Crutches

I had a crush on Matthew Freshmen year,

But so did every other girl in case you did hear.

Tall, collected, caramel complected, he didn’t like me back so I sat and reflected cuz my heart got rejected as I had suspected.

So I moved on quick to Alpha Dwayne,

My tummy got soft when I heard his name.

He was fierce, debonair, and his talk was mean,

And we shared a mouth moment on his washing machine.

Through my crush good friends we became,

And I kept my crushes Greek all the same.

I always had a crush on Alade,

We made so much sense,

But really—I shouldn’t be using the past tense.

He had me open with poem,

His eyes were my home,

I would answer his phone calls when my phone was on digital roam.

But I was mistaken because I think he was taken.

And if my heart had a scent it would have smelt like burnt bacon.

But then one night, I had a strange ass dream,

I was getting ready to marry Akeem.

He encapsulated me with symmetry and creativity and he was a unique entity.

A man that’s profound yet brief, with a beautiful mind and cute ass teeth.

But then one day when I was walking to class,

I saw Troy Hailey just a shaking that ass.

He had a country ass walk and a country ass talk.

All the girls would flock when he waved his dreadlocks.

Not to mention his good court game,

But then I looked to his left and forgot his name.

Because there stood this man, and I made sure he saw me,

After I introduced myself he said “my name is Giovanni”

Oh my god oh my god! This man is really god.

I liked him so much he sent my heart to the moon,

I wanted us to travel off in the sunset—a sunset in Cameroon.

Ghirardelli chocolate skin so special,

But then one day I stumbled upon a professional.

I went to a BSU meeting and I was glad I could go,

Because that’s when I first saw Dr. Pogue.

Yikes.

Then after a while I had no crushes,

Because Binghamton boys just stopped using brushes,

As I walk around campus and see all my crushes,

It reminds me of why my heart is on crutches.

BUT

I met somebody that I like a lot

Oh so fine, and always hot.

Takes care of me and makes me dinner

And always prefers me a little less thinner

Cherishes my soul and takes me for rides,

Feeds me, bathes me, and sticks by my side,

Understands me, loves me, and is always there to listen—

So for now, I’m gonna stick with my baby—Kristan.

Lough

Have you ever destroyed yourself because of love?

That kind of love that leaves you waiting at the bus stop. With the leaves n' shit. Sitting. watching people walk their dogs as they stop to shit. Shitting as you compare yourself to the shit coming out the puppy's anus because it's like, you're heart is mad tight, and you yourself become tight when you see a young couple holding onto each other tight and you try to be realistic, but anything realistic to you becomes pessimistic and sadistic because you know the kids in the bitch's wristlet aren't his kids. And as a father he's probably a misfit as you check the old man's hand for a wedding band and you continue to mind your bidness wondering who at your wedding is gonna be a witness so when you're hawled off to divorce court, your homegirl can say I told you so, kupid. You say kupidaintstupid, but you settled for cleofus jones and now you're crying on the phone because you're alone and you settled for a love you aint even want in the first damn place. What a mothafuggin disgrace. You better wipe up that salty shit up on your face and forget about love because its nothing. She's right, love is nothing unless its with the one you place on a pedestal, the one you zone out when you thinking about them when ur about to pay for your groceries at the register, wondering what he's thinking while he's telling you his thoughts and cherishing everything for you that he's ever bought. Even if it's a number 3 from mickey d's, each bite represents the intensity of the cuddling nights watching TV, making love in the closet because the bed's too wet, and saying love you baby baby with no regrets. I mean the last sip of the soda kinda love. The warm spot on the sofa kinda love. The move over lemme lay on your breast kinda love. The move over lemme lay on your chest kinda love. The there's mad people around but imma rub ur knee in public kinda love. The kinda love where you communicate through words and throw the text messaging bullshit out of the window kinda love. That no facebook kinda love. That no AOL kinda love. That real live, hug me, court me, wear my name on your shirt kinda love.

