Black Mental Health

Tryna Keep The Vibe Right As I Write To The Death

[blackmentalhealth]

La Luna

the

moon

also

turns itself

inside

and

out

[blackmentalhealth]

Poem Nineteen

make us fake.

so we can be together again.

lie the stars are ageless

and never falling, never failing

and our fossils will never be found.

our house so full,

our love compact lie

in messy compartments

confusing what we are with

what we aren’t,

I

wanted

to find you

in the middle of a wild story.

stoked to madness

and broken loose.

a stampeding love

long enough to talk

about everything

sometimes I hover above this body

a blooming network of scars

become bark

laid down by that rivering vision of you.

you as: my Thogal

rehearsal for death

a procession of deepening nights / like a staircase / wound me down to nothing:

“all along the boy was made of eyelashes, a cocoon: a dream…”

where upon the 73rd night , you unspun the last of me

[blackmentalhealth]

Your Mother Is a Clover Now

today i am death

and the world has lost all taste

and i for it and we, for eachother

have become a shape surviving the reach of sense

we know whence it knell

but hence no signature

after, after all

at last in this place

where stories fail

and there is no attribution

a foreswearance of becomings all

likely and fantastical

and not a hand to sign,responsible

what remains is in clovers

the forward and backward bestride

what is and is now only,

cut from sounds, smells

stranded, standing apart

all the same

the shape cut around the loss

and in time grows over it

on Mother's Day the cemeteries

are popular

people

re tracing 

the border past which feelings

can't cross

at one stage or another

of growing with and growing over

cut from the same border,

outside the reach of all senses

we await the future

to be resolved into clovers.

[blackmentalhealth]

Poem Nineteen

make us fake.

so we can be together again.

lie the stars are ageless

and never falling, never failing

and our fossils will never be found.

our house so full,

our love compact lie

in messy compartments

confusing what we are with

what we aren’t,

I

wanted

to find you

in the middle of a wild story.

stoked to madness

and broken loose.

a stampeding love

long enough to talk

about everything

sometimes I hover above this body

a blooming network of scars

become bark

laid down by that rivering vision of you.

you as: my Thogal

rehearsal for death

a procession of deepening nights / like a staircase / wound me down to nothing:

“all along the boy was made of eyelashes, a cocoon: a dream…”

where upon the 73rd night , you unspun the last of me

[blackmentalhealth]

RAHSHEKA i would press my throat together with yours to come away with flowers flares of uncoupling fireworks laughing potpourri against the thrill of silent snow i've just wondered what I've missed since the day you slipped the moon from off your fingers and disengaged the Earth, me and him both

[blackmentalhealth]

( )less I. perfect in his depth and distance a star clarifies nights, confirms a knowable presence and is a dream, for we wish by it, and though seen unclearly as is merely as was we do calculate by the surviving light which persists to us from coinciding pasts the dream and the star are prophetic.

[blackmentalhealth]

0 for 17

I built a gear

That opens a year round winter within

A marvel of science fiction

Everything goes cold dim:

the room me the lights the past, future

where I buried the door

so it never closes

and like a cavity

swallows more and more.

Time to play the winter game:

How long can I survive its floor.

No lights. No food. No family, nor word.

Dresser drawers like sickly trees

That gave you days to wear but now hold not

One hour two hour three years four

Bodies I’ve climbed and birthdays and loss

In search for the door

My skin is halogen gracing water

Living bestride time

Where passerby on either side project myth

And move on

and the other day

Came word from a woman/a grandmother/a girl

“You seem like a gloomy person”

I wasn’t quite there, but I thought

Because there is winter in my body

And I am winter to the world

[blackmentalhealth]

Thank you to everyone who got me to 100 likes!

