When my mind is full
I watch my thoughts
I realise crosses
are really the same as noughts.

I watch my breath
fill up space in my chest
and pacify my ego's need to protest.

Control is not a prerequisite
of a happy soul.
The same way your 'other half'
is not a prerequisite to your whole.

So once in a while let it all go
receive yourself,
the highs and lows.

Don't 'empty' your mind
in attempts to unbind
unwind, rewind, or realign
for how can you?
When you've no idea
what you've just declined.

So when your mind is full
and paints your heart grey,
become mindful of the fact
your thoughts make you that way.

Splinters, blisters.
Losers, winners.
Saints and sinners.
"Come in for dinner" s

It's where we learned to socialise.
Our very own sovereign land
zero politics
and conflicts always solved
hand to hand.

Loud junctions juxtaposed
against our little corner of paradise
motorists peering in when they stop at that red light.

Ringing on doorbells, buzzing on intercoms
The anticipation
to hear whether your friend was home or not.

Colourblind kids with the most vivid sight.
Retrieving footballs under parked cars
was the extent of our plights.

I didn't know where the world would take us
or the type of people it would make us,
but something I learned from a young age
is that the rest of the world isn't like
Gooseacre.

Where anger and grief learn to handle their frustrations
Where your mind sits down and tends to complications…

Where truth and lies stand on equal footing
Where ambitions and doubts do their pulling and pushing

Silence is…
Chaos and calm
Spiritual balm.
The abyss where you can find both,
healing
and harm.

The wind doesn’t blow through their hair like it does the others.

It meanders through the curls of our melanated mothers.

It carries heavy accents infused with both love and suffering

over badly connected telephone lines

and the language barriers of anglocentric confines.

It navigates their thick 4c forests

as do the rigid combs they brandish to govern expanding crowns

that sit above scalps which resemble

the most polished oak.

You see, the water does all the things it’s meant to.
It does everything and nothing
It goes everywhere and nowhere.

Its essence is dichotomies and dualities
The shores line its gentle brutality
Infinite and dangerous - an endless finality
Sometimes still – a lifeless vitality.

The wind can push it
The earth can shake it
To understand this paradox is a risk –
Don’t take it.

A stagnant mind will see you drowned.
Producing these lines, but not a sound.
Words to be written but not to be spoken.
These are the words my soul has chosen.

A moment of clarity
Stifled creativity plaguing my sanity.

Negativity’s rhyme scheme
Always alters the atmosphere.
Writer’s block obscures a slighted right hemisphere.

The brain’s left side is logical, factual
The right side intuitive and creative,
My brain marches - left, right, left, right
All over ink stains and blank spaces.

Navigating these ruts requires emotional dexterity
and my creative muscles have been stiff
So, it’s difficult to write with sincerity.

I can’t just churn it out while I’m burning out
Maybe I should try, I can be quite cynical
Not all creative blocks are easy to lift
Mine weighs one hundred and seventy odd syllables.

Let's meet under all of this.
Under all the skin and politics,
under all the hate and animosity
that society is burdened with.

Mother nature got it right
she waterproofed our skin.
She didn't waterproof our minds,
hence the state we're in.

So it's hard to meet below the surface.
Just easier to swim
and thrash about in the waves of our ideological whims.
Front crawling, backstroking
"Go with the flow" kind of doomed.
The odd ones butterfly stroke,
the rest of us are stuck in our cocoons.

Dylan’s roof covers your house supposedly,
But you can’t go through the front door,
you don’t even have a key.

You see, Dylan’s roof covers your head
ever so reluctantly
But Dylan won’t kick you out,
you were brought here to work for free.

Dylan doesn’t like you
or anyone with your complexion
But Dylan won’t admit it,
he’d rather ‘serve and protect’ his brethren.
By serve and protect I mean swerve and reject.
Any responsibility for a bullet in your chest.

You see, Dylan’s roof doesn’t just cover 52 states
It covers millions of your reflection
that share melanated traits.

