Tag: identity

Then mirrors, then men

shadowed moonlight visions I heard

the familiar downpour

always a hollow, almost terrified

shower.

morphed for a thousand and one years of suppression

between rock and the softness

of one set free in an unknown yet shackled way.

i heard but never found the leaking source in time

to perhaps embrace in the way sadness marries hopelessness

giving birth to a single way

forward that at times

promises a thing like

peacefulness.

i was lost most times-

between

the vision and the slippery slopes.

It is now, somewhere between

a past unfinished and a new moon

that I saw the many men crouched, as though in

meditation.

their cries as a melody of shattered mirrors grappling for a reflection

a conclusion of self, a climax of revelations

laid waste but sprouting still

And then the gong-

And then the silence.

mirror became steel again

and all stood upright in a fortitifude that embroidered

silence

around pain.

Beautiful Black Shadow

I am the whispers between the arch of the backless gown,
The beautiful black shadow that lingers
in the deserted alleyways.
I am the apartheid of femininity
the war on women,
and the voice shouting above the train.
I bow to your order,
Shedding myself as I go along.
Bringing gifts of silence to my matrimony of selves,
Holding within, thoughts of flight, of dreams, of hope.
I am the many who drift along the edges of this globe,
gliding over the circumference of existence,
trading in goods of sexual prowess and the need
to be loved.
Within myself, I see mirrors of who was, who is and-
who could never be.
I pay homage to the black sisters who wish themselves yellow,
Who pray chemicals over their kinky crowns,
who lift thighs high in salute to an identity
they have been thrusted.
I am the whispers, the prayers, the moans.
I am without but yet somewhere I am within.
Somewhere within, I am the beautiful black shadow that talks-
in the background.