Curiosity informs my creativity.
When I dig deep within myself to understand what emotions and thoughts arise, I unlock doors to vivid spaces as yet unknown to me.
I have been an introspective being since childhood and this urge has only deepened with age and life experiences.
There was a seven-year period when I did not write a single word–and words felt meaningless. Empty, even.
My tongue was tied, my eyes filmed, and my fingers would not obey my fractured, depressed mind’s unfocused pleas.
Words matter profoundly to me. They create connections between ideas as well as between me and other earthlings.
I explain to myself–and others through poetry–how the society I inhabit imposes its rigid rule on my life and my person.
I use loosely-joined strings of words to share a glimpse of the filters that help me navigate the world.
I offer a peek into my psyche and my quest for liberation through my poetry.
This practice escalated during the Covid-19 pandemic when I truly reckoned with my
authentic self and acknowledged the veritable alphabet soup that follows my name.
With authenticity came humility and confidence.
I am clear on the being I am and how I want to express this self to society at large.
My current poetic exploration has to do with how human society has imposed race, ethnicity, gender, and heteronormativity on my person and disabled me from birth.
The trauma and diagnoses that followed and revealed themselves during the pandemic built on top of those imposed disabilities.
When I choose to move through the world as my authentic aracial, agender, queer self, I risk houselessness, loneliness, and violence.
However, this anthropocentric, white, cisgender, binary, allistic society is not palatable in any way, shape, or form.
I no longer tolerate my rational, reasonable, logical responses to the abuse and trauma inflicted by this society to be pathologized by said society.
ADHD, quiet borderline personality disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder are my coping mechanisms and I shall lean on them for as long as humanity insists on compliance and conformity while punishing those like me who choose different paths.
And my poetry is my outlet. It is the trumpet I sound to point a–not THE–way out of many possibilities.
I’m done begging for accommodation. I accommodate myself as best I can. This is MY privilege.
There’s nothing wrong with me; society has disabled me.
#DeNiM #QueerBaobabPoetry #Chrysalis #SpiteAndHope #TurquoiseAndMalachite #FireBunnyAndWaterPuppy
