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The Homeless man
There on the corner of hunt road was where I first encountered this homeless man with a smile, carrying a very artsy board articulating his personal struggle. I cannot remember anything else about that day: where I was going or what I was wearing or who I was with. I do not even remember the day itself, instead he comes to me like a misleadingly wrapped gift. I do, however, remember looking at him and wondering why he was smiling. Why was this homeless man smiling? What was there for him to smile about? I must have seen this man many times, and the same thought occurred to me over and over again.
And then I moved out of that area and did not see him for a long time, maybe a year or two. When I saw him again my circumstances had changed. For the first time in my life I had a car, and just enough money to be trapped in needing wants. I was somewhere in the middle of a murder of automobiles, a red dot in the not to near distance signalling all the time I felt I wasting. The car in front of me was hooting and the driver was screaming some profanity. I saw him and his artsy board then, and I felt so many things, I felt so many things at this inappropriate time. He looked the same as he had when I had first seen him a few years earlier: Happy. In that moment it was like everything else had stayed the same and I was only thing that had changed. The situation was the painting and I was the painter. I remember how foolish the man in the car in front of me now seemed, and how foolish I actually was. I looked at the homeless man and I saw all the things I didn’t have, and all the things I had, all things I wanted so badly. All the things that I worried about seemed unimportant, shallow, irrelevant. Here I was in my car, on my way from university to my flat worrying about my university marks, and the man who didn’t love me back, and the man I didn’t love back, and why I was such a crappy mother. I looked at him and I wondered why I wasn’t smiling.
I always give homeless people money, I like to think that I do it because I want to help them, help the world. But think I actually do it to validate and perpetuate my consuming delusion that I can change the world. One day as I opened the window to give a homeless child money for the hundredth time, my cousin said to me “you can’t save the world”. I am generally sensitive but on this day, that comment was a knife through my heart, it brought me gut-wrenching disappointment. I am now learning that loving this world without trying to fix it is a much more fulfilling and conscious (and probably considerably more difficult) endeavor.
I have looked for that man every time I am at that robot, which is almost every day and I have not seen him. If I am honest with myself, this bothers me deeply. How is it that I never got the chance to tell him how incredibly profound he was.
*This is the first short story I’ve written, its been quite the task getting myself believe in my talent enough to try new things so I’m pretty excited. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Shallow Breathing
Why do I run?
I feel that I do not deserve you.
Actions, affections, chores,
and probably all our time
contorts itself gruesomely
to fit in to the box that
I have labelled motherhood.
The box burdened
to my mother and
hers before her and all the mothers
that gave rise to me.
And the box seems to get smaller
the more we fight it,
the more guilt we feed it.
I was not ready
but then again
when are we ever ready?
Ready to find out that nothing
will ever be the same again.
That it can no longer be about us,
and that now our entire existence
is woven into much more than
we had bargained for on that night
when the rage of carnal desire
silenced every other voice in our minds.
and then there you were
with tears in your eyes
and on your cheeks,
and I thought it was a miracle
that your barely formed voice
could make all that noise.
Hands shaking,
mind buzzing,
heart pounding
because his little nose
and his toes and fingers
and the thought of his little
heart beating
makes you wonder if you’ve
actually been alive up until
this point.
Now, 2 months before you turn 4,
I realize that I was never
running from you.
I was running, I’ve been running
from myself and all the things
that I’ve choked to sleep in my mind
and in my soul so that I can cope.
My new definition of the word cope:
chocolate without cocoa,
the sea without salt,
air without oxygen,
life without living.
You and I
will never embody
the ideals of the perfect
mother-son relationship.
Not because we can never be perfect
but because these ideals,
formed and perpetuated by society
(which includes you and I),
are a gross violation of all
that is natural and beautiful
between mother and child.
I am mother and you are child.
I do not use your or my because
our existences can not be
woven into each other.
*”It is my first time being a mother.
It is your first time being a child”
and finally I understand that
we can just be.
*A quote from my aunt Clare Parsons
This is the second poem I wrote about my fears and facing them.
Suffocation
Suffocation:
- To kill by stopping breathing of or by depriving oxygen to breathe.
- To die from being unable to breathe.
Perhaps one of the most involved,
active methods of killing.
Suffocation requires persistence:
you watch the victim struggle,
fight for their life.
Ability to receive love: suffocated by mother.
Ability to trust men: suffocated by father.
strangulation during pregnancy: perpetrated by father of baby.
Now you tell me that my emotions
are suffocating you. Please refer to “perhaps one of …”.
So what you intend to tell me
is that my emotions are depriving you of oxygen,
fatally hindering your breathing,
embodying sufficient loathing to watch you struggle
while they choke the life out of you.
I need you ( due to daddy/mommy/self issues)
I don’t want to need you,
never needed anyone this way before.
Never feared losing anyone this much before.
Hence here we both are,
necks held angrily by my unrelenting,
inconsistent emotions.
