A poignant question rooted in rhetoric.
How do I define myself when there are so many images of me,
Through the eyes of many I’m  many things,
Through the echoes of history I’m liked to nothingness,
The essence of misfortunes my forefathers bore.
How I define myself? An enigma  wrapped in an mystery.

Through time I held  this truth to be self-evident,
To defy history, to condemn the distorted truth about me,
To nullify the justification of my existence, I objected to the
Classification of race perpetuated to the minds of those who cannot reason,
To those with misguided arguments at best and irrelevant at worst,
How do I define myself? Colour has nothing to do with it.

Looking to define myself, I met myself.
A pervasive, facile definition I was  fed since infancy was to be questioned,
As I looked deeply  into myself, disregarding the Eurocentric ideologies of my
Existence. I came to define myself by not subjecting  myself to any definition.
How do I define myself? I Stay undefined like God in who’s image I was created.

Kissing you was like swallowing
the salty, salty sea:

I have corals for ribs,
and seaweed limbs;
my bones are ship-wreck saves
and wishful pennies.

My heart is a sea-shell:
if you put your ear to it,
you’ll hear me screaming, shouting,
pining
for you.

Searching through my circumcised conceits
ransacking allegorical nature
a more outlandish metaphor
alluding to your eyes glistening,

Though Shakespeare, were he to hear,
would revolve over over again
in his graves, may he feel free
to make jokes of.

I say with poetic assertion
confidence, no other allusion
would come closer to truth,

to my purpose, than me saying,
your eyes contain the sparkle of ten million diamonds:
they are far

far brighter than any sun.

Pictures of dead people I know
are smiling and are so full of life
hanging on my wall
reminding me
to seize this day,
because it's not cliche,
and it won't come again.