1116

* Eid Al-Adha is the "Festival of Sacrifice" or "Greater Eid" is an important religious holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Abraham (Ibrahim) to sacrifice his son Ishmael (Isma'il) as an act of obedience to God.d al-Adha is celebrated annually on the 10th day of the 12th and the last Islamic month of Dhu al-Hijjah. Eid al-Adha celebrations start after the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage toMecca in Saudi Arabia by Muslims worldwide, descend from Mount Arafat.



They say they can tell when a woman has lost her god
that our tongues become heaving and burdened
when our heads become light and bare

There are promises on this campus
packed and folded away into drawers
where they can drape over the good chance
that we've been lied to

Biases we hold hidden in class rooms
where subordinate and subjugated are used for us
are used because
ones like patriarchy hit too close to home
for these people

A faith based anachronism,
a time capsule of traditionalism preserving a past
no one is ever too sure about
an exhibit, praying in a museum
with all the other art pieces
there are drapes for the statues with eyes
for the pictures with eyes
for us women from eyes


Bodies pasted in lines
shillouttes of impressionist vision
pointillism women turned into rounds of color and fabric
into blank spots in a bigger picture again
molded into the quiet in solidarity with the nostalgia
still present in the way we worship
it is only for a day,
maybe for an hour

Even lost and godless
you'll see our tongues tuck in
so our promises can unfurl again
every Al-Adha
every festival of sacrifice

Every sacrifice for a religion
In pilgrimage honoring pilgrimage
those still searching
that have crossed sands,
climbed pillars of silk and salt
those that have thrown stones,
that are always throwing stones

All those towards Mecca,

at the end of their hajj
with their God and religion
Wandering
Wandering
Wandering,
like us,
in circles

Children of Men (freewrite, rough draft)

There will be more traumas, I presume.
Each documented in hopes they will lean
more towards blasphemy someday.
I do not want this for my honest.
Do not want pain for my truth

In 20 years the brunt of a world collapsing
upon itself has folded me paper crane.
And like them, it is easy to forget how quickly
the drowning seeps through.

I am not a genuine creature of flight,
but this is not fake water

In 20 years I have learned to love things
that don't stay long enough to watch me crumble
In 20 years I have learned to make my skin a pamphlet of pleas
from a woman striving to change somebody's mind.
And like so many love letters
I am found wandering through my travels
hoping to catch my lovers ear
lost in a shuffle of demands
on some strange terrain
with no return address
and a stamp reading
"return to sender"

He does not cry over women
did not know that
the nights he spent on the floors of our markets,
in the cracks of our country of our land baked him dry.


I ,9years old
a laundry list of prayers and despites,
a young girl creating all she will be
by what she will not, and all she will not
by what she has seen.
I found my purpose in what he was not

It was a pain to watch my father cry
letting out what little water was left.
Paving his drought and dusty dams
into a circling road,
one that would take him nowhere
far from where he is now.

This water, lost when his mother left
when life betrayed him
this water
nowhere to be found at the tragedy
of more loss. The deaths of his children
No where to be found, not like this

Not like my father
in the front seat of a taxi cab
he never pays dues on
in a suit bought
with the good conscience
that his children may be hungry and in want,
maybe market floored
houseless sun-baked-dry one day
all the water drained out of them

My father crying over a woman he beats
has cut,has lacerated troughs into her desert
Showing me the little water he has left,
has irrigated from her
offering a sacrifice
in a moment that wont leave me in 10 years

The moment Mohammad Yussuff
showed some sign in the dry soul of his skin,
that he might still be able to grow.

He was floods of everyman he was named after
Someone says the water will drown him one day,
it does. I do not know men that cry like him
but there was a boy
who learned the river and ocean of his mother
and sisters,
who swallowed their
moon to drown the ditch dug crevices,
make them bear water again, and maybe even fruit.

Bobby,
Mohammad, our father's namesake,
my cactus in a field of mirages and thirst
should you have learned to grow throns
as they asked of you
I would have nothing left.
You had no thorns to protect you
and so I have nothing left.
But the faint and fading memories of the only man
that loved me the right way.
My brother,
who sacrificed his life in hopes
that another young man
may hold on long enough
to tell the story

A boy ,who let a another he barely knew
cross a road, a dry path,
with destination in front of him
showed him to quench,
Was struck by a force much larger than him
heaved so high all this liquid
rained back into the heavens
left us wanting


You are my last,
my lasts always are
they cannot keep you here,
menelik,
tell me
your water still seeps through
your skin like mine
Have you heard me, my droughts
that I am unquenched
Tell me your water still seeps through your skin like mine
That you are still a conservatory
mornings of trickles, hurricanes
the sounds that give me hope
shouting through flesh worn doors
make me happy i never listened to anything else
That I do not read the signs meant to keep people out
Tell me that I am not another catastrophe
of women
drowned
stretched
and beaten
drowned, stretched, and beaten
soaked
crumbled
and left wrinkling.

