Excerpts and Things

Today was the usual busy day for me. Woke up, prepared breakfast, prepared Jaylah for the sitter, did some RA/GA proofreading, blah, blah, blah...

I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what the hell Structuralism is, and thinking how privileged Barthes is to have the power to "kill the author." I sometimes wonder what these theorists smoked. Other than that, my day went fine. Actually, that was my day... no pressure though :)

Here are excerpts from the "long poem" i wrote this summer:

[...]

To see identity
de facto by default, the war never ended
The struggles, victories, barriers
The progress, regress, detours
taken.
The paradoxes of a stigmatized culture

Many came to escape war
poverty, repression. History
Yet, the havoc of flight is near
In this free democratic place
the presence of a black face, threatens
the v a l u e of an e s t a t e

The new false consciousness
misremembers history
The damage has not been lost
A new ‘ism sucks like a leech
on the surface of their existence

[...] ah, the irony of place
Guns in ghettos less disrupting
The rhyme, easy distinction
It is an old fight, this fight over space,
place

[...]
“We cannot let this happen to our children”
Our children, she says it with such conviction
as if it does not depend
on residence, on words

The s e m a n t i c s of language—
to live outside
the word: to consume in nothingness
language is death
Survival is unsure
Survival is fiction

Troubled area. At risk. Violent
[...]
The dreaded, unwanted appendage
of a city turned red, read
in the language of poverty, she sees
the carnage of the city [...]

To be classified, categorized, colour coded
It’s been here
It’s in the history of the place—
the history of the people of the place
There are no gatekeepers

Over the horizon of their oppression,
the sun rises
It touches the zenith of their fears
It descends upon hopeless dreams
The son never rises. Still, they dream

She, along with other West Indian mothers,
came—
were summoned, transported, shoved, HERE—
they arrived, are arriving
It is a cold place

They’d been traveling for years
migrating, moving
made to move, migrate, travel
It is an isolating place, insular space

Back. When
Aaron’s black babe bathed in blood
it never sucked
the sweet solution of its mother’s breast. So.
A f r i c a, raped, escaped
full bloom

Back. Traveling back
Freak. The hot hot tot, hotten hottentot
To be raped by language, traded, branded black
Outsider, outcast, outlandish
The black hottentot

“The sea brought us, them, hErE”, she knows, but. Still.
“A man was shot in the chest…” she stopped listening.
Unlistened. Switched channels
Tulips are in bloom—
She never cared for l i p s

She m o v e d HERE long ago
She remembers
the smell of salt. Lime.
human excretion

Not much has changed, much not
failed
promises delayed
Swindled race, Christian gain
Paid sins
no deaths were recorded

Here, there, where they live, they pay
she knew, knows
Trenchtown, Tivoli, Harlem, Bronzeville
Soweto, KwaMashu, [...]

[...]

The smell, rotten
stench of paucity
cold hugs, blankets
warming pain, stoned
hearts weeping, calling, wanting

[...]

But
the voices she hears are muffled, by
silences, sirens and streetcars

[...]

Africville, Negro Creek Road, the maroons
The Arrivants are still hErE
troubled, tainted, undone by language
“We are ugly, but we are here”

[...]