My wings would be a mosaic
made of black mothers’ pride
They’d be boomboxes for justice
Amplifying the riot in our souls
They’d be instruments
Of destruction
Burning monuments to make room for equal testaments
They’d evolve into the freedom to live unaccosted and to die avenged
They’d be bullet proof
and resistant to hate
They’d span from the Middle Passage to Miami
They’d lift our heavy hearts
and their downward thrust
Would scatter the white ashes
of false supremacy
~Rahk
1.
You say you love me
(For the Bible tells you so)
You say you love me
(For you are a child of God)
You insist you love me
But your love hits like hurled stones
But your love stabs sole of foot
It’s hard to walk
It hurts to walk
When your love vehemently rejects my shared need to breathe
2.
Such a peculiar love to offer sour fruit to starving children
Then stand repulsed, willfully withholding aid, when their bodies inevitably protest
How have you not choked on all the dust your love collects?
~Rahk.
Tell yourself. Tell yourself
That giving up is an option,
But not for someone as unicorn as you
So spread those effervescent wings
Let their sparkle brush bold colors across the sky
And the people will shout aurora
As you pass by
On hooves of crayola clouds
Tell yourself that you are a marvel
That what your flesh cannot mend
Your spirit must renew
For you are a marvel
And no storm can triumph over your will
For you silence thunder with your smile
And tickle lightning with your lashes
Your holy locs congress the wind
Tell yourself that you are God’s
That you belong to the love that begat your sense of self
Gather yourself, gather yourself
And stand on that makeshift stage within
Face your phobia of public speech
Speak your truth across that mic
And stir the selves you’ve gathered
Until their fragrance speaks as the holy spirit
Then tell yourself to be okay
With not being okay sometimes
Because at all times, life demands integrity
To thine own self be true
To thine own self be true
And then there’s no mirror that can haunt you
And then there’s no slander that can slay your legacy
And then there’s no reason to doubt
That you are no prisoner
Though your wrists may be rubbed raw
That you are no martyr
Though you have died one hundred gruesome deaths
That you are no villain
Though you wear a patriotic badge of civil disobedience
Tell yourself
Tell yourself
That freedom is not a gift to be given
But a revelation that freedom is and always has been yours
And at any time
As a free agent
You can choose revolution
And rewrite the constitution of your independence.
Tell yourself, tell yourself
That you are a new testament of faith
That douses tortured crosses
With the antisemetic tears of arsonists
For every devil weeps
When its hate is stilled
By the hopes you tell yourself
For every devil burns unholy and red
When its blasphemy does not lower your head in deference to any man’s hate
To glare it in the eyes as a colleague of hate
Tell yourself its not too late
Tell yourself its not too late
To breathe
~Rahk
Revised for clarity in November 5, 2021.
Revised for clarity on November 9, 2020.
I am that I am,
But so are they.
Still they hate.
But are they the devil?
They do turn red
With so much new blood
Staining their hands
Even as they vote.
They are that they are.
But so am I.
Am I forgiveness
At the same time that they
Are knee crushing necks?
Am I forgiveness
At the same time that they
Are propelling arsenal at unarmed citizens?
Are they forgiven
At the same time that they
Are standing back and standing by
While more of us live maimed, or die?
~Rahk.
What can a man know of God
If he knows nothing of repentance?
What can a man know of repentance
If he knows nothing of a woman’s right to choose?
What can a man know of a woman’s right
If he does not witness softness as kin?
If he does not witness softness in men
If he does not witness often within
that strength of spirit overtakes strength of arms
Even chosen kings are not above writing Psalms
~Rahk.
Looking back
the questions I had
were more a proclamation
of autonomous
maleness
More affirmative
than outcries of “Punk!”
More nurturing than
“Hold it in. You bet’ not cry”
when you withstand hit after hit
when your body
is a faucet and an
unsuspecting wall
built to withstand hit after hit
My questions were less interrogative
than sexual inquiries
and voyeuristic requests
to witness bedroom theatrics
Less deviant than conquest
Not as fearful as religion
Inconsequential to pink polos
and Mariah Carey in headphones
Innocence does not master sports
nor does it demand a wide stride
or pants that give in to gravity
Self-awareness counts
the notches in chastity belts
Looking forward
the answer is far more curious
than wandering eyes –
Here be the island
which nurtures life
I’ll build here
with questions shifting my shore
~Rahk.
u paused
frozen, but still whirring
and complaining
like a DVD
u are no machine
yet u let life control u
remotely
stop
Rahk.
They taught me that poems shakespeare into sonnets.
Piercing the present so William keeps living on
’cause we study his writing as if no other
art has been written. Shakespeare is dead but they still
won’t kill him. Or let him die. Worshipping his words,
they grant him eternal life. The skin of his voice,
a representation of White. He lives so free
on American soil. Immigrants in our art.
No wall was ever proposed for dead citizens
smuggled into the nation by the well-to-do.
I’m reforming the sonnet. Shakespeare needs rest, too.
He speaks no more. Writes even less ’bout much ado.
Silencing dead voices- my “taming of the shrew”.
Silencing dead voices- my “taming of the shrew”.
