Some incompletes.

Glenn Gould Plays Richard Wagner.

I. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Act I: Prelude 

Shall we set forth?
There is the great big blue
for us.

The way it calls is uncommon.
My eyes were captured
by the all above.

We should never return.
The world is not worth our mirth.
There is so much glitter,

let it collapse into your pupil,
sparkle towards a nothing,
we should not forget the mirrors,

the sliver linings. The clouds.
What breathlessness, what air.
I like dying like this it is easy.

***

Motion.

I had all the focus on motion

Got on my feet, stepped out the door
Stretching my heels on the floor
arms to the sky so I soar
Heaving my chest so I roar
breath in my body and I am just walking
but feel like I'm running that just my locomotion

I had all the focus on motion

Now none of y'all telling me nothin
This story the instance of boy be becoming
man with the come-up who grind 'til the sun up
til Mama be calling and she saying kana
go rileng, ka goreng wa gana go letsa?
nah Mama, let me try and paint you a picture
my dreams splattered blood red on the canvas
dedicated to the art til my mind frantic
I'mma make the world mine, I got it, I have it

I had all the focus on motion

***

A Film That Richard Brody Would Like.

I'm too in love with the things I've already seen.

[               ].

My sister was right all along.

One day I'll kiss boys.

***

Gravity.

I.

I'm sorry, but how?

     Onanism.

     Spilt-milk.

     Half a breast: age or cancer.

     The pretty girls do not dance the same

anymore- undergarments gather like snowflakes,

they sort of melt with each passing intimate, away.

Cut to the next image, maybe another night, goodbye.

     The urine misses the doctor's cup

      by quite the margin. You're fine,

says the little e-mail the morning after; nothing

melted into you too. Where is the other half?

      Snow-angel eclipse, sun-body, somebody

      else feels like the moon. You. I am not

      quite myself lately, she says, as the white

      gathers around your light. It is cold. 

Black Convocation/Ramen Shop.

     Black Convocation

Poem.

clarity about this very real figment

of my imagination is

not possible,                      (pigment)

actually, I don’t want to think

I don’t want to think about this

these problems never go away

I’m not black my name’s OJ

        okay

I can’t breathe

I can’t breathe

I can’t breathe 

        okay

Poem.

Not everything coheres.

          Remember: not everything

                         coheres

Poem. 

Regret is such a useless thing

I’d so prefer it, if

you did not, look!,

                    at me

                    that very

                        , if

regret is such a useless thing

why preface it with the word

              (poem)

why preface it with eyes.

I will never forget the word

-even if it messes my head. 

          

Poem.

I mean, yes, of course, yes

I’m so, so hungry

but I will not eat you, no, not

no, of course, not like that.

      I otherwise like you,

                I promise. 

Poem. 

A few more words about: coherence, 

it doesn’t exist for me, I’m so hungry

for everyone else and their platitudes.

It must be nice to avoid existential breathlessness.

I like that word: breathlessness.

I resent that platitude: existential.

I am not bitter, I promise.

It’s just that the air…

it tastes so…

                      …(blue.)

Poem.

I don’t believe in you but

                             your face.

***

     Ramen Shop

Poem.

Tomatoes are nice 

fruits or vegetables, I like them.

I eat now. It is nice.

Cheese has a fullness.

Meat a warm blankness.

And my tongue- 

The business of living makes me be.

And it is often simple,

         I would cry.

         Could, but can't,

         I could.

Poem.

Okay, so, that didn't bother me that much

anyway, people are nightmares,

but that's okay, okay?

that wasn't even the problem.

I think it was the gleam,

ass-light.

People think that there's a sun,

a whole ball of it,

up their asses.

So, yeah, it's hard to say:

maybe you should stuff it

maybe you kinda suck.

There was another light.

It wasn't so bad. 

I sort of liked it.

It was nice.

It didn't wake me too harshly.

How can I explain:

     stained glass, church

     small solution, math book

     small ocean, vagina

     curved shaft, penis 

that sort of thing. I guess.

the perfect sunny of not giving a fuck.

     

Poem.

People are enthusiastically boring

I wish I could get more sleep

Sex isn't interesting: neither are my hands

It doesn't matter when you cum

I believe in the Bible once

Physics doesn't make much sense to me

I'm saying that I tried

I don't like the sort of questions you ask me

Ask better questions

Maybe one day people might fit together

until then, please, ask better questions

Poem.

