Skin of My Soul

Breathing is a constant reminder
of the miracle of being alive
It is a magical play of inhale and exhale
This totally automatic sequence is restorative

Everything breathes on this orb of green and blue
Paying attention to the breath is a gift
Troubles come as part of the human play
All the roles, emotions, traumas and we inhabit

My heart walks me to recall
the meaning of my being here presently
I am a block of stone with a complete gesture of me inside
The Universe's chisel sculpts away what does not belong

What moves through me is not who I am
These experiences through serve me in ways of becoming
Letting go of what I am not rings sublime and true
As I breathe and accept the stillness that emerges;
this is the skin of my soul

©zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#blackpoetboy

Tears

Saltwater is a sea
that hides within the eyes
This ocean speaks when
emotions collide inside
They wait until the time
is ripe for the tsunami

As the situation overwhelms the eyes overflow
Saltwater cascades in rivulets
They roll, splash and fall
We call it crying, sobbing
Blood shot eyes greet life
in ways only they can tell

Let's cry with joy and sadness
It's the same water with varying emotions caught inside
Cry freely. Tears are liquid prayers that say everything
Dammed tears hurt
We become more when we let the tears flow

Love weeps didn't you know?
Sadness doesn't hold all the approval
Consciousness weeps too, didn't you know?
Children cry all the time
Why don't adults shed tears?
The strongest of us are safe weepers

Let the saltwater fall
It washes more that tear ducts
But the hold of fear and anxiety
Let's cry and release ourselves from perpetual darkness
This ocean washes away the old and let's the new flow

©zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#blackpoetboy

Photo Credit: Tumblr

BROWN MOLASSES

Once upon a time
Sugar was alien to the western palate
Meanwhile, in the sweetest clime
Kingdoms enjoyed abundance in all forms

These highly conscious beings
Travelled the world as ambassadors of culture
And brought innovation and things
Europe was built by kings made of gold

A sudden but gradual switch was forced
As the fearfilled stole breathing sugar
In whose veins creation coursed
Sun kissed, wise, hospitable and open

Carnage ensued as dark hueman flesh
Was turned into commodity and profit
Sugar lost its taste in the mesh
Horrors untold visited upon the trade

Century to century black lives matter
The ocean claimed cubes as they fell
Reality made raw by the serving on a platter
Inhumanity denied nothing for anything

After all the infernal hubris and asinine lies
In the midst of the boiling down process
Those kings arose from the syrup
Sweeter than before to again possess

With iron in the soul and fire in the belly
The dark liquid of courage remained
A people of high tenacity akin to brown molasses
Slowly formed as they became sweeter;
Look at us now
How beautiful is the castle of our skin!

©zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#OurBlaqStories #blackpoetboy

Bring Me A Dream

I looked into the face of my face
and said words in lined thoughts
A word with mySelf ensued
How do you speak to the essence of Life?

Unspoken love whispered as I waited
I heard the sound of a dream anew
The texture is smooth and then rough
I picked up the sense of contrast

When I self-inquire, it's the way I choose
Standing on a beach of white sands
Listening to the voice of soul in hushed tones;
"Bring me a dream".

I reach out and touch my face

©zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#blackpoetboy

Last week, two prominent names in the media, ended their lives of their own choice and accord. There have been a plethora of prominent people who have chosen to leave in such shocking ways that we, the on-looking and starstruck masses gasp with shock and disbelief.

We gasped collectively on why and how this can be. We try to rationalise that they were the poster people for success, its accoutrements and dreams come true and yet we see people like us making decisions that are informed by many factors. I wonder too. I also think that I understand why.

It's a human phenomenon.

Whoever we are and in whatever aquarium we choose to swim, we are dealing with some harsh and strong currents that are beneath the seeming glassy exterior that we portray to others. We hide our true feelings and share insipid factoids to ease the pain and expectations of others. We hold back our light and let the shade that systems throw stick to us as real.

I am not certain what pushed Kate Spade and Anthony  Bourdain and Robin Williams and the many others in the limelight to choose to end their journeys but I completely understand the premise. I feel on the edge at times. It's a fact of life that our culture is hiding behind its hands in denial and so buries its head in the sand. Mental health issues are a fact of modern living as it has always been in times past but moreso in our overstretched modern culture. And yet, there is a hush about the fragility of the human mind. There is a taboo that shuts off many who are in that shaky place. It disregards fame, fortune or personality. Life is not cruel, conversely, we are not listening to the loving guidance that is in the Universe as us.

I struggle often with trying to keep it together in ways that slip from from my hands. There are a smorgasbord of triggers that present other mind games that are sure to lead to dark and depressive episodes or fully fledged depression. No one can tell when the crack happened. No one can see the train coming on the track that isn't there. No one can predict who is frail or strong. Especially the so-called strong. The lid must be lifted from this shadowy part of our lives and allow the light of truth to shine. We do better in the sun. We suffer in the dark.