You've said before
you will not cry over a woman again.
that your water will find itself nowhere here

made blasphemy of hope for this land,
these cravings and prayers left deep
landing hard on my pathways
after promising to make blasphemy of my doubts.

You must not know
what happens to men
that take the water out of women
Let them make their wet offerings
to find their shrines left with little or nothing in return.

Meet my father.
ask him how I got this way.
Tell him of the woman I've become
with roots drowning
crumbling chewed paper-wet
Branches cracking
Always trying to be a symbol of growth
in a land that says
It wants none.

Freewrite? No idea. 5 Things I've Learned From Being in Love

Partially inspired by Robin’s “10 things Ive learned from being in this relationship”


1. How to calculate a 3 hour time difference without thinking, despite sucking at math.
1.5 The words “acquiescence” “coalesce” “intentionality” and “moribund”
2. FB ruins lives
2.5. If you both like ass, and you both stare, its fun…not awkward.
3. Skype cuts off after an undisclosed amount of time,
so when taking virtual naps, Ichat (which doesn’t cut off) should have been used instead
3.5 It is totally worth it to stay awake on the phone until 5 am despite having a class at 8:45
4. Long emails and longer phone calls can be HUGE band aids,
4.5 sometimes the blood still seeps through
5.
Long emails
unanswered
and missed phone calls
are enough
To make you stop believing in magic
(….even if only for a little bit.)

Men use women as currency
Tools to play the came of masculinity
Raking up chess pieces
Even if they're queens

Hometown is Homesick (prompt from Rose)

Home is a place, 
place is space paused in moment,
moment is emotion rubbed into memory

Home for me feels like a fleeting moment 
And lost memory
In a space I am not sure can exist anymore 

My homesickness is hometown
I am permanently displaced 
always half departing venue of
supposedly human 
and supposedly woman

I am not sure why I was brought here

My spirit still has charred pieces from the transition
My body beaks down often from the traveling, the moving
The manifestation of my awkward keeps moving to pretend there is somewhere to go 
as if I have not been lost since offset,
since origin

Maryland
Born
a place a year too far away for me to draw memories into it's distance
I cannot remember who me is
And so, have no whereabouts as to who or where she was

I have lost notions of the place that taught me loss, it is where i keep my dead history, the death in my history 
As if, unlike me, it will stay there

DC
Is forgotten self made and divinely declared home
Loves me like a betraying grandmother
Or some other mystic kin
Maybe a swinger aunt
A husband with amnesia,
I am told that we have history 
But I don't remember what it was like to love you

I see the photographs and poems that prove we have been places together
But can't remember those feelings
I cant help but feel like I am living in someone elses house

Nigeria
Made
Me a child of missing centuries before the wombing 
We still hold on to the few things that time and space and men with prophetic names like "Lord" divied us
It must not miss me like it did before it unlearned how to
And is the murderous mountain from which my rolling avalanche of travel fell

All of these are places that have changed despite me
Have become dismissive emotionally disrespectful memories lost to big pockets dug deep enough to fit big buildings and needed bodies 

If I had learned nothing of home
in people, in memories and emotion
I would not know anything of loss

I am from every city that asks to be missed for the sake of evidence that someone knew it once

The nostalgia floating to the top of any land with the top layer of it's skin burning it unrecognizable

This,
Is the stomach churning, the gut wrenching place, moment of degorge in yet to be tacit diasporing,
The homesick I call hometown

One day I will  laugh at the audacity of thinking I could be from "somewhere"
Sending down a thunderstorm from heaven, in earth they will call it an earthquake, or hurricane,
A natural disaster,

This world is not my home.

10 Questions for a Stranger (Prompt from Jamaica)

“Then his soul is returned to his body, and there come to him two angels who make him sit up and they say to him, ‘Who is your Lord?’"

10 Questions for a Stranger,
10 Questions the Angels Will Ask You

1.When you were younger

did you think you could fly?

Can you?

2.When was your birth,

or creation,

the one that required you die first.

How many times did it happen,

can, will it happen again?

