Heirloom

That which is gifted unasked,

I look at but dare not touch

That which in your hand held-out exists,

A most prized possession, possessed,

Passed from one to another,

I leave behind for I do not need

 

Given that this is my life-

I choose to break free from its power

By levitating and reaching the peak of freedom-tower

Emancipation by setting it free,

This heirloom I do not need.

For generations next –

An act of love on my part

Four's-skins

The colour of my skin is not supposed to mean anything,

And yet it does:

It carries a history of a whole nation made up of warriors.

The colour of my skin is not supposed to mean anything,

And yet it does:

It carries on it and within,

Rivers red, flowing deep,

Memories of a people not meant to be.

The colour of my skin is not supposed to mean anything,

And yet it does:

It means to this day the black man is perceived as weak.

The colour of my skin is given a variety of meanings,

By the colour clothed, colour-less, on another

The colour of the skin on the other, abundant of meaning,

Always!

It means according to history and this story, my skin will always be a shade too dark compared to his,

But it also means that because of the colour of his skin;

I am filthy,

Deserve nothing better than the worst,

Belong in conditions uninhabitable, even to anything lost,

Incapable of any reason or acquisition of education,

That with the epidermal cells that were chosen to be mine;

I should not be anything but nine-times…

Lower than he who wears the colour of skin colourless,

That I am nothing that is,

That exists.

Hence, his need to not only dig my grave but lay me in it.

Surfacing

Not sure how I got here,

seated with all that is but no-one.

Not sure how I manage to remember my life back on earth and still dine with Angels.

I do not deserve to be here.

I wear the scarlet letter of my sins, those accumulated and still accumulating.

loudly I proclaim: "I do not deserve to be here".

"Forgive yourself," they say in song,

"you are not made to walk with others and not experience human-ness,

For all that you've done and still are about to, we forgive for you are aware,

dine with us and return to where you rest your head, for this dream mimics some, and not all of your reality".

My home, Macabre

Ravenously gulping down the ghoulish and great

Hoping to get away from the sweet, soft, surrendering that comes with you-

Knowing not what the knots in my abdomen meant;

I continued to ravenously gulp down the ghoulish and great

“Macabre” is the home I know and built

I find comfort in its skulls; orifices with meaning now left vacant
 

Where the eyes once found refuge, only worms and soil abundant

Where the voice once birthed from, only silence and the cold apparent!

Where apparatuses of the ear once were burrowed, only memories of sound come in the hollow

Ravenously gulping down the ghoulish and great

Hoping to get away from the sweet, soft, surrendering that comes with you-

A kiss from the cyanide-filled chalice, prevents the absorbing of your pure heart-state

I continued to ravenously gulp down the ghoulish and great

To leave me alone in the tomb of my fate