Monday, February 21, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
12 year old sisters
Men look at you with hungry eyes.
They gulp down saliva to quench thirsting throats.
They want to taste the swollen bee stings on your chests
and cup your ass the way only grown men can.
They want to love you with their manhood
it's tumescence will make him murmer all the right words prematurely.
Your pride and purity will deflate at the pace of his turgid intruder.
He'll kiss you till your belly swells
then zip up his pants
and walk out the door with your smile in his pocket.
They gulp down saliva to quench thirsting throats.
They want to taste the swollen bee stings on your chests
and cup your ass the way only grown men can.
They want to love you with their manhood
it's tumescence will make him murmer all the right words prematurely.
Your pride and purity will deflate at the pace of his turgid intruder.
He'll kiss you till your belly swells
then zip up his pants
and walk out the door with your smile in his pocket.
The broken heart of a lover
She has always been a lover. A beauty too.
She clung onto places so dark her smile shifted
desperate to be loved back, she wouldn't let go.
She lent her radiance to the night until it embraced her
She looked up so expectantly until it kissed her back.
He was what she wanted
but the tears he forced out of her eyes
are never what she deserved.
He didn't fill her mouth with his fist
or cover the pretty blush on her cheek with his palm
he sharpened his words and cut her with that,
the words he spat at her cut me too.
Beauty shouldn't weep.
I, with my too big nose and my too small eyes, I'd cry for her.
Her job was always only to caress the insecurity off my heart.
He may have broken her smile so she left to fix it.
Yes I remember now, that's why she left.
I never forget that she's a lover,
naive because she believed him when his fist was full of her hair
and he drew promises of a future on her stomach with his tongue
a tongue that nudged her closer to the subject of hushed conversations between women with hunched backs and knowing eyes who could spell o-r-g-a-a-a-s-m with their legs closed, and virgins with fingers buried deep inside their own bodies.
Bitter because she didn't care if her lilting laugh, and the breasts that fed a writer made grown men weep if only to have her look at them again.
She would be the one breaking hearts now.
She was 20 and that's how it began. She left her smile with him and moved out with his heart.
She clung onto places so dark her smile shifted
desperate to be loved back, she wouldn't let go.
She lent her radiance to the night until it embraced her
She looked up so expectantly until it kissed her back.
He was what she wanted
but the tears he forced out of her eyes
are never what she deserved.
He didn't fill her mouth with his fist
or cover the pretty blush on her cheek with his palm
he sharpened his words and cut her with that,
the words he spat at her cut me too.
Beauty shouldn't weep.
I, with my too big nose and my too small eyes, I'd cry for her.
Her job was always only to caress the insecurity off my heart.
He may have broken her smile so she left to fix it.
Yes I remember now, that's why she left.
I never forget that she's a lover,
naive because she believed him when his fist was full of her hair
and he drew promises of a future on her stomach with his tongue
a tongue that nudged her closer to the subject of hushed conversations between women with hunched backs and knowing eyes who could spell o-r-g-a-a-a-s-m with their legs closed, and virgins with fingers buried deep inside their own bodies.
Bitter because she didn't care if her lilting laugh, and the breasts that fed a writer made grown men weep if only to have her look at them again.
She would be the one breaking hearts now.
She was 20 and that's how it began. She left her smile with him and moved out with his heart.
Untitled
The girls. They bent to your kisses.
Danced at your touch, a jagged, painful, hopeful dance.
They believed your words when you said you'd call.
They hovered near the phone
took a little longer than necessary to dust around it,
checking if fate hadn't unplugged it as they swept under it.
Fussing, waiting, urgent whispered prayers
till mama shouted "Girl get in here"
Then they ripped themselves away
realising that it was the 4th day after your promise
and like all the honey-tongued others before you,
the phone is where you went to die.
Danced at your touch, a jagged, painful, hopeful dance.
They believed your words when you said you'd call.
They hovered near the phone
took a little longer than necessary to dust around it,
checking if fate hadn't unplugged it as they swept under it.
Fussing, waiting, urgent whispered prayers
till mama shouted "Girl get in here"
Then they ripped themselves away
realising that it was the 4th day after your promise
and like all the honey-tongued others before you,
the phone is where you went to die.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Grammy fashion
This will be one of the rare times I post anything fashion related on this blog, mainly because I know so little about it but also because this isn't a fashion blog. I haven't actually watched the Grammy's yet but I did google the fashion from the event...what makes celebrities think they can??
Anyway Grammy hits and misses below.
Beyonce and these damn sparkly shorts! A few years ago it was a gold ensemble very similar to this. You'd think a woman who works as hard as she does to get "it" would be much better turned out to the Grammy's. I blame Tina!
'Cause Rockstars can! Get it Lenny.
