Baby girl, you gon' keep bein' blue.

There is so much time.
We have so much time.

2.

The house of Allah is a humble one
Bottle-bottom panes where stained-glass should lie
A garage filled with a few dozen palaces
Each scarf a token of an understanding
That distinguishes this gathering
From those late afternoon sessions
In rotating garages
Where cookies and beer mattered more
Than Divinity
An understanding held in hands palm-up
On which Spirit kneels
Cradled by more than Persian rugs
On concrete floors
And secondhand pillows
Against concrete walls

We were the only ones to say:
Silly little white girls
How dare you
The Moon and Stars shine for us alone
Who need their light
Must've reached a crossroads
And taken an ignorant turn

Only an oppressor who thinks of himself as such would assume the ritually oppressed to recognize his presence.

A woman with the intricacies
Of the blossoming world
Traced in henna upon her palms
Asked if this was my first time
I should have said no.

The intricacies
Of the blossoming world
Have stained the inside of my eyelids
For a while now
So crowded are they that I fear I may not see

1.

I once thought that if man held dominion over all others
On the basis of innovation
Technology, guilt
Then surely the sea holds dominion over the drier parts of the glob
On the basis of magnitude, intricacy,
Wonder

Dominion is something short of a construct,
Compensation,
Indicative only of man's insecurity,
Discomfort in the face of the depths of his origins
The depths of the sea
the darkness of the womb which fosters each tiny grain of polished life
Of light

What man would want to think himself greater
Than those who find comfort so far
From his own?
Who can visualize himself greater than the whales
And the waves and the wells from which
Our lifewater springs?

I do not want to know him.

What kind of man is he who cannot allow
The migration of the downy monarch
To outshine his creation of flashing lights?
No imagination here

Whirling, vulnerable,
Victim and blessed ones
From the depths of the sea
Creators of a vibrancy meant only
To seduce
A self interest projected
Where no man can see

The light you project is reflected
By me.

As children we
Would never swim past the kelp beds
Slimy
Hiding things we enjoyed kept behind glass
Having just left we could not even fathom going back
Wrap yourself in its warmth
A safe stay above the waves
Fixed
Suspended
Bob with the tides, with the moon,
Returned to that womb

It's no coincidence that the sweat
On the curve of your spine
That beads as you heave with the swell
Brings the salt of the sea
To my tongue

I'm going to start up again.
I think having a tangible, paper copy will help me out. Apparently drafting is something I could use some help with.

Writing about imaginary experiences or hypotheticals just doesn't cut it for me anymore.

The problem with writing things on the internet is that there are so many readily available distractions.

Thanks a lot for the butterflies and bulldozers. I wish they'd leave my ribs alone; the sound of the sea is hushed.