The Air

Something in the air isn’t right

Its suffocating me

Wrapping itself around my throat

And i cant breathe

I cant think straight

I cant see right

I can’t be me …

The sun is blocked off by the clouds

The atmosphere is white

The people are white

My white socks have holes in them

My white shoes are dirt filled, too small for my feet

My house in the bronx has no ceiling

Large roaches fly everywhere

Mahogany floor boards are lifted...

The way my soul has been lifted

  And my mahogany colored skin lingers in the streets

It lingers like an empty vessel

Soulness

Lacking inspiration, motivation

Lacking purpose

The atmosphere is white

The people in the east village are white

My roommate is white

My mother is white

I’m brown

Brown like the soil

Brown like worn out bricks

“Brown like the perception of who’s on welfare”

My school is for white folks

The education is for white folks

And i’ve been patted into the soil

Like a worm

And i feel as though a crow will soon come down to pick me up

Swallow me up

A black crow, so violent

A white dove, so gentle

I walk through the east village, my mind has been shaped by third avenue

Clean room, no roaches, no rats

An east village fantasy

I say fantasy because

in the Bronx my section 8 housing is falling apart

I wont visit my mother because I’m ashamed of where i’ve come out

Another empty vessel that has shaped me

Like a matryoshka doll

A mentality that is bricks,

Artificially forced to fit concretely

But my mentality yonders everywhere

The way these bricks will when the world comes crashing down

Climate change

We will be our own demise

gangs?

my whole life i heard "soo-woo" out my window

it was something i didn’t know

but it was frequent, like the crow calls

from birds perched outside my home

men pitched it high and low

so i started calling too

out my humble dyckman abode

something "birds" surely do

didn’t know what a gang was, 

but i sure knew what they do

scare, murk and kill niggas

even for a two by two

but no one taught me the difference

between family and a gang

so in my notebooks i scrachted in “ABT”

said it’s cause that’s my sister’s dad

not affiliated with ANY gangs. I'm reflecting on how i would hear soowoo so often, every man's call distinct. it began to sound like a song, something birds do on perched trees as they call after each other. i mention crows because i heard them a lot outside my window when i lived in Ellwood st.

i moved out of dyckman when i was 13, i never learned that soowoo was affiliated with a gang until much later.

"abt"= all about thayer. i didnt know it was a "gang", i just thought it was a trendy graffiti thing, so i grafittied my own notebooks because my sister's dad is from thayer, just a few blocks away from me.


if you google "abt graffiti thayer" portraits  of Abbott Handerson Thayer come up , lolololol 
google searches are so eurocentric, gtfoooo

dancing smoke

Thick smoke fills the apartment full of roaches, and I imagine it dancing. 

I spin under it as it envelops me,
and I so desperately want to become it, easily disappearing in the air. 

In the smoke I’ve made a friend, 

One who keeps me company while my mother holds her cigarette in her hands

Every time she smokes, my friend returns, 

and I trail after it...as I desperately trail after her. 

We danced together, the smoke and I. 

Gray clouds that I floated on. 

She concentrated on every inhale, every blow, 

So I started to flush them down the toilet, hoping that would bring me some attention, but it didn't work. 

My friend came back, and I said I was sorry, said my mother loved her more than her daughter’s own folly. 

The smoke took a disliking towards me, 

and the air made me choke, 

and I sucked on my pacifier, 

hoping to revoke, 

all the memories of our friendship, 

as a means to cope. 

Until my mom burned her cigarette on my arm...

Sure it was unintentional, a quick lagging in her arm 

but I grew resentful and stopped chasing after her. 

With me not after her, there was no smoke to comfort me, and I was truly alone. 

And when I became 16, I still danced alone, no father to admire how much I had grown. 

la petite femme

La petite femme.

En fait, elle n’est pas petit,

Seulement dans sa peau

Elle veut être petite,

Car elle veut une homme plus grand qu’elle à venir,

à venir dans sa peau,

de vivre dans sa peau.

être une seule âme, un esprit, mais deux corps

daddy's little girl

Broken women are looking for a god 

and men are looking for broken women

He takes her, goes in,

she relunquishes herself to him. 

Virginity: masked with big, nice, round titties

Virginity: masked with big thighs, the size of cities

<<She's cumming>>

                        //She came//

She comforts herself because it's to a church she came. 

And at the end of his torso is where she kneels and prays. 

the little island descendant that could

She drowned in a blue dress

The fabric hugging every curve; every inch with every turn

It was as if she was going deep under the Caribbean sea

The waves hugging every curve; every inch with every turn

And she came up,

Her beautiful Dominican island in her hand

And she showed the world

That even people like her can

Dimple

I wanted to dive into his dimple

and drown in his soul,

until I found his heart;

my personal prize to hold. 

el hombre que prive en sol para robar mi inocencia

Quien será el, el que se esconderá detrás de cortinas para reemplazar la realidad. Detrás de cortinas el se asombrará, con la decepción del sol tratando de romper la oscuridad. El se hace el sol, se hace el dios. Y mi inocencia se llevará, y yo se la daré por que el me convencerá.  

desiertos ojos

Cuando yo miro en el espejo, no reconozco la quien veo. Es culpa de la sociedad, los que dictan qu'es feo. 

