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It's better if I lose
because that means that you lose too
and I can live ten lifetimes
facing every single truth
the fact that all I've done
the obstacles I faced
how I stood in the outcome
proves everything I say
I will not succumb
even if you think youve won
I can feed off the defeat
as you stand there with none
Drowning in the smell of transcendence,
I saw too many people,
from the days I don’t like,
the days I try to keep in the basement.
Between clutching toilets and empty talks,
I met everyone a second time,
and now I’m locked in a car alone.
I couldn’t breathe and was losing a war with my mind.
Trapped in this prison, listening to people’s voices.
It was a beauty of a sound,
like an orchestra from a muse,
with the crying face from abuse.
With my tears still hanging on the window,
you whispered soft sparks of fire through my ears,
when you asked me,
where were my tears,
and what were my fears.
The kind only a candle can hear.

The night we were ballroom dancing with blindfolds on,
every light was off and the curtains drawn.
Swaying into the dark, like an avenue of trees.
Your eyes were born in that tiny moment,
where you want to believe.
Your heart was born,
in a change of season,
where you gave me no reason,
but to leave.
You gave me the keys to your heart,
then changed the locks.
Our love was like a delicate dandelion,
and you blew away the seeds,
so they flew with their tiny parachutes,
into the wind of the past,
and to cling to a stranger’s boots,
so you could walk away from the start,
and peer at me through your window.

After your heavy breaths,
you told me,
you’d rather be part of my story,
than a work of art, in my worry.

Then I woke up at the Main Street Park.
Now up on my knees,
I glanced at one of the trees.
The words “I loved her”
carved into the wood.
To have learned a lot about identity, and self-negation, and alternative identities, and what it means to be an indigene, and Afro-adjacent and the concept of eurocentrism, and ideals of appearance and how they are appropriated by deliberate power structures who seek to marginalize and condemn to maintain circles of dominance…To know that we don't live outside of those circles.

It’s understandable that you've waivered over who you thought was attractive or not...naturally you are not outside of those circles of influence...and some days they put a gloss over you and might for a while convince you that we are oscillating farther and farther from the false ideals of appearance.

They put you on a spell that tells you whose beautiful, that our brown skin is not brown gold, that our eyes are not black emeralds, that our bodies’ hair must be removed, because the only hair that should be allowed to be left on a body is blond hair, because the world has taught you to think that our hair, our black hair is an alternative, an intruder.

It is an impeding and ever-growing pain to become a conscious man…one that is learning about the injustices in which he has ignorantly been a victim of all of his life.

To have thought once that I was not attractive because I was not attractive, and that I was not sexually desirable because I was not sexually desirable…

To think that the universe had devised it to be this way as if there was no conniving vice guiding these concepts of normality and abnormality…the standards of beauty and ugliness…

To come to the painstaking realization of being robbed of the truth…of the manipulating lies and biased standards of appearance that had been constructed so far back before our birth.

To realize that we are beautiful but that this fact would be one that would be negated.

A reparation that would be contested and denied, giving over the claim to legitimacy to those who judge this trial because they too have been veiled by the lie.

Recognizing that the identity as a brown, indigene, homosexual man with brown eyes and black hair (with remnants of a French grandfather who people can refuse to believe and because of that he does not care to acknowledge that part of his heritage. Realizing that that identity is dangerous to be acknowledged as being beautiful.

…Because if those that control the power structures that dictate the normality of appearance declared that that was beautiful you and everyone else in the world would never ever doubt that attractiveness.

But again that's dangerous even revolutionary because it would supplant the beauty and more importantly the power that white people (and those that aim to oscillate closer and closer to the Eurocentric ideal) gather from maintaining that dominance.

Shouldn’t we have a right to be angry and jaded? After being burdened with the truth and consciousness...we should have a right to be. It is a burden to be conscious and we should very much want reparations...The more the injustice being construed against us becomes clearer and clearer the more we must hold contempt against euro-centrism and disarm any semblance within the pride of European descent to superiority.

It’s unnerving to realize the slight that is being used on us to beat us down. These conniving power structures have managed to get under our skin and as if through remote operation have unleashed on us...ourselves.

It’s the best weapon of destruction...of control and disillusionment. Because they don't wish to destroy us, at least not until they've extracted our worth for their gain and consumption without our interruption.

We must not be unconsciously wielding individuals who think we are ugly, and who are paralyzed by a superficial analysis of what is the optimum of appearance, which we think we are not.

Abhor the inability that has been forced onto us, to declare we are beautiful.

That the weight of the lies, the farce, the systems of marginalization as they apply to appearance carry more legitimacy and authority, than our truth...the honest truth…

It’s asphyxiating to always face confrontations and juries who will indefinitely argue for the indictment of our ugliness.

To which deep fear and disbelief will be manifest in the paralysis of eloquence and ability to articulate an opposing argument.

The saddest thing would be that they have prevailed so well and penetrated our consciousness and conceptualizations within our minds, which has made it way easier for them to force us to see ourselves the way they see us.