I have destroyed myself because of love?

Cuz it seems to me that the love I want is out of reach, and the love I want, I gotta teach. And the contract I made with love got breached because he tells me at least once a month that I'm on his mind and not because of the picture message I sent him of my behind. I mean I put it on the glass for my love. I twiddled my thumbs in the rain, by the bar, in my car, by my laptop waiting for his screen name to pop up so I could say hi because he forgot to. This love right here is pulling me by a string, making me think of wild shit that I would never even dream of. Picture this dude in a black tuxedo with winged tip shoes, walking down the isle to say I do. And me in my black dress in the back of the church, I stand up in defiance right after the preacher says, object or forever hold your silence. And I'll be there with a copy of his wedding license standing on the pew ripping it up in a million pieces as they cascade gently to the floor of the church. And I run to the front and I get on my knees and beg the love of my life to reconsider please. Because I know I'm the one that's best for him. The best fit. The best shit. The best wit. And the best tits. He pics me up from off my knees and looks me in my eyes and sees, the love and all her desperate plees. He closes his eyes and pushes me to the side, and takes ahold of his unfit bride. He says his vows so proud and loud and I look and there's consent from the crowd. My figure slowly starts to become static. Coming in and out like stolen cable TV. I'm fizzled out…nothing but an important memory. I was never the priority.

I'm still destroyed because of love,

Cuz like I'm a damn good friend, with a guilty conscience. No bitter apple could replace the lodgings of coagulated blood that runs through my veins like slugs and no bear in a forest could kill me like I've been killed. No clay bowl could be kilned like I've been kilned. That love.

Love?

Lough?

Love?

Lough?

Love?

Lough? What does it mean? If I can't be with him then it can't be. Love? That word is nothing to me. Love only applies when I discuss my mom or my dad, or the best friend I ever had, or my favorite drink, or my time of day, or the sarcastic way I display dismay or how I feel about CSA. I have a shirt that says I love new York. But the heart is replaced with a cardiac model, displaying the ventricles and the whole damn aorta. It's bloody and drips down the side of my sleeve, and seeps through like nectar in a sieve. Love ain't shit unless it's with the one you want to be with. But if the one you want to be with is the one you plead with then go smoke some weed shit and take ur heart off your sleeve. Cuz if I can't have his love the only love that keeps me feening…then I spell love l-o-u-g-h…because it has no meaning.

One Night Stand

So I decided to sue the people in the mall for harassment trying to sell me the nail buffing kits. Harassing me on the sideline with their one line "do you have natural nails?"

I felt like telling that little Grey man, I’m a Jamaican girl from New york state "of course I don't have no goddamn natural nails." But its cool though because I'm understanding of the fact that a hustle comes a dime a dozen but often enough it's a bakers dozen with the lucky number 13 leaning serenly on the back drop screen behind the city skylights and in a crackhead's pocket.

Lemme stop it.

As i cruised around the mall, little cousin in hand, i stumbled across this man, Pablo.

Not normally my type. no attractiveness license. I usually like em dark like a kitchen appliances and with the soul and passion of lets say...mike tyson. but he started to slow down and i searched his eyes to find the game he had in mind.

He signaled a sign to his wrist as his male ego said watch this and he reluctantly asked me the time. He wanted to to know where foot locker was

and i said its over there and I'll walk with you because,

I'm going in the same direction....knowing damn well i had to piss like boxed wine, but this man, this papi was absolutely breathtaking. But despite that shit, but despite that shit, but despite that shit, I could tell he was taking apart my profile as we cruised side by side, admiring my freshly curled rizos and how i flashed my platinum visas and he gave me all the reasons for all his sentimental jesus pieces and he introduced me to his nephews and nieces as we stopped by CVS and he bought me a reese's pieces which made us think of chocolate. Chocolate, he said, is a metaphor for life. For instance all this political drama…look how I can break down obama. I aint never heard no shit like this before. he said,