When I look at you
I’m up in the clouds
but now I wonder:
when you look at me
are you in the depths of the ocean?
Lungs filling with water.
I know you love the ocean
but never underestimate it’s power
to suffocate by drowning.
I am being suffocated by my fear
of losing you.
*Written as a part of a series of poems I am writing about my fears and facing them.
African Lips
His lips, big African lips
like his mother carried
water on her head and his father
father wore animal skin.
Like when he was in
his mothers womb, those lips
gave rise to the rest of him.
His lips are, simultaneously,
all the tears of June 16
and all the euphoria of April 26.
You see, he thinks I don’t know
but oh I know how much he
hides behind those lips,
behind his gated teeth
that cage his tongue
and I know he wont like
me saying these things
but I have to
because I want him to know
that I know what he
thinks I don’t know because
somehow in my fixer mind
this means I love him,
because for the first time
I don’t want to fix someone.
I just want to lay on his chest
as it hungrily consumes his
heart beat, leaving crumbs of him
all the way to my soul that stores
him in glass and titanium so he’ll
never leave.
In that moment I am reminded
that I am the one who needs
fixing. But also that no matter
how many times my jagged edges
draw blood,
he will always have enough left over
to rap for me,
to help me put on my shoes,
to get mad at me for falling asleep,
to wipe my tears away.
His lips, big African lips
that reverberate with the
beat of a thousand drums
and the silence of a
thousand thousand tree’s.
His lip, dipped in the red river
of the struggles of being black,
his lips pour out the struggle of
being human.
I think pour is the wrong word:
his lips tornado out the struggle
of being human.
And in a gust of lyrical genius
he unknowingly, intricately
reveals to me the struggle of being
a black man, loving a fair skinned
woman.
And in a gust of lyrical genius
he gently, lovingly peels back
the layers of me only
stopping so we can breathe,
so he can remind me why he
loves each divergently.
His lips, big African lips
are the perfect contrast
between naive hope and
cynical pessimism.
He thinks I don’t
see the light dancing in his iris’s
which is weird for me:
its the only thing
keeping me from complete darkness.
He thinks I don’t see the
labyrinth of darkness
woven delicately into his pupils
which is weird for me:
every single cell in my body
understands the dark.
This is not to say that
I understand his darkness,
only that I appreciate its
ironic incandescence.
I can lead us both through
the darkness, with the light
from his eyes.
His lips, big African lips
inhale, exhale
regale the tale of a
child, never held, but always loved.
Of a mother strong but rigid.
Of sisters always loving, never loved.
Of an angry black man with
dreams that society refuses to
make room for or understand.
Of a black man who can do anything
but wants to do the one thing he’s
told he can’t do.
Of a black man in the struggle
of consciousness.
His lips, big African lips
that blow metaphorical kisses
at thick women,
that plant literal kisses
on my inner thigh
and I have to sigh:
among all the toxicity
in the lungs of society
he is the perfect dose
of oxygen.
The Struggle
The struggle is consciousness.
The evolution of your knowing
who you want to be
but never quite being able to get there.
The heavy chested disappointment
of knowing who you are not.
The struggle is consciousness.
All these questions!
Am I asking the correct questions?
accepting that some questions,
no matter how debated,
will never have answers.
Realizing that everything is subjective.
The struggle is consciousness.
With it comes endless introspection
made more difficult by a society
that that condemns it.
and the struggle is the dreamless.
Those who passively accept,
ask no questions, hear only lies,
are diseased by their closed minds.
the struggle is consciousness.
Acknowledging that there is no definition,
accepting that it can never
be reached in its entirety.
Understanding that one understands
nothing.
Understanding that one understands
everything.
Realizing that one is nothing.
Realizing that one is everything.
Bearing the burden of bringing
consciousness to others.
The struggle is consciousness.
Wondering whether it is a kalopsia or
whether is it orphic
beyond human understanding.
The struggle is consciousness.
Caraphernalia
I refuse to keep any of it anymore.
I don’t want your pictures
And I don’t want the lighter you gave me
You can have my brush, it’s full of your hair anyway.
Take back your denim jacket,
I hope the smell of my perfume never washes out.
I am returning the scent you have left
On my pillow and on my sheets and in my room.
Take back all the dreams you gave me the courage to follow
You can have back all the hours that felt like seconds
Take back rap music and hip-hop
Take back the beach
No one can ever take me there again
Because every wave that breaks upon the shore
Will take me back to you.
Take back consciousness
And I don’t want Paulo Coelho anymore either.
Take back all the poetry I have written
And all the poetry I’m going to write
The whole fucking lot of it is about you anyway.
Take back the teeth marks you left on my skin
The ones that made me smile for weeks after.
In retrospect, you can have the smile to
I’m not really using it anymore anyway.
I’m drowning in your memories, in this saudade nightmare of all we are not, all we could have been.
