truths

She shifts attention from selfish need to selfish need. Tears in hand trying to explain a bag filled with the sorry explanations she takes out and use accordingly. Most people will acknowledge vices of substance use or abuse, but what happens when the substance takes on human traits and characteristics, a heart and a name.

She shifts attention from one to the next and back to herself, painting illusions of stability and love, caring and heart. Except for the fact, that it’s all done in the name of selfish game, or gain, as she fills her soul with the hearts of those who loved her. They say loosing the one you love through some form of deceit can create a state of animosity that clouds perception. I wish this was the case, I wish I was just bitter and this was just some jilted ranting.

Let’s call her emotionally dangerous. She is earth but moves like fire, destroying pathways of friendship and love. Her blaze captures you in its brilliance, but eventually the smoke clears and the wind blows and subdues the fire. She is love that seeks the company of a lover and that lover’s friend, a love that draws triangles, dipped in gasoline and then sets it ablaze. I am wind.

Wind is two-spirited, gently and strong, masculine and feminine. It can shift direction in a second. I refuse to carry the stench of blood and deceit on my journey to possibilities. The one that will never carry the sound of your name to bed, like I had done before despite what my spirit guides said. Despite the fact that I saw deceit and danger in your eyes, yet I ventured in the trap you baited. As I stand back, away from your danger, I see the traps you continue to set, baiting lovers and their friends, playing them both against each other, so that they may fight over you.

Sadness is the individual who feels powerless that they feel a need to create their fantasies. Danger is bringing those fantasies to life at the risk of another’s pain. At the risk of broken friendships and hearts…while your tears create doubts in the minds of those you claim to love, but use for your pleasure. But karma has a way of manifesting truths…you probably don’t even know yours.

Reclaiming me

I am reclaiming my space, my voice, my likes and dislikes, I am reclaiming me. Sometimes when we make deep connections with someone, we tend for their likes to become ours, their musical taste to slowly slip into our CD drive, until your 6CD changer now holds 5 of their favourites and one of yours.

I am reclaiming my music. This morning I filled my CD drive with cds of all my old familiar sounds and sung to the top of the car roof…I felt liberated and happy.

Then you find yourself cooking their favourite food, and forgetting what is yours, quietly brain washing our taste pallets into believing that this tasteless dish in front you, was always your number one pick.

This afternoon I will make a detour to the supermarket and try to jog my memory into remembering what I truly love.

I am reclaiming my favourites. Maybe this result from wanting to please, and while we are busy pleasing others, who pleases us, besides memories.

wanting you

moments

like first smiles

intoxicate me

like finger tips gently

or perhaps accidentally

touching naked skin

and I have studied your lips

imagined how they may taste

on my tongue

as I whisper dangerously close

my body vibrating

trying to grasp the scent

i want to bathe myself in

yet you pull and push me

magic marker boundaries

and erase them

tired of standing still

waiting for some direction

and I’ve released you

more times that I’d admit

but my heart returns to your gaze

and what is it about you

that captures me

in that first moment

of wanting you.

independence for country

Forge from the love of liberty

and too often Independence Day is just another

holi-head for the beach, lime late the night before,

thank God for this long weekend day

happy 47^th

but shouldn’t maturity have kicked in already T&T

shouldn’t we have progressed beyond facelifts

and skirting issues

shouldn’t we be sitting around round tables

erasing this hierarchy of ideals aka illusions

that 90% of T&T would never feel outside

the burglar proofing of our mind

trying to safeguard our thoughts

praying for miracles

shifting blame

when there is nothing wrong

with our hands and feet and voices

to be that change.

independence for me

We just celebrated our 47th year of Independence. Two days have passed and the triangular red, white and black flags seem to flap our national anthem in the breeze. But what do we know of independence? Besides a date, and our national flag flying high, when the majority of the population flying high on depression and bad politics, hospitals with not enough beds and doctors with private institutions offering said patients care at a cost, while we pay health surcharge every month. But this is our Independence we raise flags for, stand in lines to watch the military parade….yiepeeeee we’re free. But free from what? I still can’t sleep with my bedroom window open, I still can’t walk the street holding my lover’s hand, and I still can’t afford to buy a house without a spouse. But happy 47^th all the same.

Some believe, and I did at some point in time, that freedom is a state of mind, and to an extent it is. As a man thinks therefore he is…but one can’t pretend that obstacles don’t exist, counteracting all the positive mantras and beliefs that I greet the day with. And I haven’t stopped believing, but I’m slowly becoming a realist, after a long time of being optimistic about life and love.

An ex once told me that I am a dreamer, and I remember how much that hurt…I guess it’s the same reason I believed that we would always be friends, and not pass as strangers, as we do now. Maybe there was never any love there to begin with; maybe I wasted nearly a decade of sharing a space. And it just goes to show sometimes we think we know someone, but we really don’t. Strangers parading as friends, and as lovers, only in so much as it satisfy their needs. Right now I am trying to free my heart from becoming bitter, but how do I give someone else so much of me again. There is a Tracy Chapman song that says something like “Next time, I’ll keep a little love for myself, enough for my heart to mend…” So I’ve buried some seeds of self love, waiting for them to catch and bear before I venture fought into loveville again…but this time it will be different. So in the mean time ‘happy independence’ country, and ‘happy independence self.’

