The smell of your cologne sticks to my skin,
Warm and spicy,
Musty,
Smeared in with our sweat,
A reminder of our cravings last night.
We watched the sunrise tinge the white sheets yellow,
Cradled between your legs,
My back against your chest,
I touched the skin on your calves,
You made a joke about how the bones in my neck stick out,
Like the demons from horror movies,
We both laughed, and it all felt so familiar.
It was in this moment I realized,
That this was more than just cravings.
City lights,
Please guide me,
I’m just a broken boy who’s far from home,
My fire grows dim and weary in your howling winds
So I hide in dark alleyways
Behind dumpsters filled with my emotional shit.
Emotional shit or devotional shit?
I devoted myself to this flawed version of perfection,
Seeking validation in toothless smiles,
And Botox filled faces.
In places whose only comfort
Is in plastic, perfume-soaked roses,
But never mind that, let’s strike more poses
For online posers,
Who pose the real threat to your sanity, because,
They double-tap in hopes that they will tap-tap that,
And then double back.
You popped your back in the back of that bad-bad,
But I digress.
Lest I make your emotional shit my emotional shit,
Devotional shit,
So devoted to this confessional shit that poetry allows me,
So I scatter ink on these white pages,
Like the black of my soul,
That taints the pureness of my mind,
I guess that’s why they call it grey matter,
And grey is all that matters, when,
These bright city lights dim my vision,
Shine light on my watered down convictions,
Making light of the afflictions that plague my existence.
It seems like life in itself is an existential crisis.
It’s funny how I wrote about living in circles,
But nothing is ever the same,
It’s a lot of people under these city lights,
Thinking that they know your soul,
Like you went and became a stripper,
Put your life on a pole,
Well here then,
I have no silver platters,
But you can sip out of this enamel bowl,
Because I have no spoons to stick in your mouth,
I’m trying to eat good,
But alas,
I am a broken boy whose body can not hold onto anything,
I bleed memories of golden yesterdays,
Trying to hold onto diamond tomorrows,
But these diamonds have cut my hands,
Leaving me bleeding out my last lifeline,
City lights,
Please guide me,
I’m just a fallen boy who’s trying to go home.
– Yaone W J Kgabi a.k.a. Po
I couldn’t help myself,
Her caramel-colored coating, some might have called her a yellowbone,
You know #TeamLightskin,
I know I shouldn’t have, but all I needed was to taste her sinful paradise,
Take a peak beneath what looked like a tough coating,
But beneath my lips it fell away,
Like the leaves on a Sunday afternoon in autumn.
Autumn,
Often I think about your subtle flavors,
Flowing over me, not like water,
You were sticky,
Sweet like butterscotch, you hooked me onto your deadly insides,
I know you’re not good for me,
But I keep running back for more, and more, and more,
I consume and you tell me the next time will be better than before,
I fight myself, raging wars of desire,
I can’t let you take me higher,
Wait a minute, I can’t believe I wrote all of this over an Oatmeal Butterscotch cookie.
– Yaone W J Kgabi a.k.a. Po
Where have you gone?
I can’t seem to remember your number anymore,
That’s not a surprise because it seems you don’t call at all,
Lately, I’ve found myself decrepitly empty of feeling,
I can’t feel the cool of the water at my fingertips,
Just a bunch of expressionless faces,
Places of nothing,
Empty castles echoing post-revolution France.
I can’t seem to bring anything to the surface,
I’m unable to write, my heart, can’t bear the weight of my words,
My pen buckles and bends under the pressure of my needs,
The page an endless scrawl of graphite,
Sometimes I think maybe I just can’t do this writing thing,
My droopy, lazy wings would fall off under my command,
But my heart still years for it,
My body aches constantly,
I can’t keep up with this, can I?
– Yaone W. J. Kgabi a.k.a Po
Confusion,
He stood there,
Blood rushing from his face faster than electron particle physics,
A single tear racing him as he unbuttoned his shirt,
He studied her naked paradise from across the room,
Moving slowly towards him like a cobra enchanted by the ancient snake charmers,
Legs trembling, he fumbled with the succulent flesh between his hands,
She looked him in the eye and said;
“Make the most of it. You don’t get to do this again.”
