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Story for the gods

Write a poem about anything.

Rip the page from the book and make a paper plane. The simple ones we made as children.

When I was a kid we would breathe into the wings of a paper plane like somehow we had the lungs of God and that must be how he kept planes in the sky, because even then we knew that living isn’t just breathing but the application of breath. So breath into yours, and let that paper plane poem fly. Believe without questioning that air and words can keep anything alive, for what is God but words that come to life when the world feels dark and empty.

My mirror always gives advice like, consider the big picture, but always pay attention to detail.

All my gods don’t pay attention to detail and I don’t blame them, there’s over 7 billion details. So maybe we all don’t matter the same, but at some point we all believed that out breaths could keep paper planes in the sky, at some point we all believed that God will make our dreams come true.

So today I am writing poems and making planes and taking breaths so deep the paper ripples from the wind of my lungs. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m trying.

Men like me, we daydreamers, we caterpillars trying to be birds but we’ll settle for butterflies. But my best friend, she is a tree, planted deep but reaching for the sky, shedding leaves in autumn cos she knows that even the ground needs a blanket from the cold.

All my gods don’t pay attention to detail, but my best friend, she is human and kind or at least she tries.

We still fear the empty in a half full glass, but we know we need air as much as we need water. So we drink, half believing we are all gods in charge of our planes. And we breath, as humans, capable of much better.

Apologies to Mandarins

As uncertain as the first drop of rain, an undecided sky trying to pick what game to play, she was the wild kind of beautiful. With her, every heartbeat was a fist against heavens door and my chest was left a battered jukebox playing broken tunes for broken men. See wild things always leave broken in their wake.

So we unlearn love by attaching orange peels to naked mandarins, and maybe one day I will love mandarins for who they are but I still see your face in every crowd because most times close enough is good enough, so apologies to mandarins. When I said forever, please do not believe I lied, for forever is just another way of saying from birth to death, so let us bury this alongside old jumpers and handmade cards. Let us gather all the orange peels from the kitchen floor and find all the places we hid ourselves in each other.

Now my mother worries about me, she doesn’t mention it but she says “remember your roots”, I almost said it’s hard when you’re trying to branch out, but I just said always, I always say always. I always mean sometimes the ocean between us makes me feel like half a story no one will ever truly understand. So apologies to mandarins, until your skin learns to unravel across an ocean to the doorsteps of old black women with crowns for hair that doesn’t know how to fall and wishing well bellies where dreams come from, I will always be half a story and you will always be half my life.

Queen Sugar

Where we grow, we grow strong and tall. Brown skin and black roots, we grow bold like the night sky of our skin, like the swallowed sun and all the light we try to hide.

Where we grow, we grow thick lips and thicker skins because sticks and stones are no match for words. Because bones are good for hiding truth.

Most days I’m afraid to let them know that there’s cracks in the sidewalks of heaven. On other days I try to cover the cracks with my toes. They say practice makes perfect and too many times I’ve caught myself in front of the mirror practicing to be what they see.

But today the rivers are flowing in a rhythm and I’m dancing with shadows to all my favorite songs. Like old photographs, in one moment in time, where age is only a nightmare for our children and loss is last nights dream.

Let the dust gather around us, and let us go from beautiful to instant classics. Take my hand, the earth deserves to spin a little slower, let us give our bodies a reason other than gravity to fall. Take my hand, you deserve to dance a little slower, let us give our bodies a reason other than music to move.

In praise of C minor

Yours is the lullaby saved for thunderstorms, where boys like me gather courage to face the rain.

Yours is the music for dancing in the rain.

Yours is the one legged soldier at the end of the war, thanking God in the language of the enemy.

Yours is the light at the end of the tunnel and every bit of darkness still left in between.

Some words are better left unsaid, so we let you carry language in your keys and our voices are the doors you always seem to open. Like the number of times Beethoven used you to explain that true music is one part sound and one part vibration, one for the body and one for the soul. So we gather the dancing souls of deaf men like fireflies in a jar, something to chase the night and green the moon with envy.

henrywels

Mismatch II

I want to get to the end of now And meet the start of forever I want to stretch an inch but run miles through your mind I wish we could skip the mornings, fall asleep on these night calls and awake in our dreams I wish the birds chirp in our honour The winds blow at your accord, and we fall according to the times

But am nothing but a man writing my side of things Taking sides with the side of the moon I can see Knowing not the play on its other half or what time of the year it phases I still pray that in the first and third quarter of your life you have a waxing crescent across your face That you remember no matter what part hides your shade, the sun always shines somewhere

That earth knows your name And heaven has a stone on which its engraved

Mismatch, now and forever have a lot in common.

dagogo-hart

BRUHHHH!!!!!!!!

Depth Over Distance

Distance and hope are two old cell mates that have long stopped fighting for the top bunk. They settle into each others charm as I think of you nightly. As my voice tries to break the night to spew sunrise from its spine and my shoulders learn to catch tears over the phone.

