Writing Again.

Somehow between the Joburg airport and now I found again those whisperings within me that say, 'Say something.' Ten minutes before my flight I rushed off to the bookstore to buy my first love with words of this nature, 'Ariel' by Sylvia Plath. This collection remains an enduring fascination of mine. Here I am. Some of these, oddly enough, follow readings of Barack Obama's 'Dreams from My Father'. I haven't bothered editing them to make them better and I won't. These are transitional works, I hope. There's another thing: I don't believe in anything at the moment. I don't know why. I wish I did. I should. Soon. The world is moving far too quickly for people who don't believe in things to justify their place in it. There is a right side of history. There is a wrong side. History is ever present. 


Many Sad Songs.

There were words once.
Meant to be heard and said across
various distances, sometimes
an eternity, seemingly, continents
pushed together into one, sometimes
a whisper, momentary, finally, lips-
they say things that very often mean
nothing. Nothing she says. What's wrong he asked.
Many things. Nothing at all. You press play
and something sings in your ears and you
wait for another flight to somewhere.
Nowhere feels everywhere at once, always,
which is why we built these planes. Sometimes
out of paper. As a child I did those things.
Watched how they gleamed across the tops
of my eyes- never too far they went.


What the World Looks Like.

skin is a net endlessly catching the school of character-fish swimming restlessly in myself
ocean unknown depth murkily swirling with waters composed of molecules of culture or and? DNA
what does the world look like to such a thing as me?
I am, or was, rarely bothered by mirrors
now every reflective surface is a cascade, a waterfall
in which I collide with myself then part with I
a wooden staff struck furiously to the ground to lead me away from some desert to some promised land
a wooden staff thrown at an emperor and his court of spellcasters turns into a snake-
this is a dick joke.


And Where To?

I hate airports. My father is a pilot, my ex-girlfriend(s)
live(s) in another (other) continent(s). My friends either resent me
or (also) live far away. The movies I watch
are filled with white people. My skin gets darker by the day.
I don't want to be another diaspora poet boy- my
hair coils thick and violent as it is and I can't
manage it with my afro pick (end of handle with no black power fist attached). I'm the only
one from my country here as an undergrad and I didn't apply from home. No one
at home even greets me in my mother tongue anymore (can't speak it anyway).
My mother says I don't try hard enough to keep in contact. Within the space
of three years my father has changed jobs from Ghana to India to Saudi Arabia.
This poet girl I once fell in love with goes to school in a desert with skyscrapers
(it's close to Saudi Arabia). My sister is in Vermont and she's sad. What
is this? It doesn't snow back home. I love it, I love it.
The crisp crunch of my boots in the white. It beats the thorns
and the sand and the stones and the dust in the sun, which is yellow
and orange then red and purple,
but will appear winter white in the clouds once
the plane finally lands. In the fucking airport.


As a Movie.

My jet-lagged self sleeps early,
wakes early, sleeps again, reads.
Having watched one movie too many over summer
I relish the sounds designed above- a click
of a door handle, bare warm socks gliding
across wooden floor, the scrunch of toothbrush
against the rusting metal straightening yellowing teeth,
the few lone cars across the street, that hazy
early sound that only light can make as it
becomes aware of itself in my dorm room. What
kind of camera lens would make this moment more
livable and is it already dead?


March.

Today, we marched, or rather, I watched him,
my friend, next to me dream. Of what futures, I'm not
quite aware. Some orange man has overtook
the american government everyone in their right mind
and heart
cried,
and a square in Boston was filled with lively
dreamers
with placards and gleaming eyes and faces
that said no (./!) not again (./!). A few toddlers
sauntered around the feet of their parents
saying and shouting and muttering and playing
with words and slogans they don't understand
yet in their minds,
maybe their hearts,
in them they know. Next to me my friend grabbed
an abandoned placard and I felt lost. I only
came to watch how the words of the orange man
came alight. I was afraid we would catch flame.
A grey-haired woman had earlier skipped across
the crowd in front of us to show us a different route and
told us useful things- we were fresh I had explained-
and we carefully avoided police but there weren't many.
It was cold. Not the orange man. Somehow we
met my friend's friends and we started a chant
in the crowd below us, perched atop a crumbling
history of a church. Pictures were taken. Instagram.
We dabbed to the beat of Hindu chanting and tambourines.
Muslims prayed towards Mecca beneath Christian statues.
Amazed. I felt a certain emptiness.
Then my friend joked,
'I'll make a social justice warrior out of you too!'
Why am I not angry? The orange man is wrong.
A fool, a jester. Yet our testicles are in his hands.
Sometimes, rarely, I feel a meager sad frightening pressure
between my legs. Some have already been castrated
in confused airports. Accidents of birth have left them
stranded in a great barren womb of this world. What
is a state? A foreign policy? Man? Woman? Child?
How much time do I have left to cum? On whose
face can I do it on? Is the orange man aiming for
mine? Ours? The veiled woman? Is the immigration
counter camera pornographic? What awkward things
to do with one's time. One's body. One's mind.
One's heart.
I am ashamed.
Instead of working, I am thinking. I am lazy.
I spend scholarship money in restaurants
away from the college dining hall so that the noise
around me will be something I cannot recognize.
Still both are the same bubbles of safety. Different
stages of cocooning is all. I am a caterpillar surrounded
by butterflies eating steak and salmon. I am ugly. So ugly.
Nothing beautiful at all.