I'm like, one person

How is there never enough space for me

You talk and your mouth is...

listen, I'm like one person

The air sort of passes by

from time to time

        sort of how

your mouths do. 

Whose mouth was first on whom?

I thought it would feel better.

You asked more than once,

if it feels good. Stop

asking questions that aren't 

                 good. Stop,

no, not like that. Yes,

       maybe like that.

Several Poems That Ought to Have Been Raps.

  (1).

Poem.

Poems, bars: people, stars

Eyes lookin' Life on Mars

Boy wonder looks at mirror- Blackstar

Boy wonder looks at mirror- Blackstar

No time for jokers cause I keep it Nightwing

Fly 'til early morning, next day, coda, swinging

Pendulum, swift; please acknowledge the kid,

even though he skinny like Syd

What a future: even if it Odd

Grimace in my face like I'm General Zod

But I keep it Clark Kent with the moral sentiment

Merriment when I'm flying over all Metropolis

Heaven sent? God bless. Still stressed.

Still flex. Morning breath. Kinda fresh

I guess with your skin under your dress-

aaaaah, where was I again?

Are we having fun anymore?

Not really? We still friends?

I'm sorry we not talking anymore.

Sorry, who are you? 

Voice to void to void the void

annoyed but buoyed by white noise

helps to take the fact that there no point

as given, what difference with man with boy

he toys with himself with eyes closed

eyes opened: it's the same, she broiled

and her breath fuzzed like... white noise

fizz-fizz, hiss-kiss.

Dorchester St. Quartet

I.

//Yum Yum, No Vacation//

Such remarkable running you did there

You look like you're out breath, where is the air

You carried around yourself, air-bending monk

Heaving this way and that like you're in a funk

Yeah, I know, promised to never comment on you or your look

No more, at least to myself, but, baby you shook

Like how you shouldn't be, like someone like me saying 'baby'

Please, I trickled down your throat- gravy

Maybe, if you wasn't lying to yourself, life would be gravy

But then again- my mind is hazy

Maybe, if I'd been more faithful than lately

We coulda ended more stately but that's just a maybe

I like to deal with certainties so if it ain't that physics

I gotta ask why, where and when is it biting me

My space and time aren't hyphenated I'm not prepared to give

Myself away like that- so, can I live?

(Eh, you prolly didn't like me that much anyway

Eh, it doesn't bother me that much anyway

Yeah, writing past that call me Hemingway

Blam, end of a verse just like Hemingway)

II.

//Beach Bummer, No Vacation//

Oh wow, what weather indifferent is difference

Hello Boston, with your moodiness, how is you feeling?

I'm doing fine cause I'm doing me

Shower with rain and ice, movements in your symphony

Sympathy wasn't no nothing I asked from you

But double negatives ain't mahala so hala with sunlight akuna mathata

Lion King if you really wanna know

Roaring on so bitter with this flow

like

You really gon' try play me out of this Simba

Like Mufasa didn't gift me that rhythm marimba

Whatever homie, they don't even know me

Way they actin' up, they could win a Tony

Bummer- and I thought I wasn't good enough

I'm good, getting out of my dreams, getting out of my seat

Good- like the only house concrete after a huff and a puff

Summer- only time the lyrics get done- sheesh!

III.

//Biking, Frank, Jay, Tyler//

Watch      what you say to me

Watch      pretty clear to me

Tick-tock til' next drop you don't mean none to me

No more if you play me, see

Soft boy, hard heart if need be, breathe

Not just for next stroke, left strokes, knees

Don't get weak, leave dirty sheets hang in breeze

Last whole night b, don't mean I'm happy

Pretty nice problem if you asked him

Little boy playin' 'round Invader Zim, where his friends

at? act   like   you   -   don't care

act? act         -you do-  so scared

Of dying lonely, crying won't be done

Nothing welled in tear ducts since fifteen, no fun, so done

with this shh... where the catharsis

Hamlet complex: the rest is shh... silence

IV.

