WTF?

Be Safe

I’m superficial, I know, and I’m growing, but I felt something last night when I hugged her bye. Maybe because I was drunk and she was high, but I didn’t want to let her go. She’s so cute and so stranded and so graceful and so damaged and so ready for whatever is about to happen next. She laid her head on my chest and said “be safe,” and I knew she was talking about more than just the drive home.

Soulmates

You remind me of my ex-wife from a past life who I committed suicide to escape from when I made myself wings of feathers and wax, and fell to my death when I flew them into the sun. You just laughed and floated over me as I drowned.

They say birthmarks are entry wounds that show where we died before, and dreams are just memories we carried with us from the other side, which is why you looked so familiar the first time I saw you. Your feet never touched the ground.

My opening line was “you look like my daughter,” you smiled and asked “how old is she?” I said, “well if it all works out, five years from now she’ll be three, but I’m in no rush.” It felt like a third person existed between us.

And I wasn’t sure who we were before, or who are supposed to be, but I knew that on the other side of the world planted deep inside a forest there is a tree with our names carved into its side, and written in a language neither of us speak is inscribed

“forever is a pretty short time looking back on it,” and even though we may not be able to read it, we would instantly recognize our handwriting as evidence that we were part of the same tribe that died out a thousand years ago, and we would brace ourselves for

the earthquake as our souls shake and vibrate higher. We were sent here to repopulate so there was no time to apologize for everything we were about to put each other through. You just grabbed my hand and said “I look forward to getting tired of you.”

God don’t make mistakes, but people do. Souls only know wavelengths, and communicate through music and colors and sound; they don’t always remember to leave the key under the mat, or come home before 3 a.m., or put the toilet seat down, or

make sure to hold your hand whenever we’re out in public, because the flesh doesn’t understand it’s just a vessel full of flaws. Soulmates exist to serve as a reflection of how truly damaged we really are, how hurt, desperate and unexamined we are.

I never asked for a soulmate, just someone who hates all the same things I do, and in you I confronted all of the things I hated in myself, like a mirror that reveals the first time you realize you are no longer beautiful. My ugly is going take some getting used to.

I used to fear going to sleep next to you because I would get tangled in your hair and you would roll over, strangling me, leaving gasping for air in one of those dreams where you can’t quite wake yourself  up, until I realized that you only hogged the sheets so you could

expose me to the cold and wake up the other side of me whenever my dreams got off track. My arms would always go numb so I could never fight back. So instead of starting a war with you I would just kiss you on your cheek. I need you here with me.  

Maybe we’re just meant to walk through life trying to fill each-other-sized holes in ourselves. Feeling like we swapped souls at a crowded train stop like two strangers who picked up the wrong bag and were forced to wear the clothes they found inside.

I have that sweater you’ve been looking for, it’s a little stretched out but it still smells just fine. Find me again so we can make amends, or at least swap bags one last time. Everyone deserves a seventh chance.

I guess I’ll see you next lifetime when you and I are butterflies and during our migration we can gently clip wings and create a vibration that causes the tides to rise off the shores of Hawaii and forms a tsunami that crashes into the coast of Japan

and floods some kind of nuclear reactor that causes the world to spin backwards and we can finally rest our wings on the sand and look back on all we destroyed with a smile, and I’ll know that it was all worth it just to be with you when the world ends.   

"Don't believe in Kings, believe in the kingdom" 👑🔑

THE WATER IS RISING 

The winds are picking up and people picking their things.... Here we go again but those who stay are not ready to go wherever her winds blow them I know you cant say nobody told them but you can say nobody showed them the way

It figures.... the rich in this city don’t give a damn about thousands of poor niggas

The winds are picking up but for most there's nowhere to go just get on their knees and hope they don't wind up wherever the winds blow

Left deserted without help with the only comforting words of "you have been warned" but the poor in this city are strong we should make it out of whoever decides to weather the storm

we should be safe now we can see the sky now we can go outside now that the winds have died down... but the waters are rising

and the streets begin to overflow those who find a way out still have nowhere to go

There is a thin line between determination and desperation in times of despair it’s almost as if the waters are purging us but who is to decide whose soul will be spared?