When celebrities are cracking before our eyes, what must we do to assist them lovingly? Are we not on the same team called humanity? Are we not made of hair and skin and hopes and dreams? Do we think poverty kills more than affluence? Or is it a racial problem of a human issue?

I know that I, as a person with no grand clout, influence and relative power, I struggle with the market forces that squeeze beyond my abilities of course correction, the intentions of others when gentrification is the darling of the government and the theft of livelihoods by nefarious measures plus the impact on relationships, family, faith and fortune, it's a perfect recipe for fractured people to fall apart. The stigma attached to mental health problems is making it difficult to rise again. If those with all the bells and whistles are checking out suddenly as we are witnessing, what hope is there for those of us who are as common as muck, so to speak?

We are in danger.

We are custodians and not owners. We are relationship wired beings. We came with nothing and will take nothing with us when we transition out of here. What is it that is so important than life lived with purpose, joy, love and generosity cannot fill?

Is bigger, better, more really enhancing our lives or is it simply diminishing the flavour of our individuality and our collective consciousness? I am for openness in recognising, assisting and healing all kinds of mental health problems. Hiding never solved anything.

Can we start by owning up to the fact that most of us are closer to cracking than we care to admit? Can we open to the possibilities that are creating an imbalance in our engagement with life? Can we just fess up and tell our trusted ones that we are overwhelmed? Can we find our strength in what we think is a weakness? Can we listen to each other between the lines first and then speak truthfully in a safe space? Can we realise that everyone on earth is beleaguered with modern life and the cultural demands that we create?

Can we talk honestly?

Can we?

©zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#blackpoetboy

Prosperity Calls

I left my space to travel far
The sights I encountered were riddled with the dark
My strength faded when I saw the door and
The mind twisted like steel in the furnace's spark

I think that my joy is hiding far away
I surmise that I must go and meet it
And so, with just my fear I saw it all at play
Bitterness slapped me hard where I did not sit

The vista looked inviting until night fall
I realised my soul when the mind failed
I had left home thinking there was a high wall
Only to discover that my false boat had sailed

Deep inside me I knew a voice
so sharp, sweet and mine
It is the Universe reminding me of my ultimate choice
That was when I stepped over the fake line

The sound of beautiful music beckon to me
Decisively, I ran beneath the cascading falls
My guide takes me by the hand to who I am to be
And then, I can't forget the feeling of when prosperity calls

©zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#blackpoetboy

Black Rainbow

I am non descript in my appearance
The jolts of fire that spark within me
Is invisible to the closed sight
I am soul disguised as a daughter, a son, sister, a brother, a cousin, a friend, a human and an all rounder on the journey of life
My magic is awesome and yet hidden
Like diamonds waiting in the coal

I am human in sensuality
I am spirit in divinity
I am not the 'other' as they say
There are no 'others' but one
My attraction is awesome
Like the flower that the bee seeks
I feel love in a spectrum that seems to scare the fearfilled
I am not violent
Just a part of the fabric of Life
My stance is regaled in mystery by closeness

I am the shade of Everything in one hue
Yes, this is me at peace
And not in the pieces that the narrative cuts me
The cold game is not true love
Love is the kaliedescope of the cosmic way it expresses ItSelf
I am one prism filled with the whole

My skin is not black but the colour of night
I am the beginning of what fears me now
I work. I laugh. I sorrow. I fall. I learn. I have. I know. I fear. I create. I breathe. I am...
My sight is real in the dark

I am part of the family
And yet the same family I call mine
Reject, deject, suspect me without respect
My sexuality is but the version of the same Universe
Why am I made to feel ashamed of my authenticity?
Does not the same sun drench my space too?

I bring colour to the experience we call Life
I see what you hold yourself from seeing
Does blood flow through our collective veins?
I create the invisible tangible
By my uniquely sublime gifts just like yours and God's
This game of thrones is futile
For we are the one of the One
Who breathes as us

Look into my eyes
My face speaks the same language as yours
When did who we love steal from ourselves?
Who coined the labels right and wrong?
Why do you stick the label 'wrong' on my person?
Are you right? Did Love tell you this?

I am non descript in my appearance
I am you with a different and certain flare
I am the quiet storm that creates
You can see me anyway you want
The same God that holds the mystery in the process through you is shining through me too
Hate has no place at our table
The banquet is for all of us
When will we stop this dispicable fuss?

