Speaking in Tongues

lish, lisp, his glish

must come clean

from mi mouth

roll over mi tongue,

through mi lips.

What a bangarang, eh?!

lawd, is so Mr. glish is,

laden wid grief, mad fi lick mi

wid him punctuation and grammar.

I before e, heheeeeey!--

but no, on my tongue,

it have a duel with

modder tongue,

they arguing over spices

both claimin' spaces,

hisglish an' modglish.

Lawd, they not easy

though, eh?

Is a' inheritance from

"the bad-minded English"--

a generation glitch,

[...]

Seeing Double

Have you ever searched the corners of your room for answers to your questions only to find that the corners are as empty as you are? It hard when you searching for answers. It hard. It always hard. Harder than rain in the winter and snow in the summer. It hard.

I wonder who makes the questions so hard and then put the answers in hiding? It hard. It hard when you find yourself stuck and you don't know how you get stuck. It always hard. A woman can get stuck in a big city. A woman can get stuck in her own mind. Her own pain can destroy her, and no one has to look at the wreckage. In a big city you don't have to look.

When you walking down the street and you see a homeless man, what comes to mind? Bum. Here, i have to freeze off me arse just to make a shilling and i should pass it on to him, for what? Did you ever consider the psychology of that man? Like him probably saying to himself: "Cho, it too cold to work so i will sleep on the street for free, where it safe and dry, and depend on the Toms, Dicks and Jane Does in this city."

That man probably just like me. Searching for answers; only, he searches in the weather beaten feet trampling refuse smelling asphalt thinning cracks of the city.

Here's a Story

Everyday is a struggle against the odds: the odds of getting an MA in English. Sometimes i feel so fragmented, i'm amazed that i have been able to stay whole instead of being fed to the wind like debris caught in a storm.

Another Academic Muse

At what point in our lives do we stop blurring? When do we become crisp individuals? What must we do in order to end these fuzzy identities--to clarify just who it is we really are?
--Douglas Coupland, Girlfriend in a Coma

I happened upon this quote while reading Girlfriend in a Coma, a book filled with dark humour and an apocalyptic sensibility. I'm not too far in, but it had me thinking about that quote, especially how it relates to my personal experiences as a graduate student in English. I am realizing that the further up i go in the institution the more blurry i become, the more it doesn't really matter who i am. I become a slave to the system in such a way that i am producing essays, research papers, argumentative strategies for discussion but it provides no meaning for me, especially when i begin to survey my own subjectivity as a "crisp individual." I know that this sounds a lot like life in the big city, or even nihilistic, but i think that it is a bit more complex than that. I feel an incredible rush of excitement and satisfaction when i produce a paper and i am usually very happy with the returns, but for no apparent reason, at times i feel lost and confused. The truth is: I realize just how phony the whole system is and how complacent i am, moving to the same phony beat as everyone else. I guess that is what happens when you lose a sense of meaning and purpose in your work and your entire life becomes obfuscated by this burring: the inability to see who you really are.

I am writing a paper and i have reached the end; i am supposed to be happy at the finished product because it is coherent, the argument is solid and the structure is great. Instead, i start thinking about the next paper that i am to have done in a few weeks and i try to think about the "new" language i will need to successfully produce that argument. I have to create that new language while producing a sense in the reader that i have mastered the topic/language. But, really, getting an excellent mark has to do with how well i can argue that i am right; it does nothing, it changes nothing, it challenges nothing--at the end of the day, it goes into a drawer and takes its place with the pile of other papers i'd already written, and it stays there.

Higher learning institutions thrive on showing you how insignificant you are; how minuscule to your professors, your superiors who "know everything." They keep you in place by making you aware that you can't know everything, and if you're black like me, that you won't reach anywhere. It's survival of the fittest. The university is one of the most brutally racist, sexist, elitist, Eurocentric, xenophobic places on the earth. yet it praises itself on being the best door to a world of opportunities. In the end, it doesn't matter who you are and the University becomes a big business that owes you nothing...

I survey the drawer, then finally, i manage to get-up and open the door; i enter the parts of my house that aren't filled with phony people and phony principles. My daughter sees me and calls, "mommy, mommy!" She runs up to me, and as i take her into my arms, she starts to sing me a song; suddenly, i realize who i really am, and my world isn't so blurry anymore.

I have met some amazing professors, students and writers who are not in the least bit phony. And that is why i have survived, and still surviving, the traumatic alienating effect of higher learning.

Jennifer Hudson: Carol of the Bells

Merry Christmas! I admire this lady so much. She's a great example of what talent and dreams can do :-)

"the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams"

A plaque i have on my living room wall and walk by everyday without noticing. I noticed it today...

