Mr Obeah Man

Mr Obeah man,
I didn’t come here to get a raise,
I just wanted to understand,
Why I am just like Melda,
After I heard the lyrics and laughed at her.
Manifest? In this manfest?
Man, I think the universe is manhandling me.
It’s their world. They make the rules.
We’re not taking anything that they didn’t give us already.
Stale bread. Here. Take that.
Mr Obeah man, mr magic,
Take my money. Take my energy. Take my soul.
To seal up this hole.

Storm in a teacup

Try to sip slowly,
If not you’ll down all that coffee,
Hot and sweet,
Burn your lips, scald your tongue,
Willingly drowned,
In a chocolate fountain,
You’re supposed to dip,
Not stick your whole head in.
You’re supposed to feel grounded
With your feet burrowed in rich earth.
Not like you’re spinning.
And pining.
Ripples in striated agate.
Browned in rich butter in a pan.
Sumptuous flavour to savour.
You may choose to look in,
And fall in.

Hardened

Sand away and lacquer,

Varnish and polish,

Because bullies have their way,

And you only wish,

You had the hardness to meet their harshness,

Their stubborn short sightedness could just get a peep of what you term as your goodness.

But sometimes it’s harder to make things easier.

It’s easier to get harder.

Your feelings surge to cue that you aren’t being treated well.

But the staying power of these feelings is the real hell.

Keeping a straight back and a strong defence is a hard easy,

You get weary.

How can I get people to let me be?

How do I get the chance to just be?

Just be me.

I already know I can’t change any mind but my own,

So how do I change my mind about how others perceive me?

That isn’t even my responsibility,

But it sure does hurt me.

How can it be made to hurt less?

Can I really learn to redirect my thoughts?

Reperceive?

Reevaluate the things I believe?

Who am I really?

What am I doing here?

Who can I be? Who do I want to be?

I do know that hard can be smashed in a thousand pieces,

While the soft can yield and bounce back.

Can I be softer with myself and yield?

Be so kind to me that no bully can touch me?

Well, let’s see.

Musk

Windows shut,

You know I’ll be there.

So you’re making sure that I’ll be cool.

I walk in, shut the door behind me.

I immediately feel different in there.

I love the smell in here.

It reminds me of something familiar,

Cozy.

Makes me feel peace. I feel warm, but on the inside.

I mention it. You get defensive.

I like it, I wasn’t trying to be offensive.

You know the smell of after?

Lying on a matted pillow, still welcome even when razed and rough to the cheek.

It reached somewhere in my brain like smoke in tendrils reaching through my nostrils.

Tickled zones of joy and pleasure.

I’m wrapped in it, stroked by it, stoked by it.

I leisurely let the door click behind me and inhale.

That smell would always get me.

Petty jealousies

If it makes you feel any better

Know that you have what I never will.

You should be exceedingly proud of that,

Instead of thinly veiling your desire to wish me ill,

Because you know that what you have is what I, and most women, have always dreamed of.

Love.

It isn’t enough to know that you have superior knowledge and experience.

You’d use your powers to kick me when you could uplift me,

And I thought it was about me.

But it wasn’t.

I don’t even know what I suspect I know, to tell you the truth.

I can only say what is in my own heart.

As much as I envy you, I would never take my sword to you,

And even if I will never get credit for that,

I wish not to be pitied or disrespected.

I already have things to call mine.

I’m trying to be grateful and thank the divine.

It’s a struggle for me that I didn’t live up to my own expectations,

So woman, could you please help another woman,

Let me be proud of me.

Let me be.

Don’t be so unkind

If it were somebody else

Would you tell them that you now see them as a pathetic loser?

Would you promise yourself to remain silent because your words were probably taken out of context?

Or they probably weren’t.

So you want to seal your lips and choke on silence.

They will seal together permanently and you’ll have to endure the pain of a razor to open them again.

Chastising oneself is not the answer.

Don’t even bother.

It has never worked before.

You want for yourself what you would want for your brother.

Fashion passion. Compassion.

What does that kind of kindness look like?

How does it feel?

How do you create it? Feel it? Share it?

Start by stopping.

You feel that urge to be unkind.

To launch the assault of negative self talk.

Self blame and self pity.

Woe is me.

Start by stopping.

If ever you feel unloved

Know that all the cells in your body exist because of you, worship you, do everything to serve you.

They view you as you do God,

The highest honour.

