Votre.

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

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.

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.

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/)

Adventures in Gaborone No. 2

I've been quiet lately.

At school, I've been floating in and out of the classrooms not like a butterfly, but like a moth. I don't feel obviously beautiful, but I do, however, feel like a difficult beautiful. Moths are less easy to love than butterflies. As a result, I will likely vanish because I spend so much of my time beating myself against lightbulbs, those flickering astonishments being my dreams and ambitions. Anyhow, I constantly get the feeling that I'll be forgotten by and be forgetting my friends very, very soon. The prospect of flying away to another country does that to you. The present ends up becoming less and less important because it becomes but a mere waiting period for the future. It's been difficult planting my feet to the concrete because I know how wonderful it is be one with the sky. Yeah, I think I know what's that like; I know I know what's that like: the sky is blue. Yeah, my favourite colour is red but god! don't we all need a little splash of blue from time to time?

I'm sorry for the ranting. You see, I've been rather quite lately. Gaborone hasn't said a lot recently either.

Though, if I'm being entirely honest it's not like Gaborone is a particularly loud city. The rampant acacias whisper platitudes and not secrets. The scorching sun sets fire to nothing. The old woman in front of you at the bus station moves slowly and talks loudly but you never hear what she's saying. Really, the most noise you'll ever get out of Gaborone is a screeching mini-bus horn pelting out against... yes, the concrete. Combis drive as such amazing speeds that they seem to want to escape the ground. And I think they do. Many of us want to fly. Many of us know how wonderful it is to be one with the sky. Yeah we think we know what that's  like; we know we know what's that like: the sky is blue. But the world keeps saying out favourite colour should be red, but god! don't I need a little splash of blue from time to time?

Okay, let me stop being so abstract now.

In the last two years of my life here in Gaborone, I spent quite a bit of time combi'ing it out to various places of colour and adventure. I have rather lovely memories of journeying the small grand distance from my school to the University of Botswana in order to have a little bit of intellectual fun with the varsity debaters. There was even a brief hurricane period of being wheeled to the Botswana Accountancy College to meet with their debate society. I was always the slightly awkward high-school debater posing as a seasoned veteran, but my posing wasn't so bad. I'd been invited to share in those ambitious spaces by debater-friends studying at the tertiary level. If they thought I knew what I was doing, then it's worth assuming that must have been the case. Okay, so I didn't always know what I was doing, I never knew what I was doing- but they humoured me anyways and taught me how to fight with ideas with a little bit more vibrancy and spirit, so I was happy nonetheless.

There was also, of course, my life in poetry, which continues to this day. In 'Adventures in Gaborone No. 1' I talked a lot about this being a city of poets. I still believe this is true. Finally breathing in Gaborone's air has allowed me to rapidly evolve into one of those poets, and I've even gained an amateurish level of respect from some of my bigger and better senior writers.When this first started happening,  I loved it. Sometimes after reciting one of my pieces, I'd get asked how old I was and feverishly, but not really feverishly, responded with a nervous, but not really nervous, 'I'm seventeen.' This did wonders for my self-esteem. A year later I'm often asked that same question, but saying 'I'm eighteen' doesn't have that same kind of wunderkind relish and spark.

I mean, we have to grow up at some point right?

Well you see, I would grow up, but the two kids in front of my sister and me are so darn adorable that I can't imagine looking like that horrid afro-dude in the background hiding his horrid afro-dude face. 

Maybe not. As you may have noticed, I spend a lot of time living in my memories. Writing poetry is, of course, an exercise in preservation rather than creation. I suppose this is why writing verse comes relatively easy to me (editing, is of course another matter), because I have a penchant of looking over my shoulder and glancing back towards yesterday, even though my foot is firmly set on tomorrow.

Hey! Do you remember the lovely girl I mentioned who showed me what a wonder Gaborone is?

She's coming to visit.

This makes me astonishingly happy.

Even if I haven't exactly been able to stay who I was while she disappeared.

But that's a different story for another day...

Yes, as usual, I'll get around to writing about it...

Such things are my specialty:

Adventures about yesterday for tomorrow, written today.

Adventures in Gaborone No. 1

 My scholarship dreams finally came true and I'll be leaving Gaborone soon for Watertown, Connecticut. So, as a little prelude to an upcoming blog series, 'Adventures in Watertown,' I present my alpha and omega- Gaborone. We'll start off this journey with an essay from my English class... 

A City of Poets.

Though I’ve lived here all my life, I only began to take Gaborone seriously last year. Things like thinking up a venue for a second date can do that to you, especially when you finally score that date two years after the first one. You’re probably wondering why it took two whole years for such a mystery to reoccur, but it took two years because I’m the type of person who would call a date a mystery. In any case, we were supposed to go out for ice-cream again but somehow ended up at Mugg & Bean. Why the absence of ice-cream suddenly prompted me to start loving a city I cannot say for sure. What I like to assume is that love of a city comes easy with love of another person. Which is precisely why I’ve never thought that Spain or Paris are any more special than Gaborone; those cities just happened to have more poets to romanticize them.

I have a lot of friends who think the opposite. That a quaint, anti-picturesque city like Gaborone could provoke any feelings of red, pink and maroon is an absurdity that they would never accept. Gaborone, they claim, is not a city for artists and bohemians. Hemingway and Fitzgerald flocked to Paris. Hughes and Plath had their honeymoon in Spain.  In short, they say, “what excitement could be found in a city that values beer over wine?” But I think such a line of reasoning is narrow-minded madness: what excitement could not be found in a city that values beer over wine?