These things that you’ve left me with keep me in a nostalgic depravity
My soul can’t take another moment of falling into your gravity.
Innocence II
In the incandescence
Of a cheap candle
She blinks lazily.
The bed holds her
Like her own mother did
What feels like a million
Years ago.
When her soul was
Flowered by the innocence of childhood
And her spirit woven by vitality.
It will burnout,
As it always does,
She thinks.
And a fiery, dreamless sleep
Takes over.
Behind impeccant eyelids
Eyes that have only seen wonder
Sleep peacefully
Stirring only when
There is a disturbing fusillade.
Or when he dreams.
when he fly’s too high
Or when he feels the spray of the sea.
But suddenly
The sea is on fire
And he can’t get away.
And there is an inferno
In his tiny lungs
And the air is like fuel.
He can not escape.
His wings can no longer carry him.
It was supposed to be a dream.
But then he allowed the fire
To get to the bed
And now everything
Is consumed by
Angry flames.
The words are trapped
In his tiny throat
All that can escape when he screams:
“Mama”
And she wakes
To a holocaust.
*the second poem I’ve written as a dedication to the burned baby, whose case I assisted with
Love in the Past Tense
Finally you have convinced me
That I am the convincee
Who has been convinced by you
That convincing someone to love you
is not something I can do.
And I have also been convinced that
The love I have, I can not contract
Nor distract, nor retract
All I can do is interact
With the memory, without hope to contact
Or be contacted.
You are the kiss on my inner thigh .
The one that makes me grit my teeth, and whisper my sigh.
But you, you fucking monster, only make me cry.
Thoughts
I have told people that I’m jealous. I’ve always been the girl that actually feels resentful when I see another female that my mind deems prettier than me. But what many don’t know is why I am the way I am. I was conditioned, from before I understood that I was even female, to compare myself to others. My mother and other females in my family constantly obssessed over their weight. They bought magazines with slender, sexy women on them and in them and moaned about being fat. They went on diets all the time. They complained about how much weight they had picked up at family dinners. Everybody got super excited when someone had lost weight. They wore clothes to try and hide their fat tummies, big bums, or thunder thighs.
I was constantly compared to my cousin. This bubbled over into my school years when my cousin was more popular than me: Girls wanted to be like her and boys wanted to be with her. I was just the chubby sidekick who people called “ironing board”* and “shwapha”*. I was the quiet one where as she was like a beautiful storm.
I had small breasts (of different sizes) and a small bum and a chubby tummy. She had big breasts and a wide ass and a flat tummy.I did my first diet in grade 6, at the age of 11. In retrospect, there is something fundamentally wrong with that. At that age, I already understood how I had to look to “be beautiful”, I understood that being fat was not a part of that ideal.
My mother always told me I was beautiful. She used to say “You are so beautiful, but if you could just lose a bit of weight…” or “You’re so pretty, you just need to be a bit smaller” or “Remember how pretty you were when you lost all that weight”. How do I blame her? She grew up in a society that dictated that ideal of beauty to her too. She didn’t understand the dramatic effect that those double-sided compliments would have on my self esteem.
A close friend once pointed out that I look in the mirror way more than most people. I have never seen myself as vain, so this comment disturbed me a bit. After thinking about if for a few days I realised why I do it: when I look in the mirror, I am constantly complimenting myself, not because I think I’m the best thing since sliced bread but because I’m trying to fake it till I make it. I have to convince myself that I am beautiful, size 9 feet and size 40 waist, acne, flabby arms, different sized breasts and all. The best thing has started to happen, I am starting to believe myself. For the first time in my life, I can look in the mirror and genuinely like and appreciate what I see. This doesn’t happen all the time but it never used to happen at all so I know I’ve made progress.
I still put my body down and I still compare myself to other women every day of my life but I like to think I’m getting better. I read this status on Facebook “you don’t have to be pretty like her, you can be pretty like you”and I swear it was my saving grace. I say that to myself every time I catch myself comparing myself to other women and that’s one more battle that I’ve won against my mind.
I also make a great effort to avoid putting my body down infront of my son because I don’t want him to learn to be that way. I always tell him he is beautiful and that I’m proud of him because fuckit he will not grow up hating what he see’s in the mirror. I don’t allow anyone to talk shit to him about what he chooses to wear or play with or eat. I am careful about the nick names I allow people to call him, and I try my best to refrain from making him feel like certain clothing or shoes or accessories make him look better. I want him to know that he is the most lovely when he is just him. If I have anything to do with it, society will not impose it’s unrealistic, cruel ideals on him.
I see that I needed my son, so I could have someone to love myself for, besides myself.And I’m learning and I’m growing and I’m hopeful.
*Ironing board: a term used to refer to people who are seen as having no curves, small breasts and a small bum.
*Shwapha (isiShwapha): an isiZulu word used to refer to a person with no bum.
In My Shoes 