//Fourth of July, Sufjan//

O, when the crickets clunkered and thundered

I thudded against myself- mind against skull

Bruce Banner in Incredible Hulk, whisper in bulk

Ghost in the Shell, heard sorta mumbled

Skip a few weeks later she breathes on my neck

Same thoughts really I don't like how I see me

I mean, I like myself, I hate my body

Or rather the idea of a body, microphone check:

Can I finally hear myself? Am I still stuck in myself?

Can I get outta myself? Can I please get some help? 

I like living and touching and I like what she did there

But imagine if could disappear into universals and share

the same space as numbers and shapes

with none of this creaking and yearning my body it makes

I am a corpse in the making- and so is she

No matter how long we keep at it I am still inside of me

I didn't finish

I didn't finish

I didn't

I didn't

I

I

  (2).

Poem (after Chanel, by Frank).

Whether or not you could've foreseen it

Whether or not a nigga had dreamed it

I dreamed it, somewhere, possibly

   dreamed it, multiverse hypothesis

-dreams, of course, are a common pornography

catch dat alternating history, it is a discography

of movement of movements from Romantic to Classic

fuck it, I know I went backwards

I'm backwards, because, I never look forward

I'm bored, oh god, it's already the morning?

                 oh god, it's already the morning?

I die pretty like a girl

Ophelia

I die pretty like a girl

Ophelia

Poem (after Chanel, in Shanghai).

Way my pockets were snug- dick print felt like a hug

Know that you like it and liked it like that

No need to be mad, a nigga spitting facts

Fax- obsolete but scan and send me, fly like a bug

Cockroach, black Beatle, K-West, bald eagle,

with hair, long like Samson, no bitch Delilah

Delilahs flowers mysterious powers in the pussy print too, even after the shower

Not golden- just clear like water: breath and drink and devour

Let's pause for a moment and think about that

                                                think about that

         pause for a moment and think about that

                                                think about that

Poem.

Thoughts are so reckless citizens feckless still

Society got me buggin' but thumpin' doe

If I'm gonna dance let it be in this hell

If we gon' romance, can it just end well

for once it'd be nice to hit it and smile, fill

you up and sip-sip all off of that cup, mo' 

drink, drink water in the fountain of your legs

where the youth, youth going, no more shots from the kegs

for me, no more, no more

'ready drank too much- what else is in the store

for the night, is it nice? is it Nike? am I right?

be my wife? Not tonight, but I'mma hit you with dat spice

Yeah let it all go let it all go go 

                let it all go let it all go go

                let it all go let it all go go

                let it all go let it all go go

Poem.

Breathe- don't matter if air is fresh

Colour of my lungs- canvas is flesh

phleghm look like thick paint- god, cigarettes

you hit a blunt a lil' much, rather just sweat

out the toxins 'fore problems prevent more mopping

you promised you wouldn't puke again on floor, 'member Mama's calling

She says your sister said hello- is everything great?

said sure- just as soon as I remember where my mind is at again

Poem (w/ P and S, after Alicia Keys, in Hangzhou).

I don't write love songs no more

You then ask what is this for

I said that I really don't know

But either way would you come home

                                       come home

                                           come home

                                                            ­        

                         ....Yeah yeah yeah yeah

Yeah yeah....

Baby I got it and no not ironic

The way that I see you go way past the logic

All of the girls in they summer dresses

Got me rappin' without none of the stresses

Blessings on blessings I'm countin' them: Chance

Sonnets to hip-hop that modern romance

Fly me to China, I teach you Setswana

Drinking that wung zai 'cause batho ra tshwana-

Pink: pretty girls like trap music

Think: of who got dat music make movements-

That's me, that's real, any other nig gotta deal

got 'em feels, give 'em tissues, take no issues, under heel-

Step on 'em: let 'em know that I'm only one

Tell on 'em: got the screenshots say I'm the one

Did on 'em- right damn I hit 'em with dat beat

Pretty picture model sisters never follow through like you

See I got you boo

Like no one else luh you

Some people want it all

But I just want you

Yeah, I got you boo

Like no one else luh you

I also got dem views- and damn-

all of dem views's you

                                              *

What was the joke that we thought was so funny?

Can I hear it again? Can it touch me at night

and make me feel again?

***

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/)

Colour.

#VerbalEmancipation2014.

by Tawanda W.T Mulalu

(with excerpts from 'Blue is The Warmest Colour’ by Julie Maroh.)

