journey through

I am lost in a room full of mirrors, I don’t even know who the real me is. I can’t look for my eyes are blinded by the reflection. Tell me, mirror, what do you want me to see? Turn yourself away, for I know not the stranger pointing back. Shatter and fall. Cut me up in pieces and send me into the oblivion. When I look into you, who is it that I see? Who is that stranger crying silently and alone? What are those two lines encrusted below his eyes? Am I the one in tears or it is you giving me the illusion? Let me heave, turn your eyes away so my tears can fall, for I have held on long enough. Look away, you image, turn and face the wall and let me rend my heart broken and tear myself apart.   Show me my face. Let me see the wrinkles and the tear marks. Allow me to view my visage, with its craters and bruises. Go run, run image, run to where you came from. I want to see me, not the dark ghost trying to scare me, not a monster with eyes full of impunity and a heart full of darknes...

Harder, hit me harder oh ye falling stones. Comfort me Ooh lonely road, sting my feet oh ye sweet thorns of lust and infidelity. Remind me how alive I am and remind me of how sad my life has become. Fill my mouth, oh bitter fruit of derelict reap. Let your juices flow down and stick at my throat. Let me choke and gag and drop to the ground with a thud. I want to burn and grind to dust. I mourn thee, like a young lioness abandoned by its mother, like a young bird whose mother was stoned mid flight. I have called and shouted my voice hoarse. I have sung, I have roared but all that answer me are the echoes of the night. My pride is wounded and my glory shattered. I am lost, just let me mourn. Try not to take this shroud off me, try not to pry me away from the cold and barren ash, for I know that with enough hope a fire shall be kindled from that. And even though I mourn and cry, I still can’t stop hoping that my tears fall not on barren ground and my faith is not a mustard seed under...

Is it ever too late? Skeptics and naysayers, the gathering of fools and the wise, all you pessimists and optimists, I point fingers today, and call out all names of the people. If a man has walked the path of wrong, burnt bridges and broken cords, is there a way he can unwalk this path? Is there a path that he can unchart? Is it ever too late to start over again? Is it ever too late to remake what we have destroyed? I know the pain of starting over, for the always good disappears together with the bad, and all the thorns you walked over, and the blood you shed ends up in vain. I say it’s never too late until it’s too late. Young man, you whose fountain of dreams had dried, wake up and start digging. You man, whose family knows not how to smile again, ashes are not going to solve your problems. As long as you are still alive then there is hope. It is enough that you have regretted, but nothing will change if you keep carrying a cross that is of negative consequences. Woman, giv...

I met a seductress One day when I was new to the city of Harlem and to the life of the night, I met her. A silhouette moved like painting coming to life from the walls and I saw her almost naked when she stood in the light. I met a seductress. She was ugly, but how sweet her ugliness was. She looked me up and down then batted her eyelids and my heart dropped into my knees. She breathed on my neck and whispered into my ears and oh, blood rushed down to my loins. This woman was a witch, and she had in her hands the souls of men, lost souls of lost men. She was the men’s best dream and their wives worst nightmare. She pulled me into her abode and I, oh the ram on heat slid in with her grasp. Her home was a mess, a resting place for overfed cockroaches and a buzzing ground for the over-indulged flies. The fire in my loins traveled to my toes and my hunger for her turned to distaste. This woman with a sweet tongue knows how to rid men of their money but cannot wipe germs off her pl...

In my search for freedom One morning my mouth said that I should take a walk and see life and her slaves, slaves in suits and ties and in vests and tattered pants. I thought that since I was a free man, a trip would do me justice, that by the end of the day I would have a man or two walk out the clutches in charge of them. I did not have to go far, for I came across zombies seated in a park, eating stale fries and expired soda. I saw slave women chasing after their slave babies and slave men walking their slave dogs. I saw them all, men with leashes on their necks and little babies with muzzles in their little mouth. I saw them being led by their dogs and their pigs. I saw their cats tired of being associated with slaves hanging up the trees. I saw them all, boys who would never grow to be men and girls who would never make responsible housewives. I saw women who could never speak their hearts out and men who would never actualize their thoughts. In their eyes I could see coun...