Home is where the heart is but the heart is a broken place.
          I hate
how loud I must barely scream so that people can see my face:
          I am dark
and this is a time of shadows.

Sometimes what worries me most about us
is not that we are forced to carry guns and **** our own mothers
is not that we are pulled from our classrooms back into our homesteads
is not that some of our leaders feast while we become skinny UNICEF models
is not that if only one molecule of my DNA was different I could have lived without ever knowing how to read even a single word
is not even that the smallest of things can wipe out entire villages in an instant-
mosquitoes, viruses, locusts; slave ships.

Sometimes what worries me most is that
my headphones carry more sounds of strange places
than my heart will ever know-  that not even my brothers and sisters
sold off to those strange places ever knew, as their children are hung off
the trees of Jim Crow and we call them strange fruit, and that
maybe our first president didn't marry a white lady; the white lady might have married him.

Sometimes what worries me most is that for just over eighteen years
of seeing thinking feeling breathing being I couldn't
have ever told you what Africa meant to me past the occasional 'dumela'
to my mother's mother but never, never did I know or now know or will know my mother's mother's mother's mother's mother
because
she can't fit inside the cellular America that I hold in my palm.

And this is why they call us lost.
Because home is where the heart is but the heart is a broken place.

One time, my five year old cousin said matter-of-factly
that black is ugly. In my Primary School days
everyone said I should stay out of the sun lest I get darker.

But
I'm here to tell you that I don't even bother wearing a sun-hat anymore.
I'm here to tell you that I don't cut my hair because to do so would feel like oppression.
I'm here to tell you how vivid and lovely and blessed I do feel to have been born in broken-heart home because at least it has soul.
I'm here to tell you that, yes, I do remember
that time when the whole world knew what to do about ****** and Bin Laden but never could get round to talking about Cecil John Rhodes.
I'm here to tell you that
Today, that conversation starts with a toppled statue.
Today, that conversation starts with my voice.
Today, this conversation starts with a poem which proclaims-

child I am, child I am, child I am, child I am, child I am-
that this is my day. This is my day.

The Day of the African Child.

Strip the words of all their excess until only, only, ONLY the soul and the essence and the heart and the life and the breath of those words remain; naked, bare, coldandwarm and me.

You wanted the truth so now here it is:
I want you to **** me up.

I want you to eat me alive
and tear me up and
rip out all my pages
and then struggle to glue them back together knowing
that you probably won't try because -oh!..-  there's another page.

Open me.

End my being with your marginalia.
Write on my skin with ink if you have to,
but stain me. Stain me
with your negligent splashes of volatile
explosions of how your name tastes on your tongue.
Show me what it is to cry until you cry out blood
off of your throat. Let me know  
why your vivid hair always curls like that
without your permission. Tell me that I don't need
your permission to do the same to you
because everyone says my hair isn't combed
and you say you can't see the difference when it is so
bite me.

Bite me.


Bite me.



Bite me.





Tear apart whole chunks of my flesh until
you have had your fill. Smile that smile
that smells its smell of blossoming blood
like a poppie that decided to implode outwards.
Do it so that Faust is not even a second too late
to offer us his bargain because we were eons
ahead of him. Do it so that I understand why
you called me a hurricane. Am I your disaster?

Take me to your hell. Your eyes
excite me and I want to know why.
We should burn out violently.
Not be put out. Not gently.

Yes.
In the silence I don't grab you.
Next time I might.

You asked me to write a poem about you so here it is:

Hell is brown-eyed.

Today I watched him put his heart into an empty locker again...
He did it slowly and cautiously,
As if to put emphasis onto how long it's been since
He's satisfied himself and not satisfied me.
He used to indirectly claim
that I was smaller than his textbooks-
that I was smaller than his backpack, but just a more heavier weight to carry.
I never knew if he saw the strains I felt more as a burden than he did-
but if he did he ignored it because I never lost an opportunity to turn my pain into a fire-alarm.
Every day we talked about how if it ended it was worth it and
how it still made sense even if we counted days like a bombs detonating time.
His locker grew colder,
And I watched the clock more and more-
I guess he couldn't tell that
I was measuring my heartache with each heartbeat
That burned per second.
I guess he couldn't tell-
Because we talked like we knew each other.
Now I watch him put his heart into an empty locker...
I guess I shouldn't be surprised when I hear a heartbeat inside of there,
That belongs to neither mine,
Nor even belongs to his own.

Death is never the worst fate
Alas I realize this too late

I wish I could have stayed in bed all day today,
Writing poems about entertwining fingers and tangled legs;
About lips that never moisten themselves; About tickles that, abruptly, turn into
caresses and lingering touches.
I would have written about cuddles and tight ******* embraces that didnt require that "thing" they like to do most;
About kisses that make you yearn for nothing less than a lifetime supply of Them.
I, simply, wish I'd have just stayed in my room
In my bed and
Penned all morning about the complex simplicities of coexisting with Desire.
I'd have written about how Competition was welcomed with unfurled arms, kissed and un-coated at the door.
I'd have written about how it was welcomed as a third party to the bed;
how we would vye for its approval and battle for 1st place as Best Giver of Love.

..But, instead, I'll just write a poem about the poem id have written had I just stayed in bed today.

There is beauty in the End;
Beauty in a conglomerate of
Failed fairy tales we
Once thought would make up
Our life's happy trails.
Virtue hangs purposefully
On quivering lips
and racing heartbeats
that foretells a demise-
There's MEANING in the End.
Wipe your tears.
Dry your eyes.
These are means to every End.
So enjoy that Last Kiss
and mourn not the story that it concludes
But await the one that it begins.
For like I said,
There is Beauty in the End