saw this in magic
fitted new memory old.

heard a story told by a man today
reminded me of a story i once wrote
his story was of randomness love perseverance
pain is stronger than hate
mine was about outsider states
and nigger john ware.

black (in) rodeo.

the words that i speak aloud, bring into existence, sometimes surprise me. most of the time, i can figure out where they came from, but it’s their utterance that gives me cause to pause. meanings layered on top of them, attributes include the language i choose to speak them in. my sub-conscience doesn’t just contain clues, but neon-outlined signposts.

(this isn’t the right time for me to write)

one particular line by william is what i hear on repeat in my head. a rap lyric is going to determine my future. i shouldn’t be surprised. no-one should be surprised. the best i can do right now, at this very particular and very specific moment, is promise to revisit, relearn and repeat at a future time, predetermined now.

there’s a lot on my mind. i’ve been excusing myself with saying that it’s part of a creative process, but that in itself is inextricably linked to processing in general. emotions getting conned, sieved. yeah, you should be concerned, this concerns you.

(remember one fact, i got your back)

some of these words, that i’m typing right now, belong to another, mainly unwritten, poem. it’s one that i ripped out a few days ago. the truth contained in it makes me leave it alone. most of the time, i can’t look inside. in direct contrast to my witnessing of the external.

i haven’t slept properly in five days. peace isn’t accessible to me right now, although i know where to find it. the result of a choice i’ve made. even substitutes aren’t possible. this is the very worst part of that choice. security means engaging in competition, and i think that’s the only time i ever say never and actually mean it. i’d rather walk, far. i’d rather walk than sleep.

(this is why my teeth fell out)

i can trace this all back to a dream i had earlier. tongue pressing, jolted into a wakefulness i haven’t been able to shake off. see that nightingale? the one over there, on its back underneath that bench? it lived in my mouth, but now it’s dead. i saw it last summer, but last summer it wasn’t in a dream, it was in my parents’ backyard. again. symbolic of the death of poetry.  i don’t want to leave. i’d rather die than walk.

je me plumerai ma tête.

fin.

I wasn’t given the opportunity to fall in love with poetry. I didn’t chance upon it, discover words that stirred my emotions in new ways. I didn’t stumble upon poems, take them into my life as lovers, didn’t get to experience the romance of poetry. It wasn’t that I had any aversion to poetry, I just didn’t get to experience it as new. This was a result of the ubiquity of poetry in my childhood and throughout my life.

As far back as I remember, poetry was a patriarch, embodied in the memory of my grandfather, a man I had never met.

My grandfather was a poet, and he passed away when my mother was a young girl. In my mother’s family, the figure of my grandfather was mythic, a larger-than-life personality, whose identity as a poet overshadowed his legacy as a parent. His blood infused my own in the same way that poetry infused my life: a presence I took for granted.

My grandfather was nationally-recognised and his poetry was part of the educational curriculum. Each year, in poetry recital class, at least one of his poems would be included in the collection the young schoolchildren were expected to memorise. The first year this happened, the teacher eagerly announced that the esteemed poet’s granddaughter was one of his students, and he anticipated my familiarity and understanding of my grandfather’s work. I disappointed, struggling enough with the language as it was, having recently moved back to Khartoum from London. That incident triggered my journey to “forget” English, and focus on developing my mother tongue (the result? Although I learned to speak English first, I succeeded in reinstating my mother tongue’s position in my own language hierarchy).

I only have one of my grandfather’s books, published posthumously through the efforts of one of his colleagues and my grandmother. In the introduction to this final collection, my grandmother writes that her husband was questioning his identity as a poet. Those words hit home at a time when I was exploring my own claims to “poet”.

I have been writing poetry for years and years. Silly rhymes when I was young, angst-ridden teenage verse, contemplations on the meaning of life, expressions and reconciliations with depression. Instinctive expression. I rejected, and still do, the title of poet, believing that while we all have poetry inside us – literally and metaphorically – I can’t add that tag until I (l)earn it.

This journey is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother and the myth of my grandfather. And through them, to my mother.

***

I’m starting to write parts of my history, figuring out my own life’s path. It’s this feeling of hitting a peak but not peaking that is necessitating visiting and visioning the past. My explorations have a tendency to become public.

i don’t know where my head’s at right now, but this is crazy. can’t figure out don’t know but euphoria punctuated by high-hats and 808s. hugging this flow like i can’t let go like it’s my lifeline like i need to be here so bad i just don’t understand don’t know don’t care. and i want it to stop.

strange fruit.

who said loneliness wasn’t beneficial? cabin fever on fast-fo or something else i don’t care. right now, this moment, this is all there is. your embrace is all i ever needed. all i ever wanted. i just found something i thought i had lost.

and i’m ecstatic/desolate. which comes from knowing this is always there. i’m the only one. i can pull jedi mind tricks. wind blows through clears one puff lungpower lowers my mind. literally. and i do this in your (my) name. my sweat can dissolve a silk suit. somebody make these orangutans go away.

i can make time.

that’s how i feel right now.

headnodz and crossed legs
listening to the notic with my neck.
like janet, control disappears.