Go to Baptism Lake
Sit on the water, take a seat
Dip your feet
That hand on your scarred back
Is an inquisitive wind
That coolness is the sin of your obedience washing away
That warmth is praise for your skin
That sunlight is not a whip
That bird song is not an alarm
That splash might be a tear
But that’s okay, it’s okay
Rest does not require strong arms
~Rahk.
1. Maaan, you must be crazy
To think that I’m going to hold it all in
To reflect your blurry image of masculinity
You ain’t no mirror of mine
Light does not bounce between us
When I stand naked
Before a modest vanity
2. It makes no sense for rock to float
It makes no sense for water to dig graves
It makes no sense to know you are vast yet refuse to acknowledge your sky
Don’t hold it in, not when ocean water presses its skin against sunrise
I won’t hold it in, not when rushing water wears solid rock like old garments
3. Why should I hold it in?
Bruh, for whom would I be saving face?
I know who I am
I know Jesus wept
Why can’t you? Why can’t I?
Are we not vast? Are we not sky?
Maaan, gone and cry
~Rahk
Some thoughts thrive on discretion
Some thoughts slip by undetected
Some thoughts don’t care to know their own strength
While others struggle to breathe past the knee
And still certain knees apply more pressure
For their thoughts never drift to consequence
For their privilege undermines certain life
For their privilege denies a certain right
For their privilege relies on the presumed purity of white
Some thoughts claim to not see color, preferring selective sight
~Rahk
You are less empty than you pretend
You are no cup air drying on the counter
You are no tablet, factory reset successful
You are not the first page in the sketchbook of an undiscovered artist
You are far less empty than you pretend
You are:
A crescent moon peaking from your whole self,
The beginning of a hidden forest,
The living scripture spoken by God
punctuated by revelations.
You are full and splashing over the hard edges of the Hoover Dam
unable to be contained
by concrete, steel, and man’s intentions
~Rahk
When the text came in, I was overjoyed. As an avid advocator of self-expression, I insisted that she was perfectly capable of writing it herself–she, of course, begged to differ but sent her thoughts anyway. She would not let me convince her that her thoughts, as they stood, qualified as a poem. She laughed me off and insisted that I take the wheel. Using her original poem/thoughts as a guide, I composed a new poem. It was as exhilarating as always! Here is her original:
Happy,
~Anonymous
I don’t want your so-called happiness
I don’t want to be so happy
that I strain my physical astigmatism
To adjust my minds eye to the blindness
of my deceitful figurative heart
I don’t want to be happy anymore,
knowing that when I turn the corner
I’ll be blindsided by a breathtaking blow
I don’t want to be happy anymore
ignoring the push of your pain
and the pain of your push
I don’t want to be happy anymore
when u ask for I do
but show me you don’t
until you do again
I don’t want to be happy anymore
if it means extreme highs and bottomed out lows
I don’t want to be happy anymore w/ you…
Poetry, for me, has always been conversation. A conversation between the heart and the mind, or between the writer and the subject, or with no one in particular. The next poem is my side of the conversation, my response, which I see as a sort of translation.
Your so-called happy
~Rahk
don’t spell itself out for me
for us
for this we I faithed
into existence
This happy you preached
to my congregational heart
This happy you requested offering for
only to frown at my 2 cents
You are not familiar with kneeling
You do not understand altars
Your happy knows nothing of repentance
I don’t want no happy
that requires a sermon
before I can eat
I can’t rejoice over no happy
that disturbs my astigmatism,
changing how I see myself
I can’t use no happy
that hurts to smile through
for us
for this we
I feared into existence
You can no longer sway me
with charismatic words
and open arms
I’m keeping my last 2 cents
You’d misplace ’em anyway
Ahh. The joys of collaborative expression. Who’s next?
#art-therapy, #gender-norms, #hard-conversations, #heart-break, #life, #love, #love-poems, #poetry, #raw, #relationshipsA Badu song
Mothered my manhood
Told me
Boys can cry like yeyo
Told me
Boys, too, miss planes when dragging too many bags
Told me
God’s image is mine to claim as I am
Told me
Buildings crumble so why should one bear my name
Told me my name is a Black mother’s prayer
Answered in faith, with sound mind
Told me man’s strength is not greater than womb,
but born of it
in God’s time.
~Rahk
I preach
Floetry’s gospel
Administering poetry
I preach
Black Voice
Kendrick flows
“We alright”
I promise
We alright
We just speak dialect differently
Cast words
like griots
We too familiar
with feelings
Language bends to our pulse
And we preach
I preach
I preach
Saul’s doctrine
How ‘She’ square roots men-
Solving problems
on pages
Calculating thoughts-
Making simple equations of
miscommunication
I’m just one successor
Not the first
Not the last
I may walk in shadowy valleys
But my words
are a Rapture
Embodying Revelations
and Maya reclaimed her wings
For us
To fly before we die
To live our “Amens” outloud
in these sermons-
Classically
defined by the kinks
In our dialect
I speak
I speak
We speak
Folk just ain’t been listening
Too busy sippin’
On centuries old wine
We spit it out
Prefer our spirits fresh
from the vine
Somewhere between ’74 and ‘89
But you keep drinkin’ the “good stuff”
We’ll keep turning
We’ll keep turning
Parables into wine
Or something far less conservative
Yet much more pleasing to the palate
Take this poem
This bread for your mind
Our flow is the body
Our honest words
Well, that’s newer wine
~Rahk.
Rahk's Water 