Posted on No Comments on Going The Distance

Going The Distance

Have you ever gone through your personal poetry archives and stumbled upon an old piece that, at the time of writing, you were convinced was absolutely awful, but now that you’ve given it some space, it turns out it wasn’t too bad after all? This piece is one of them. It’s almost a year old and no longer personally relevant, but I hope you like it.
Distance pulls heartstrings taut
While memory taunts
Sighs go unanswered
Empty promises fill
Where your touch should be.
Silence breeds disquiet:
I quietly wonder
If it’ll be worth it in the end.

Posted on No Comments on The Sea

The Sea

The waves sang the same siren song that had lulled me to sleep as a child

and I swore that this time I fathomed them
I tasted the subtle warmth of the salt in the air
And I let the openness of the water trick me into thinking I could grasp her
But as the grey of dusk fell away into night
the dark of the sea stopped revealing the secrets of her depths
It was then that I learned the truth
We never stop fearing the unknown

Posted on No Comments on Anthology

Anthology

I would write you everyday.
Poems and scribbles and notes,
Until you learned
The unevenness of my hand
The habits of my penmanship
The chaos of my scrawl.
In a world of dying paper and ink
They would save every scrap
Torn from the back of notebooks
Jotted down on well-folded receipts
They would compile anthologies of my sweet
nothings
Until children who had long forgotten pens and lined paper
Would press their fingers into the ink and
indentations
And know this is what devotion feels like.
Posted on No Comments on For The Moth That Lived and Died In My Bathroom

For The Moth That Lived and Died In My Bathroom

And his wings, folded
shut in death, concealed that he
had been beautiful
Posted on No Comments on Coming Out

Coming Out


I read that we never get
to stop coming out.
Well I came out to myself the other day,
Stepped out of my glass closet for a moment,
Well, not so much a class closet than one of those
Cabinets old people use to store their china
I am transparent, the way I hoard your gifts,
Your presents, your presence.
I never tell the ones who need to hear it the most.
Instead I let it rest on my lips the way I wish yours would
And flitter round my tongue the way I want yours to,
But I can’t.
Because I only tell you in sighs I hope you read
Or maybe see it in my gazes that linger too long
Or notice how I touch you too often, sit too close,
Smile too much.
I am transparent in my cabinet as I watch your hands
Dance across tabletops.

But I would never come out to you.
I much rather confess to strangers on the internet,
Or in ambiguously phrased verse,
That I dream about you at night
And I think of you all day
And while I may joke about others,
Everything I say I love about them,
Just reminds me of you.

Posted on No Comments on Shop Boy Crush

Shop Boy Crush

Do you have a lunch break, or do you
sustain on cuteness and sheepish smiles?
Because if you do, I do too.
And i don’t mean to be ambiguous but I do
mean both.
Because if you don’t have a lunch break, I
don’t really need
That soup and a sandwich I buy everyday
Just that smile…
See I’m like a plant except instead of
sunshine, I flourish on your shine
Because boy do you shine.
See I’m more like a flower than anything
else,
You know, like how they lean to the sun and
all?
Yeah, that’s my flow and I wouldn’t mind if
perhaps we could…
Pollinate?
No I’m just kidding, I meant conversate,
Oh sorry,
Converse, my bad.
Your brightness makes me a little dizzy
So forgive me if I get a little bit mixed
up,
You make my head light with your light.
And if you do break for lunch?
Perhaps you can take a break by the juice
bar
Because bar none, you are sweet
And it would be nice to see your other half
And perhaps another side of you
Other than” thank you and please come
again,”
though at this point I’m sure even though
you say that to all the girls
and all the boys
and whoever else may patronize this fine
establishment,
that you specifically mean me…
so if you have a lunch break, or sustain on
cuteness and sheepish smiles
remember I do too.
Posted on No Comments on Hands

Hands

I have become enamored with your hands.
The way slender fingers join knuckles,
Soft palms taper to fine wrists.
I cannot look away.
Cupping your face,
Clasped around knee,
Rest belies their strength.
Your hands could craft the world if they
wanted to.
Posted on No Comments on Sea Shanty

Sea Shanty

I wrote this on the offhanded request of a friend. She said that her OTP (One True Pairing), was sand and salt water. And I take inspiration where ever I can get it.

