A Love Letter to Black Girls
Posted by Justin Reilly | Filed under '08 Fall: Notes from Underground, Poetry, Print, Show Poems
So I date black girls..
and everyone who falls in between ebony & ivory
I love hair Straight, wavy, and curly like Ivy
I guess you could say im a dog
because im color blind like Lasey
and where i’m from
we bark at anythang
with parashaped hips
and that ‘mmm Oh Jesus’ flavor of lip gloss on your lips
we would spend hours
quoting old Biggie tracks
and working on punch lines
just waiting for school to let out
but here
I’m supposed to have a type
5′7”
blond hair
blue eyes
can’t dance
doesn’t eat
oh and she thinks my poetry is ‘nice’
shed rather drink than talk
gossip than walk
and she cant chew gum and do either
I Ken
She Barbie
commanding the road on the way to the playhouse
but i never played with dolls when i was a kid
based on these hives
i think I’m allergic to plastic
and I used to write for hours
about that ebony girl who sat in from of me
outlining her curls
with 5th grade metaphors
and naïve
sentence structure
you see white kids
are supposed to sit in the front of the class
but I gotta tell ya
‘the back of her head was ridiculous’
and I just enjoyed the smell of her hair
somehow
I knew all that scribbling would pay off
you see I learned at an early age
that coloring in between the lines
was only taught
to hinder my creativity
I never found comfort
In coloring books
Etching conformity into my veins
Just so miss Jones wouldn’t
Check my pulse
I would flat line in art class
I guess I thought
It was just a waste of my time
Assigning names and colors
Like Adam
But this is no Eden
b/c clearly Eve was
a feminine mirror image of her husband
and that just doesn’t work for us
they wouldn’t even dare
to crucify us
side by side
on the same color wheel
fearing we might bleed together
and I hate to break it to you
but Jesus didn’t look like me
laying helpless
hoping you stain my hands
watching colorless
blood cells drip
to count hours instead of sands
I just wish I could freeze time
We are in a black n white film
Mouthing affection
Smiling as the wind blows
Wishfully hoping for the depression to end
Living in speak-easy dreams
Drinking red wine in prohibition
And playing charades
With our words
We were rebels
Even in a time
When we knew boundaries
Were the difference between life or death
You could find us laying in the graveyard
Mean mugging the stars
And cursing the gods
For not making us the same
Sadly we were only
comforted
when the sun and moon made love
Even though we were told
Wed go blind
If we looked directly into
The eclipsed moonlight
They were worried we might
Find enlightenment in the stars
We would color in our existence
And try to paint our love
within a tattered stencil
Trying hard to be different
And wish
We could roll around in the mix
Just long enough
To let the paint dry
And I feel like an artist
With no brush
Desperately trying to finger paint a
Tragedy in the dust
You will never be able to color in our ashes
You see
There’s no right way
To color
And no right way
To kiss you in public
Because its too much for them to stomach
So here
Is sum Pepto-Bismol
To easy ur fears
gargle ur bigotry
spit out your sickness
because I don’t have time
to worry about your insecurities
I have a master piece to finish
My Mother
Posted by Justin Reilly | Filed under Poetry, Print
My mother
She’s like Oprah without all the cameras and fake car give-a-ways
Like shed give you marital advice and never ask you to plug her book afterwards
She’s Mother Teresa with a little more swag
I’m thoroughly convinced shed give a stranger the clothes off
her back and feel no shame walking home naked
She’s Betty Crocker with just a little more spunk
You know the kinda women you always want on your side
When Ur the kid who just beat up the superintendent of Jersey Public
Schools son
Yea my mother is not only Satan’s arch enemy
She’s a super hero
Equipped with super sonic hearing
Crazy balance and about 4 to 5 arms
And a heart full of enough compassion to heal
Any sorrows a wanderer like me has ever had
I’ve seen her drive a big-body suburban with one her knee
While checking the directions
Feeding my younger brother
And still managing to knock me upside the head for messing with my
sister
To be serious though
I’ve never someone so beautiful in my life
An old painters definition of beauty
“the sum of parts put together in such a way that nothing need be
added, taken away, or altered”
That is my mother…beauty incarnate
Someone who can be Ur best friend
Your biggest critic
And still make a mean and I mean mean meatloaf to ease any anxiety that
you may still be having during day
My mother
Is wing clipped angel, earthbound just so a few of us
Never forget what it felt like hours before conception
When we were playing hopscotch on the golden bricks of heaven
She is a daily reminder of why we reach for the sky
And swallow star dust in our vocal cords
Gods way of saying
the simplest pleasures in life
Can be found in subtle southern accent, a heart felt laugh,
And a smile
That would have converted Saul on the spot
She is the reason why young men like me
Bask in the ambience of their female counterpart
And cherish every moment we are allowed to stare into your eyes
Just hoping to see a little bit of our mothers deep down inside your soul
So I can tap dance, or two step, whatever little jig the kids do these days
Until the sun goes down
And we are left in the star gazed glance of a mother
Who always knew we would make something of ourselves
And yet never let us forget that no matter
how tall we got
Or how deep our pockets ran
Or how colossal our name
She will always be there to remind us of
where we came from
And how we got here
So when they call me a momma’s boy
I chuckle
Raise my eyes and reply
Wouldn’t it be nice
If we were all so fortunate
Dear Friend
Posted by Justin Reilly | Filed under '08 Fall: Notes from Underground, Poetry, Print, Show Poems
Dear friend,
Its one a.m.