Cosmic chaos.
So goes the story of the dark-skinned kind;
Her body is free, but the chains are in her mind.
Her freedom paid for in blood and dirt,
And she dances.
Hips swaying suggestively,
She caresses her neck oh-so-sensually,
But this battle is not to be waged sexually.
Under her well-nourished African bosom,
Lies a heart, through which her royal heritage flows,
A wilderness from which order and chaos were born.
A battle for her self-worth,
A moral compass that doesn’t point north,
“Only God can judge us”, so she trudges forth,
Forth into the quicksand of 1, 2, 1,2 many calories
You throw it all up and start again,
Start again,
Find that God is within you,
And God is you,
And God loves you,
And God isn’t who they say God is,
And God never left you,
And find the love that left you,
When Black Power went sour.
I tried,
I tried to be your perfect boy,
Your flawless Ken doll,
I tried,
But it didn’t work for me,
Because, you don’t see the color that I do,
Feel the heat the way that I do,
And you don’t love like I do.
See, you were my Jim Jones,
And my spirit was your Jonestown,
You whispered sweet murderous sounds to my heart,
But my soul you couldn’t ensnare,
My soul, the revolutionary,
The body, a temple of sexual desire,
All are welcome, open for prayer 7 days a week,
A place for the sick, the demented,
The broken, the one-searching-for-the-next-one,
Yes, I was broken,
I was broken, your broke Ken,
I was broken, just a broke Ken.
If I tried to understand you,
My mind would be tossed into a cataclysmic power struggle,
Much like yours.
If I tried to understand you,
I would feel the tormenting pain you subject yourself to,
Refusing to face the feelings that over-power you.
If I tried to understand you,
My soul would scream for salvation that a congregation could not offer.
And if I tried to understand you,
The frantic scrambling of the fire ants in my heart would bring me to my knees.
But you see, I tried to understand you,
And I found the me I left in that corridor, begging to be freed.
You’re so big now,
And it makes me so proud,
When I think about, how,
We used to kick it in your bedroom,
Looking from the first floor
Time would pass, and we’d always beg for more.
See, you will understand that I found comfort in your insanity,
In your whirlwind, I found clarity,
You had one simple philosophy, and that was; “Be Happy”.
Be happy,
And that’s what you were,
You were happy,
You taught me how to let go,
How to be happy even when you know
The detention room is where you’re going to go
You were magic,
Bursts of energy, free spirit, characterized the free-born spirit you are.
You ignited my soul,
You inspired my whole, being,
With you was ecstasy.
And when you spoke my name, I swear my heart beat to the rhythm of our African forefathers’ drums.
Smiling before the breath escaping my lungs, with excitement,
I accepted you whole.
You had eyes that bore straight to my soul,
There was no method to your madness, but the madness was a method describing sanity.
Brown-skinned east African, you were beauty.
You’re so big now,
We drifted apart so quickly, it baffles me how,
I’m dying to speak to you,
And yet I fear rejection,
Two different paths we have taken,
Do our minds still share toys in the playpen?
I watched you jet off into the sunset,
Or rather you left me where the sun set the bronze color of your complexion,
And there I was longing for affection.
Your love was an infection, infecting my dreams, we can call it inception,
And without you, I lost my direction.
See when you walked out,
I lost more than a part of me,
I lost a reason to be,
The future, my eyes could no longer see,
I searched and searched for God, and yet the devil was all I could be,
But to you I held on,
To you, I held on,
And when you began to move on,
Dim became the light of a new dawn,
Then they came to me,
The lion and the fawn,
Told me to look deep inside then all fear would be gone,
I didn’t know it then, but I realize it now,
You were my first love, it’s quite fascinating, how,
I loved you unconditionally, unintentionally, and yet uncompromisingly.
I still look at you and understand why,
But to think you’d understand, would be feeding myself a lie,
Because,
You’re so big now,
At one time we were perfect,
But now, it’s time for me to step back and, watch your life unfold,
‘Cause you’re so big now, still perfect, just a little old.
E Pluribus Unum 