The boy drama started young

"and on the topic of trust, it's just a matter of fact
that people bite back and fracture what's intact" -The Roots ft. Erykah Badu and Eve on the 1999 classic track, "You Got Me".

This is not a poem. This is a blog consisting of sporadic thoughts I've had in my mind the past few days. I believe the thoughts are intricately related, like a story that hasn't yet figured itself out or a thought process, an idea that's missing the center piece.

- On the beach, two weeks earlier, my uncle joked that I like my men, like my coffee, Black.
- I was on my Queen Bed with my cool blanket between my legs and hugging my pillow.
-I had a dream I was dating Ricky Williams.
In the dream, he kissed like he meant it.
He kissed like a man who knew how to kiss.
He kissed like I was wearing the tight purple dress I wore during Sophomore year of college that made the freshmen boys' blood rush to... well.
My palms were navigating then massaging his head. We were sitting on a staircase being judged.
Even in the dream, it didn't matter.
- I was exhausted in the morning.
I had my Black coffee with three sugars.
- At a gym, during work, I ran into the brother of my first love.
With a white woman who I will presume he is having relations with.
- She is beautiful and probably has a beautiful personality
but on the way home, the only thoughts that ran through my mind were of a poignant conversation I had with a friend,
who astonished me when he said that African American, African, Black South American, and people living in the Caribbean who had ancestors from the African Diaspora,
may all have different cultures, beliefs and personalities,
and may have different thought processes but they are still all Black.
In the United States, they face the same Black discrimination
irregardless of accent or dress.
- My entire family is full of mixed babies
so I can't say a thing about the growing trend
of Black men and White women/ Black men and Asian women/Black men and Latina women/ Black men and anyone but a Black woman.
- Mixed kids are beautiful and love makes a beautiful combination but
light skinned Blacks (from some lit. and my minuscule squint of experience), are treated with more compassion.
- I thought, integration, seeing the beauty in all races, progression, YES.
- Simultaneously, I thought, dark skin is so beautiful and the histories of Black peoples are so rich. Let's hope some of the purity remains.
- I saw a documentary about Ricky Williams a few weeks ago. His wife is White.

What does this all mean? I don't think I can craft a poem, but I think I can write statements.

I hope purity remains when everything else goes by the way-side
I hope purity remains after you and I had mixed our lives into a bowl
of what I had hoped was salad but what had churned into an ice cold smoothie instead
I hope the saliva I used to nibble on your ear remains my own
and that the wrinkles and the sleepless eyes are placed on my own face by my own mistakes
and I hope my dreams remain unscathed,
un-manipulated when the dreams of you and I had fallen by the way-side.

I searched my house for old family pictures to scan onto my computer. I was a photogenic child who always loved being the camera, so God forbid, those pictures become lost or worn down one day. It's like the stories and poetry people never want to lose.

My cousin Tianna is almost one now, and like my brother and cousins were at that age, she's a darling little thing. I bring this up, because first, I love children, and second because it reminds me to save the images of the happiest and most carefree moments.

The kids working at Subway and CVS don't smile. The lady who administered my road-test was a grumpy, bitter, hapless and obsolete middle-aged shrew (who, in-turn, made me grumpy). My father seems to be constantly afraid that our neighbor of two years will call the cops on us as we drive around the block several times practicing for that very road test. (Philosophy of an Asian man, mindset of a Black man in America). One time, from his front porch, the neighbor seemed curious and asked us if we were lost. Needless to say, next-door neighbors don't seem to bond these days so imagine the shock he must have felt when he found out, that on this all White street, he's lived next to people of color for two years. In Maine at least, people seem so void of passion and happiness.

Hence, the pictures, because maybe I'm a hippie, or maybe I'm not hard-core, or maybe I've just been treated very well my entire life, but I like (to be honest, require) being around friendly people. Hence, the pics, and the love of little kids rather than the joyless, insensitive, experienced adults that most become.

I run and write even when I don't run particularly fast, and write particularly well. People have got to find an outlet or, at least, they need to start doing what makes them happy because this place is a hot mess.

July

"We get high on all types of drugs,
when all you really need is love" - Talib Kweli

I've been on Facebook more in the last two months. I've become a bit of an insomniac coming from IHP where I had everyone to confide in to coming home where I always feel that my energy, potential, and love for life is being wasted.

We live in a self-aggrandizing time, which may explain why facebook is so popular. People may feel more self-validated and more understood through it, and it allows them to present the image of themselves they want to present to friends (who should know them through interaction) and to strangers (but if they're strangers, who cares?) Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, this blog even... time for me to cleanse, at least for a little while.

Goals:
1) Three books. Two on Black Veterans in the Viet Nam War for the senior research project and an Ayn Rand novel.

Boggles my mind, this project and how I'm going to survive senior year. Boggles my mind why I didn't try to major in African American and Black studies. Since my father, my aunt, and now my brother, myself and three cousins, are all part Black and we're missing respect and knowledge of Black history and Black culture. The summer is almost over. Senior year is going to be tough.