Our Faith is in the Palm of an arm too long to see the face. Our breaths are daily sacrifices, but each kiss is a protest, Each three hour train ride is a war against heaven and a riot against hell demanding paradise, nothing but crepes, Netflix and winter. With swords made of Friday nights and shields of Saturday mornings, time is nothing but a prisoner of war.

But for those Mondays when I’m too far to reach, but my scent hasn’t left your pillow and there’s still brown hair in my black, let this poem be the cloud of hope and dandelion seeds, keeping you afloat till you find fertile ground, till you find me again.

If I have learnt anything from you it’s that for trees to grow the earth must break, so we know that not every trial is a test, but every test is a brick and every wall that we build is another reason to slow dance to an orchestra of ringing phones and text message alerts.

My love

For when I cannot hold your hand

For when I cannot wipe your tears

For when you and the moon cower under the blanket of cotton and cloud

For when your heart is breaking, know that I will sip through the cracks like glue and hold you together, I will whisper your name under my breath, for what is the wind but the breath of lovers too far to reach.

So I love you like I love the pen, beautiful and true.

And I miss you like oxygen to two sinking lungs, more and more with every breath.

Broad shoulders

This is for those December mornings, when the sun is having a lazy day and the clouds are trying too hard to make a rainbow.

For dreams that only the night can carry.

For angels with broken wings envious of pigeons.

Fathers say our shoulders are strong enough to carry the world, but only some of us will have to, mothers say only some of us will get to.

Mother carries you in her arms and father carries you on his shoulders. The world isn't that heavy today.

Most days we try, sometimes we fail. We only know what we know until we know better.

Our cheeks have known too many rivers and joy doesn’t flow around these parts no more.

But I do know a few things, I know faith is showing belief in the sky by planting deeper into the ground. I know curiosity shouldn’t always be explored and sometimes feathers are better pens than they are wings.

So catch flight with this, let this be your mothers’ arms and your fathers’ shoulders.

I know someday soon the world won’t be this heavy and we’ll get to carry it, even though we don’t have to.

Apologies to those that understand this poem, I'm sorry for what happened to us.

Paper plate poems #1

Things I will always be

I will always be words. I will always be rope, both noose and harness. I will always be words, jumbled up alphabets to break spirits and raise men. I will always be flesh, I will always be too man to cry but just man enough to fail. I will always be tears, I will always be too much pain to be anything other than mortal. I will always be man, too much ego but just enough sense to know I need a woman to tell me when enough is enough. I will always be my mother’s prayers and my father’s son. I will always be my brother’s keeper and my sister’s friend.

The other side of the best thing ever

This is not a poem, well maybe it is, but it isn't a poem about streetlights and butterflies and metaphors about metaphors. It is about weak men and strong women and places where lost souls practice bravery. I don't know what she felt I don't dare claim to But I know she cried, I know she fought, I know she broke in places she didn't know she had, I know she scrubbed hard all the time praying her skin was the memory, I know she prayed, I know she prayed hard, I know it rained, both inside and outside. But I don't know what she felt. I'm tired of excuses and stories about how men are built like tsunamis raised between rock and hard place leaving broken bodies in their wake. I betrothed the knife under my pillow to the souls of men like you, men like me. Is there a crack in my spine, why can't I understand that women are nothing but a sum of their body parts. Is it my fault for seeing them as everything we can't be, from wishing well belly buttons where life comes from to men raisers and once in a while they beat us at our own games just to remind us that they can rustle at the top also but foundation is key. I'm tired of apologizing for men that cradle in the arms of a woman but still reach for her neck with their arms forgetting the reason he is off the ground. But even if she was none of these. Even if she was built like a tsunami raised between rock and hard place. In his eyes her body will still always be a temple for his sins and sacrifices.

Between the shadow and the soul

I learnt today that things hidden between the shadow and the soul are the most precious of all. Maybe there’s something about darkness that keeps, that stays, waiting for light to leave but still doesn't reveal itself. I learnt today that somewhere, between the shadow and the soul is where dead things live.

Maybe in the dark we can both lay down our armors and no one will know. Maybe we can strip our bones of our skins and bath in the shimmer of night till we belong.There’re two lovers at the bottom of a well somewhere in the middle of nowhere with their souls dancing to the sound of sinking water.

There's a rotten corpse that serves as a home to an earthworm and a field mice that know they shouldn't be in love, but they come back to the dark everyday. There's an alley that dances with its shadow every night when no one is around to judge. And I'm somewhere in between, between dancing alleys and sinking water, spread over the different shades of dark, between the shadow and the soul.

But with all this dark, nothing compares to mine, where I have hid me, somewhere between metaphors and mirrors. Cos the brightest of lights make the darkest of shadows, so we hide in plain sight, a dozen fake smiles away from sunset, waiting for night to come.

dagogo-hart

in this upside down world falling makes me heavenly bound

Body parts

My heart has never been good at solos, its always been too much flutter and skip and too little beat. It is a glass jar holding two whirl winds always leaving pieces of broken dreams on the kitchen floor that pierce the soul.