Will you spoke plug yourself

into the churning of a failing world

knowing there will be spinning,

For no good reason, maybe.

3.Where is your Grandmother,

granddaughter, at this exact moment,

in your body.

Could I speak with her?

What will she say about you?

What kinds of things will be said about you by legacy?

4.When was the last time you had an untellable feeling,

an emotion with no name?

What color was it,

are you, when you are lonely?

Do you crowd your pain before or after?

Are you a welcoming surrender

or a warring wait?

Would you mind if someone sat with you,

And asked the place you were

the first time something hurt you?

If the walls shook, the shelves too

and if anything fell on you.

5.Have you ever longed to tell a stranger

you love them? In an elevator maybe?

Have you ever found intimate

the closing space between you.

Wanted to cut the throat of the distance in you.

Chip your doubt over it, strum it like a harp.

Turn it breathing hole, and mouth it flute.

Air waiting to be cradled in your healing,

your hospital bed tongue

and its unfurling pink sheets.

6.If you are old and African

Or any other skin sheathing

of lost Gods and vacant history

Do you smile, cry ever?

Are you afraid to, or simply above such human faulting?

7.What do you think of skin?

Our see through bones, and creaking entries.

Our spoiling frames and overused doorways.

What of when it has a tint?

8.What exactly is love to you?

Is it morphine shot and opiate at all?

Can the spell be found foul needle

in your hands.

Who taught it to you?

Do you know someone taught it to you,

And them to?

Have you relearned it,

taken out the excess liquid and discoloring,

made it less dead.

Or is a laziness disheartening you.

9. Of that cocooning coffin body

will you show the loss?

What catastrophe has stolen,

the discarded arteries covered in tattering wishes.

Will you reveal the parts that have been hidden out of fear

So no pieces will be missing

when it is time for us to bury you.

The not so “extra” questions that were almost lost

9. Do you believe in fate?

Because you are assured this world

is set in something good for you?

Or because you are sitting, waiting

for life to happen to you?

9. Are you religious?

Do you spend more time praying in temples

or building them?

9. Are you starving, how hungry are you?

are your intestines coiling like a snake

Is there ever venom in your action, Lucifer in your want?

Do you think we fell out of heaven

or that we were banished?

What would you do to feel like something God made again?

10. Are you one of us,

Are you sure?

Are you sure,

You can’t fly?

EGBE OMO ISOKUN

NATIONAL YORUBA CONVENTION...

It is a room full of crowded diaspora
with the American anthem playing,

silence
like no one knows the words


It is the Yoruba anthem I first heard when I was EIGHT
still making me cry

It is his daughter
a man who is 60

his daughter,
13 stubborn and unfriendly

adjusting his shirt

without saying a word

like she is his father

Habeebi

Ever write a poem for/about someone and realize it doesn't skim?
This doesn't skim...
Im going to sit down with my muses and live through it and then let it happen to me instead of try to make it happen through me.

I love you.


For Sadia, who held me in a green field, sang ‘Yellow’ and cried with me


I have always wanted to cry as pretty as you do.
Shed water and light at the same time
Pour and glow transpire a rainbow,

Emit
Through plains of dark and shaken nowhere
Every color stolen from us
And hidden in some wrong cavity

Do you see sun in me?
Are you forgetting about the water?
that you are spilling brim and dam split
cleansing
That your head is pouring somewhere near your eyes

Find the narcissus in you,
See for once
That you are simmering rays and golden
See the gold in you
Watch what you’ve guarded so dearly
Admire all of it
Guard but don’t hide it

Though I am ether tarnished treasure or blackened foil
and you love me
Do not let anyone
Rot iron
or lime you

You are a perched sun nights
When I do not want moon hole and sinking feet

Thank you
for blocking out evening
and skipping morning
for being zenith and high noon

Mercy filled baptism
You are no fountain,
Not recycled water

You are falls and pottery wheel
overflowing
clay and sand hands
pedaling feet

Held me yearned creation though I made your work muddy

Kiln
how are you still not water logged hearth

Who made you
All heat no burn
All liquid no drowning

This world
Eggshell promises
and
Unimagined heavens

I don’t know how is it I have still found one in you.

What God Looks Like to Me

Two days ago I had a conversation with the love of my life Jamaica Osorio ... in my head. I have been asking myself recently about overused words (and structures) in my poetry. All to challenge my language, my craft, my heart. One such overused word is "God" an other religious rhetoric. Reminding myself that words are symbols, I am selling mine so short of what they represent. I want my words to be less symbolic more merging, more transcendent.