2) Work, work, work until mid August. A few runs a week. A few trips starting mid-August to NY and bean-town because my hearts aches to be with my friends.

3) Most importantly, get better at writing(I've reached a snag.)

The love, passion, rhythm, love stuff, is easy but elementary. Yet expanding has proven to be a struggle. But a girl's going to keep trying; poetry is like love in the words of J-Lo, I may fail a million times but you can't blame a girl for trying. She is beautiful and if she can and has failed, I guess we all can.

--
Let's make this easier to understand instead of random thoughts forcefully patched together into an obscure concept. It's hard for me; sometimes I want to force the poem to go where it doesn't. I gotta let a few of them sit before I have the inspiration to fix them. The real goal- to be as good, as sexual, as powerful, as raw, and most of all, as subtle as Terrence Hayes is.
The lines:
"people die and fall into each other,"
"when I leave my body, woman, I want to be pure flames, I want to be your song,"
and
"I never want to walk out of the house wearing a coat of ice,"
are immaculate, right?

It's a combination I haven't mastered.

Being stated, like John Lenon in "Imagine" and Christina Aguilera in "Beautiful" where the "I Needs", "I Wish", "I Ams", "I feel" are obvious and simply stated but beautifully written
vs.
Being "artistic" and talking about the struggles of life that everyone experiences and the emotions everyone feels in my own artsy, unique way.
--

trippin' over my own two feet for yous,
over and over-- see I'm not a virgin when it comes to being
love sick- but my soul still urges for the
love hip-logics can't bring

I wish
you were
actually
inside me

so you could stroke my ripples of confusion
into silky tides and lather your doors open
And I wish you hadn't
left a trail
of other yous
for this virgin
--
Eish, lacks creativity.

Power

“"Got treasures in my mind,
but couldn’t open up my own vault
My childlike creativity,
purity and honesty
Is honestly being prodded by these grown thoughts"
-Kanye West

I think there's a misconception that I don't value my friendships and that I don't follow-up on them. I just let things go, progress, and whatever happens, happens. And out comes a lesson I learn to make my heart strong. And it shouldn't be that.

Whereas family is where safety and love has come from.

Friendships are where my voice, power, and philosophy were created. But the friendships come and go, whether it be their fault or my fault. At the end there's a lesson to it. How to support. How to empathize. How to see society differently. How to also think about my own needs and desires. How to move past pain. How to "grow". Picking myself up and moving on... not seeing the impact I had on someone's life and them not seeing the impacts they made in mine because of our different trajectories and because of mistakes.

And I suppose that's how the world works but I'm not interested in going into situations to create life lessons. I don't love hard to create a life lesson; I do it because I'm a person and that's what people do. I think the revolving I have which one friend after another enters and exits has never been what I wanted, and it will take its toll. It's a balance between putting up/ "empathizing" with "inconvenience" and negligent mistakes or walking out of people's lives and watching them walking out of mine. Because everyone is fucked up in the head and everyone is imperfect.

To see people smile and to see people progress, to see the impact I've made on someone's life is very fulfilling. To have conversations with people after 10 or 20 years and to see them become a better version of themselves, that is beyond a blessing.

I've grown from a door-mat to less of a door-mat to not really a door-mat. From shy, to quietly stronger than a lot of people I know. And that strength has made it so I can gain "perspective" and have "thicker skin." But I think it's also created less sentimentality, some coldness, and a little bit of an attitude that says, "this won't shake me- it's just a life lesson."

The thing about young kids is that they jump into everything with all of their faith, all of their love, all of their passion, and without doubts. It's green but it's also very beautiful and endearing. Every time I build my wall up, there's that reminder of "yo, give people a chance. Don't be afraid to hurt. Allow them to be a friend rather than a lesson."

I'm trying to expand my horizons in my poetry. It's difficult.
---
If you slip

There is no segregation between the shallow and the deep end of the pool
But the dudes coming to my party with no wives are a little sleazy
I have qualms about them.
Because jumping in the pool won’t wash away their stench
‘less they end up drowning in the deep end
Yet they drone on drunk in the backyard barbecue
And Pops is grilling ribs but I don’t eat meat…
Where’s my honey to help neutralize my bowel movements
and grow back the hair the chlorine’s killing?
Ahh, he’s standing by the shallow end watching
grown men swim with their bellies full of guilt
and their hearts full of appetite for love
And so he swims over, I think he’s joining them.
Drunks at my pool party telling bad stories about what coulda been
What woulda been if their chicks only knew about come-
passion
What mighta been if their children showed appreciation

But see, they said, what had happened was…
The kids turned into spoiled intellectuals of the white world
From their blue dollar
And the strangers are robot maids folding up the linens they laid on top of
with other women and no protection

So that their liquids could swim deep inside empty souls,
So they can self-loath as soul mates to sob stories and feed lust to drown love.
But I’m not a lifeguard and my love aint even 22.
If he's, I hope the pool floods and drowns away his ugly stench