Miro en mis ojos, lo que se parece desiertos solitarios. Parecen una ruina de arena oscura, como el dolor en mi pecho que siento diario. 

Busco un hombre mayor, de forma en papa.

Yo me analizo yo misma, para que ustedes no sean capaz. 

Imagino qu'el será tan como el color de mis ojos. Una mezcla de chocolate somos. El se perderá en mis ojos desiertos, y yo en sus manos. Y mil besos me traerá, y mil desiertos en cual se hundirá.  

Mujer

Adivinas lo que se esconde en cada curva de mi cuerpo. Son secretos desde nacimiento, secretos acumulados por tiempo. La mujer es una figura, la cual debe de ser entendida. Busca conocimiento de ella, a travez de su postura. Busca conocimiento de ella en forma de travesuras.

reflection on people and self 4/10/16

He’s a model of sorts, but aren’t we all? Not role models, but sculpted models of humans beings; a testament to human life.

His racial ambiguity screamed beauty to me 

I no longer focused on black or white racial tensions, I just focused on him as a person, him as a being, he who is beauty and he who is surreal.

But it upset me inside the way his modeling success was warranted,

Here we have a man who’s not friends with republicans.

From humble beginnings he’s rooted, and the ideals of being humble are carved in his branches (his tattoos).

He’s not rich, but a regular man he is.

They sexualize his racial ambiguity to sell their products to rich people who probably wouldn’t be friends with him in the real world because he isn’t rich.

How funny and intimidating it must be to model for the upper class when you aren’t upper class yourself.

---

In my faded and her drunken state, I sat on the corner of the bed and she laid askewed. Her fingertips stretched out to my hair, and she lost them in the jungle of my curls. I silently wished it wasn’t my friend who ventured off here, but an older man that was just as curious as losing himself in my hair as I was in his eyes; wondering about the mysteries of men and their somewhat nurturing father ways. I hoped  a man would make my garden an extension of his estate.

---

The leaning Tower of Pisa was attacked by a group of gentle snakes that wrapped themselves around the outside columns (getting head from a curly haired girl while your fingers grab onto the nest of curls)

---

Broadway

I ran into you on Broadway one afternoon in August. You rolled your own tobacco and I fell in love with the way your hands moved and the sun highlighted the warm tones of your skin. 

I ran into you on Broadway in March, seven months later. You walked with a sort of rhythmic balance with music blasting through your headphones. I ran out the Chase bank on hoping to catch up to you.

The brief seconds before I tapped you to say hello were the most suspenseful seconds yet. But you turned and smiled, and I caught the sun reflection in that smile, the stars and galaxies expanding for miles. 

So now I walk on Broadway everyday, hoping to run into you again, hoping to be a string of metaphors that you try to piece together in your head. 

Dazzled

"I wanted you dazzled, I wanted you drunk," -Frank Bidart (Star Dust)

I wanted you with the sweet taste of champagne and the bitter taste of beer so that finally I would rid myself of my self-consciousness and wipe away my tears. You'd be too gone to realize you don't truly want me, and I'll be too gone to realize how self-deprecating my desire for you is. 

Love Blackness

We are raised to hate each other that's why we hate the color of our skin 

And so I don't take my self and self worth seriously because of my skin 

Love me some black 

Love me so me 

Please oh dear please 

Rid me of self hate and set me free

It's in...

It's the arc of your eyebrows 

And the fullness of your lips 

That makes me want to drown in you 

As you swim in my abyss 

Beauty In A Stranger

I fell in love with the idea of him playing his guitar while we laid askew on his bed. I’d wear one of his white T’s while he only wore  the guitar around his chest. I’d hide under his white sheets which bore the smell of him, and I, and us.

And he’d play to me and I’d sing to him and our bodies would melt into one and it would be a beautiful juxtaposition of two brown skins finding harmonious peace in each other

Only Ones Who Know

I wish to speak intricately placed words that ignite a light, and splatter a juxtaposition of colors on the canvas of your heart.

Purple Hues of Disapproval

The purple hues of fist sculpted wounds 

dented her face, 

shoulders, 

stomach 

and thoughts 

as she beat herself up with her self-conscious hate 

and disapproval of herself. 

Flooded

Her confidence was only a mere projection of who she wanted to be

Because on the inside she was fighting a battle worse than the ones over seas. 

The water came in, 

and flooded her from within. 

Such that she was drowning in an abyss 

and contemplating sin. 

Her remains floated to the surface, and that's where she stood. 

An eternal portrayal of who she wanted to be, a self creation from the womb. 

Analysis:

Locked

Those locks became locked straight 

In her routine efforts to assimilate

She looked at the reflection with content:
she fostered to create an image than can be upheld by men. 

But her inside screamed of regret
and the locks screamed of reject.