safe and warm. I hope you have food to enjoy and that before you eat it you give thanks for the thousand little gifts of favour God has granted you. I hope if you watch TV something makes you laugh –it’s a medicine for having to carry knowledge of this world’s woe. Or I hope if you read a book, the story touches something in your humanity –its medicine for a heart that grows apathetic and unfeeling toward this world’s woe. I hope when you go to bed again your sleep is sweet and your dreams are tempered with the beautiful things the passing day has found.
Good morning. Find the beauty in your day.

Dear Black Son

Dear black son, welcome to the world. Many sweet days here await you. You will learn in them and find a million beautiful things, teaching you the primary purpose of the heart you’ve been given. You’ll observe and you will grow. You’ll learn and you will discover. You will happen upon moments of awe and wonder. You will form a universe of truth and brilliance behind those beautiful dark eyes.
But son, there must always be some shadow near where there is light. And in this world you will see horrors and confusing injustices and the outlay of hearts filled with gall. And because man’s heart is what it is and doesn’t always care for sense, there may be times you are subject to its basest malice.
Your beautiful dark eyes will see in history books, on screens and in papers the evils of an earth that cannot fully understand mercy. You will wonder why your beautiful dark veil provokes the ruptures in hearts that leak poison. I won’t be able to explain to you. But I will tell you that fools used to throw rocks up at stars and bright lights irritate those used to cold shadow and hatred is always born from fear and God allows persecution because he wants you to become like Him and powerful men’s treatment of you has no power to affect your value.
And I will tell you that you belong to a royal priesthood and paupers are too glad to attempt to pull you from your throne and you are stronger than you’d ever believed and ever known and the rough grounds of this maze-like life are necessary to prove that to you. I will tell you that love is a force great enough to change even the sickest of those shadowy hearts, so use its power, wrap it around those closest to you and protect yourself with it too.
Dear beautiful black son, welcome to the world, attempt to change what is in it, but do not let it change what is in you.

Teen Boys

Teen boys you don’t know the damage you do
When you take girls
And pretend they are not people
Treat them as your consoles
Briefly entertaining and disposable.
Boys you don’t know the injuries you leave behind
In the developing minds of not-yet-women
Waiting for real love.
Boys you don’t know the damage you do
When you fill your eye with those images.
 You don’t know the wreckage you’ll leave
In a heart which was made to uphold women
Now trained to few them only as fodder
For soulless fantasies.
Boys you don’t know the damage you do
When you pretend to be something other.
Bowing to the opinions of fellow young fools
To fit in.
You’ll lose who you are
It’ll be lost in a mass of mistruths and feigned masculinity.
And if you are not careful
You’ll never get the real ‘you’ back.
Boys you don’t know the damage you do.
To yourselves.

Hidden War

I’ve met girls like you before
They cut themselves in a bitter battle
Starve themselves. Ravages of a hidden war.
I know girls like you.
No words spoken reveal the mire they’re in
Just small patches of torn out hair
Just the pink tracks of scratched skin
I’ve met those girls who fight demons
And must feel their way out of tormenting darkness
The ones screaming to drown out voices
That break the fragile self in pieces.
I’m glad for those girls that are still fighting
I’m glad for the ones who didn’t give in
‘Cos the more of us exposing the battle
The more there are left to fight and to win.