The windows under Dylan’s roof give you a glimpse of your potential.
Freedom and happiness.
You trace the future with a stencil.

After some time,
Dylan’s roof will start to dissipate.
The rains of your liberation
will begin to precipitate.

The seeds that were planted
by the ones gone before us,
will start to germinate
in the fields that once tore us

Intertwining souls
Immaterial and immature
Navigating each other’s boundaries,
coasts and shores.

Redefining what’s commonly referred to as
‘Love’
Requiring understanding and flexibility
Requiring both strength and vulnerability.

Weakness is courage,
when teetering the tightrope
of romantic and platonic.
Insecurity and traumas,
also balance on it.
If and when you fall off,
it is into the chasm.
where balance is no longer required
and perfection is no longer desired.

The fear of letting go.
to tie up loose ends.
The irony of falling,
In a bid to ascend…

Unearthing a few grains of soil could create sinkholes
Or create more solidarity
The ones that grow and stand tall
Are ripped out and harvested for sustenance

We live in it
grow in it
sustain it.

Our bonds are like packed soil,
porous but poreless
in appearance
a state of perpetual disturbance

With every handful forcefully taken
endless grains fall in on themselves.
To save face
save race.

I could be
Still.
But the words never will.
Stop
Writing themselves.

"Thoughts spill over as ink to a quill..."

When I'm in the ground I'll
Still
Reside in the words that I write.
Until

My blood dries.
And the universe has had its
Fill
of what I have to offer.

Somewhere between the pages of Soyinka's Ake and my wondering mind
The Robin comes to visit me like it did last time
I catch the fleeting body at the edge of my periphery
but for moments I ignore it
mistaking it for leaves falling from a tree

But it's summer,
and there are no big trees in my garden.
The Robin lands right at my feet
and for my granola crumbs it bargains
We stare at each other, both equally curious
I ignore and return to Ake
I think it finds that injurious.

Throws a tantrum around the garden for roughly 5 seconds,
but almonds in my granola to the robin they beckon.
Fluttering around me ever so nimble
landing at my feet again
and the granola deal rekindles.

This time we exchange looks
with an unspoken knowing
so I submit and get to my granola throwing.

Nostalgia.
A chance to live it again.
To remember it differently.
More fondly.
A re-arrival.
At a place once overlooked
A reappreciation of life.

Nostalgia, is what we yearn  for
moving forward, but looking back.
Striving to recreate a feeling
our present selves may lack.

An inception of missed moments and
lost focus.
Nostalgia is that bridged gap.

Nostalgia is all versions of ourselves
Indulging in those split second, missed seconds.
Sitting in the audience calling for an encore
a sign that we have found
that bliss we search for.

In fact,
it was found it a long time ago.
Nostalgia told me so.

I crave the sun.
I crave the feeling of the heat wrapping my skin in tranquillity
and beams bringing braveness to my being.

So when the clouds crawl across, I wait.
I wait for its smile to creep out from behind the obstruction.

Patience is not my forte
but I wait
because the sun gives me what many cannot.

A warmth that asks for nothing in return.

Is it God or my narcissism
constantly chipping away at my psyche?
Is it God or my narcissism
forever dictating my wrongs and rights?

Am I religious or just conceited?
The question pesters me.
Quite frankly my mind is just depleted.

Occasional retreats into my mind
became regular visits.
Then I became a permanent resident
and so, nowhere else felt like home. Nowhere else could.
Always just inside.
Inside the outside.
Or rather, what the outside had made of me.

Inside pain
Inside scars
behind dark eyes
that had long since lost their stars.

Hoarding pessimism and harbouring cynicism
mistaking resentment for activism,
unrefracted anger through a hollow prism,
locking arms with isms and schisms.

The world knocked all hours
I would look through the peephole, but never open the door
The glass on it was stained bloodshed
A panorama of the world overwhelmingly red
but blue, in 1803 on a Dunbar riverbed.