Nevertheless, this resulted in,in my head, my love challenging me. Asking, as if in response to reading a piece I have written, since i mention "god" so much in my poetry...what is it that god looks like to me.
My response was the following...




A fiery night turned scorched evening in Brooklyn
A homeless person stands over
a hallowed turbine canister for heat

A man, wall street all three piece suits
And shoe sole covered
with other peoples dreams
walks over freezing

The homeless man shifts over
Never even looking up
They stand over the fire
Both shivering

Neither of them saying a thing

That is what God looks like to me

10 Things That Remind Me of A Thunderstorm (freewrite)

Got this via my beloved soulmate Anwar Jabari Johnson


10 things that remind me of a thunderstorm

1.
Ancestors falling
from their avalanche of wander woes
gripping to the roof of her mouth for heaven
afterlife

My mother's voice
the lioness she taught me to fear
...being.

Mane slipped into its aftermath,
the depth of her transmutable story
causing unknowing listeners to call her
"MR" Yussuf
like they know how shes been my father

2.
Our lips meeting for the 1st time
the passion that made everything messy
Have you ever clutched a storm in your arms before?
Tamed it?
Are you sure
Minilik?

3.
An unnumbered summer
2008
Where some girls began shedding their skin together,
learned to stop being ashamed
of how they had shared it together.
No one told you you looked this good naked

4.
A bag of Italian leather shoes and suits
that always seemed better buys than
formula, or juice, or school fees
or marriage counseling.
My older sister at 15
rolling his belongings down the stairs
right after calling the police

5.
the night when it began to become clear
that little girls do not grow into 18 year olds
that hate men for no reason.
That there had been clouds beneath her eyes breaking
not high enough to forget what happened
That the fogs and opaque bottles full
of blackouts and drowning
the nights when alcohol found prescriptions
readable, understanding,...friendly
Had all
never been for no reason

6.
The day they realize
they did not welcome a daughter back properly
When a whole country
will rise above itself
into the frame of what
its dislocated daughter
has always viewed it to be...
My the cheering

7.
Dec 2009
A doctor saying something
about a lung collapsing
A prayer in a hospital bed
that means nothing
In a room she is sharing with a woman who is 90
A 19 yo realizing, again, she is dying

8.
A quiet night in Chicago
at the most recent BNV
When something is happening
that shouldn't be
Pathetic attempts to regain agency
Have you no idea what type of woman
you want to be anymore?
Are you looking for her
by finding
everything you don't want to be

9.
"that night" "that summer"
I had a vision of my deceased sister walking towards me

10.
"finishing"
the sound of breaking to begin again
pretending you've lived already

"Muslim Jews & Christians war, no one's left to praise the Lord"
knaan

TO do List (freewrite)

Bismillah
Start everything with God in mind,
be open about the horrible if existent
nature of your Arabic.

Do not be ashamed of how you carry your religion
its compass, guiding light you follow when you so choose
relinquish the idea of it shinning a single hue

Level your head
try to wear that rolling scab with pride
Remember the times when your hijab
made you feel beautiful but never be afraid to expose your wounds
bear no fear of exposure physical or otherwise

Lose yourself when your write
find a forgetfulness for not being good enough
You are larger than your fears wont let you be

Run away from complacency
even when it looks like God standing still,
Know that God never stands still unless you are running at a divine speed
Check your feet, their harshness, how quickly they are moving
Kick the stagnancy when it comes
Catch up to yourself

Ponder the making of your first love into your last
not for admonishing, just for pondering
On nights when your chest is cold with wondering if you lived too quickly
warm it with the kinetic heat of a clock moving
Time
Feel its abundance, flow in it
there is so much, too much to exist
Forget finite, know it never
Live now

Let yourself wonder why this poem is filled with “Don’ts”

Don’t stop being hard on yourself out of guilt
knead yourself against the scabs on your heart
rub your chest often, especially when your insides hurt
make it prolific

Keep writing poems to your broken body
there are no doctors, no cure that can heal
your inherited illness like these poems
The unveiling of sickled cells
do not make you less strong

Cherish your withering hands for what they are
do not regret how dark your palm
its lines, the depth of the bark, the tell tale rings
Stop trying to hide that you’ve been here before

Kiss boys,…Kiss girls
Kiss first,
and only places screaming of beauty
Look for nothing in return
Be thankful that you will let none of this make you ugly
Forgive yourself for not letting them kiss you
For surrenders reserved for the love you won't let go
Do not let go if you do not want to
Know that its okay if you do decide to