And I should be dreaming of Princeton play calls
But I can’t allow my sight to darken
Because you see I’ve been in a fog
A ghostly daze
Much like your earthquake
That has sent me spiraling
In and out of that lava
That you so eloquently describe
I’ve kept Aphrodite
In my skyline for far too long
And now she’s stealing
My sunshine
Those succulent rays
That used to simmer my skin
Have now caused me
Melanoma
I’ve spent this last year
In a smoke screen
It’s been hard for me to distinguish
Clouds from
Facial features
Let alone
Love
From
Lust
I’ve been in a vegetative state floating through existence
Stepping over my fare share
Of roses
To get to a Daisy
And my love poems
Have been simplified to
“she loves me – she loves me not”
While plucking pedals
From these stems
And what’s more I never
Was really able to see the
Full beauty
Of this Rose
Like the San Francisco fog
Masking the Golden Gate Bridge
Much like your tectonic plates
Were rocked by after shocks
My water logged façade
Was dazed by a tidal wave
A merciless tsunami
That handed me doubt and stole my sight
And not even His palms
Could heal this blind man
Dear Friend,
The bigger they are
The harder they fall
Held true
In this Katrina
But not even
Flower Arrangements
Could be
t-shapen and blood stained
there was no Red Cross
in sight
and now I feel
like a flower gurl
at my own wedding
watching her stilettos
pierce my past
as if they were
meant to be sacrificed
pupils dilated
these headlights
struggle to illuminate
the pavement
they say if you made the bed
then lay in it
well I’m hittin’ pot holes in this road
and it feels like I paved it
I never thought I’d be writing this poem
But it looks like Dipolar Radar
Has once again
Lead this weatherman astray
“Your tropical storm has now been
Elevated to a hurricane”
So I boarded up the windows
And headed for higher ground
In the city
Of 5′10” beauty
Dear Friend,
Well if I’m Jay Gatsby
Then you’re my beam
Of light across
The bay
And she
Well she is
The asthma
Inhibiting my breaststroke
And these last 3 months
Have felt like a 100 meter dash
In the Everglades
Like a tornado twisted
Me like a clever braid
And spit me out onto
That road I paved
Dear Friend,
You see
It’s been awhile
Since I’ve fallen
To my knees
And prayed for sunlight
But our
Photosynthesis
Cannot happen
In its absence
Cause I feel like
Were in a foot race
Around the world
And a lunar eclipse
Just lapped us
So I guess what I’m
Sayin is maybe soon
My foot speed will catch up
And I can play Joshua
And freeze time
Or Hezekiah
And run it backwards
Either way I’ll make up
For lost time that has passed us
Like you said on
Some fairytale tip
When I can be to you
The way I leave this ink to drip
Yours Truly
Soul Underfoot
Posted by Sruthi Sadhujan (Alumnus) | Filed under '09 Spring: Dream of a Ridiculous Man, Poetry, Print, Show Poems
Some days… I smell of loneliness and escape,
of the uncomfortable intimacy of economy-class seats.
On these days, I scrub to take off that layer of dead skin,
hoping that if I rub hard enough, I can find traces of that person
that I once discarded from 30,000 feet high into the gulf of good intentions.
But sitting in an ocean of brown faces, all keen-eyed yet timid,
I felt the familiar restlessness of a 15-hour trans-everything flight,
the first voyage over, where every miles feels heavy under your eyelids,
as you try to put it all behind you.
They spoke of kathakali and crowded bus stands,
with passengers stacked like matchboxes,
sparking with urgency and escape.
One man told a story of a village of untouchables,
of a dog that wandered off
and impregnated another from an upper-caste family.
They torched that village,
raped and killed the first woman they could get their righteous hands on.
An eye for an eye, a dog for a rotten bitch,
these are the stories that move them,
these are the stories that appear in international newspapers,
but for all their notoriety and fame,
they’re standing neck-deep in stagnating water,
where the smallest ripple would drown them.
Because backward castes are equivalent to the very shit they scavenge through.
I looked over at the man, speaking with earnest and a quite rage.
Your eyes are hungering for moonlight,
and my heart cracked through the spaces of my split lips like parched earth,
ashamed to say that sometimes I dream of this place with pride.
I come from that far off land where mixed caste fetuses
are crushed one by one under the four legs of a bed frame.
Women are told to hold back their smiles,
because no one wants a rabid bitch to bear her teeth.
I know that you’re struggling, unable to reconcile the curious yearning in your chest
for the land that spat on your face because of the sound of your last name.
I belong to you,
I belong to a first son and his first child
with a mouth too big for much too small wallet.
to rice paddies floating with drowned lungs,
plastic bottles, and water-stained pleas,
I belong to a billion explosions of color between brown and ivory
I belong to the monsoons, to the color of my skin,
to women strung with jasmine garlands,
I belong to jai hind.
To communist graffiti on the walls of train stations
And groping blind beggars scraping like scalpels against the asphalt,
as if his knees were more courageous than he was.
I belong to him
To Kerala, Tamil Nadu…
And yet it seems that I will never belong but still…
I dream of you like the space between the fish and moon,
I belong to the place where they breathed, dreams expanding like balloons,
to the sun dying in the east.
I belong to a few, to a billion, I belong to you.