Mya also showed up. I like her (so does my broom) I mean she gave us "Case of the Ex". I like the dress, but I'm not in love with the accessories.
How is Diddy still even relevant! At least he took off his shades. Small mercies.
Janelle Monae stayed true to herself in her signature tux - works every time!
JLo's entirely too beautiful for her own good, doesn't hurt that her body is tighter than a miser in a mall!I love everything about this outfit.
Where do we pray? Nicki we let you be Barbie give someone else a chance to do the leopard thing. Or whatever National Geographic is about. Just no to all of it!
Paul Wall and his wife. I don't even know where to start. What's going on with the beard area! My heart's too young for this.
Who gon' even check these two? I love them. Heidi pops a kid out every year but she still gets to look like this. Hate if you must.
Anyway Grammy hits and misses below.
'Cause Rockstars can! Get it Lenny.
I always want to like Ciara's red carpet looks but this dress just did not convince me to spread the love. Looking like Wonder Woman's 2nd cousin on her mama's side. You're better than that Cici! Hair and legs are smashing though!
I'm uncomfortable looking at a skinny Jennifer Hudson. the dress is alright, the semi-circle cut-off thing at the bottom is very 90's. I die for the shoes.
Musiq I don't even care 143 boo 143!
Ah Toni babe...so much is wrong with this dress.
Marriage definitely suits Miss Monica. This dress is to die!
Lol! Tyrese and his church suit. Go transform something.
Anyway enough hating I'm starting to grow horns.
P.S Miss Keri "don't hate me cause I'm beautiful" Hilson. Noted I'll hate you for something else.
She looks cute though I shouldn't even lie.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Kalaedoscopic living
I haven't blogged in such a long time. Mainly because life was going on and I was trying to live it. but also because I've had a lot going through my mind, I couldn't settle on just one thng to write about and I also failed to seamlessly connect the myriad of thoughts going through my mind.
A few weeks ago Mr Amazing Boyfriend tells me about the star signs shifting - I can't remember if they moved one up or one down but basically I wasn't a Gemini anymore. Me, Angelina Jolie, Marilyn Monroe and Joan Rivers all of us all amazing women weren't Gemini's anymore, we're either Taurus or Cancers or something else less awesome.
I refused to change. It wasn't just about me, this was bigger than me. How would Angeline feel if I didn't fight for us. Anyway the conclusion of my dreams of celebrity grandeur ended with me as the hero (naturally) and Amazing Boyfriend finally told me that it only affects people born from 2009. So I'm still a versatile, 2-faced (that's not what it sounds like), creative Gemini.
Everyone who knows me well understands that cowardice is a part of my personality. I avoid confrontation but if ever gets to that I fight to win. This little brave philosophy was put to the test on Friday when I was almost dragged into the sugar cane fields. I left work early because I had a dentist appointment I had to get to so I had to walk about 5 minutes to get to the main road and catch a taxi because that's just how rural the Bend is! Anyway to get to the road I had to walk past some sugarcane fields and I saw 2 labourers in the distance, I remember mentally rolling my eyes, as if being harassed Monday to Friday isn't enough now I had to deal with this mess and one of them looked like he was staggering. Thursday night was clearly more fun than it should have been for a man who has to report to work the next day. As I approach them they stop and continue having their conversation and I had to walk past the drunk one, you can't buy this kind of luck, really. *The conversation will be translated to English for audience purposes*
He says "Hi, I didn't know such pretty people existed"
I might have blushed if he wasn't leering. Or staggering. Or ugh never mind I can't blush anyway. I respond with a preoccupied hello and hurry along.
Then he says "Can I just have 2 minutes of your time"
I keep walking and I don't look back.
Then I hear his uneven, heavy footsteps coming after me.
And I remember thinking I can't go out like this. I can't be murdered in my safety shoes.
My macabre journalistic mind started reporting the story of the cute girl found in the sugar cane fields. Which is when, God bless it, the cowardice took over, I woke the hell up and picked up my pace. Which is when I felt his calloused hand on my arm. Pulling, grabbing at whatever he could touch. Then his friend pulled him off me. And well my name is still uttered with reverence in the corridors of my old high school I ran like there were pretty shoes at that main road.
On Saturday I went to Mbabane to spend time with Amazing Boyfriend and I was wearing a white vest, shorts and sandals. When my sister and I got off at the rank we had to walk across it to get to town. I got stopped 4 times before we broke free. One guy said to me the type of thing I'm wearing isn't allowed in Manzini and I mustn't complain if I feel a man's genitals touch my ass. Pause. Okay that one went right over my head.
A few weeks ago Mr Amazing Boyfriend tells me about the star signs shifting - I can't remember if they moved one up or one down but basically I wasn't a Gemini anymore. Me, Angelina Jolie, Marilyn Monroe and Joan Rivers all of us all amazing women weren't Gemini's anymore, we're either Taurus or Cancers or something else less awesome.