"Boxes of chocolates, some of the pieces of chocolate running for office. Not the real kinda chocolate persay, its kinda like the grey fluffed up shit you find in a milky way. Not really chocolate, but not really marshmallow. Kind of an in between thang that appeals to all mans across the land. Sort of like a Mounds bar with the velvety reality on the outside, and the corrupt as coconut flackey filling on the inside. And throw in its almond joy counterpart, because of course a good candydit—always gotta have some nuts. "life is like a box of negroes" ya gotta bid high to get the best guy. And the same goes for a box of latinos, just look in the same box as the cream filled negroes."

This dude has me past my limit. This Puerto Rican man also has me over my minutes. We talked about different kinds of weed, and how to warm up the seeds. He admired my African Pride which oddly enough is the name of the perm i use to smooth down my African sides. He said that in a lot of black females, their pride is missing, but as he talked I still stay concerned about my kitchen. I engaged him and he engaged me with heavy conversation for the masses. Worthy of extra credit in classes. It was that nerd type shit worthy of taped of glasses,

Our ryhthm was that of you and me and flowed like viscous poetry and the one day he cheerfully invited me to meet his family. Family? What would they say? If they found out I religious ate curraayy. That I don't have jesus hanging over my bed and That my dad come from yawd and my mother is dread. Shit, I'm a black girl, thats matter of factual, although I'm light skinned, these curls are not natural.

And even though i'm yellow as day, I'm still eligible for micro braids. We can be friends pablo, buts thats all we can do, your mother would think i was too black for you.

Pablo took his olive fingertip and leaned them against my congo lips.

he said

The Africa that you believe is the Africa inside of me, with whips and chains and connected necks approaching ships on wooden decks. I was laying next to you side by side with parched lips and desolate eyes. As we departed from our land, it was me there holding your hand. I witnessed you working in the heat, you rubbed the caluses off my feet. I wept the night that you were raped, and you bore a child by nature's fate. The child you bore turned out to be me destined for the life death. I watched you as my beautiful mother with bails of cotton atop her head.

My beautiful girl can't you see,

we share the same damn history

You're my mother, my sister, my aunt, my daughter

mi madre, mi tia, mi hija y hermana

but this vision of you that stand before me

reminds me of the memory

the one you still exude for all to see

even after all the centuries

of the conquerors brutality
messing with our mentality
the vision of you enjoying the breeze

you standing, not hanging, underneath a tree

with your eyes closed as my queen.

we shared a kiss and went to bed.

like enslaved lovers head to head.

As Latino and Jamaican as we could be.

We were Africa between the sheets.

Disease

I’m an environmentalist and that’s why I smoke.

I painted my nails red because my ex was loc.

I’m a poet and a singer, but I don’t sing folks.

Light-skinned but I got a West African yolk.

Ya think I’m joking?

If sex were a disease I’d have a cancerous tumor that started in my high school like a rancorous rumor. I was the butt and the expense of everyone’s humor cuz with sex at 14 I was the first consumer. When the sky was lunar he’d come over and spoon her. She couldn’t lose her cherry innocence any sooner. Sex was matter of factual, something very casual she loved her daddy a lot so she followed his wanton actions so she was promiscuous and yes she was ashamed so they deemed it as conspicuous. She washes dishes. She used the sponge to wash wash because the soap went down the drain and also washed away the pain.

If love were a disease I’d be a diamond. At first slowly being lied to, and then dying to be buried to 6 feet under as my mother shudders and the cows udder with no brothers. Being flushed to slugs and eaten alive by bugs as my family hugs each other in pain as the years fly by and my eyeballs turn to meatballs for the parasitic hogs; that also eat away at my draws and my heart like he did. And he did. And he did. And he did. And he did. And he did. Oh he just wanted to hit it, he broke it off with me for her, he did her because I wasn’t around as my buns turn to dust and my coffin hinges start to rust and my clothes and shoes transform into CO2 and my skin turns to oil as my hair gets course and coiled and I’m turned upside down in metamorphic mash where I’m heated and cooled and pressured and no longer dying but reborn as a diamond.

