10ThingsIWantToSayToAGirl

1. I wish I could treat your voice like fireflies. And hold it in a jar to gaze at on cold winter nights when I miss hearing it more than ever. Then I would open it. So that the silent cathedral of my room would turn into a concert hall of your words. As sound waves ricochet off walls. Playing raindrop rhythms against my eardrums. To the sight of galaxies of hellos and goodbyes nurtured in the universe of your vocal chords, giving birth to supernovas in your sentences. That turn cold glares into tsunamis that wash away every judgment we’ve ever made about you.

2 Your smile is the most beautiful thing ever created, past the secretive smirk of the Mona Lisa. You make the sun insecure, while you mock the phases of the moon with the crescent curves of your lips. And shooting stars flip coins into wishing wells at allotted times to be able to smile the way you do. So smile.

Because 3. You are beautiful. Not just in the contours of your figure or the angles of your features, but in the way you carry yourself…like a queen.

4. See only queens can give birth to men they raise to be kings. The beauty of creation held in one moment of infinity. See the second I was born, my mother’s smile played welcome committee to my existence. She radiated every molecule of love I would ever need, just for the sole reason that out of everybody in the world…I was the one she gave birth to. It was better than winning the lottery. And to this day I can’t figure out what she ever saw in me.

5. I’m sorry. For every magazine, song, picture, music video, website, and advertisement that made you feel like you weren’t good enough. Because if I could. I would plaster your personality over walls, have your compassion play lead roles and have your sensitivity star in the centerfold of magazines.

6. I promise I will do what I can to make you happy. I would cook, clean, do the dishes, do the laundry, even make you a sandwich. Okay, maybe I wouldn’t make you a sandwich. But I would do everything else to show you that not all men expect you to cater to them according to tradition.

7. Never settle for less than you deserve. Or give anybody a reason not to give you all the respect they can give you. Or let anybody convince you you’re not beautiful.



9. I skipped 8 because I don’t want another number to be able to judge you with. I refuse to mentally assign you a score for what you look like on the outside. See the only numbers I would relate to you would be…your birthday. An anniversary. Maybe the cost of a wedding ring and a mortgage. But I think I’m getting ahead of myself here. Though at the very least, I would gladly spend…my time with you. See out of the trillions of numbers that’s in the world…the only ones I would want…would be the seven digits in your phone number. Because if time was money, I would spend a precious eternity talking to you about nothing at all.

10. So no matter who you are. Don’t stop being you. Because we would be lost without you.

MakeLove

"Let's make love."
One sentence that will never roll off my tongue and come out of my mouth.
I will never “make love”, because I don’t know what love is made out of.
So what if I don’t have the building tools? No, T-square to take the right angles at a-cute actions while I plan out the blueprints from the get-go. Or a metre stick just to see if it measures up to what we expected. You flash a smile, eyes contact and I beam…but it’s a shallow replacement for a concrete foundation and I-beams. But I’m no architect.
And what if I don’t have metres worth of PVC? But all that does is turn the whole relationship into nothing more than a pipe dream of what we wish it would turn into. Wishing that the wooden panels keep the frame of the relation-ship steady in the tide instead of creating walls between us. Because the insulation in these hollow walls don’t do well to keep the warmth inside when the frigid air seeps in between us, and the love starts escaping…little by little. So I’m wishing that I wouldn’t need to rely on a hammer, nails and glue to keep it together when the shit starts falling apart. Because I’m no carpenter.
Or what if it’s not the question of how to make love, but about what we can make out of it? Like “love” is just a bunch of pieces that interlock like Lego’s or jigsaw pieces to make up the bigger picture? That would totally make sense because love never had instructions or a recipe laminated in the box it came in. It was something that people just took in their hands to try to create something beautiful out of.
Not beautiful for everyone else…but something that they saw as beautiful, like Pygmalion crafting a statue. And all of a sudden, they’re in love with love.

SlamPoets

I am not…a slam poet.
I SLAM poets!

And every cookie cutter poet that is out there right now.
All of a sudden, every body thinks they’re Def Poets and Brave New Voices.
So let me Express Myself in a way that lets me describe what’s happening to this form of expression I used to love…Hell, I still do. But it’s like she’s cheating on me with every person that’s ever had a crush on somebody and was too scared to say so. Every person that’s ever suffered through heartbreak and just wants to get emotional. Every person that wants to stand up for their rights even when they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Every wannabe motivational speaker who wants to try and be an inspiration to others. Every self-absorbed speaker who just wants to talk about themselves and find a way to make it seem deeper than it actually is. Every pseudo intellectual or political activist that thinks being a poet is all about writing about the problems of the world. News flash, it doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t believe in it beyond what is on the surface.

But let me straighten this out. You are not a poet, just because you can rhyme cat, with hat. Having a certain rhyme scheme or cadence doesn’t make you a good poet, it makes you a rapper. Using metaphors and similes doesn’t make you deep, it makes you an English student. Using rhetoric or comedy doesn’t make you a poet, just a person with an entertaining speech. So stop trying to point out the pros and cons, using your prose and poems. You are not the dopest because you get angry, loud, riled up or passionate when you deliver a piece. None of it matters without content, so don’t get gassed up if you’re just okay with the words.