Let yourself build a shrine to your tears
reread the poems he wrote
they are a portal into eternity
Be okay with not wanting to leave it at just that

Reminisce on when you got the wanting washed out of you
how ugly you looked clean
Bask in the residue the stains
the foreshadow in smiling at being called “filthy”
by an Abyssinian son with Seattle tongue

Burn hot inside for him whenever you want to
Fuck outsiders' feelings procreate with patience

Carry the novelty of that love obnoxiously as you want to
other claims will only be as threatening as you allow them to
Listen to those declarations with open ears and a sure heart

Use your heart
as a key
the places you belong will never
accuse you of breaking and entry

If and when you decide to kiss girls
Do not check boxes
But do not not check boxes because you are afraid to


Believe in Hasani
(the hypothetical human being)
love yourself for giving him a name
and appreciate that God gave him a face
Find a way to settle with the idea that he may have many
That “he” may be a “she” or that he
may make his way into your mirror one day

No one is more worthy of your love than you

Make love to your insecurities
be open about the dance you two do

How you are thinking to yourself
you must make this poem pretty,
adequate, less longwinded
Forgetting that you are a stretched breeze
that you encompass everything

Focus, and re-read
every word before these
they prove
Here there is much love
and many vital things to do

Egbe Omo Yoruba National Conference

Baton Rouge
August 5-8
SHITTIN on deez hoes....

haha.
I'm so excited.

this song is a series of what the fucks
shet
Taylor put me on.
I have bomb lovelings,
fuck it..
when you make up a word you should know what you think it means and try to justify it...
but fuck it.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3Q8dlusBk4

“Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.”
- khalil gibran The Prophet

Finally read it last week.
gah.

The poem that resulted in my drive from Hartford to Hanover last week.

The only emotion easier than anger is sadness, which looks too much like pity to be thrust onto a woman of your strength. For my mother, my fountain of faith, who reminds me to fight for what I believe in the worst way sometimes…by the downpour.

Yet another ride
down a snoring road
crossing New England
In the passengers seat
a bellowing history book of sins
and strict rules bound by strength
is beautiful

It is uncommon for you to be this quiet on a ride
but you still say all that you would want to
the percussion of each breath
a matter of fact sound repeatedly punctuated
by a schizophrenic back and forth paranoid battle,
What is described as “a snorting breath during sleep”

Apparently it is impossible to dream whilst snoring
I imagine, dear mother, that you have long been afraid to
that your nightmares look too much like your memories.
It is still unclear how a woman who has seen so much battle
always manages to come out on top.

Warrior woman you raised an Athena like yourself
and most of the honesty between us
emerges out of feeling combatively corned.
when I feel trapped.
which now is left for days like these
when there is no escaping a battlefield with wheels
and a mother with too many lectures
but not enough good questions.

We have not called the same place home in a year
Our storage is full of burnt out thunderbolts and crushed armor,
our phone conversations the biting taste of iron.
I am told too often about my guard (purity), that my clothes are too tight,
that my shields are not high enough, that I know too many men I trust,
that I don’t know the right time to run away from a fight

We have not learned the same things from war.

Last week you asked me to pray for your friends’ brother
A man in Florida who accidently killed his wife,
in an infidelity fueled rage,
…with a baseball bat.
I can say…like I did last week
that despite all the love in me
I have not learned how to pray for men like that.

Today,
I hear you speaking on the phone
relaying the story
trying to defend a party
Using the phrase:
oloriburiuku obirin
meaning
‘horrible woman’
Forgetting that violence is only ever justified
in the minds of those who commit it.
Forgetting the conversations knives and fists
have had with your throat and body
I wish you did not hold that bat with him today
Umi,
I wish that you would not let the blood and hair
claim your hands and hijab

Somehow you do not see the connection in the faults
of this conversation and the one you have with me
in which you claim that a woman’s body is so holy
men can only read sin into it.
I still do not know how to be trapped into that lack of connections.
I have never felt good hiding behind those cloaks
I will never look good in the lessons learned from your mistakes
In that veiling, and its patriarchal God

He
Who only re-disguises himself
As everyone else’s God
And still finds ways to stand in the mirror cursing
And still trying to catch all my holy with the fire from either side

It should be easier to simply choose one of them
what with my cover too lacking to make me a ‘good Muslim girl’
and juxtaposed modesty too abundant for my sexuality to not be questioned
Choosing would surely be easier than this
But I will not feed from flawed leftovers
Dear mother,
I cannot worship at a temple of backwash