Pick up like a hound those nuances among those that talk, and how euro-centrism has defiled their consciousness!

Insides can't help but churn and recoil with madness and try to say no don't do that! Stop the killing of the legitimization of your and my beauty!

Don't ever be apologetic. Just know that this is something that troubles us and is complex. Concede to the fact you won't ever have to suffer the injustice that us and other brown and black people have to try to subvert and alter as part of our journey toward the empowerment of all human beings.
February 10, 2013
Yesterday I sat on your porch,
and drew pink chalk hearts around
your doormat.  You asked me if I
wanted sweet tea and I said yes,
though all I really wanted was your
lips against my ear.  Whispering how
much you missed the smell of
my perfume on your pillow.

And sometimes I take snapshot of my
face when I cry. I mail them to you
in a grey envelope and on the back of every
one I write down confessions about
what animals I'd run over in the
road that day, and how they all made
the same loud thump under my wheels,
no matter how hard I pushed on the gas
pedal, or how much I turned up the stereo.

Occasionally you bring the pictures
back to me, telling me everything you
know about radio waves, road ****, and how
they relate to the tread on my tires.  You tell
me things I won't ever need to know, but
will never be able to forget no matter
how many times I try to burn the memories
of you from my frontal lobe.

I guess that's another reason why I love you.
Because no one's ever told me how
they make the colors in my favorite
fourth of July fireworks.
Seriously though, I am so blank when it comes to a title.

EDITED!
 Feb 2013 allan jain bonder
Savio
We listened to jazz all night,
I had no wine in the tiny fridge,
that was,
supposed to be the kitchen,
we took *****,
I kissed her stomach,
as she lit,
red cigarettes,
with a yellow lighter,
that was thin,
like her neck,
long long long like her,
legs,
we made love with the lights burnt out,
from staying up,
for so many nights,
laying on the hardwood floor,
discovering silver-wear underneath the couch,
and coffee mugs,
to pour our,
Gin into,
that costs 3 dollars,
at the downtown,
liquor store,
we made the city,
smell like cigarettes Gin and ***,
the dogs barked,
2 blocks away,
when she moaned,
and Norwegian birds,
migrated here,
to nest,
to listen to her sing,
when she,
took a bath,
we listened to jazz all night,
on the tiny radio,
that blinked the incorrect time,
and when she left,
I kept the bills paid,
the tiny fridge,
full of wine,
and grew my beard,
when she left,
the jazz at 2 AM,
seemed sadder,
and the piano,
sounded,
more like a her saying goodbye.
As soon as I said that
God laughed upstairs.

You inspired me at least.

There's two huge mistakes:
when you shoot and you shouldn't,
and when you should and you don't.

Nobody knew
about the killing
but all of them knew how to get out.

Don't fix a mistake with a mistake.
             Don't be pride.
                              Don't disappear.
I know you have a tendency to do that.

We know who we are
but we try to convince each other
that we are something else.

And I don't want to do that anymore
The last time
I saw my landlady in the hood

She said, 'I hear you been spending
a lot of time in the woods'

It's true, I said

'I thought so
That's you
you'll sleep in the woods
before you'll sleep in a hotel
have your tea and you'll be happy'

It's true, I thought
happy
in hoods and woods
My elbows feel damp today like they’ve been sitting in
Small pails of oil and someone forgot to tell me.
They feel drenched
Where if someone tried their very hardest to pinch the skin
I would feel no pain.
My only moment of invincibility.

My elbows are boney-
From my mothers side of the family
Like my toes are shaped like my fathers
And no amount of brightly colored nail polish will distract from that fact.
My hair is all my own and my eyes, a cinnamon mix
Caught between browns, yellows, and
Gluey waves of molasses.

But my elbows feel damp today
Even though its fall and skin likes to crack and break and shutter in the wind’s blue outrages.
But skin is only skin
And I didn’t die from scraping my knee on that branch hidden in the big vulnerable pile of leaves…

It’s fall. And leaves are caught struggling with
Conformity and peer pressure.
Their newly painted toenails scream out insecurity;  
Caught between greens, yellows, and
Cinnamon mixes.
Like gluey waves of molasses.

I bet some of those leaves have damp elbows too…
Joesph L. Clark then decided to stand up, because
The gravel was hurting his knee.
"Well, why not?" He pondered,
Aloud. That was a mistake.
"Because Joe,
You can't make a living off of
Poetry and whiskey."
Her voice was sharp
Like knives, as strong as
A meat pounder.
Joe short of liked that,
Though.
"And besides, there are other men
Here in this town that can hold my
Hand tighter than you ever will."
To that, Mr.Clark's jaw tightened,
His hands around themselves did so as well,
And with a tilt of his head he muttered
These words out of his bearded face:
"I'm no option baby,
I'm all or nothing."
And walked away knowing that
At least he had the dignitiy to be
A man at times.

Ms. Eleanor P. Carney's
T-strap heels struggled against
The grain of the dirt road, as she ran after him.
Tight hand holding made her palms sweaty, anyways.
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