Confrontation

She met the reason for your distance

Both had a run-in at the bar

You should have been working late

At least that's what you told her

Instead

She finds you wrapped in the arms of a lover

So she says

I cry

When your eyes can't shed another tear

I feel

The pain when your body's numb

God knows there's much I've had to bear

I lie

To my heart, though my head loathes self-denial

I love

You, with everything I am

Myself, well, not so sure

Otherwise, why do I keep coming back for more?

Five years in the making

You say four years way too long,

The morning after is day of reckoning

Myriad of illusions crashing down

Makes her wonder

Why did they even bother?

Pretend that today is like any other

So he says

I know

It must have hurt seeing me with someone else

I tried

Making forever last forever but couldn't

Believe me, I swear

I wish

I could take back the pain I've caused you

God knows I've caused myself

If I could take back a cowardly act

Afraid of its maturity

And consequently own downfall

Then where would that leave us?

Where does this leave us?

- Kimika Prawl

____________________

Mean girls

'Some gyal look like ol ooman eeh'

People mi answer clear

At least mi look like ol ooman

In mi owna hair

Caa from di day I know you

I doan sure a how you look

Caa yu no stop wear white people hair

Fi disguise yu black looks

Di odda one sey uhmmn honey

Is yu modda still alive?

Mi sey move along Tankweld steel

Yu foot back tuff like pipe

Yu fava di four foot animal dem

Whe Trevor Simpson ride

Yes mi blind to fashion

But iron pipe doan go wid tights

A third sey you're not 'sexy and sultry'

Plus yu black no brute

So with your permission

Stay out of our photoshoot

People to how mi shame

I could hardly speak

So mi jus walk a distance

Den shout, di hol a unu a freak!

Den when dem ask a who sey so

Mi sey one gyal run in di street

She kinda look jus like me still

But ah never mi did dweet.

If you need someone to save you

Mean girls will let you drown

In you thirst for inspiration

Mean girls will let you down

The only way you can escape

The things that mean girls do

Is become as mean as them

And turn a mean girl too

Mean girls will spite you

Mean girls will fight you

Mean girls will make you cry

If you need someone to save your life

Mean girls will let you die

In a world of competition

And who betta dan who

This is the space that mean girls need

To show that mean girls rule.

- Lisa Gaye Taylor

_____________________

Melanin blessed

Look at my skin

Stop! Hold on!

Look at your skin

Don't you see that

you

like me

are blessed with melanin?

Yet still

inferiority

instilled by sub-cultural lack of heritage

and a nurtured mindset

has caused you to act and think and give

superiority to those without hue and melanin

'For the dark colour of thy skin

thou thus deign to bow to them

with white outer covering'

And so you use chemicals and pills

to rid yourself of this 'curse' you're in

May I (en)lighten you

that your sacrilegious bleaching

attempting to remove pigmentation

from your skin

is like trying to make water dry

What ritual

What fad

What shame

Could have made you think

that the colour of your skin

was a sin?

And so you had to divorce it from your regimen?

What?

Didn't God create you right?

In His image and like?

Try as you might

the melanin shall reappear

the pigment shall return

your colour shall recover from remission

Hear your ancestors bawling from their graves

'Why do my progenies traitorously and torturously

ascribe

to look like

those who made us slaves?

I ask the question

You should as well

Why do you think

to have black skin

is to be an offspring of hell?

From beautiful chocolate kings and queens you came

Now you play the Frankenstein game

(Some even transform to an albino frame)

Yuh a eediat?

Or kunumunu?

How yuh fi de-culture inna so much folly?

Consequently,

even the sun is feared

as thuggish men, like women

a wear tie-head ova dem hair

Yuh melanin blessed!

But yuh so ignorant

dat yuh a depigment into a 'caricatural' curse

And not even cake soap

can wash away

or clear

yuh eyesore.

- Austin G. Henry