Hate.

If hate were a disease then I’d have HIV where no one could possibly save me and I would waste away like shit and pee and be placed in a category of the lowest form of healthy and I understand what hate breeds. Hate breeds separation of species, Hate breaths people who feign for me, like to phenotype me and especially those who wanna be like me try to pretend like they don’t see like me or literally see like me. Please lemme be apart of the pristine, clean, lean, beauty machines. But first I gotta lighten up my spots with cream and get a nose job because my fat nose leans. My dignity keeps me warm but now my brown weave which is a 1B 33 makes my soul freeze because when I look at myself in the mirror I no longer see me. SEE? Bad posture I lean to the side…If ignorance was a disease I’d have an STI. Chillin on a dead campus, that’s why I’m still a GDI trying to make it to grad school so I don’t live on the street side. I grew up on high street that was off of Good MAN, Full of marginalized rainbow kids that was my hood MAN. Then I was ripped away from the ROC where everyone was curious about being black like me and for real for real for real like seriously I was a slave to the white girls raiding my braids. Asking me why the hell my hair was that way.

If my words were a disease

Then ya’ll would all be sick

But I would give ya’ll a cure

Because I’m not that sick

If your minds were a disease

Then ya’ll would constantly sneeze

If your ignorance were soap

You’d be breathing in suds

If your hate were contagious

You’d be coughing up blood.

If your education was chronic, you’d be hooked on phonics

If you want a cure for these diseases then you need to research pharmacies not Eckerd or Walgreens but the one with hope and comfort and a ignorance cream to rub on your friggin noses so the next question I pose is how can I help my sistah rather than diss her? How can I help my brother rather than shoot him under cover.

I’m an environmentalist and that’s why I smoke

Sex, love, hate, and ignorance is not a joke

A disease for the things is a proper description

Just listen and get a prescription.

Listen to me if you can’t see me.

Listen to me if you can’t see me.

His love was like a CD-ROM. I could place and position the cylinder plate and push play and I’d peep the piercing melodies like bumble bees that would pulsate from the pressure pulse of a pelvic push; of palms pleasure player pounding porous powers of pins painless acupuncture of pure pretty passion. My love was rationed into half sections no sex sessions because we used discretion with erections as I caught all of his attention through the wire and we gained desire from lips and phone and keyboards on fire. When the phone rang it used to sound like a choir.

Silently crying in the top right hand corner of my dormitory bed. Knees tucked; hugging my head not wanting to touch my clammy linens and I was quickly losing weight from loneliness, yes I was thinning, and I knew from the beginning that the 185 miles would do us in on those rough weekends when I needed him the most like for instance when I’d burn my toast on the last two slices of bread. Or when I didn’t have enough bread or when I’d get back a good paper with an unmatching grade or when a particular boy abandoned my friendship and then murdered me with an army grenade. When I had so many lemons that I’d just ruin any type of lemonade I tried to make and nights when I sweated and regretted not saying how I felt consistently and persistently not knowing that that faithful night my love would come so instantly.

Listen to me if you can’t see me.

I could no longer take it. Wanting an embrace from him and I couldn’t take it. So I hugged my pillow instead and then I told my pillow, GET OFF ME because you’re not him.

You’re not the slim Jim with the delicious teeth that would greet me in my sleep and sweep me off of my feet. Make me feel as if I was whiling because I would always wake up for some reason smiling. You don’t have forearms marked up and you’re not dark how I like em’. You don’t have clothing style that’s crispier then tempura or the audacity to wake up on a Wednesday and wear a fedora. You don’t laugh at my dumb ass jokes. All I can do is stare at your slobber stained stitching and poke you. You invoke nothing within me. No butterflies or visions of zipped down flies.