Sea Shanty
You are the salt of my earth,
Said the tide to the
shore.
Leaving sweet nothings
In pools filled with
stars
As the moon’s siren
song
Pulled them further
apart.
Palm trees with their
heads
buried in the clouds
promised he’d return,
You could hear it
in the crashes of the
waves.
But every time you
leave,
You wear me away,
The shore whispered
back.
Posted on No Comments on An Education

An Education

I want to learn the
language your body speaks,
Whispered by your hips
as you move,
Decode the ciphers
between your sighs.
I have learned the
angle of your slouch,
The spread of your
fingers
And the coil of your
curls.
There is a science to
you I have not yet learned.
I have learned the
contours of your face
The locations of your
moles
The longitude and
latitude of your dimples
The length and breadth
of your smile
Better than I ever
learned geography.
Maybe I’d map those
contours of your face
(Which I’ve already
committed to memory)
but I can’t.
To recreate the
brownness of your skin
is more motivation than three years of art
Ever were.
Writing commits you to
memory.
Posted on No Comments on Flash Fiction Friday #42: Shaman

Flash Fiction Friday #42: Shaman

 first fff in a while! And now i have to know: how many times can i write about obeah before i actually need to research it?

flash
fiction friday #42 (inclusion)trigger: religion,
superstition, tradition, vision, collision.
                         Shaman

He didn’t like to talk about it, but given the nature
of gossip, everyone knew and did the talking for him.
Big time evangelist preacher,
but I hear his brother is a obeah man! Yes! I hear it too! An’ it wasn’t jus’
he, his granny in it too! My tanty was tellin’ me so de other day…
Not to say it wasn’t true. For Raymond, growing up was
as steeped in Granny’s special prayers as it was in entire Sundays spent in
church and revival tents. It had gone on for so long that by the time he was
old enough to think anything of it, he couldn’t imagine anything different.
Raymond didn’t hear much about Randy these days other
than the whispers of the congregation. The last he heard was that he was up in
some shack in San Souci, honing his arts, to paraphrase his grandmother. Randy
had embraced it from the start. Raymond had to have a brush with death before
he did anything about it. It was ten years ago and he and his best friend
Marlon were coming home from a Carnival fete, (the congregation absolutely
loved that part), when a driver drunker than he was sped through an
intersection and ran into their car, passenger-side first. The driver of the
other car had been killed instantly and, as he would find out later, so had
Marlon. Yet, when Raymond awoke in the ICU, Marlon was there with him. And he
stuck around for a while after that, (and would visit whenever he got bored
with whatever otherworldly business he conducted when he wasn’t busy haunting
Raymond).
 It was
Marlon who helped him figure out the whole healing touch, and Marlon who
suggested the whole church business. His granny knew of course, and would tut
righteously whenever Raymond mentioned Marlon.
“Spirits not supposed to linger so long,”
she would chide, sucking her teeth and shaking her head, to which Raymond would
respond with a halfhearted shrug. He knew about as much about ghosts now as he
did ten years ago. His forte now lay in balancing the people’s beliefs in the
divine and the extent of his ability.
 He
started out about a year after his accident. Between the seminary and the
advice from Granny, Marlon and Randy, Raymond thrived. For the first time in
his life he was actually doing well with something: secondary school was
lackluster at best and life pre-collision was idle, punctuated by whatever
hustle was necessary to fund temporary desires. But the Church made him feel
whole. So his congregation grew. Marlon had the makings of a shrewd businessman
and he wasn’t going to let go to waste just because he was dead, and donations
poured in.
Raymond declined the radio and TV spots and tried to
keep the pills and tonics to a bare minimum. He would cringe when he heard
other evangelists on the radio with their bizarre Frankenstein-esque Yankee-cum-“foreign”
accents rebuking the Devil and lauding their various remedies, (specially
shipped and available for a very affordable $700 package deal). He was already
mixing “devil ting” with scriptures and his morals wouldn’t let him betray the
people further.
Yet Raymond knew that some of the same members of his
congregation that would sit and gossip about his brother would drive up to San
Souci to see Randy with matters they felt weren’t appropriate to bring to the
House of the Lord. Two sides to the same coin; what was obeah to one was
religion to another and whatever Spirit had given him this gift was fed by the
same belief of the people. Obeah man, witch doctor, pastor… Raymond had figured
out a long time ago that it was the same calling, different name. The trance,
the healing… It was all steeped in ritual and parlour tricks, with a kernel of
truth nestled at the centre of it all. Shaman was shaman.