My lungs are two empty revolvers searching for bullets in every breath, something to make my words hold the whole world to ransom. But they are beginning to learn to give way to the ears.

My feet are constant reminders that time is just as important as distance and sometimes a fast life does nothing but set a clear path for the slow and the steady. So walk, one step at a time fast enough to clear a path but slow enough to leave your foot prints in the grass.

My fingers have always loved puzzles, whether jigsaw or broken hearts, but my knuckles have always loved trouble. Together they fix as much as they break. They are experts at gathering loose ends of old strings that once held me together trying to sew me together again, but they are still learning to wipe tears.

But my mind is both battleground and cemetery, it is a bed of roses growing in gunpowder. It is still learning that only death before life can prepare you for life after death, but it knows that only true love can give birth to awkward poets with too much cloud and too little earth. So bury me with pen and paper and just maybe I would bleed words till I’m nothing but bones and rose seeds. And maybe I will live on, planted somewhere in the mind of another, a memoir of words and legend.

Learning to Unlove and a few other things

As long as people see themselves in art, metaphors will always be the best place to hide truth.

Because I will rather say “two fireflies that fall in love in the belly of a dragon might just stand a chance in hell” than explain that the tough times make us stronger.

But maybe fireflies don’t fall in love, maybe you and I are two wet wind-shield wipers that love playing chase in the rain but never do touch.

We shouldn’t have tossed our hearts around, gravity always finds a way to win, whether it be falling in love or breaking hearts.

There’s an anchor of cobwebs and strings that should never have been attached, but the deep of my voice would always be a resting place for your worries. Even when life puts shorelines and new loves between us, I’ll always have a metaphor that carries you in its arms. I would always have pennys for your thoughts and paper cups with holes made for old strings.

As long as people see themselves in art, metaphors will always be the best place to hide truth.

Because I will rather say that patience is a key to a door I haven’t found yet, than explain that most times I don’t know what I’m waiting for.

But maybe the fear of the unknown makes pacifists out of activists and poets out of lovers.

If words could make you sweat as much as they make you cry, the world would be a better place.

River (after Leon Bridges)

Somewhere at the centre of every tornado is a violin playing “surrender to the good Lord”.

The skeleton of every raging storm is an orchestra of rivers overflowing with sin and blood from all the times I’ve tried to wash myself clean. So being planted by the river doesn’t help me much anymore.

But I hear there’s something of a Jordan to your tears, something of a white to your blood. So take me to your river, deep me in your smooth waters. I hear you have experience with bloody hands. I hear you have holes in your hands from where the nails used to be, I have a few holes too, and all the superglue music doesn’t seem to keep the rain from coming in. “So take me to your river, l wanna go”

Been travelling this road for so long now. With nothing but an echo of mama’s voice and a faulty compass heart to guide me. Most times I just follow the sound of water, hoping to find a river to go with the flow.

So on those days, when the sun is nowhere to be found, and two stars in a black sky are all there is to remind you that home might as well be billions of miles away, allow me to sink. Cos swimming just feels like another tornado gathering strings.

I’m trying to find my way home, with an army of brown skinned girls with tomato lips that always tempt you to bite, with a cup overflowing with blood that needs emptying and with a heart with missing pieces from all the times its been broken trying to free the creatures that hide inside.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC5Lisj1hGI

#leon bridges #river

Better in tune with the infinite

He says that if you walked long enough in one direction, you'll only end up where you started.

He says that bullets and escape shuttles share the same address and veins are just smaller bridges. so he leaped off the edge of a knife and even though he felt like he never made the cut his wrists didn't always feel so.

Good times are just cushions we try to rack up to fall back to when the bad times come. He's been falling on the same cushion for so long it's not different from the concrete.

The world is a dark room and he still hasn't found the light switch,

On days like today, he tries with all the walk that cripple has left him.

On days like today, when the world is trying its hardest to prove to be black and white, he tries to be a gunshot in the spine of a rainbow.

When you die we’ll put two money stacks on your eyes cos heaven has to be far from this hell hole that we live in

But you know better than most that you know nothing about what comes after death.

So sail, sail on a canoe of timber and broken dreams on a river of your own blood. Cos maybe heaven is better believed than lived

henrywels

I hope you read this

Before you dim them, I hope you made it…

Through the dark walls that lit your tunnels… the crack in every word that bled your heart Past the past that held all your conflicts I hope the moon rises up to watch you as the sun sets to sleep in your arms while stars gaze at your wonder I hope your dreams met you at cross roads and parted your ways with old wishes I hope your smile’s long enough to break cheek bones… so much there’s no hindrance to happiness

I hope you read this… I was running out of ink ,when, you ran through my mind So I dipped my last, and engraved these words till I could pen no more I wrote a psalm of love… glad to know your heart was my note pad.

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