Gaborone is home to soul-people with hair as frenzied as the words on their lips. Many are of course starved and hungry artists. These are either university students with dreams as plentiful as their cigarettes or non-graduates with raspy voices that loudly whisper anti-government sentiments. I’ve been told multiple times that over half the guys at the University of Botswana are about to drop a mixtape. Half of that half, along with their more sensible female R&B counterparts, are among the greatest spoken word poets on the continent. Every month or so they meet up at the National Museum to show each other bits and pieces of their very being in an event called ‘Poet’s Passport.’ Gaborone is small enough for such intimacy to be long-lasting. I haven’t shared myself for months but I haven’t forgotten and been forgotten by my soul-people.

So why is Gaborone so colourless for me right now?

Let’s end with the beginning: after my second mystery I got a third date. Then a forth. Maybe even a fifth.  It was around this time especially that the marvel of Gaborone started blossoming before me. I started learning the combi routes and my Setswana speaking became earnest, sincere. My reading and writing became reflective of my background- my actual background.  I was happy. Which made sense: in a city of poets, a man with a muse is a king. That I came to lose my crown so soon was nothing dramatic. I simply watched her fly off to another continent from the ground at the airport.

And it’s almost amusing how quickly Gaborone came and went. Just like her.

Biltong.

The last thing the Poet feels of her is the distinctive taste of biltong. It lingers. She had bought two packets at the café.  Their last kiss is made just before the airplane announces itself with a great roar of being. He watches it swallow her and turn her into a memory. And then the plane flies away. He can’t find a silver lining in the plane’s path, so he instead focuses on the gentle return of normality to his skin. Every centimetre that was previously pressed to his Muse is smoothing its goosebumps. The Poet’s heart goes back from verse to prose, just as how it was before she became the subject of his pen. 

He turns to say an awkward “dumela” to the Muse’s grandmother. She responds with the tone of a grandmother greeting a boy who has just been making out with her granddaughter in front her: “dumela.” It probably doesn't help that his hair isn't combed. It probably doesn't help that they have not met before. The Poet then asks the Muse’s brother for a ride to school. Now that the Muse is gone, it is time for him to begin studying for the colourless exams that were the subject of his existence before her. The Muse’s brother nods in agreement, and he walks out of the stale atmosphere of the airport with her family. The summer sunshine somehow manages to feel uninspired. 

The journey from the airport stretches out like a goodbye that ought not to happen. It is slow, painful, and filled with empty promises of hope from her family. Her brother says she will visit during the Christmas season. The Poet knows she won't- she can’t- but he has enough novels to keep him company.  They are riding in the same little red Volkswagen that often picked her up from school. If time is simultaneous, she is sitting next to him. 

The car is full; time has only one direction, and its wheels stops in front of the school gates. 

He says his farewells, closes the car door, and limps to the library to start working on maths equations with his classmates. He barely opens the library doors, barely greets his classmates, and with barely practiced nonchalance, barely explains that his Muse went off to another country. He picks up his scientific calculator and clicks open his pen to attack a math problem. Hours pass in numbers that stubbornly refuse to make sense in place of her. The Poet solves a problem, and then he doesn’t. He asks for help, and then he doesn’t. He laughs with his classmates, and then he doesn't: they have to go home now for lunch.

The Poet cannot go home. He has to wait for his mother to pick him up. He decides to walk out the school gates to eat at the Chinese restaurant. It is placed conveniently outside the school. He orders some dumplings and some noodles, and then tells the waitress that he is going to buy a newspaper at the filling station while he waits for his meal.

At the filling station counter are packets of biltong hooked onto a stand.

Assumedly, this story is largely self-explanatory. 

(The image used  is from the manga Bleach back when it was the most amazing thing on Earth.
Also, this story was originally posted here: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1115725/biltong/) 

Show, Don't Tell.

Show:

Suddenly he found himself smiling more, and occasionally he even laughed. His sarcasm withered away and instead, what took root was an incredible earnestness to explain his thoughts and feelings to other people and even listen- no matter how stupid he thought them previously. Eventually he figured that this odd happiness couldn't be just a coincidence: it was sustained by the way she dotted her i's with little hearts whenever she wrote his name.

Tell:

He was in love.


***

While I am nowhere good enough a writer to be openly handing out advice... I thought this was definitely worth sharing. Make Good Art.

I originally published this piece as 'Not a Poem VI' on my Hello Poetry page: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1044362/not-a-poem-vi/

Poet.

And what you'll find is, your highness
Can paint a picture that is vivid enough to cure blindness
                                                       ­        - J. Cole, January 28th


And because they have never before seen a naked soul,
they ask me
if I am being deliberately provocative
with my pen.

And then I paint.

So that they too can undress
that mental amnion that has cocooned them
since birth; which itself became still-born
as it was followed by an undying funeral 
of parental expectations.

And then I paint.

So that they too can reclaim
that aborted clay and mould their burial
into gestation, and shatter
their amnion coffins
from the asphyxiating breath of non-existence
to the respiratory lust of Being.

And then I paint.

So that I too can remember 
that I am they. A victim
ejaculated into the darkness of lost light,
dreams deferred at birth;
who still focuses his pen on this canvas
to cure his own blindness, to see
and paint his naked soul before me,

which we then call Life.