April 2012
89 posts
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“The death of something living is the price for our own survival, and we pay it...”
– The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
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spilledandinked asked: Publish publicly please [you always answer me in private]. What is a constant mistake you keep making?
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26/30: pagan scripture
love thyself as you love thy neighbour,
even in the moments when your claws are exposed,
unretracting, unforgiving.
be still. be still.
do not break the sanctity of silence.
know your impatience can be virtue.
be still, be still and know.
love like he is the last molecule of oxygen in a gas chamber,
feel every moment like fireworks in a first kiss.
bruise.
bruise.
break.
fix...
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9: On Travelling & Home
I come from what my father describes as a “mobile family”.
I have never stayed in a school for more than three years. I skitter from place to place so much that home is no longer a physical place for me. Home changes too often. Home is never constant. I have migrated to other countries with my family and even in those countries, we kept moving. When my family moved back to Malawi, we...
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8: On Marriage
I am the middle child of a failed marriage. I am not ashamed of this fact.
My parents divorced when I was around 12, 13 maybe 14 years old. I honestly don’t remember. Theirs was a miserable marriage and the fact that they stayed together “because of the kids” just about made the situation horrible for everybody. One thing many adults fail to understand is that children are...
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Anonymous asked: Name a motto you try to live by.
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Discussion : Do you feel people outside the...
ourafrica:
Answer & reblog .
Honestly? We are humans. We’re greedy even in the most selfless of acts. Whether we do it because we want recognition or to just feel good about ourselves, is irrelevant as long as we’re helping.
What makes me angry are the countries who give “aid” and loans to Africa in a bid to cripple Africa. What you notice is that there’s a...
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25/30: Dear John [These are My Empty Apologies]
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry the only time you felt you were a man was when my body became your punching bag.
I’m sorry I cried.
I’m sorry I lied about it.
I’m sorry I begged you to stop punching landmines into my skin,
I’m sorry it took me two years to allow another man to touch me.
I’m sorry we never talked about it.
I’m sorry for the blows your ego took when I stood up to you.
I’m...
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7: On Wash Day [A Less Serious Honesty Archives...
When I first went natural, I didn’t do it because I wanted to have healthier hair and blah blah blah. It was a dare from my family and I took it. Truth be told I’ve never cared about my hair too much. This is what it looked like a few months before I shaved it all off. [Not a clear picture but know it was about shoulder length when I combed it out]
Back to the present, my hair is now...
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6: On Feet
If ever there was a part of my body I’ve been so thoroughly ashamed of I hid it every chance I got, then it has got to be my feet.
My feet, just like the rest of me, are disproportional with my body. I am slim. My feet are fat and imposing. I remember when I first started going to boarding school. Back then I was still swimming in pools of insecurity and low self-esteem. A girl on the bed...
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Yima
It is 3 am.
It’s been forty-six days, twelve hours and fifteen minutes,
I have been counting your tears in my hands,
my palms are a bucket with holes in the bottom.
I cannot catch them so I allow their essence to slide into my fingernails
praying they will make you immortal.
I cannot tell you to stop bleeding.
Pain, like love, is a right no other human should take away.
I...
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I promise to abuse the word darling in my poems...
Readers, brace thyselves.
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mwanawe
this is for the days when the bones of your skeleton turn into lead poles and the talons in your veins pierce your chest for when your blood is more asphalt than crimson
i can only say take ownership of your lungs and breathe my darling, it looks better in the morning.
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24/30: wake
i keep searching for meaning inside things that don’t make sense
they are jigsaw pieces morphing into lego too big
to slot inside the crevice of our memories,
when we meet your eyes slip to your wrists
like you don’t remember what you loved most about me.
abandon your amnesia, i dare you.
think ocean,
think thunderstorm,
think the obese night sky when it’s lungs have failed to breathe
...
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23/30: night crawler
she has loved you from the bottom of her lungs through
the acid in the back of her throat,
swallowed your bullets when you held your gun to her mouth,
called her whore and spilled your coins
onto the floor, let them spin around
her panties, brassiere
let them clatter on the floorboards.
when you empty the tension in your ego,
do not hold her.
she does not need your arms,
she is not...
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inverted nirvana
I find solace in broken light bulbs and midday stars; they blink between my irises and form crystals at the base of my spine. I carry them like a burden, lodge the mistakes between my ear lobes and count my scarlet letters in the dark. There are times when I carry my lungs feel more baggage than breathing. There are times when the walls of my throat close in on my asphalt spit; I can barely stand...
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Speech
Sculpt your words like art
so when beauty is broken
your tongue makes it whole.
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4: On Knowing My Worth
A couple of years ago, I was involved with a boy. I first met him at my prom, it turned out we were already Facebook friends. We then met again later on because it turned out we lived in the same neighbourhood. He once wrote about me on his Mxit status, “green eyes” he called me. I don’t have green eyes but back then I did. I wore prescription grey coloured contact lenses which...
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22/30: what are we if not addicts?
in the darkness
broken glass was born parading on my lips
to remind my mouth i can still bleed
even when the sharp edges of my tongue have been sanded down
by the discs in your spine.
i found myself beneath the hook of your shoulder blade
and the skin on the canyon of your ribcage,
i have long since admitted i need you.
through my pores i breath you in,
drag your essence into my lungs...
things fall apart
i have learned to wash my suspicions
down with a bottle of gin.
the dog can smell another woman’s name on your lips,
she tastes like a dosage of that should be me.
i cannot lie next to you without my skin crawling
...
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3: On Oliver
Apart from the last term of high school, I have never been “cool”. I’ve been lame, a loser, a lesser known jock and sometimes okay but never actually in the cool crowd.
This bugged—and continued to bug me until well into my sophomore year— me so much in my first year that I did what the cool kids did to get people to like them. I tried to make someone else...
