I always stay too late. I am always the last to leave, The one left to taste the soured wine Passed in frantic effort To regain the spirit, Get burnt by the embers Of hysterical bodies Trying to rekindle the longspent fire. Last to leave And first to come off that high Brought on by either ethers or ethos First to sniff the stale smiles that linger in the air Long after the fleeting fancy That brought them has left. I always leave too late, And as I totter home, I am always emptier in the dying hours Drained from…
Heat
And it felt like all there ever was, was heat. 32 degrees coupled with too wet air, hot stickiness of flesh it incites hot throbbing in the tips of my fingers and the end of my toes hot sighs with hot breath as hot air lays sultry kisses on blistering necks. Hot rain hits hot pavement and sizzles And all there ever was, was heat. My paradise is now hell.
Sunkissed
The pallor of my skin mocks me. I miss the sun’s feverish kisses On my brow until its touch burns. The pain means I am loved.
Mania
I go like a clockwork toy wound too tight Frantic and eager but sporadic and hysterical And I love and I love And I give and I give Until like like a well loved toy My skin is worn thin And my entrails spill out from the seams. And the pounding ratatatat tattoo of my heart whipped into frenzy is calmed by the panicked coda of my hyperventilations. We all have our lows.
No Rest For the Wicked
Inspiration rides the dregs of a late-night caffeine high, brain bubbles like a percolator on speed, firing synapses are the prodding pokers that keep me awake, inciting me to violent turns of phrases, penpoint picks at an itch long left unscratched. They say to hide one’s light under the bushel is a sin, and this must be my punishment. No rest for the wicked.
Knock Knock Jokes, or Writer’s Block Haiku
Knock Knock Jokes (Writer’s Block Haiku) knock knock- who’s there? what do you call a writer who never writes? a joke.
Diaspora Dysphoria
Look I write something! I’m actually trying to perform this for the One World show my school has every year. I just auditioned it today, so let’s hope for the best <3 Still have to work of some of it, but most of it is here. Diaspora Dysphoria I am a child of diaspora. Last name I have no ties to, First name my mother heard on Sesame Street, Names give me no solace. My mama’s mama was a product of love soured By a nationwide obsession with race and colour: A story of a baby too brown For anyone…
Death Throes
Morbid fascination kills me again and again. These are the death throes Of our potential. This is the not the martyrdom I try to tell myself it is. It is assisted suicide. Nor is it the first time- Reincarnation ad nauseam, Same me, different yous- Till nirvana: A state I cannot reach. It sickens me, The way I crave Your attentions. Like Tantalus I thirst And am never satisfied. You bloom perpetual While I fade like echoes. Jeweled fruit that fall From your lips Into my ears Sweet fruit, biting aftertaste, Like soured wine to the dying man, Leaves me…
Impotency
Stagnancy-bred frustration Angry at what I wanted to do but didn’t What I didn’t do but could have. Listlessness taints everything, Even my rage is impotent.
Carnival Poem I
(I’m not dead). Carnival Poem I The music whips you into mania And the sweat of the masses incites to ecstasy If religion is the opiate, This is the tonic. Sweet like cascadoo, Rush of power like cocaine, Addictive like morphine. We are the vessels The street is the vein Infecting all with Wuk-up-yuh-waist-osis And free-up-yuh-self-itis. It is a chronic epidemic Where the only cure Is to succumb to the disease; More riddim, More kaiso, More tempo.