Intro.

“And little by little, I understood that there were many types of love. We do not choose the one we fall in love with, and our perception of happiness is our own and is determined by what we experiences. Does that answer your question?”

I.

(beat)

No-

Let me tell you right now that red is my favourite colour

But I got it on with blue, some would say that that’s a blunder

I wonder is… infidelity the vibe of this poem?

Some secret guilt in my mind, that I’ve decided to be owning

Up to, I’ve got to, spill it out of my heart

I’ve had no idea what to say, but I’ve commited to start

A statement that’s an indictment to romantic commitment-

Let’s face it: when it comes to love, haven’t all of us been sinning?

At some point, nobody can claim to never ever have smirked

At their own version of the colour red in hoping that it might work

Even though your girl’s colour is blue and you know that this much is true…

You kinda now desire sunsets instead of plain skies; and thus seek a more maroon hue

(beat-beat)

Skies change with the sun, time influences that

But listen, honestly, what I feel, it’s deeper than that

(beat-beat)

Blue and red seem only to be opposite colours of the visible spectrum

But actually flow into one another, from point A to B, like a pendulum

(beat-beat)

So my real problem is denial: I’m not really interested in swinging back

Because whenever I see red again…I can’t help thinking that blue is just a fade to black.

And black scares me because it represents…

And black scares me because it represents…

And black scares me because it represents…

And black scares me because it represents…

II.

(beat)

Hol’ up.

Literature taught me that cheating is immoral but understandable

From the point of Gatsby and Daisy it’s not even that reprehensible

The thing is, I still see the American Dream in another colour

No red, white and blue and great starry flag of wonder

But being honest to the context I should only omit the white

And keep red and blue; so it follows that my greed is merely self-directed spite

In this way I am suggesting a hint of hatred towards myself

As I’m unable to colour-block my view of my colourless self

I mean that I’m disappointed in being able to reduce

Myself to old, novel characters…as a result I have deduced

That blue and red don’t matter when my true colours are grey

I’m ashamed in having even having tried (and failed) to pick (just one). 

But all the same…

(beat-beat)

Skies change with the sun, time influences that

But listen, honestly, what I feel, it’s deeper than that

(beat-beat)

Blue and red seem only to be opposite colours of the visible spectrum

But actually flow into one another, from point A to B, like a pendulum

(beat-beat)

So my real problem is denial: I’m not really interested in swinging back

Because whenever I see red again…I can’t help thinking that blue is just a fade to black.

And black scares me because it represents…

And black scares me because it represents…

And black scares me because it represents…

And black scares me because it represents…

III.

(beat)

Forget it-

I’m still wishing… her sunset becomes my sunrise, and envelops the sky

But regretting… her blue fades away, painfully, I’m left to die

As the sun will too soon turn to night, driving me to gentle panic

I know this now: colourless people always beg for a rainbow because they can never have it.

...Damnit.

I apologize to blue for making her feel even bluer.

I apologize to red for using her to make me feel better.

I’m sorry to myself for making myself so bitter.

So suddenly has my soul, become colder than this winter...

Thus the part of the poem where I conclude with the theme

Of the echoes within me which of course are only dead dreams

I had looked to you, red and/or blue, in hoping you could redeem

Me to your world of colour. But present reality is different, which can only mean

That...

(beat-beat)

Skies changed with the sun, time influenced that

But listen, honestly, what I felt, was deeper than that

(beat-beat)

Blue and red seemed only to be opposite colours of the visible spectrum

But actually flowed into one another, from point A to B, like a pendulum

(beat-beat)

So my real problem was denial, I wasn’t really interested in swinging back

Because whenever I saw red again… I couldn’t help thinking that blue was just a fade to black.

And black scared me because it represented…

And black scared me because it represented…

And black scared me because it represented…

And black scared me because it represented…

Outro.

“…you asked me if I believed in eternal love. Love is something way too abstract and indefinable. It depends on what we perceived and what we experience. If we don’t exist, it doesn't exist. And we change so much; love must change as well.

Love catches fire, it trespasses it breaks, we break, it comes back to life…we come back to life. Love may not be eternal, but it can make us eternal…

Beyond death, the love that we shared continues to live.”

Fin.

P.S You are free to check out the reader-friendly version here, along with some of my other poems.