So I’d go and take a cold shower just so I could pass some hours. Trying to uncrinkle my heart while my hands got wrinkly and my body became cold and goose pimply and I’d think about those dimples that I’d imagine myself diving into for a warm waterfall of conversation. I’d sing and scream and shout and then I’d feel even dirtier when I came out. My face wet with water droplets…a few of them salty.

Missing him is like missing the news. Lost

Kissing him is like singing the blues. Cost

Holding him is like holding my life. Because

Being his girl was like being his wife. I was

Listen to me if you can’t see me.

They say time heals all wounds but what if you get amputated? Do you become encapsulated in trying to feel elated that you have two good legs and one hell of an arm? But my first mistake was not telling him in a sober state of mind that I didn’t want to leave his love behind. Disregarding his CD-ROM so I resorted to ineedsomeonetoloveme.com looking for black management but I stumble upon a changed bandit who learned his life’s lesson through incarceration but is still living a life I can’t manage. Thinking my love for him is true because I met him sober, thinking he could relate to me because I called my self ms. Startngovah. He’s currently filling a void that any other man would be doing if he was pursuing me. They’d be fillers. Filling a void and passing time while I hobble around with nothing but my girlish charm. Waiting for the love of my life to return because he is my prosthetic arm. Figuratively he completes me. Literally he completes me. Definitely, he defeats me. And physically, he releases me. But everyday it eats me to know that I never realized that when we split, I took his eyes.

So when I see him, he doesn’t see me.

Listen to me if you can’t see me.

Surprise.

Here are your eyes.

AIM-less

YY4Myslf (10:29:17 PM):Living a life and seeing all the diff paths to take. I wonder what it is that caused the pain. What caused the mistakes?

kupidaintstupid (10:32:06 PM):Mistakes? I mistakenly mistook a mistake for a mistake, not considering that it was a risk I had to take. Living life on the brink of acceptance; I must accept my mistakes as fortune.

YY4Myslf(10:32:46 PM):So with this fortune, not just a cookie, I live the life of a new signed rookie. New to the game. Every step, I decided to remember the mistakes for it would only be a mistake to forget.

kupidaintstupid (10:35:35 PM):So what the hell did I get from all of it? Do I move on? Do big things? Or be a bum on the side of street smelling my pits? Do I risk a presently good idea for shit? Or do I wait and sit? Until someone's mistakes become my destiny.

YY4Myslf(10:37:27 PM):Its like all the confusion internal and ex. It’s the only thing stopping me from moving to the next. Plateau, height, no matta fact my zenith, I want to go so far my mind holds me back but at the same time has me feigning.

kupidaintstupid (10:41:20 PM):We learn from the past but the events become monsters...everyone is a snake, a thief or imposter. If your mind is holding you back, you're gonna’ have a slow start, the key is to connect your mind to your heart.

YY4Myslf(10:43:02 PM):And with that connection made standoffish even when afraid it seems I reach the fork in the road and go straight, no dead end but maybe a prolonging of fate? Or preparation...

kupidaintstupid (10:45:41 PM):Preparation....of time wasted. Fear is a bitch. Believe me, I am she. I reached a fork in the road as well, but each prong leads to a cliff that I am more than ready to dive off of.

YY4Myslf(10:48:03 PM):Hmmm so taken the shift and the jump notice jump not dive, for maybe after I fall instead of sinking I will rise, Can u hear them... The leaves dance to the music of the possibilities.

kupidaintstupid (10:52:37 PM):Oh the music...my saving grace. So powerful I’m glad that something can feel the way it makes me feel. Sort of the ways u make me feel.