[blackmentalhealth]

Poem Nineteen

make us fake.

so we can be together again.

lie the stars are ageless

and never falling, never failing

and our fossils will never be found.

our house so full,

our love compact lie

in messy compartments

confusing what we are with

what we aren’t,

I

wanted

to find you

in the middle of a wild story.

stoked to madness

and broken loose.

a stampeding love

long enough to talk

about everything

sometimes I hover above this body

a blooming network of scars

become bark

laid down by that rivering vision of you.

you as: my Thogal

rehearsal for death

a procession of deepening nights / like a staircase / wound me down to nothing:

“all along the boy was made of eyelashes, a cocoon: a dream…”

where upon the 73rd night , you unspun the last of me

[blackmentalhealth]

Thank you @eldritch-abominable and everyone who got me to 25 reblogs

[blackmentalhealth]

C L O V E R S

On Mother's Day cemeteries

are popular with people

carrying for two what time has

made theirs alone.

they bring it with them anyway.

to borders inviting

what can never

change hands again

it only stays in clovers.

perennial of crossroads

and native to ignoble firsts:

the night spent sleeping

the holiday right side up

a workday on its feet

and our unmet arms

make us thresholds

become shapes past reach of worldly sense

in this place where stories

fail with no attribution

we turn 

by memory’s unpredictable math

a generative grammar along 

graves, 

surprised there spring frontiers

where we find our feet 

like learning about

cemeteries on Mother's Day

where we arrive and await

the future

to resolve us into clovers.

[blackmentalhealth]

Your Mother Is a Clover Now

today i am death

and the world has lost all taste

and i for it and we, for eachother

have become a shape surviving the reach of sense

we know whence it knell

but hence no signature

after, after all

at last in this place

where stories fail

and there is no attribution

a foreswearance of becomings all

likely and fantastical

and not a hand to sign,responsible

what remains is in clovers

the forward and backward bestride

what is and is now only,

cut from sounds, smells

stranded, standing apart

all the same

the shape cut around the loss

and in time grows over it

on Mother's Day the cemeteries

are popular

people

re tracing 

the border past which feelings

can't cross

at one stage or another

of growing with and growing over

cut from the same border,

outside the reach of all senses

we await the future

to be resolved into clovers.

[blackmentalhealth]

Poem Nineteen

make us fake.

so we can be together again.

lie the stars are ageless

and never falling, never failing

and our fossils will never be found.

our house so full,

our love compact lie

in messy compartments

confusing what we are with

what we aren’t,

I

wanted

to find you

in the middle of a wild story.

stoked to madness

and broken loose.

a stampeding love

long enough to talk

about everything

sometimes I hover above this body

a blooming network of scars

become bark

laid down by that rivering vision of you.

you as: my Thogal

rehearsal for death

a procession of deepening nights / like a staircase / wound me down to nothing:

“all along the boy was made of eyelashes, a cocoon: a dream…”

where upon the 73rd night , you unspun the last of me

[blackmentalhealth]

La Luna

the

moon

also

turns itself

inside

and

out

[blackmentalhealth]

“Do you take care of her?”

A coworker asks if I am a father.  I light up, reply in the affirmative and display the framed black and white photograph of my child I keep on my desk. 

Immediately he asks, “Do you take care of her?”

A swell of algorithms flood my head:

1.  The ‘absentee-black-father’ narrative has on sight produced in me an object of skeptical integrity in his eyes.

2.  In the era of omni-media I understand how someone who uncritically absorbs these messages will have a racist context prepared as the default for processing new information.

3.  I am offended, but I mentally refer back to 2.

4.  Wait, bruh, I just SHOWED YOU A PHOTO OF HER AND I.  THAT I KEEP ON MY DESK.  HER PAINTINGS ADORN THE WALL OF MY CUBE. AND YOU STILL ASK IF I FUCKING TAKE CARE OF HER?  FADES ON SIGHT MY NI - and then I again refer back to 2.

5.  I prepare and deliver effective neutral messaging, appropriate for the workplace.  Something to the effect of:  “I do, and she is the light of my life.”

6.  It is tiresome expending energy qualifying myself as a worthy subject instead of actually talking about my child, who is beautiful, charming, bright and innovative.

This takes place in the span of seconds.  Miliseconds?

So many conversations begin in the basement of suspicion.  Few ever make it to the ground floor of fruitful subjects over which I can actually build with people.

What burns me out is the extreme calculus I undergo grappling with daily micro-oppressions and employing language that defends me but also neutralizes oppression on its own terms.  Somehow destroying the context from within, using knowledge and experience that comes from without.  At the same time this requires exercising the patience, understanding and love of a world I dearly wish existed.  I model these to identify myself as a citizen of such a place.  It becomes extra difficult because I often face up to the task alone; I don’t have a community to really go back to.  My comrades and I communicate through a scattered network of text and email.  

So I thought I’d give this a try.