Day 30 | #NaPoWriMo | "It's the end...

...but the moment has been prepared for."

So #NaPoWriMo is done. It was a mad one. My writing has transformed for real. Shoutout to all the poets that have taken up the challenge. There are some I've deliberately not uploaded for various reasons. I may put them up soon; I may not. But I did it. Daily poem for 30 days. Man's got work to do, still.

This is one I could upload.

Enjoy.

I want to stop living in my head,
make my body a neighbour to you.
I don’t know what it is to sit in the space between breaths
but I am tired of the growing gulf between our mouths
and the emptiness between our clasping palms.

Tonight, we tried to cross the gap between our feet,
but we’re still broken
and drift apart like arctic ice,
even as we lie
here, with nothing between our chests.

Day 29 | #NaPoWriMo | untitled vol. π+1

Minimal intro again. Not really got much to say, to be honest. Thank you for reading.

Enjoy

my prayers are slipping
i am too coward to cross myself
my left hand is pregnant with flesh
my right is gangrenous with lust
my back will not bend to prostrate
my knees are unused to the ground
my neck is stiff
my forehead is heavy and throbbing with sin
my ears overflow with serpents
my heart contains legions of swine.

i’ve been falling away for so long,
i’m afraid of hitting the ground
and smashing to pieces on impact.

Day 26 | #NaPoWriMo | Can I leave these untitled?

I low-key burned out of introductions. But that's fine. The poetry is what counts.

Thank you for your presence.

Enjoy

On separation

I fear my hues are intermingling. Soon
all my whites will come out looking wrong.
My darker sides will start to get washed out.

OR

I fear the crossroads where I stand
has collapsed into a single street.
I am forcing myself to keep a foot in either lane.

Either way, my divergences are starting to unite.

Day 25 | #NaPoWriMo | Good-natured caveats and dat

You know that awkward moment when you rock up to a motive and you're wearing the exact same outfit as your friend?

I don't - I never got that.

(Is that a thing for people? Is it really that deep? I feel like it's been a plot point in way too many sitcoms with female characters. To any females reading this, can you clarify this for me, please? Thanks in advance.)

Yeah. I never got that. Until last night when SugarJ Poet told me I'd copied his title for Day 24. It's awkward because it was slyly in my drafts - started on Day 23, I might add -  but I hadn't typed the poem up yet, so it got peak.

He beat me to the upload/share and I forgot to change it. (If you're reading this and are slightly confused, this has been uploaded a few days late and backdated, lest the out of sync upload dates bug me). It's not that deep, but he was cussing me out for it in the group chat, so yeah. I'm playing. And hella petty. Anyway, preamble over.

[EDIT: Rah. His has the definite article and everything. Okay, L received.]

I won't say what this one's about, but reading it back to type up, I started to think of Omar Bynon's I Go For Long Walks Now, to which a good few other poets - including the aforementioned title thief - have responded to. I'm telling myself this is my [unintended] second response (here's my first). Omar's poem is now available in video form, if you haven't read it yet. I'd direct you to the Barbican Young Poets 2016/17 anthology, but this intro has enough hyperlinks.

Anyway, here's this one.

Enjoy x

On trying to write happy poems

Maybe I can't write happy poems because I'm not. I'm a poor actor and a bad liar, so I don't know how to tell you to be happy or how to bring joy to your day in any other way than “don't be like me”. I think it will to be the most consistent thing I tell my children, if I have them.
I’ll show them my notebooks of fake-deep, stuffed with metaphors like overflowing kitchen bins, each as meaningful as an empty fridge and tell them "it’s the reason why I cannot give you the life I want and you deserve. Why to this day I wonder why your mother would waste her time, what in the hell she was thinking or doing or taking when she chose to be with me’ why I question your existence every day." I imagine my eldest, how she’ll look up at me with the cosmos in her eyes - so bright and full of everything I’ll never see but at one time hoped I would - and say nothing. Maybe do her best to console me, and for a moment at least pretend to understand the man that failed at everything but them. And I’ll tell her through our foreheads: “please don’t love a man like me”.

Day 23 | #NaPoWriMo | The Home Stretch

It's kinda mad how there's just a week left of April, and therefore, just a week left of #NaPoWriMo. It's been interesting, I think. It's also mad how I said I'd have this site up properly by week 2 but I haven't. Awkward. I'm working on that. Thank you for taking the time to log in (every single time, Squarespace). But I know you reading this are the real MVPs. Thank you.

Here's a new one.

Enjoy.

DEJA VU

the lines between dreams and life are blurring.

(you've already talked about this.
there's only so many times you can
rehash yourself.
avoid CD, record, or tape comparisons -

you're not broken.
you've no excuse.

don't mention sleep's relatives. 
that's done.

if you must be lazy, be original at least)

you convince yourself your deja vu is proof
that your dreams are prophecy. that you’re not forming memories the wrong way round
and it's not your sleeplessness that's blurred the days and warped your sense of time. 

Day 22 | #NaPoWriMo | I Think Therefore I'm Late

I spent a bit too long on this one, I think. It's cool, I just forgot the whole point of doing this is to take pressure off, and kill the overthink. It's the home stretch, so I'll sprint the rest.

My title reference to French philosopher, René Descartes, wasn't total vanity. I've been thinking about négritude recently, so I thought I'd write on that. To briefly summarise (and horribly oversimplify), it's basically the quality or fact of blackness, and the affirmation of the value of black African culture and identity. As a movement or general school of thought, it was started by French-speaking African and Afro-Caribbean intellectuals in the 20th century. Anyway, it was a lot deeper, denser, and more complicated than I thought it was, with so many dimensions and aspects. I don't know where I stand on it as a thing myself. I think I may have found my future MA topic, because it's WAY too big to explore in a single poem. If you're curious, there's more on it here.

I ended up with a few versions of this poem. I decided to share this one.

Enjoy.

NEGRITUDE

There is nothing grandiose in bondage. I untie
my titles from your lips. You will not neuter
my black root and stem, or state I ought to paint myself in green
or red or blue to camouflage. I am no colour. I am no part of white. I will not de-grit
myself for you to pity me for how much I endure
to prove I am deserving of your gaze. Nor will I proclaim myself. I reign
regardless. I do not need your eyes to see that I am erudite
any more than light feet leak timidity. My sinews will not tune
themselves to your tone deafness. I will just be: twist and label-free. Just as a tiger
needs no battle cry to pounce upon his prey, so I need not roar or grunt
for you. Instead I am. And you are merely deer.

Day 21 | #NaPoWriMo | "What's 9+10?"

"21"

Throwback to that old Vine/meme from *checks Google* 2014. That was three years ago. Three years. That's a Bachelor's degree.

I spend the better part of today reflecting on blackness. I thought it would be a good idea to do a gramme of &s using the word Négritude. I decided I'd do one a week ago, but I never got round to starting. I should have just done it when I had the impulse, because I haven't managed it - I spent too long overthinking so it looks like it's going to be a longer mission for me. I'll give it a try tomorrow once I've had some time away from it. When I post my attempt, I will define and explain both négritude and the gramme of &s. For now, I'm uploading this. The title may change

Enjoy

Obelisk

You tried to burn away my names
bleach out the hands that shaped their syllables.

You've failed.

I will not gingerly
uproot my veins
from this earth.
Your land is my
blood-given
birth-right.
I claim it by the weight of all my titles in it's soil.