Heart Beat

['Unedited' creative writing i did in high school; found it on a disk i had in storage]

I never thought that Jamie could hurt me, no, not in a million years. We were supposed to be the perfect couple, utterly flawless. Now all that we’ve shared for the past eight years was coming slowly to a close. As much as I would like to forget the entire scenario and pretend nothing happened, I couldn’t, it was already planted in my mind. My mind raced, my heart thud, I cursed myself for being so sensitive. Damn Jamie, damn him to hell! I almost said aloud. I steered the car into the driveway and sat transfixed, the ignition running. I couldn’t think, concentration was impossible, I ached inside. Once inside the house, the house Jamie and I shared for eight years, I retired to our bedroom to claim my possessions. Jamie must have come in early for I heard the shower running, though I could not recall seeing his car out front. I searched frantically for my suitcase trying without success to control my anger, fear, anxiety or whatever it was that I felt. Half way through my packing he came in whistling bringing the sweet smell of after-shave with him.

“Hi honey, I didn’t hear you come in,” he said casually.

“You won’t hear me go either,” I said bitterly.

“Why, are you going somewhere?”

“Yes, someplace where I won’t have to see your lying cheating face again,” I yelled.

“What…”

“No, let me finish, for eight years I remained blind, blind because the love I had for you pulled the wool over my eyes.”

“What the…”

“It all adds up Jamie, now it all makes sense: the condoms I found in your jeans, you taking in your sleep, the pictures, those phone calls, showing up late for dinner because you had to work late, you bastard!”

I hurled a vase freshly filled with white roses at him, but it hit the wall instead. Furious I strolled past him, haling my suitcase behind me.

“Cathy I can explain everything if you just give me a chance.”

“Explain, explain?” I laughed, refusing to look at him. “Well maybe you could explain why you have being after my friend Joan for the past two months.”

“Whoa, whoa, did she tell you that? She’s the one who has being coming on to me and when I told her that I’m committed to you she backed off a bit,” he said calmly.

“Cathy I love you, I always have and I always will, I would never want to destroy what we share,” he said, taking the suitcase from my hand, as I stood motionless.

“ The condoms you found were meant to be used with you since you have being complaining about taking the pills, me talking in my sleep I can’t really explain but I’m sure it had to do with my up coming plans for us.”

“Oh, Jamie for the past few weeks we have being so distant, I thought I was losing you.”

“Wait, Cathy, let me explain everything. Those phone calls were totally work related and platonic, I never lied to you about missing dinner because I had to work late, and I wouldn’t do such thing, I swear. The girl on the pictures is my cousin Leona, I was going to show them to you but you found them first; I’m so sorry, Cathy.”

“I love you Jamie, I always have, and I always will,” I said smiling.

“Now that’s better. Are you still leaving?”

“No,” I purred, “not for a long time.”

Life, Death and Salvation

Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order.
--David Gerrold

They say that only salvation can save us, make us whole. Only salvation is everlasting, and can take away the void in our lives. That empty spot, deep within our soul. They say that salvation is free. That it is the Almighty's plan for us. I am ready for that salvation to wash me all over, and set me free. Make me whole. Is salvation ready for me?

Child

['selected' poems i wrote while on mat leave in '06; Child, Higgla and Kiss of Death; enjoy]

Take these words,
Put them inside your heart--
Momma loves her child
Pappa loves his child
Eat, breathe, keep these words
Until you open your eyes,--

Higgla (a tribute to Louise Bennett-Coverly)

Mango, banana, pumpkin dry
Two fi twenty
Four fi twenty-five

“Hi miss, Yuh look so nice
Buy someting fra mi nuh mam,
Look how yuh smile bright an’ nice."

"Is plenty water grow dem yuh know mam.
Wha’?
Say yuh nuh waa dem fa dem look pwoile?”

“Look ya nuh missis
Nuh mek mi tell yuh ‘bout yuh lice.”

“A yeseday mi pick mi mango
‘an mi banana come straight from Martinique
Whe’ the sun nuh tap shine!”

“A bet yuh a de same one
Who gwine bawl dung
Mi price--”

“Ga lang yaa woman
Wid yuh rucutuntun behind
Haul yuh tail out a mi stall
Fa no freenis nuh de dis side!”

Kiss of Death

I rise high in the sky
My time
Has come
To lie
Beneath
The sheets of life

As I glide
Pass ancient stories
And lies
I smile
To see the gardener’s eyes

Open wide--
I ride the waves
Ten thousand feet high
I spy
The wounds of an unborn child

Come my loved ones
Let us sing and cry
For this old, old withered land
Must die!
Alas, I must go so good-bye
I have waited for that mile long kiss, for a while.

'Phishing' for Identity

I received e-mails, three days in a row, asking me to activate my online banking with RBC Royal Bank or else my account will be deleted within 24hrs. And i thought that my e-mail was "protected." I am supposed to go to the link provided and enter my client card number and password. Fortunately, i know fraud when i see it, so i didn't 'click'. But what about all the people who do click? Well, here's a link to a dictionary's definition of phishing; it's the least i can do to prevent others from falling prey:

Phishing: definition, usage and pronunciation - YourDictionary.com

I won the lottery several times in the past, but never claimed any of the winnings. I also inherited millions from philanthropists all over the world, and never claimed it either. I have to say that these e-mails are usually quite convincing. But what is it about me that attracts fraud? Funny, I never get these in my Hotmail account, only my University account.