YY4Myslf(10:54:19 PM): His eyes dance to the rhythm of her fingers on letters on screens, yet inside he hears the silence of the unknown scream, he wants to open up so she can see thru his heart, he wants her to see he is not superman, and the cape is to hide-- not to protect her.

kupidaintstupid (10:57:09 PM):I shitted on superman yesterday... when he came by and tried to rescue me from a burning building. I told him, "This fire feels good. It burns but I yearn for it." Superman is whack because the super man, super, fantastic man I know...is black.

YY4Myslf(10:59:35 PM):He chuckles at the vision of her shittin on the cape, closes his eyes and walks hoping he walks into her arms not his relived mistake, he reaches for her hand hoping that she comes near, little does she know that because of abuse, simply holding hands is a fear.

kupidaintstupid (11:11:12 PM):Well then she tells him not to be afraid knowing her words probably won't help. The same words a mother tells her child before getting a shot or the same words a murderer says before he lets out a shot. She tells him that she is afraid too. Not afraid of what he might do to her, but rather of what the past will do to them. She understands if he doesn’t want to hold her hand, all she cares is that his hands are open

YY4Myslf(11:22:40 PM):Sighs in. A chest eyes closed with emotional direction, yea that's what they say, “love is blind attraction due to personal predilection,” "or is it a depiction or dereliction of a past......love, lover, shyt maybe a mother....shyt maybes its a mother

kupidaintstupid (11:30:18 PM):Well predilection in this situation is a sickening likeness or a healthy infatuation. The dereliction that creeps into your mind is gnawing at your behind and its decaying your cornea because you cant make out what’s in front of you. The neon spots of a painful light are lingering, and that is understandable...scientific even. And you’re right because love is blind. But love is also paralyzing...so hold my hand....heck...you won't even feel it.

YY4Myslf(11:38:54 PM):Hand shakes as it reaches out so much deeper then just holding a hand, its beyond the fear of him not being the best man or that her heart cannot stand and will falter fail maybe even run, for it was him who lived had a mother who didn't want her son but I can’t dwell on what was and what could be. Opens his eyes sees a newfound love shoulder and heart, takes one step, isn't much but it’s a start.

kupidaintstupid (11:47:46 PM):She tells him that comparing apples and oranges will give him one hell of a punch. She reassures him that whatever likeness or love exists from he to she is one that goes above appreciation. The calendar says one thing, but true time says another and she's sorry about his mother who made him afraid of the day that has come. And now his patience is unraveled by the enforcement of a mother who cast him aside and traveled, but she assures that this step he has decided to take will somehow lead him to his fate. And she's happy that she can affect it now, she knows its good, but she does not know how.

A circle

He amuses me.
But He confuses me when he abuses me with the clandestine way he gets away with bruising me as he uses me for illusions see? Like when he accuses me then black and blues-es me it alludes away from his bluesy state of translucent charm with a hard gripped arm marked by post charm syndrome as my face begins to heal and I begin to deal with presence punch and my patience is what keeps me a patient. Waiting in pain like a professional patient.
Is it disgusting that I take pride in these welts and my bleeding scalp? reminders of his excuses to touch me.
to fuck me.
or whats left of me.
He makes me laugh.
He leaves me in stitches. And showed me his philosophy on snitches by literally blessing me with stitches. Calling me all types of bitches in his stagnant snake-like stature with a bitch mode disposition that invited fear inside
like it was a goddamn dinner going on inside of my soul. With no clean bowls and sharp silverware everywhere. He cried over spilt milk which was a direct representation of his milky white guilt that was viscous and thick like shit. His guilt hauntingly dripped off the kitchen table into tiny translucent pools seeping into the wood.
For the better good.
For my sake.
For our sake.
I remain un-raped.
Naked in a romantically inclined air bed. Gave fantastic head like clockwork. Clockwork Orange was more of the mood as he came and tumbled off of my breast cliffs in an abruptly rude way after saying all the romantic things a man could say in one spray of semen he admits his love as he bursts in relief, and i'm in disbelief of how he feels.
And it appeals to me.
And it amuses me.
And it makes me laugh.
A circle.