Today
I am stuck in the car with you
All the things that cannot be said over dinner,
or a two day visit
being forced back into my throat by my own hands

I wish I could tell you,
as I have learned,
That the world is not all battles
and how to choose the right ones

That you cannot wear your armor all the time
that even if you end up being partially exposed
you can pray for blooms to sprout from the bruises
and be thankful for your thick skin

I wish
I could tell you about all the handprints
and dented breastplates
How I have found away for them to teach me
Resilience

But today
You are fighting, again,
in a world that you think of
as the highest level of hell,
The world I know
as simply the lowest level of heaven
we have not called the same place home in at least a year
I imagine my words would not translate well as they descend
That they may fall
on deaf ears
and hardened hands

I do in fact know retreat
Taking all of me that is
what the woman you would like to be hopes to be
I will go into hiding (yet again)

The monotonous humming of this road
you will not hear me snoring
Will never know I’ve gone to sleep

"We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered."
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard

via (wolffofthesea)

the world actually does not have it figured out.
AT ALL!

I really just did that

DC
New York
New Haven
Hartford
NewYork
DC


...
(four cities) in four days

"Have you ever lost yourself in a kiss? I mean pure psychedelic inebriation. Not just lustful petting but transcendental metamorphosis when you became aware that the greatness of this being was breathing into you. Licking the sides and corners of your mouth, like sealing a thousand fleshy envelopes filled with the essence of your passionate being and then opened by the same mouth and delivered back to you, over and over again - the first kiss of the rest of your life. A kiss that confirms that the universe is aligned, that the world's greatest resource is love, and maybe even that God is a woman. With or without a belief in God, all kisses are metaphors decipherable by allocations of time, circumstance, and understanding"
— Saul Williams (Said the Shotgun to the Head)

(via James Sprang)

"i am like a survivor
of the flood
walking through the streets
drenched with
God
surprised that all of the
drowned victims
are still walking and talking"
— Saul Williams (Said the Shotgun to the Head)

"I cannot tell you the last time I smoked..I got groceries to buy I don't have time to… no, extra munchies?"
-the 'fabulous' homie whose convo I've been eavesdropping on my whole way to new york.


me and him need to be friends
<3

yas =]

"Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror..."
- Khalil Gibran
via. Omar Offendum








Who I was stalking...
because he is worthy of stalking.









he is DUMB sexy.
aiite I said it.
My love Sadia put me on.
His work is matches up to his face.
haha.

HALAL BOOTY.*

He also qualifies as IslamaBAYADNESS.
I have decided.

Apparently he frequents the District(as well as the multiple other places I sporadically do such as Philly and New York)
...welp, I'm not going to SAY anything but.. umm...yea. An encounter needs to happen soon is all.

And ...again.
HE IS DUMMMMMMB SEXY.
shet shet shet triple shet..




I should not be watching this.
SMH..
hormonal angst.
Or is that more than you neededto know?
its not my fault he is so damn pretty.
Actually enough of this, let me go find the artist circles around here he frequents lmao
let the work (or rather procrastination from my own) begin


*Tomfoolery is Ade and Murktarat creating Muslimly contradictions

THANK GOD

for the Pazzaze in my life!
The Universe is speaking to me
and my do I love the things I am hearing.

Ears Open.

It scares me how much I am understanding this poem more and more.
I've been got it deeply, and relating....but today...too much, too much.

Domestic Nomad

let's ego trip real quick shall We.
I give a big wtf in reflection right now..


I have been home, what i call home.. the only place in this country i call home (DC)
For Two weeks
... mind you.. I do not have a house there...

okay...
and in those two weeks
I have spent not one weekend in DC

I am in Philly right now..
for the second time in Two weeks
(more out of necessity than choice)

By the end of the week (according to plans)
I will have visted

DC (going back 'home' in an hour or so)
New York.. to get to New haven so i can get to...
Hartford CT (where my mom lives)[from which i will go to]
Hanover NH to take care of school shit (and drama etc)
New York again for poetry regionals on Sunday... [and maybe a fashion show and play or two.. on Saturday]
all in one week...
actually..??!?

WHAT
THE
FUCK?!

Avoid Tough Questions

I keep skipping the uncomfortable ones subconsciously.. the one's I have already written too many poems about
day 7-10 is all the same person.. Damn, Okay.