I SHOULD BE THE ONE TO SAVE MY PEOPLE I SHOULD HAVE PLAYED MY PART! I KNEW I SHOULD HAVE LISTENED WHEN GOD TOLD ME TO BUILD THAT ARC but i didn't now i know for certain its hopeless I watch my people flee in a mass exodus with no sign of Moses WHO WILL SPLIT THE SEA? WHO WILL DECIDE WHO WILL BE CHOSEN? don't leave it up to me my words are mere echoes LET MY PEOPLE GO! but nobody is listening

It figures the rich in this city don't give a dam ABOUT THOUSANDS OF SCREAMING NIGGAS

THE WATERS ARE RISING and so are the number of victims we cant call on God because he is the one who did this along with tampered-with levee systems GRANDMA SAY GOT DON’T GIVE YOU MORE THAN YOU CAN TAKE AND DADDY SAY GOD DON’T MAKE NO MISTAKES but i know government officials do and i know what happens when THOUSANDS OF SCREAMING NIGGAS ARENT LISTENED TO

What a sight for sore eyes to witness such a painful changing of the seasons the magic curtain has been pulled away now that the waters are receding

and the crowd gasps as they watch the stranded struggle for purpose how government officials really feel about the black social class has finally surfaced

It figures the rich in this city don't give a damn about thousands of dead niggas

Refugees in the same country we pay taxes to live in

THE WATERS ARE RECEDING the cleansing is fleeting the christening is one genuflection away from being completed.

Do you smell that? smells like thousands of dead niggas a city flooded by the same rivers that were used to carry slave ships and forced to swallow dead niggas

You should have know that overboard thrown slaves would not be digested well now the old man river has taken his revenge and he’s making sure you hear the story he has to tell

The slaves kept turning and turning under the sea due to their restless souls until they picked up enough winds to blow them back on the ones who stole them is how the story was told

The winds that blew off the coast of Africa across the Atlantic followed that same middle passage to remind these southern states of their damage

They blew apart those same ports that were used to auction off families on and blew down those same trees that were used to hang niggas on

And as the waters recede back into the river we see government officials still don't give a damn about thousands of dead niggas.

The D Train

I saw you tonight waiting for the D train. I was going uptown to Harlem and you were headed to downtown Manhattan, or Brooklyn, I don’t know, you were on the other side of the tracks so I couldn’t ask you.

You looked dead at me though, like you had something you had been waiting to tell me and you finally got the chance, but I was just out of whispering distance. So, you walked to the edge of the platform

like you wanted to jump. Not into my arms or anything, but like you realized you were about to get on the wrong train and you needed to hurry and get to the right side of the tracks. There was something you needed to tell me.

It’s an impossible leap, you would never make it. Plus, now the train is coming. I guess you didn’t care because you did it. HOLY SHIT, YOU DID IT! You actually ran to the edge and jumped

like you had been practicing your whole life for this. Like a gymnast who had never won a gold medal in anything in her life and now this were your Olympics. Just as you jumped, you opened your mouth to say something

and the train came and cut you in half. It was intense. There was confetti everywhere. I couldn’t wait to see if you were ok or anything because I had a train to catch. It was late and the D train runs funny at this hour.

I mourned you all the way to 145th Street until I remembered that you don’t even live in New York. Neither do I. I came to this island just to get away from you. I guess I should have chosen somewhere slightly more deserted.

8 million people in this city, I was bound to see you somewhere, in someone. Now I’m bound for the Bronx because I missed my stop and I have no idea how I’m going to make it home, or if I want to.  

Are You Happy?

I never fully understood this question. Happy with what? Happiness sounds like an ending to me, "and they lived happily ever after." How can somebody who has more life to look forward to than to look back on honestly comprehend that question? Ask me in 50 years and maybe I'll have an answer for you. 

There are no pieces of you missing. The same way a tree doesn't miss its fruit when the farmers come for the harvest, neither should you worry about what parts of you are not there.

I have an elastic heart. My heart stretches to let love in, and does so pretty easily. My heart has no walls, and no locks - it enjoys being full.  But once that love is gone, or you're gone, my heart bounces back like a rubber band. There is never any empty space. That space you once occupied is no longer there, my heart will still be just as full, only a little smaller, a little tighter - there are no voids in my heart. Only love. But just like a rubber band my heart can be stretched again. You may have to try a little harder next time. You may have to wiggle your way in. 

Finally got to paint both of my grandparents for their birthdays.

Muse

I've never felt so used. All I do is write and paint  and say beautiful things about you

and what do you do besides break my heart? Sure you inspire me but at what cost?

I’ll never own you but I feel like you belong to me.

I’ve called you home for far too long

far longer than these transplanted seeds.

They don't have any roots here they haven't grown any trees.

Yea, they sing you songs but they do you wrong, too.

It’s hard having to share you with those who have yet to shed their leaves.

When they come for a visit and they don't stay I'm the one that sweeps your streets the next day

and how do you repay me?

With hurricanes, and apathy and summers that last too long and disregard but I still hang you on my living room walls  

and invite everyone I know over to see that you're the one who inspires me even if you don't care at all.