The personal is political and the political is universal

The Personal

I have wrestled thoughts that jump me in the middle of the night and quiet out-of-control imaginations so that I may at least enjoy sleep. But sometimes, desire haunts me as if it were a live entity, demanding from me resolution or answers, action or climaxes…and I vent to my pen, scribbling emotions, so that I may later make sense of…

The Universal

Like love and knowing. And what is it that makes us aware of someone else’s very breath, their every nuance, the way they smile or laugh, the faint wrinkles around their eyes, the way the bangles on their hands sing as they walk past, not really inviting, but definitely teasing and/or mind-seducing you, causing you to write words dripping in adjectives forgetting about commas and full stops, because you don’t want it to stop.

And then there are others who drop rose petals so that our feet never touch the ground, and yet they remain invisible to us. Their love goes unnoticed. Why don’t we fall for that? Is it that love is made too easy, too much within reach, too accessible. No fight, no gain, and no gain means no embrace, no sweet whisperings, no wet sheets, can’t get any sleep tonight moments. Except the tears for the beloved, they leave on pillow cases, illuminated in morning’s light.

The Personal

There are times when that Love/Beloved status changes, and when do I find a common ground without settling for what’s available, rather that waiting for my desire to be requited. While I wait, I am learning to love me, my nuances and my quirks, my stupid grin, my low guttural wolf sound I make when I’m thinking. My need for solitude for freedom, my moods, my grumpiness, my flowing locks, that gets in the way….ooops another story.

How can I expect someone to really love me, if I haven’t first loved myself completely. Love the goodness, the God within me, so that someone may see that hint, or hue, hear that divine sound, spark, or however people see love and attraction. I must first be my own lover, my own companion and embrace me as a whole, as loving, as love.

RUN-ON-THOUGHTS IN POETRY-PROSE…and

Eyes are always on me, no matter where I turn, what I do, whom I see. I feel like that

Zora Neale Hurtson novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” living life in flashbacks; memories racing in circles like a silly child’s carnival carousel, or like guilty drippings of affairs masking truths with lies. Staring into a mirror’s past reflection, and what do I see now, besides an empty shell where an inflated ego dwelled. Locked door, preventing visitors, and un-rolling masking- tape over windows, over heart, so that no one can even glimpse me. Wait this isn’t about me…I think…I digress.

Masking tape over windows blocking the light from entering, so that the darkness masks everything, including the shadows that walks before our steps. Hmmm if given the option, how many of us would turn the hands of the clock back, erasing mistakes made. But that would be the power of premonition, and I wonder how many lives would be saved then? Maybe those are the gifts of Gods, or God-women boasting about special Shaman powers, and if we dress that up, localize them, call them seer-women, obeah men or whatever you wish, we slowly realize that no spirit-wish can change destiny. Maybe destiny is pre-determined before birth, and being a believer in re-incarnation, I believe in karma and soul’s choice to choose the trappings of incarnation…more digression, but necessary in my mind’s chaos.

So these God-women or shamans, and I digress intentionally, court nature and chant the wind into believing that God is to the north, south, east, west, top, bottom and center of our being. They dream spirit-animals that help us understand our nature. So God is never to the sky but available with every breath and sight of our existence. There is no heaven and hell to be fearful of. No damnation, despite what pulpits shout on early Sunday morning as they embrace the weight of prayers dressed in chiffon and stockings, high heels clutching suits and polished shoes, holding the hands of children. And their smiles make us envy the singing and clapping of the congregation, and when I was a child I believed they were all happy after service ended…but I was only a child.

“Their Eyes Were Watching God” ever wondered what God looked like, it is said that ‘He’ made us in his own image and likeness, then that would mean that ‘He’ is like a mirror reflecting us all. Digressions run the gamut of thought in this piece of sharing. I no longer can identify where my musings end and my digressions begin.

However I do remember looking out at crowds, seeing eyes staring, dead, and I thought that zombies didn’t exist in this country. Dead eyes, lost of hope and dreams walking lifeless, going through the motions of living, cursing life and God and existence and birth and what do those eyes look at, if not at the God within us all. Namaste…my hands together in front me, I bow, hoping to connect their gaze, it never meets mine and I move on, without finding answers.

Each man is now becoming an island, connecting across the matrix of fan clubs and profile pages, sometimes never really meeting the essence of who we really are. Lies cloning identities of whom we think we should be. And who’s the God within us? Who’s the God we’re supposed to be watching, if it’s not you.

Throwing stones to the horizon

I've put my past behind me. Folded my memories and forced them into that draw, deep at the back of my heart. Ten years of friendship and love sliced by a gaze, seasoned by my tears and mixed in this uncomfortable bowl of disbelief. But I refuse to eat the hatred; it leaves a bitter taste that never seems to leave.

Some say it is better to have love and lost. But what if loosing is all you seem to do, then what's the sense of rendering yourself vulnerable to new possibilities. I know the word possibilities presents many variations of life and situations, but I can't help it if mine all seem to go in a certain direction, dotting the horizon as the sun places a tired day to bed.

And yes i've read 'The Secret" and practice positive thinking, but perhaps this is my fate, preparing me to strengthen my faith, so that I may one day stand firm like bamboo, with the resilience to weather life's tantrums.

Easily broken, my heart pumps tears through my veins, and still old lovers stab at my delicate mask, perhaps waiting to see me break, as they snuggle close to new love, disrespecting all that we have shared. But this is life, I suppose. The tears that run through my veins will eventually evaporate through the sweat of my pores as I toil and toil building myself for me again.

So this is the stone I throw to the horizon, finally putting this old love to sleep. The note attached says. "I wish you all the best, may the blessings be."

River