Strange Mood

I guess my professed compulsion to write is waning, not! I have been scrambling to find time lately, although i'm supposed to be on holidays. That 700pg book that i'm to have read over Christmas (among others) puts a smile on my face, not! OK, so i guess i'm jealous of all those people who get to go on "far away" trips while i'm stuck here; i may as well say it now and get it over with. (Note transition) I love my daughter but i've tried giving her up for adoption several times but no one will take her, even though she is a super kid whiz (or is it whiz kid?). Besides, daddy won't let me. She's such a sweetheart (scroll up/down, look to the right) isn't she? Yuh want har?!

Okay, so, that major essay is coming on quite lovely, ah... ah mean, slowly. If i could only write a bit faster! The thing is, theatre is not exactly by comfort zone; I wanted a challenge; besides, my comfort zone was getting, well, comfortable. I am also taking a theory course and it's way, way out of my comfort zone. I guess that's how it is when you challenge yourself. Actually, i don't regret taking them at all. I am learning quite a bit (sure, Jerisha).

I've done all my Christmas shopping and i am happy to report (note irony) that i have spent over $500 on gifts, actually, make that six, i sent a little something for mi moms. My mom sent me some beautiful drapes that she made herself. She is very talented. If only some had rubbed off on me...I would be ri...no i'll save it. Why do black folks think about money all the time? Because we never have enough! Dah!

As usual i have to cut this one short because i have bigger fish to fry...i mean, not fish fish, but, you know, fish...

2 face - African Queen

Sometimes we, black women in all shades, shapes and sizes, forget just how beautiful we are; we want to change our hair, skin colour, body--
we don't need to.

You are a queen and there is no need to change Y O U. Love yourself--love your hips, your lips, your nose, your toes-- you are special.

Red Dust

Mother left.
She said God will
take care of us, and
that we should pray.
But we can't,--
God won't listen.
Or maybe she will.
To the sound of our feet against
the earth, hardening each step,
each mile, each time we travel.
To our hands, cracked
bleeding like water from a
spring, only, less hope in it.
To the hair on our skin
suffocating, afraid to grow,--
blinded by the haze.
Mother said that we should
Pray, but we won't.
Because, God, he's inside,
underneath, our skin.
behind our eyeballs,
in respite, from the world.

I Am Glad...

I spend my days doing RA work and working on an essay due Jan 3rd. My essay is on Djanet Sears' HARLEM DUET and Aime Cesaire's A TEMPEST, both are incredibly important plays for black theatre and postcolonial studies.

I am glad that my blog has inspired friends on a conscious level (those who have come to me and said so and those who haven't). I am also grateful that they have encouraged me to keep writing and thankful for their kind words about talent that i didn't know i had. I hope that i can (and will try my best to) live up to those expectations and good wills.

I am always thinking about "stuff" and sometimes i am most inspired by the silent, nonspoken realities of people's lives which don't get covered-- whether in the media, literature, normative Truths--where ever it is out there. How do we live and make sense of our lives? What causes us to live past pain, and why do we exactly? My blog is a way for me to make sense, especially my creative blogs, of the things that i don't exactly understand precisely because of their complicatedness. It is always a strive towards an understanding of someone or something; of voice, pain, love, history, race, gender, class, poverty, death, birth, survival. Aime Cesaire says that he became a poet by rejecting poetry, French poetics. I think that reflects my consciousness as a writer of sorts. On the one hand, writing for me is healing, and on the other, it is an outright rejection of the mainstream western way of "doing" poetry. I never liked studying poetry because of the genre bound rigidity and technicality of how it has been taught. But i love a poem that makes me think, long after i've read it and closed the book; in a way, that's also how i feel about novels which is why i approach a novel like a poem and a poem like a novel.

Inside Out

Is the anger in me
the ebb, flow of anger,
deep within me,
they should have told me,
warned me, even.
Yea! how 'bout warning, eh?!
'bout the scar of mi flesh
all over me.
The wound of being.
I look,
back, wonder
'bout that wound
like the searing of flesh
in a prison-house.
I scream, i fight,
i get mad.
Ain't nobody know pain
like black woman
she pass on pain
like ulcer, in bloodline.
When she wails
it carry fire to burn hell over,
and water fi she children, no suffer.
But, there is a crushing power
over me.
It feeds on me.
If i could rip this flesh,
burn this flesh,
kill history.
We want to burn history.
She born with anger--
was fed
from my mother's breast--
she lost her anger, chose to forget.
The forces on me tell,
say i must never forget,
long as i breathe.
Breathing is hard when you're angry
when you fight everyday.
I must learn to breathe everyday.
Everyday my flesh confronts me
condemn me.
If i could transform it,
exchange it
for a dead history,
maybe she won't suffer,
the next line.