i had to touch you.
no reason —
just the pull of knowing
twenty-six days
is all we have left.

i plan
to press my memory
into your skin
every day,
so you can carry
the echo of us
through the ache
of my touch,
even after you vanish
and leave me behind
with no one
to guard my heart.

THE KIND OF THINGS POETS THINK/DO

all its little life
the triangle longed to be
a circle

"I want to get around!"
it piped up
in its little Isosceles voice

"It's...it's preposterous!"
screamed his mother Scalenely
"...whoever heard of such a thing!"

"You should be proud of your lines!"
scolded its grandpa
Equilaterally

"A triangle can not be..."
said his Papa in a right angled kind of way
"...anything other than a triangle!"

"I always felt I was a circle
trapped inside
a triangle's body!"

one day a passing poet
eavesdropped in an idle moment
on what the lines were saying

"Why ever not...why
ever not" said the poet
poet chaps tend to think like that

so he erased the brave
little Isosceles
drew him again as a circle

"Wheee!"
laughed the former Isosceles triangle
delighting in its circle-ness

this is the kind of things
poets think of
poets do


*


Ahhhh this wasn't Maths...this was play...teaching Tilly her triangles as a bedtime story. and the technical terms didn't phase her as they were just luscious sounds and she went marching about the house the next day proclaiming isosceles in a a loud declamatory tone with lots and lots of spit....scalene was also a delight to say with barred teeth which she used to frightened the cat...equal...lat...or real was her brave attempt at the other...so she knew her shapes and what was what and had a lot of fun doing it...she was only 5....and a little tomboy....someone had told her that girls can't do that...so as well as teaching her her triangles....she was also being told that hey....you think it...you can do it...she was only 5....and a little tomboy....someone had told her that girls can't do that...so as well as teaching her her triangles....she was also being told that hey....you think it...you can do it...

This was Tilly's TELL ME A STORY! one night in the long long ago-ness of her girlhood. Little did I know I would be still telling it all these years later..wonders will never cease.

What the ******* looking at
I’m that loudmouth
Cotton-picking
***** ***** you heard about
I’m that slick-talking, big-walking *******
****, I am a *******,
*******
I’m a watermelon-eating, cornbread-munching, fried-chicken-smacking *****
I’m a black **** that will do anything for the white skin, for those white men, that little bitty white plan
That western thinking, that only got us sinking.....
Into generational oppression
Contemplating deep thoughts of depression
Like clockwork
Over and over again
Wait
Over and over again
Is my clock broken?
NO!
Over and over again
In this sin, we call life
Playing the game with a disadvantage
A Catastrophic injury
Not having all the tools to conquer
This constant relapse of cycles
Hating myself so much that hate you
Hating myself so much that I beat you
Hating myself so much that I **** you!
As I say,
Yes sir,
No sir
Yes *****
No *****
But hates his own kind  
A *****, who doesn’t sit by the door
But on them corners!
Right on that corner on 79th
Or maybe 78th, or 63rd maybe 65th,
Name a street, I’ll sip the 5th
As I plead the 5th, for crimes I did not commit
Feeling so bashful and so cloaked with indifference, that I cop a 5th
1st, 2nd, 3rd—5th
As I amend my thoughts
I understand!
Just another body to this cause
Again
I don’t think you understand my pain
So again
I’m that ***** not by the door but in them fields, crushed in between a jail cell and genocide
With homicide in my conscience  
Ready to blast nine shots by two Glocks in a ***** that looks at me crazy!
From being a crack baby
To selling to crack babies
From whips to chains
To whips to chains
Not knowing why I hate
But deep down inside, I am full of love
Unfortunately, I will never show love
Because I was never shown love
and in the deepest form of honesty, I don’t know how to love.
So, with not knowing the stereotypes continue
And forms a mind of its own
Hate!

Life feels heavy —
as if I lack the strength to carry on.
Loneliness demands it so;
I've grown used to fleeing from what's real.

I watch others live their love-filled lives —
but it's never enough.
My body aches for it,
and so does my soul — to love, to be loved.

Yet still, a spark glows deep within,
flowers bloom in my heart,
whispering softly:
Spring is near.