Once, I opened the door  
the world crawled into my pores.
pain and profanity stretching in my skin
wearing me, tearing me.
eating away at an empath, of course.
I was told that my mind and skin needed apathy to reinforce
I am to stop the world from putting me on all fours.
My nature does not allow for me to be so coarse.
So for now,
I close my doors.

Days inside are boring and longer, but
Understand your frailties.
So we can come out stronger.

Stay inside
For those hurting inside.
Stay in your home
For those suffering alone.

When you hear "Don't keep all your eggs in one basket"
Translation: "Don't put your heart in a casket".
I only have one heart
so I freely impart it.
I don't label it heartbreak,
you can't tape it or mask it.
The heart's the greatest gift
it only breaks if you guard it
and I never question it
I don't care much for asking.

Heartbreak and heartaches
aren't things that your heart makes
it's teetering the scale
of what the heart gives
and heart takes.

I hear the unfiltered tune of birds from somewhere among the trees.
Unaware that I watch them with my pen
they keep singing.

The lone generator,
where the towering evergreens used to be,
emits a soft baritone hum.
It's loudest on the days when the sun is brightest
as if mourning the loss of that reposeful shade.

So I try to write some shade...

and the tip of my ball point rolls me back in memory
to that stubborn 'NO BALL GAMES' sign
that would try persistently to deter our playfulness
but instead
made childish rebellion so much sweeter.

The low gravelly glide of pen to paper stops
as if the words have been delivered to their destination.
And my senses come to a standstill
to check which memory they may have accidentally dropped
along the way.

...then they remember

and my nostrils welcome the scent of Mum's cooking,
which flows inwards and floats downwards
where it branches out in my chest
and gently pulls my heart into an innocent grin,
that sometimes I forget,
but Mum and Dad never will.

Am I meant to just hold my breath?
If I don't then I might just get knees on my neck
or bullets in chest
from a pig with a bulletproof vest
who sees this melanin
as the greatest of threats.

"He was this, he was that"
I don't care, HE WAS BLACK.
unarmed citizen with a cop on his back.

I don't wanna hear the "the all cops aren't bad" raving.
That's like saying "three percent of white people controlled slaving"
but if the other ninety-seven cared we wouldn't need saving,
so George Floyd was dead
way before the cops came in.

R.I.P.

There's borders between the clouds in the sky
and I wonder why the space between us
can't be as soft down here
as it is up there...

I gaze at the clouds with eyes of the guilty
ashamed we've carved up something so pretty
with cities, committees, concrete gritty
Clouds stare down with nothing but pity.

If borders that know nothing but war
could be given the serenity of the clouds or shores
your feet wouldn't bleed to claim what's yours,
to live free wouldn't be something to pay for.

When the ground mirrors the sky
and our hearts reflect July
we will all look at one another
without bordered eyes.

Hearing is not listening
we fear, so start missing things.
Far off and dissonant
souls always stiffening.

Try social distancing
from the incessant whispering,
a product of your conditioning
so very limiting.
That voice in your head?
So very crippling.

Look within, start witnessing,
the ego needs a visiting,
a minor repositioning.
then you may find
your compassion
doubling, tripling
nevermore dwindling.

Exit yourself
listen in
ensure that you're listening.
Not always to the words,
but to loud eyes glistening
Not always to the conformist,
sometimes to the dissident
Not always to the waves
sometimes to the rippling.

It's so much easier to write from pain
when sorrow and sadness
have ink-like stains
when ink spills, it glistens
before it drains
but within that spillage
paper's made less plain.

Write your smile,
write your pleasure
write your wings
with rhymes for feathers.
Let your delight go unfettered
give your heart those twenty six letters.

Let your pen tear through paper
like a grin to cheeks
let your verse sing songs of bliss
you've not heard in weeks.

Or months,
or years
through prayers
and tears
or however long
your ambitions have been hostage to fears.

Make your happy easy
freely and completely
daily and weekly
scrawl those words sweetly.

Until your pen smiles
as much as it cries.
Until your cheeks hurt
as much as your eyes.