Go to the river, carrying currents from torrents of rain,

To the great mother at sea,

This water, salty, like that flowing in your blood,

Run off from the same water that nourished your food that built your body,

And remember that the water runs with you,

For you

The sun nourished your skin and ripened your fruit,

Without which you’d be frozen solid.

The earth is the same stardust from which you were fashioned,

That grounds all things,

That offers richness in buried fertile in darkness,

And the air breathed into you to give you life,

That if you feel you are drowning, shrinking, buried,

Bring that attention back to your life’s breath.

Remember that you are a part of all of this cycle.

You exist with it. It pours out unabashedly at you.

That exchange of love keeps us alive.

All our cycles are love cycles.

Think of all that exists with you and for you,

If you feel unloved.

You are loved. You just need to be reminded.

The Cowardice of Men

War brews in the eastern west

Men called to arms are not all the best

But they stand in wait of the threat

Sympathetic world looks on, eyes wet.

Men glean courage for causes great and small

But on the level of self? None. At all.

He’d rather die in horrific ways than to be seen as a vulnerable weakling

Men are hunters.

What is there for them to fear?

Softness.

They fear becoming it. They fear succumbing to it.

So they walk around, posturing.

It really ain’t no thing.

Hardens his heart because he is no simp,

Doing us a favour because at least he isn’t a pimp.

To look like a loser who gave anything,

Who gave everything,

That is for women and women are fools.

Men take what they want, take what they need,

That’s just the way it is,

You need to get with it.

Use before you are used,

You are fucking her, she isn’t fucking you.

Always come out on top, heart intact.

She brought it on herself. She chose you.

And that’s that.

They are masters of dishonesty.

But I’m not talking about the lies he told me,

I refer to the reality he will create to escape sharing feelings and vulnerability,

The real relationship currency.

All in the name of being manly?

No.

Because a coward could never lay his heart on a table on the chance that you might butcher it.

Smart?

Perhaps.

Thanks a lot, Psycho

Talks so sweet, illustrated love story,

Promises and lies, you know in your gut,

But you go along with it being stuck in your own rut,

The takers know the givers,

They don’t just take things,

They sink teeth into your flesh and draw,

Leaving behind contagion,

Doubt, insecurity, here and there a lesion,

You sob out your soul with each interaction,

Why are you still here? You need to take action,

But you don’t.

You’re threatened when you don’t comply,

But you didn’t leave after the first lie.

You’re sick in body, soul and mind when that narcissistic leech is done with you,

But you learned, didn’t you?

Trust your gut.

Let noone intrude in your heart space whose intention is to rule with fear,

Love does not cause wear and tear,

Love is the material of which the universe is built.

Don’t regret too much when the lessons pass through your life,

They too shall pass.

And who remains? Who must always be if you must be.

You.

Closed minded

Here’s the thing: social media ain’t real.

(Keyboards and screens cannot feel.)

But feelings associated with disagreements are.

Threads longer than Lachesis could spin and Anansi could weave,

Meant to hurt, meant to flirt, meant to squirt,

Pleasure.

Scary that sometimes inflicting pain is sweet.

Heart pounding as you take a blow,

Tapping, clicking, typing furiously to deliver a jab

To the face, the gut, the groin?

Everyone thinks herself above such trivialities,

Yet, they join.

Opinions flooding memory banks to fill an ocean,

Tap the back space key and try again.

I mindfully consider not resenting people who disagree with me.

Their point of view can enrich my perspective.

No back-chatting to them just to be vindictive.

Of those with whom i agree

Let me think, let me see.

The same spiral of thinking for many a year

Never ascending, because I am right and I have a right.

Always.

I deserve an ear.

I never hesitate to flash qualifications and titles.

Beware that part of self resisting change.

To grow and thrive, a creature needs space,

Outside that zone of comfort that feels good, but within it, you will always remain the same.

Emotions serve us, in ways that are strange,

But steering along with logic and reason.

Often the other person is only partially wrong.

Engagement is a serious decision

As a spoken agreement between more than one person.

Tearing others down speak of me as a person

And from there, introspection

No distraction from self reflection.

Thoughts that are immediate are reflexes

Un-tempered, under-scrutinised, over-utilised

Get over the thrill of being right to get it right.

Growing doesn’t have much glamour as it’s looking in the mirror but using a mental hammer,

To craft yourself.

You’re a work in progress.

A little nobody. A little everybody. With no one to impress.

Sometimes I am ashamed of myself.

Shame is a feeling too: not to be put of a shelf.

Explore. Question. Listen.

They sound so simple. These are still of value.

Practice them. You’d be surprised what you don’t know about you.