* 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
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Monday, November 8, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
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.)
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.)
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
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
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?
Sunday, August 8, 2010
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
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
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