I refused to change. It wasn't just about me, this was bigger than me. How would Angeline feel if I didn't fight for us. Anyway the conclusion of my dreams of celebrity grandeur ended with me as the hero (naturally) and Amazing Boyfriend finally told me that it only affects people born from 2009. So I'm still a versatile, 2-faced (that's not what it sounds like), creative Gemini.
Everyone who knows me well understands that cowardice is a part of my personality. I avoid confrontation but if ever gets to that I fight to win. This little brave philosophy was put to the test on Friday when I was almost dragged into the sugar cane fields. I left work early because I had a dentist appointment I had to get to so I had to walk about 5 minutes to get to the main road and catch a taxi because that's just how rural the Bend is! Anyway to get to the road I had to walk past some sugarcane fields and I saw 2 labourers in the distance, I remember mentally rolling my eyes, as if being harassed Monday to Friday isn't enough now I had to deal with this mess and one of them looked like he was staggering. Thursday night was clearly more fun than it should have been for a man who has to report to work the next day. As I approach them they stop and continue having their conversation and I had to walk past the drunk one, you can't buy this kind of luck, really. *The conversation will be translated to English for audience purposes*
He says "Hi, I didn't know such pretty people existed"
I might have blushed if he wasn't leering. Or staggering. Or ugh never mind I can't blush anyway. I respond with a preoccupied hello and hurry along.
Then he says "Can I just have 2 minutes of your time"
I keep walking and I don't look back.
Then I hear his uneven, heavy footsteps coming after me.
And I remember thinking I can't go out like this. I can't be murdered in my safety shoes.
My macabre journalistic mind started reporting the story of the cute girl found in the sugar cane fields. Which is when, God bless it, the cowardice took over, I woke the hell up and picked up my pace. Which is when I felt his calloused hand on my arm. Pulling, grabbing at whatever he could touch. Then his friend pulled him off me. And well my name is still uttered with reverence in the corridors of my old high school I ran like there were pretty shoes at that main road.
On Saturday I went to Mbabane to spend time with Amazing Boyfriend and I was wearing a white vest, shorts and sandals. When my sister and I got off at the rank we had to walk across it to get to town. I got stopped 4 times before we broke free. One guy said to me the type of thing I'm wearing isn't allowed in Manzini and I mustn't complain if I feel a man's genitals touch my ass. Pause. Okay that one went right over my head.
 |
| These are the offensive shorts. |
That's basically what's been going on in my life. I'll share more once I've lived more. Tomorrow basically.
I typed this so fast I hope there aren't any spelling or grammatical errors. If there are, count to 10 and remember tomorrow is still Tuesday.
Stay beautiful.
Friday, January 21, 2011
I am a coloured girl
I was 21 when I discovered Ntozake Shange. I read an excerpt from her book "For coloured girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf". I was excited, inspired and nervous at finding someone who wrote about being a woman of colour so fearlessly, so passionately and so openly. I hunted that book down everywhere, I visited second hand book shops religiously in hopes that I would find a copy, battered and worn from years of reading, years of inspiring, years of affirming. But I had no luck, so like I always do when all else fails I turned to Google. There I found bits and pieces of the choreo-poem written in 1974, it blew my mind to think that the issues Ms Shange wrote about then were still relevant to a child born in 1988.
I am a black woman. I am an intelligent black woman. A woman who by virtue of her skin has no choice but to be tough because the world doesn’t believe that black can be beautiful. Ms Shange’s writing tells women to be reliant on themselves, to love deeply but carefully. Her writing is so necessary for women of colour who have been disinherited and dispossessed. She deals with issues that all women go through whether inadvertently or directly.
Rape, abuse, abandonment, incest, abortions or promiscuity.
I have family members who have been raped, Aunts who have been abused, friends who have had abortions and my whole tertiary experience was punctuated with the sounds of girls too young to know better screaming in all the right places during sex. The world is a tough place especially when you’re made to feel like an observer of life, never invited to participate in the living. I’ve written about my own insecurities after being “abandoned” by the most beautiful woman in the world, how difficult it was to be the woman I wanted my sisters to model themselves after. I was 6. I had big shoes to fill, but I grabbed those size six pumps, slipped my pampered little feet in and wore them till they fit. Because as a woman life demands you to cope, it demands you to smile through pain, it convinces you to lie to the world and cover up your bruises – talking ‘bout “I fell down the stairs”. Women are soft, beautiful, delicate beings; tough, fierce, strong things – things of resilience, stories of their strength repeatedly told over the years but woman is handled carelessly, her laugh is taken for granted, her tears aren’t a thing of importance. Ms Shange’s poem “Dark phrases” state simply what I’ve always known to be true;
All the people woman encounters in her life should strive to handle her warmly, should seek her smile, should walk to the ends of the earth to stop her eyes from brimming with tears.
