black summer hymnal

College student. I to write. (And I'm really bad at introducing myself.) Read more about me...

[buttonpoetry]

“I know I was supposed to say something to him in the casket, but there isn’t a word that means goodbye and I’ll miss you and please come back to me somehow and let me know when you get there?”

— Neil Hilborn, from The Future

[blacksummerhymnal]

10052018

I couldn't stop crying at his burial. And hearing his mother cry out as he was lowered was heartbreaking. I had to look away. I wish I packed my journal with me so I could write about this pain as its fresh. It finally all hit me that I lost a friend. I loved him so much, he is an unforgettable energy and deserved a better more convenient outcome. I never want to go to another funeral. This one I had to though. My last duty as a friend is a final goodbye. But the heartache is not one I want to experience again or any time soon. But I'm still so glad I came home despite everything working against me. I'm so fortunate to have seen my close friend for the last time and to see mutual friends and share this experience between each other.

[blacksummerhymnal]

07042018

I, too, taste like summer rain. Like a chrysanthemum of dreams. A yellow sunset mourning; a Sunday fever catching honey and lavender and brewing it to your lips.

[blacksummerhymnal]

05282018

I pity men. Their constant beating at the chest. Bruising and blood. All that noise they carry with them. Their weighted steps. The hair growing every where and having no space to be bare.

[blacksummerhymnal]

I want my future child(ren) to be conceived from a warm yellow love. No child should wear their parents' scars and call it their birthmark.

[blacksummerhymnal]

I have no poems for this feeling yet.

[blacksummerhymnal]

02262017

the boy loves you.

you loved the boy once before

in a dream where he died in your lap and you cried like a mother would for her lost child.

but the boy still loves you…

behind closed doors

where your God cannot see.

[blacksummerhymnal]

I want a man with a woman's heart.

[ukpuru]

Women in Igbo Life and Thought, Joseph Therese Agbasiere

Political Organization in Nigeria Since the Late Stone Age: A History of the Igbo People, John Oriji

The Igbo-Igala Borderland, Peter Schäfer

The Slave Trade and Culture in the Bight of Biafra, G. Ugo Nwokeji

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Olaudah Equiano

Murder at Montpelier: Igbo Africans in Virginia, Douglas B. Chambers

A History of African Societies to 1870, Elizabeth Isichei

An Image of Africa/The Trouble with Nigeria, Chinua Achebe

Nigerian History, Politics and Affairs, Adiele Afigbo

Igbo History and Society: The Essays of Adiele Afigbo, Toyin Falola

There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra, Chinua Achebe

[blacksummerhymnal]

I want to be loved, she said. Everywhere. I feel empty here. (She pointed to her chest) I want his warmth here. (She lifted her shirt) And here. (She held her waist) I want him here. (She locked her fingers with one another) I have spent enough time desiring myself. Only me. Some days I am tired of being the only one in my reflection. I want to be loved. To be touched, all over. To be secure. To be wanted and held.

[blacksummerhymnal]

07092016 Today, I thought of you in a new light. Today, I remembered your name as Fluorescent and wondered where my memory of curses for you disappeared to.

Before I slept there were no traces of you stitched into my bed. I undressed, slipped into a [nightmare] nightgown, rest my swelling head on rose petals and drew the blanket of silk over my breasts. And then you appeared. I dreamt you like beams of an exploding star. I dreamt you like light flaring into a multidimension of chaos. I dreamt you like an array of bulbs in a white room, particles bouncing from wall to wall. I dreamt you like first morning spark blinding me from feeling the yawning ache of sunrise. I awake and your energy is engraved in all of my sight. Today, you are a new light. Today, your name is Fluorescent. Today, you are everything (b)right.

But today, I closed my eyes and found a better peace in the darkness.

[blacksummerhymnal]

06082016

I am strength. I am intelligence. I am beauty. I am sensitive. I am maternal woman, I am Man. I am child of Spirit. I am Black. I am life and death.

[blacksummerhymnal]

05032016

You cannot find God in men. The poets have fooled you. Do not search for marks of a crucifixion in the naked crook of his spine. Or his hands on yours. You will not find it here. Not coming out of there. You wanted a religion that could press its tongue in you and force a shiver, a God that touched between your skin. But the poets have fooled you.

[elarafritzenwalden]

Resort Tipaza, Algeria; 1968-72

Fernand Pouillon

Taken from “Fernand Pouillon : architetto delle 200 colonne” by B. Félix Dubor and Jacques Lucan, (1987)

[blacksummerhymnal]

Places I want to travel to (possibly live in)

[blacksummerhymnal]

Why should I ever fear darkness?

Was it not my mother and her mother (and her mother’s mother and her mother…) who birthed the night, pushing a millennium of stars through their inner thighs to breathe life into me? Was it not my father and my brothers who carry the moon on their backs and rally the tides that cleanse the wombs of my sisters and I? Is it not I—daughter, sister, lover, woman, beauty, intellect—that commanded the Sun to bow down and make way for my midnight blanket of skin?

So, why should I ever fear darkness when it was darkness that fed me into Light?

[blacksummerhymnal]

You must love yourself the most. That is not a crime.

10122014

[blacksummerhymnal]

09192014: Swimming Lessons

My father and mother emptied their pockets to fly above blue earth, devouring the Atlantic like a newborn suckling on his mother’s breast.

And now it is my duty and the duty of my siblings to hold their weight up from sinking underwater; Mommy. Nna. you did not cross oceans to reach land and drown.