- will you be able to bring it to a conclusion? she asked wisely.

- maybe. i don’t know. i hope so. i would at least know one way or the other whether to put energy into it or not, i replied uncertainly. but we’ll talk about it when i see you.

[aside - i now have several notebook pages titled "Conversations I Need to Have"].

it just might be on. scary.

there are ingredients, elements. trying to figure out if they’re omens too. need to just figure out whether or not this is a path. i’ve been looking at it for a while, at the same time walking on a different road. at the very least, i should be able to know where to step next. get rid of this service road feeling that’s been hanging around for two years.

bobby taylor, the answer is yes. let me ask you that same question.

++

current obsession: cyborgs (again).

virtuereality will eventually subsume me.

re-kindled by a talk on embodiment. i exist more online than i do in the physical world, evidenced by the surprise on friends’ faces when i’m seen in public. oh well. the amount of thinking, processing, and working out i’ve been doing, i should probably be removed any way. my mindscape’s getting compartmentalized.

i don’t know how to talk to people any more. social awkwardness, magnified.

++

new language to theorise my mental. themes of the past little while: historicisation, spatialisation, temporality. removed from advanced theory, re-applied to emotions. temporality’s been throwing me off. when i have time (a mantra, repeat several thousand times over), i will study time. what is this pressing sense of urgency?

there’s a paralysis i’ve been unable to talk about. i’m hoping that writing this out, posting it in public, just putting it out there, will do something to break this deadlock. i try and talk about it with people around me, but they don’t hear me though. i seem to portray this image of ceaseless hustle, always being on the grind, but right now, it’s not true at all.

i’m frozen, suspended. up ended.

there’s reprieve, blips of fantastical times on another plane, indoors between four walls, cocooned in love and protection, surrounded by amulets and emotions. you are my holiday. and although i physically leave a space, mentally i’m tenacious in remaining.

the return to the real isn’t happening which is problematic. i haven’t been this scared in years. i don’t know what the source of the fear is, possibility maybe. failure too.

i’ve tried every little trick i know, from exercise to setting myself up. throwing myself into lifestyle changes to produce an illusion of change and movement results in selective agoraphobia. the only survival behaviour that remains is avoidance.

i alternate between choosing to shelter myself and choosing to provoke, poking at my playdead body with a sharpened stick. it hurts, so i curl up tighter.

today, i live between parentheses. i need to move into the body of text, embody text, bodied in text. and i don’t know how to do that.

it’s been hard, challenging. and the more i seem to want to leave escape flee, the more helpless i feel. forget the magic, i’m at the point of needing cathartic.

and all underlined by this huge feeling of shift control delete. i need to know where to how to turn.

i confess…

and then, you
take my heart and place
it in your chest.

anti[em]bodied.

apr10

i feel like i haven’t posted on here in a while, but it’s only been three weeks. threads of narratives in my mind, completely avalanched over by academia, theory and the like. apart from that, life’s been magical.

i went to new orleans, a city prettier than i had imagined it. jasmine and vodoun traces on my heart, carnival stories and gypsy jazz. stopped in a shop, he told me i was beautiful, bought photographs of dead negroes, was asked my race. funereal party procession lapped muddy waves while i talked to a professional poet. stories and more stories. freakshows and hammerheads, old ladies and conjoined twins. tortured slaves, lovers, and brangelina. come back and see me, (s)he said. i don’t make return promises anymore, i replied. i’m learning not to lie when i say goodbye, learning to follow my heart.

- your strangeness is beautiful, he said.

- but i find beauty in your reflection of my ordinary Self, i thought.

hard to explain, word. golden brought up more questions, similar experiences, processed from a different vantage point.

- it’s not just in skin, gypsy heart echoed, he’s a lucky man, whoever he is.

what’s luck, but a second hand in motion?

ask the moirae, they know.

solitude has been a blessed caress. forced in the beginning then embraced like an arranged marriage accepted with a shrug. familiarity’s breeding comfort, i hope. loneliness has been a sharpened sword, and we all know how i feel about blades.

percussive force of life, needed to be put on mute. scared to turn the volume up, scared to listen. the drumbeat is everywhere again, trying not to read into omens. but my bones know how to listen to the drums, try to tell me. i’m a newborn again, i’ve been there before, and it’s not just a river in egypt.

the worst thing right now is: there will soon no longer be. it’s hard to speak that one fear.

***

i don’t wan’t no trouble, just a little loving, i wanna get to know ya, i don’t want your money, you oughta get to know me, my love’ll make you wonder, lightning and thunder, i get it from my mama.

yeah.

Light up your face with gladness
You make me smile like the sun
You gotta be able to smile through all this bullshit.
So I’m gonna smile
Cause I wanna make you happy.
So I put on my make up
Put a smile on my face
Crazy on a Sunday night
You’ll see the sun come shining through for you.

Just smile for me now.