I was nervous when I was settled down with the DVD about to start. I was wary of a man effectively telling the story and struggles of black women. A story that needs no hysterics, that is ugly because it is simple, beautiful because it is not. I enjoy Tyler Perry’s work and I did so with no discernment until I realized there was a formula to all his movies. I didn’t need that formula here.
The cast was made of 9 well established actresses; Thandie Newton, Whoopi Goldberg, Anika Noni Rose, Kerry Washington, Loretta Devine, Phyllicia Rashad, Janet Jackson; Kimberly Elise and Tessa Thompson. The stand out performance for me was Anika Noni Rose, when she recited her poem about “the nature of rape has changed. We invite them into our homes, cook for him, kiss him goodnight and are caught unaware when the stranger we expect the intrusion from doesn’t show up. And we are raped. By invitation.” It broke my heart.
This movie had some rough moments but it was definitely uncomfortable at times to watch, as well it should be. It shouldn’t be easy to see;
a woman get raped in her own home,
a young girl who has sex for the first time have to face the harrowing decision to venture into a shady house in Harlem to terminate her pregnancy,
a woman facing a life with HIV because of an unfaithful husband who’s all too accustomed to fixing everything with “I’m sorry”,
a woman who uses sex to feel powerful over men.
Tyler Perry took on a tough challenge but he pulled it off. It wasn’t flawless but it worked, it was captivating, heart wrenching and so very beautiful.
I went to sleep thinking about all that life has in store for me, not because of the colour of my skin, not because of my gender but because I am and I can and I do and…the rainbow is enuf.
I am a black woman. I am an intelligent black woman. A woman who by virtue of her skin has no choice but to be tough because the world doesn’t believe that black can be beautiful. Ms Shange’s writing tells women to be reliant on themselves, to love deeply but carefully. Her writing is so necessary for women of colour who have been disinherited and dispossessed. She deals with issues that all women go through whether inadvertently or directly.
Rape, abuse, abandonment, incest, abortions or promiscuity.
I have family members who have been raped, Aunts who have been abused, friends who have had abortions and my whole tertiary experience was punctuated with the sounds of girls too young to know better screaming in all the right places during sex. The world is a tough place especially when you’re made to feel like an observer of life, never invited to participate in the living. I’ve written about my own insecurities after being “abandoned” by the most beautiful woman in the world, how difficult it was to be the woman I wanted my sisters to model themselves after. I was 6. I had big shoes to fill, but I grabbed those size six pumps, slipped my pampered little feet in and wore them till they fit. Because as a woman life demands you to cope, it demands you to smile through pain, it convinces you to lie to the world and cover up your bruises – talking ‘bout “I fell down the stairs”. Women are soft, beautiful, delicate beings; tough, fierce, strong things – things of resilience, stories of their strength repeatedly told over the years but woman is handled carelessly, her laugh is taken for granted, her tears aren’t a thing of importance. Ms Shange’s poem “Dark phrases” state simply what I’ve always known to be true;
“Let her be born
Let her be born
And handled warmly.”
All the people woman encounters in her life should strive to handle her warmly, should seek her smile, should walk to the ends of the earth to stop her eyes from brimming with tears.
I was nervous when I was settled down with the DVD about to start. I was wary of a man effectively telling the story and struggles of black women. A story that needs no hysterics, that is ugly because it is simple, beautiful because it is not. I enjoy Tyler Perry’s work and I did so with no discernment until I realized there was a formula to all his movies. I didn’t need that formula here.
The cast was made of 9 well established actresses; Thandie Newton, Whoopi Goldberg, Anika Noni Rose, Kerry Washington, Loretta Devine, Phyllicia Rashad, Janet Jackson; Kimberly Elise and Tessa Thompson. The stand out performance for me was Anika Noni Rose, when she recited her poem about “the nature of rape has changed. We invite them into our homes, cook for him, kiss him goodnight and are caught unaware when the stranger we expect the intrusion from doesn’t show up. And we are raped. By invitation.” It broke my heart.
This movie had some rough moments but it was definitely uncomfortable at times to watch, as well it should be. It shouldn’t be easy to see;
a woman get raped in her own home,
a young girl who has sex for the first time have to face the harrowing decision to venture into a shady house in Harlem to terminate her pregnancy,
a woman facing a life with HIV because of an unfaithful husband who’s all too accustomed to fixing everything with “I’m sorry”,
a woman who uses sex to feel powerful over men.
Tyler Perry took on a tough challenge but he pulled it off. It wasn’t flawless but it worked, it was captivating, heart wrenching and so very beautiful.
I went to sleep thinking about all that life has in store for me, not because of the colour of my skin, not because of my gender but because I am and I can and I do and…the rainbow is enuf.
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