Day 11.
uhh. its not complete..its not going to be.. this is what happened when i wrote..interestingly.. raw writing even when its horrible process and stress and this is what happens to many of us somedays.. so fuck it.


It is an anxious afternoon
in the city of brothers we love
I try to pay attention to only the good things
as I miss a bus back home to DC

If the "left us's"
if the dearly departed
are as omnipresent as we say
You already know these things

That our mother is more of a mess now
but that (fortunately, for the present) it has been worse
That I watched a set of twins walk by as I chewed up time
and wondered what it would have been like
to be born with a mirror
That sometimes it would almost be good to forget that i have a sister
along with the lessons it has taught me

I got a means of reflection,
when I was 14 I knew what i would look like at 18
you showed me all the good I would do
and all too often the mistakes I could not handle


1. No matter how many times you are hurt do not become bitter
...on the outside, we both know it makes us feel ugly and that our means for beauty are limited


2.Do Not love men who do not matter
Staying true to this creed is making a harder sound as life breaks me piecemeal, it has only meant that along with him I have let go of something vital

3.Do not lie

It is perfectly clear to me at this point in writing that I am bullshitting so I will not finish this piece, I don't know if anyone is worth of hearing what I actually have to say to my sister it is certainly not worth fucking up in the frame of this or sacrificing or using as a writing warm up so fuck this





Now that I know this morning what bullshitting in my writing feels like (or am rather reminded) I can get to my shit and start my poetic day on my bus back to DC, word.Guhhh.. that was interesting?? see.. Wtf.. yea, whatever.. processing..damn rereading it.. guess who's bitter.. shet

So..

I bought my ROCK the Bells tickets on Friday...

I'm pretty sure this fixes like... everything, technically.

<3

Day 6- A Stranger

To the black man with the scorched skin who at a second gaze burned me to ashes

it is the right time to find you beautiful,

the sun is scantily clad

DC is the city of hot

hot humid nights

and men the color of things that got hot too quickly

I'm still shedding all the ugly i find in me

So it took a second glance

maybe you heard the exclamation

You are a victim

or healing tool,

product of a lie

or pedestal

My throat quivers tsunamis

"I cannot love a man who looks like me"**

Your skin is a slap across an insecure face,

the burning remnants of thinking:

the sun touched too much,

too much.

It is too easy to see the ugly put in me

We like that hard kind of beauty

So, today

you are that purpose-full type of pretty

Wonder if you heard the fright before the exclamations,

the stutter

the pause

the scoff

Maybe

you tell women you meet

that they should love you

for how your skin glistens

for the faint reflections found

in the opaques trapped in your outline

Maybe

they are all lily white

or better still

the right not almost but quite

I wonder if you will ever believe like they do

Like i say, because I would like to

You, beautiful

it was a ripe day to find you

**ade is fucking booooomb

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Deadass in the middle of the 1st one realized I wanted to write about the beautiful African at marshalls.. ye..my cashier, smh

I imagine the shaken sanctuaries

and fallen figures

of your country

are bruised and engraved

over your heart

under your name tag

Dear stranger,

I did not ask your name because

I was afraid it would be beautiful

or that the way you said it would make it so

Did not ask your country because

I am sure it is entirely too close

to my first love's

to bring me any peace

By the proud of your nose

and the faint of your eyes

I'm pegged on certainty of your Somali

And you can surely tell I have a country,

too far from this one

to not be called home,

or mother

--land

I am not proud about anything

around men like you

I am glad you did not ask

The act,

as if all the Africa had been poured out of me,

made it easier to face

something other than yours

I cannot look you in your eyes

I would like my bag

and receipt

and permission

to leave

Thank you.

Damn

Yes.

Shet

Holy God.

Thats that type loving I'm talking about.

Blessings

Today me and the love in my life.

Bought underwear together.

specifically little boys boxer briefs

I'm serious.

I love Taylor Johnson...

yes, its so blog worthy.

Yesterday

I almost forgot your birthday.

like the 10pm type"almost"

Yea. they got me like that...

R.I.P to the only man that I have loved

that has never disappointed me.

Mohammad Yussuff turned 19.

“The heart has reasons that reason does not understand.”

—	Jacques Benigne Bossuel

findlings and tings, random old files.

broken women make bad decisions and

bad decisions break broken women

so broken women keep breaking broken things

Yesterday

I decided that our first daughter's name would have been Imani

meaning faith,

or some variation thereof

I called your bluff

I always knew you would break

under the weight of how hard I love.