And the scent of those blossoms —
it reminds me of you.
I think we fit, like verses in rhyme —
have you ever felt it too,
when you looked at us from the outside?

I saw you first from afar —
one glance, and my heart was already racing.
I fell for your eyes right then and there,
on M.M. Street, number twenty-seven.

I took a photo of that moment,
the place where we first met —
it still lives in my gallery.
And maybe, one day,
if I write a song,
I’ll make it the art cover — meaningful and true.

Since you,
everything around me has blossomed —
flowers in my chest,
butterflies in my stomach,
seeds of something new scattered everywhere.

If Spinoza had seen you,
he wouldn’t say “God is in all,”
but rather, “God is only in you.”

I want you to want me,
the way I want you —
with all the love I've yet to give.

In the beginning, the land was ash.
The people lived in black and white,
their days measured in dust and labour,
their nights lit only by the dim lantern of habit.
They did not know they were blind.

Then came the Whirlwind.
Some said it was wrath, some said madness.
But to the one who was chosen,
it was a hand, lifting her from the plain into the sky.

She awoke in a world of Colour —
emerald rivers, sapphire skies, gold-bricked roads.
The air hummed with hidden names.
Every creature, every stone, spoke in light.

She was given companions:
A Mind seeking truth.
A Heart longing to flow again.
A Will waiting to roar.
And the faithful Animal,
who sees beyond every veil.

She faced the Two Shadows —
one from the East, one from the West —
and learned that the enemy is not slain but dissolved,
its darkness turned to clear water.

At last, she reached the Temple of Green,
where the Throne was empty,
and the voice of the “Great and Powerful”
was only a man behind a curtain.
And the Voice whispered: The gift was on your feet the whole time.

She clicked the shoes,
and the mountain blazed white,
and her face shone as the sun.
Like Moses, she veiled her brightness,
for the people in ash could not yet bear the colours.
Like Christ, she came down from the height
to walk the dusty streets again.

She did not curse the grey world.
She carried the spectrum in her bones,
each step a secret sunrise,
each breath a covenant:
When the time is right,
I will open the curtain for them too.

I wish I was a Black boy that flew
Then all of my dreams would come true
Because people really don’t understand what I go through

If I could get away
I would
But I always seem to stick out

Sticking out like a sore thumb
Unwanted

I try to yell for help
However, no one understands my language
Foreign to all

I try to grab a hold, but my hand slips
And goes straight through
Appearing faded like a ghost

I try to climb up
But I repeatedly get pulled back down
Stripping me of my progress

So, I run away
Lungs gasping for air
I try to run as fast as I can

Knowing in my mind
That humanity is on the other side

Life or Death
Freedom or *******
Pain or Chains

So, I run
Bursting closer and closer
Sprinting to the finish line

But I trip
They catch me
Cutting my Achilles
As I Heal

I realize
That success is inevitable
As I swallow this unbearable pill
And wipe away invisible tears from my treacle eyes

Knowing that life isn’t 100 proof
Life has contradiction

Contradictions of
Impossible
Difficult
Hard
No Way
I Can’t
Fear
Failure

I laugh
Uncontrollably
To keep away the thought of crying
Because the pain cuts deep

Intensely
On the other side of the bank
The narrow trees
Through shallow waters
My hand extends
There's Our Journey
Our Path
Our Blueprint  
Our Success

Unleashing my spirit
Freeing this caged bird
I Fly!

I Fly high in the sky
Soaring to new lengths
Breaking Cycles
Discovering Life  

Writing my own story
Making history

As I glide through the canvas
I illustrate

I am the Black Boy that flew!

I woke in a house of dust and wind,
the world still clothed in shades of ash.
Yet my eyes carried fields of emerald,
skies that bled sapphire into gold.

They spoke to me as though nothing had happened,
as though the storm had been a fever dream.
I smiled and said nothing—
for how do you tell the blind what red tastes like?

The gift was not mine by right.
It was given by the hand that spins storms,
by the Voice in the cyclone’s eye
that whispered: Walk the road, lose yourself, find your name.

So I walk now between the grey and the flame,
wearing colour under my skin,
a secret rainbow folded in my heart
until the day the world remembers its light.