Being near you again
after a long time
feels as if I am Tantalus;
a thirsty man surrounded by water
but unable to drink it.

I wear  my insensitivity along with my silence well.
Under those materials No one can tell
That I am messed up inside.
Or can they?

my younger sister
never allowed fun
to limit her imagination.
at a mere five years old,
she decided she wanted to become an ice cream truck driver
at six,
she wanted to save the world.
seven,
she wanted world peace.
eight,
world peace.
nine,
world peace.
ten,
love.
eleven,
a boyfriend.
twelve years,
nine months and three days,
lighter skin.
i remember her
questioning days in pre-school
what color am i? she’d ask.
and her inquisitiveness
never allowed black to be accepted
as a proper answer.
Ruthie, we share the same color
but not the same complexion.
too much melanin, not enough skin.
the people in your pigment are waiting for a prayer
to be prayed back to the hands that once found
power in praying.
let not the lashes of historical context blind judgment.
they oppressed our kind.
feared the golden in your flesh
so they bore a color wheel of acceptable shades
and suggested brown be bad.
she laughs at black jokes, but don't be one.
and somewhere between spanish sailboats
and slave ships
you lost the strength in stride.
you let them white-wash your worries
and bury your woes in waste.
they beat her blue until she bled acceptability,
not blackness.
But
pale isn’t perfect
and black isn’t bad.
embrace the dirt in your darkness
for what could explain the foundation
that fertilized your fancy
better than you?
your people stomped on grounds
they called home
and sprouted seeds of
brown
black
beautiful
babies,
you.
she questioned God’s existence today.
she questioned why her skin tone was
the color of disease,
but she knows not the shade of ailment.
our culture brought freedom
to a situation where we could only see *******.
I want to tell her to not hate God,
not even close,
not even a little bit,
not even at all.
that our black is not rooted in shame.
that she should not feel ashamed,
or silenced,
or transparent.
I want to tell her to
enjoy the diaspora in her Africa.
she's thirteen today.
Nourish your plateau sister.
Find the strength in your coffee,
and never ever let the brown in your *** stop dancing.

‘I love you’, is not an adage
Say it only when your heart says, “Yes”*





© Amitav (Radiance)

I tell you, you gloomy ones,
that life is beautiful.
Life is beautiful
in all its depths of
suffering and misery and pain
in all its depths of
striving and joy and pleasure.

I tell you, you nihilists,
one draws breath only once,
passes into and fades out of life only once.
Yet you are to tell us it is worthless,
this gift given to us all by chance?

I tell you, you Christians,
and all your compatriots
who hate the flesh and the earth,
who promise more life through
sons of virgins and husbands of children,
that nothing awaits after death.

"Memento mori!”  
Why must you always
chime this in our ears?
Why must you fill
men with such anxious fears?
Many a man rules his life to this,
dreads and gasps and despairs to this,
prays that he may never come to this,
but you delude him on,
promising life after life.

I tell you, that
when we die, we cease ourselves to be.
Our senses stop their feeling,
our hearts stop their beating,
our brains stop their thinking,
and without those functions,
there ends a man.

So there are no souls
to greet gods in heavens,
nor any demons
to meet in hells,
only the ground we stand on,
and the caskets underneath.

Is this frightening?
Maddening, to think we must one day
cease to be and become nothing?
But death is not nothing;
Death is only a new dance of atoms.

When one thing tumbles,
it returns to the earth,
through one step or another,
to waltz and dissemble and collide
to make new things and again asunder.
With death, one only  
plays one's part
on the grand stage of things.

Do not be afraid then,
of death;
do not let it frighten you,
that you will be
pointless, forgotten, or condemned.
Do not let it terrify you
into leaving your life unlived.

And so I tell you,
you gloomy ones,
you Christians, you nihilists, you sufferers,
remember that you must live.
Embrace life,
this shortness of time,
love every moment of your being,
in all its depths of
suffering and misery and pain,
in all its depths of
striving and joy and pleasure.