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2: On Why I Don't Keep Diaries
I haven’t kept a diary in almost 10 years. I wanted to start one a few months ago but then I remembered the reason I had stopped documenting my thoughts between the pages of a hardback notebook.
I was 12 when my mother found my diary. Not the one I was currently updating but one I had filled up 3 years before. It detailed lengthy fantasies about my non-existent relationship with a boy I...
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1: On The First Time I Asked About Virginity
When I was 9 years old I asked my 12 year old sister if she was a virgin. My mother heard me and asked me where I’d heard such a foul word and if I knew what it meant. I told her I didn’t know, she didn’t believe me. She went to work and told me to be ready with the definition when she came back.
I never told my sister that I’d heard it the day before, when a red headed...
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21/30: crepuscular
in the space between sunset and dusk
the dust settles on our eyelids to remind us
darkness is coming.
this is twilight.
critters creep into the hollows of our bones and dwell while we sit,
while we wait for the ghosts haunting the insides
of the blackness to say we are the very same devils
we’ve been trying to escape.
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I constantly find myself trapped in the corners of...
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20/30: waltz
a chandelier hangs in the cavities of our chests,
the floor is still spinning.
it twirls around our hands,
sinks into our feet
as our heartbeats serenade our pulses,
and i can’t help feel so beautiful.
there are spectators in the corners
of the ballroom
there is music inside our skulls.
we are the only ones dancing.
Anonymous asked: No. Black people cannot be racist towards whites because racism equals power+privilege, which whites have a lot of.
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I don't understand
Why when a black person says something racist about white people e.g. “you’re so white…..” , nobody complains but the moment the roles are reversed and a white person goes “you’re so black….”, all hell breaks loose and we treat them like some Judas. Racism goes both ways.
mmaarriiss asked: What would you do with this line? "Then you will do that thing where you take a step back and realize I'm still the same." :) Dropping this into the hands of a few poets I follow, curious to see different interpretations. Would you like to have a go? Sincerely, Marissa
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19/30: simplified lessons on destroying a man
1. cuddle him in the bosom of your insecurities
and breastfeed him excuses.
tell him he is the best thing you’ve had since
the day you learned your mind is a chessboard.
2. clothe him in pocketfuls of maybe,
watch him squirm as the fabric itches against his ego;
tell him real men wait.
3. kiss him. hard.
tattoo your name on his tongue so when other...
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18/30: for the days when my parents would argue
they would fight like they had sand in their teeth,
form fists the size of bowling pins
i remember the first time he punched her.
i saw him lift his palm,
curl it within itself until it looked like a rock made out of flesh,
and when he slammed it into her cheek,
she touched her face, said thank you then left.
on days like those,
i would build myself a fortress from my mattress,
tie my...
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on and of scars
today, i took some of my friends bio oil after she told me that it’s good for everything and also help erase scars. when i heard that the first thing i thought in my head was “YES! something that removes any trace of the fact that i have been broken, multiple times”
but now, the bottle of bio oil is sitting next to my shampoo and i can’t bring myself to touch it. these...
beautimos:
finally the words come out of my mouth my pen my soul flowing smooth and straight, like the way I always wanted ...
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17/30
when your mother brought us
a pack of candy hearts, we broke them,
crushed them between your palms
let them fizz on the roofs our mouths,
we laughed like we had conquered something.
do i taste like they did?
does my name still swirl around your tongue
or do you spit it out and wash your mouth
with her kisses,
can she taste me too? does she scrunch her nose up in the morning
when i am...
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voices aren't enuf: It is difficult being a flame.... →
ledasoul:
It is difficult being a flame. The way men swear you mean to burn them. The way some won’t dare come close. The way others ask so many questions: Who got you started? Was it arson? Someone think you were too much liquid, too little blast? How do you hug your mother? And all I want to do is be…
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something broken lies here
see, the thing with misery is that it is not the prolonged sadness one would imagine billows into ones chest when one is unhappy. i have discovered that it’s more like knowing your fingers don’t bend like they’re supposed to, that you don’t fit into the jigsaw map you built around yourself, realising that your body is a lego set and some of your pieces got lost long the...
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16/30: sea
i am at sea. there is a capsized heart
dangling from the tip of my sleeve;
it belongs to a girl i knew,
she drowned trying to save her own soul
from the demons in her water reflection,
they turned her red and blue
and slashed her purple when
i punched the sky
and it punched back
lightning.
i am at sea and i am waiting
for the storm to suck me dry.
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15/30: all she said
there is a silence between her lips,
if it echoes in your spine,
forgive her.
understand that speech
stacks up against her throat
the weight silences her voicebox
forgive her,
because her words,
they are in the craters of her fingertips
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14/30
do not think that when i hold my hand to my breast
and skim pinkie swears on your fingers
that i mean a word i say.
no darling,
i have learned to make promises
i know i’ll break if you let me.
i swear i’ll never love you.
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13/30
if drilled into a skull hard enough,
a lie will transfigure from its cross of deception,
dress itself in the robes of the chills felt
when you tell me what i want to hear;
i let you call me beautiful
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12/30
the patch of nothing between your porch
and the streetlight was the reason
i planted forget-me-nots in your front yard,
watered them down with my poems,
fed them from the bend of my knee,
praying one day
you would remember me.
Anonymous asked: If the whole world was listening, and you had leave them with a sentiment, what would it be?
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11/30: to the first song on my "fuck the world"...
i promise this is the last time my fingers will search for you.
if i am in a bar and your lyrics spill across the counter,
i will pretend i do not know what it’s like
to curl my tongue at the corners of your strums
when you remind me that i don’t need anyone else.
i promise i will remove every trace of you,
never hit pause and play again,
if you sing to me just one more time
...