I’m witnessing a death of the art form but there’s nothing I can do about it.

Because I am not…a beat poet.
I BEAT poets!
And every slam poet and illiterate writer who’s ever contributed to the downfall of poetry.

POW! Every single “poet” that’s ever written poems for pussy.
POW! Every single “poet” that’s just looking for attention.
POW! Every single “poet” that’s picked up a pen and a pad because it became cool.
POW! Every single “poet” that jumped on the spoken word bandwagon.

See, the first mistake is calling what you do poetry.
Because complaining about your problems vocally, does not give you the right to yell “HEY, NOTICE ME!”
Hiding under the veil of “I’m trying to create awareness and understanding in the community.”
So my point is this.

If you have no deeper understanding of what we do, beyond thinking that we just say stuff that makes you go “Oooooh”, “Ahhhhhh”, “Awwww” and more words you can snap your fingers to…then don’t’ try this at home.
Just go back to watching Def Poetry Jam in your spare time.
If you are not well-versed in this art from…then LEAVE POETRY ALONE!
If you are not well read. Not bothering to learn from what’s already been said.
Then don’t bother agreeing with me and saying the art form is dead…because in the end, we are keeping it alive.
Just treat it with the respect it deserves.

70YearsOfAmnesia

WHY!?
I’m asking why. I’m asking who, what, where, when, why, how but…in the end, one word questions can’t begin to lead me along the path to the answers I need and questions that need to be asked like…

Why!?
Why would you have war? Why famine? Why terror? Why power?
When the good do bad to do good, and the bad do good in attempts at gaining power it’s a stupid cycle. I’m tired of self-indulgent rulers looking for opportunities to branch out and make paper, even if they need to sacrifice limbs to do it. The skin is torn apart and damaged and the bark becomes all bark, no bite as substance leaks like sap from wounds.

So I ask why!?
Why is World War II always accompanied by the Jewish holocaust and thoughts of Hitler when the Far East boasts its own version of genocidal history and no one is aware of it? So I’m wondering…
Why is there a reason for 300,000 civilians to die? Why is it necessary that 200,000 young girls from Korea, China, Japan and the Philippines become comfort women for Japanese soldiers? Why do 50,000 girls have to get raped in the streets of Nanking for a force of hundreds of thousands of armed soldiers to take control? Why did tens of thousands have to be tortured for the sake of weapons development in Unit 731?
Because it’s all in the plan. Kill all, loot all, burn all and leave no one behind. It’s a nightmare for the ages and the ages give testimony to blood, sweat and tears. All shed in gallons as POW’s, slaves and the dying all beg for an end to the suffering. Chinese and Korean civilians from babies to 70 year old seniors all subject to tests like inoculations of disease, flamethrower testing, limb amputation, chemical weapons tests, and being surgically opened up for study while they were still alive.

Why!?
Why would you have 8 year old girls on their knees begging their captors for sympathy for the freedom they had only seconds ago? Why would you have 13 year old girls praying to God, asking for a way out of the terror they are trapped in, but it didn’t do shit. Why would you give them reason to fear guns and bayonets, fearing forms of soldier silhouettes as shadows creep around the corner looking for victims and slaves? Why does a nation’s safety lie in the hands of foreigners and land known as the Nanking Safety Zone in their own country?

Why!?
Why would human beings lose compassion for different people just from being in a uniform? A uniform that is soon coated in the blood of innocent people slaughtered under the command of generals and politicians sitting on thrones built of greed. Why is compassion a commodity that is rarer than gold-coated diamonds on the battlefield…even when that battlefield is the capital of China with no enemy soldiers in sight?
Why is national duty enough to destroy a man’s soul!?
The victims are not my people, but it is not just THEM. It’s US. One nation is one country. One country is one race. And one race is all the same people. People like you, you and you no matter your cultural background…people that feel the same joys granted by carefree freedom…people that feel the same pain as we stare down into the depths of gun barrels and pricks at points of blades.
Because if you prick us we bleed. And at this moment…I’m bleeding words to describe the pain I feel in the eyes of speaking women. Eyes that are coated in a film of tears on the wrinkled faces of 80 year old women that survived thousands of cases of rape through 8 years of war and occupation because they were forced into the service of a country that wasn’t theirs…a country that was invading their homeland and killing hundreds by the hour.

And as I watched this former “comfort woman” give testimony, I begin to think. And out of these thoughts my own eyes begin to tear and I say FUCK THE EUPHEMISM! These military sexual slaves have to live with the pain of those years for the rest of eternity and we’re trying to make the offense sound less offensive and more acceptable so the people can swallow the blue pill. But why lie?
Why mislead people into thinking that nothing went wrong and that the only genocide that mattered in the Second World War happened to the Jews in Germany!? But that misconception is hurting me. So I have to ask why.

Why does this seem like ancient history? Why is it that they got away with all of it? Why is God standing idly by while millions suffer? God, why are you testing my faith in my own people? Why do you let us hurt each other over and over and over again? Why would you let something like this be hidden behind 70 years of amnesia?

And most importantly, why would you let us forget?
WHY?