Look how you cracked

freewrite

Patriarchy seems to be where are the issues in my problems are leveled.

men, God, Love. (Since God is supposedly male , everytime I am talking bout God is interchangeable with a man/men in my life and vice versa)

freewrite from todays training sess

About the Men

Pre-existence-

They told me that you would make trgedies out of all my hope and rigid perseverance

I do not listen. They told me you were male. I saw me in you. I will always be confused about where I fit on the gender spectrum

Age 12- between now and the last time

You have exposed me to a lot of ugly.

Before I was six I knew about sex

and wont know why until im 15

in the newest old neighborhood

you lifted up my shirt

to expose what was under there

as if to say

I am in fact a woman

I saw you try to cut my mother’s throat

You are leaving now taking everything with you

except the disconcerting assurance that you will be back

Age 18- it was either all you

or you and him between us

but God,

if that’s what they still call you.

You sulked and soaked into the thing that is ‘us’

I wanted to trust you again.

I always get what I want

in the worst way

Age 20- stranded, I wonder if you listen anymore.

the questions I have for you all come out like curses

25- you are no where to be found

30- I start thinking about not looking anymore

35- every laugh is a sacrifice of my heart. I smile to not hurt anymore

it breaks me

40- I stop reading. I do not speak, do not cry. Forgot how to pray

45- my feet are pretty now

from all the walking I refuse to do

there’s a certain beauty that comes when all the hope is drained out of you

50- I wouldn’t recognize you if I saw you,

I am too pretty now

20- I’m still writing silly poems like somehow they can make this less true.

Dear God

Today I hate how ugly you made me.

Sperectomy: the draining-out of hope.

midnight's children

In Response(s)

I do not co-author tragedies.

Dear God,
May I never fall in love again
Amen



I don't ever want to know how to stop waiting

So I talked madd shit.

But he hella redeemed himself. And is still my plan B (maybe A)

I LOVE YOU K'NAAN.

damn why he so beautiful.

oh and check out his huffington post article which made me be like..

dAMNNN

i cant be mad at youuuu

<33

rightchea

gorgeous in fact.

Day 1- Bestfriend

You have my mothers eyes.

my sisters hands

and chest

and smile

and love

you shape shifter you

cradle you rock

you have a million faces

safia-

the summer we met i watched you bloom beautiful

i have never seen anyone work so

hard to tear

broke your shell

woman

height like a sleeping giant

little girl big voice

you worked so hard to tear

for a girl who got all the

'how to cry' washed out of

her

there is bleach in that water

clean slate

you make me feel

like i can begin again.

it started with you.

Taylor

Every broken step

towards

whole

is another

one towards

remembering you

and how

i was not who i am now

before you

love.

you made me know

what type of woman i could be

and how much i would love her

and how

and how

and when

i love you,

my dear.

ade

i brought you

my stories

my burdens

my deaths

a fan-dangled forest of regret

and ugly

you made them beautiful

i cried in on my self

let it steep

poured my delicate all back in

with my hard and stern

i am beautiful

like i was before

but the reflection speaks easier about it

thanks to you.

minilik

i dont remember men before you

they were all brothers

and a father with no puberty in him

i dont know how to love men

i was never looking for a king

i found a prince trying to regain his crown

when you take your thrown

if i cannot sit next to you

i will watch your palace from afar

and smile.

bianca

it was simple with us

there is something

simple

about a beautiful girl

with a lot of heart

and all of it seeping out of her

we were sisters before i met you

my laughter knows you

like my heart knows love

and pain

and when i found you

a part of me came home again

its that simple

with us

piper

i am a whirling dervish

a cracked out queen of

street soothsayer in your life

a crazy girl

with a loud mouth

and a louder

heart

you loved me anyway

you have held my tears

you have held me closer

there is nothing i can say

that can articulate

how much i owe you

a part of my me

omie

you are a queen of queeness

a floating smile

a foolish beauty

a crying growth

I find something

so beautiful

about how true

you are with your tears

with your honesty

with your laughter

your hurt

your bullshitting

your bitching

you are your everything

there is nothing more beautiful

about being a beautiful you

and making no apologies for it

except when its necessary

yarminiah

a beautfiul black man

once wrote about the dimple on the side of your face

there is an equator about you

you make things balanced

i am smalled by you

and always want to grow

bigger

to your heights

so i can reach up to your cheek

and fall into the paradise

of the crater on your face

there is a home about you

a stern mother

a whole sister

a beautiful friend

a careless color and shade

about how confusing it is

to explain how hard

i have

loved you