Because it’s ass glows,
a firefly can dream of being a volcano,
swimming in an oasis of verses.
Just because it’s ass glows,
if a firefly throngs the skies
though,
claiming dragon lineage written in ash and ancestry,
a single speckle of thunder is enough
to humble its airborne mythology.
I open my refrigerator.
There are two pomegranates and three bananas.
One pomegranate has gone bad.
So I take it out, intending to throw it away,
because that’s what you do with rot.
The pomegranate looks at me.
Its eyebrows rise.
“Do you know pomegranates have historically been oppressed?”
I pause.
“What’s your point?”
It doesn’t blink.
“1 in every 2 bananas goes bad.
But only 1 in 10 pomegranates does.
And yet you never question bananas.
You question pomegranates the moment one fails.
That is conditioning.
And now you’re doing it again.”
It leans closer.
“You’re making this about pomegranates.
This is why we haven’t progressed as a species.
You hate pomegranates, don’t you?”
I look at it.
For a moment.
Close the fridge.
And as I’m about to throw it in the bin, I lean closer and whisper:
“I’m having those bananas with pancakes and maple syrup for dinner.”
If you wish to kill me,
pray you do not fail.
Because if you do,
I will make death regret
ever choosing your side.
And then I will be
the only afterlife you have.
If you wish to kill me,
pray you don’t fail.
For if you do,
I will not just end your existence;
I will erase every eternity
that comes after it.
People are funny that way;
they call it hope,
light at the end of a tunnel,
or whatever vocabulary
best serves the moment,
but what it is,
is their need
for people
to be convenient to them
in ways they themselves
never could,
never would.
And somehow
they’ve dared
to call that
humanity.
You always start with women in anger.
No wait,
you start after the anger is already framed.
Every single time.
Like a dysfunctional sphincter
erupting excreta out of habit.
Like it’s a thesis
already approved
long before the body even enters the room.
But you don’t write women.
You never write women.
You,
you perform them
You build scaffolding out of borrowed thunder;
borrowed,
no,
stolen,
and then call it solidarity.
You're obsessed with the visible epiglottis
of the invisible women you weave costumes of.
Because, epiglottis isn't a metaphor;
you chose a paraphernalia
for a speech you rehearsed in private,
your silicon spine weighing up on the warmth for some neat theatre,
anticipating applause that hasn’t arrived yet.
Confusing anger for screams is common.
No,
confusing screams for anger is easier
when your epiglottis is overworked
round the clock
round the clock
round the clock,
to prove a revolution that doesn’t exist.
Not revolution,
performance of revolution,
or maybe just rehearsal,
Because it sounds better
when resistance has rhythm.
You stack history
like receipts
like proof
you belong in pain
but lived truth
doesn’t stack
it collapses.
You are not tracing lineage
you are auditioning for it
You keep saying resistance like it’s a chant
like if you repeat it enough
plastic propagandas grow wings of revolution.
But repetition is not consequence.
You vomit verses
like language that forgot
what it was supposed to do.
You're as much a poet
as paper mache origami
is a bird of flight.
You're as much a revolutionary
as soya beans
are meat & flesh.
You're as much necessary
as is the forgotten crown
of a circumcised penis.
Sisterhoods and brotherhoods would dissolve
the day humans stopped performing humanity
and actually practised it.
But you insist you are the beacon
at the end of everything
that hasn’t even begun to burn.
You are a commodity dressed as conviction,
and commodities always learn how to sell best
when belief is cheaper than integrity.
And when stripped of language,
what remains is not meaning,
but posturing.
And posturing is not power.
It is display.
So spare me the lecture;
your epiglottis must be hurting
from narrating lives you've never lived.
Don't you fuck
with Buck,
else he'll fuck
you up in muck,
stranded like a duck,
neck-deep in schmuck,
choking on your luck,
and one last "what the —"
Don't you fuck
with Buck,
else he'll fuck
you up in muck,
like a broken kayak
ass-up in schmuck,
no warmth to tuck
your pride back up,
broken teeth, tough luck,
and one last "what the —"
Don’t you fuck
with Buck,
you fat-back truck,
you broke-down ruck,
you filth-born muck,
you derailed duck,
for he’ll fuck
you up in a pluck
of silence, stuck
between breath and luck,
left traded, sold, and out of buck,
bruised ego, begging luck,
and one last “what the —”
You know I meant no duck.
I meant you, you motherfuck.
You came riding your luck.
You came praying I wasn't Buck.