We are one
The hue and the sexuality matters not
All that sings is the octaves of pure motive suffused with Love
This phenomenon we know as Source
Does not demand any kind of force
Our world is dancing with awe-inspiring colours that tell one story
The story of the Universe that constantly reveals the black rainbow

©zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#blackpoetboy

When Love Is The Way

Fire  makes the life we know
move at the pace of a flash
This combustible energy that
needs oxygen to dance and propel

There is a fire glowing beneath the
Human soul that surpasses that heat
The magic of wonder that burns away
every false fence, idea and privilege made by hands

All of life is powered by the energy
of the Universe's ultimate reality
We bathe in it without consciousness
And to this movable feast, we are invited

When Love is the way-
Family has no colour
When Love is the way -
We are many as only one tribe
When Love is the way -
We let diversity guide how we breathe
When Love is the way-
Life becomes more than what we have fashioned it in our forgetfulness

Imagine, when Love is the way!
Everything we are, do and have will express only the Oneness of things.

Imagine!

Photo Credit: Pinterest

-zari alexxanderr-caine 2018

The Light In My Hands

Out of the dark I can hold
The moon with one hand
Whilst the other touches the sun
My hands reach polar regions

Inside my chest my heart beats
To the pulsating music of the cosmos
Tides come and go and potential
Let's me remember my bonafide Self

Like a glass vase, I sit on the table
Capable of showcasing a bouquet or marbles
Open hearted and clear moving

Within the light of my dark self
Whispers loudly that whatever I encounter
The truth is I am a part of the Universe
I confidently have the light in my hands

©zari 2018
# blackpoetboy

Meet Me At The Crossroads

Darkness dances devilishly,
sweetly calling your name
as if it is a family member
and Love stands there waiting

The road screams like a banshee
calling the scent of impossibilities
A guitar without strings plays
as bullies inside the head have a party

What can you do when you can't laugh?
My heart is bleeding when I see you;
striving against winds that blow nothing
Walking with a splinter and closing the eyes

Twisting dementors sway in the dark lyrics
Come to me dear wealthy self, I beseech you!
Leave me not in the box built by the other side
Do this for me, meet me at the crossroads!

©zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#blackpoetboy

Check Out!

This wall is getting on my nerves
What gives in the race I detest?
Isn't it my soul leading this way
Or is the fake sea winning again?

My hair and skin can't last
Age is burning out like a candle
My greatness seems to be hiding
Behind the wall constructed by others

Am I close to my charmed vortex?
If I found one nugget I think it would
Serve as a manifestation of my simple dream
Sometimes, I feel so less than  crap

Pretty faces, inflated egos, and wispy followings
Push the barriers like a dam cracking
What is my value worth in a plastic world?
Some days press me so hard that I just want to check out!

©zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#blackpoetboy

Friendly Universe

I was taught that the world is hard
From infancy they fed me the lies
It was as if they walked with a card
that must be placed in front of my skies

I knew something deep inside
that this world is also a kind place
My new eyes saw life from the inside
The truth of reality bathed me in grace

All of humanity bends to fear
It is a dementor and I have felt its pain
as it touches my skin like a tear
My soul knows what the mind can't gain

I chose to steady my gaze on the wisdom
of the celestial ages, the only one that holds
me together with the courage of the winsome

I am taken care of
by the infinite organising power of the Universe
I simply step off
the grind because I do not live in a curse

Now as a man, I remember this
reality that declares my freedom
I am constantly guided with a cosmic kiss
and I am boldly empowered to create from within my kingdom

©zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#blackpoetboy

The Sound of Water

Inside the nature of you and me
Is the flood that irrigates
The inner aquifers that speak
Aptly with the language of life being

Mother Nature has figured it out
With her divine wisdom
He created everything with a seed
That has its own river food

Young leaves unfurl with power
In every vein to make its sap business
Green with life like light in the dark
Embedded is magic to be possible

We are the stuff of creative genius
Within us are rivers, oceans and seas
Teeming with majestic living wonder
We came already filled with the sound of Water

©zari  2018
#blackpoetboy

Love Acts

Words are electrifyingly powerful
They spin, dance and hold the attention
From despots to the persons of truth
But they can also be the harbinger of detention

What we think is not enough
To hold the dam of imagination
For the inner living of the soul isn't touched
By placating what usurps  explanation

The greatest principle is to live it
This Love of Everything exudes billions of facts
It's by living what we know in the soul
That irrigates the dryness of life because love acts

The action of love moves all of us to be more

©zari 2018
#blackpoetboy

BURNING SAND

We play games with ourselves
the kind that even children do not play
We say we are mature and yet
we keep creating statues of clay

The beliefs we contrive
usually break the skin and bleed
We serve the gods of ill-repute
just like the centuries that we continually feed

The Universe is a woman who wonders
whether the men of her making can love
But she is angry at the prospect
that her creation will give her the shove

Such are the games we play
Fingering each others minds with hate
We jump and skip here and there on burning sand
only to fall into the holes we dug of late

zari alexxanderr-caine 2018

Photo credit: Pinterest , words are mine via SnapSeed

THE DEEPER CRY

What is it that stings so
and makes the perception cringe?
Where in life is there a pit stop
in the caricature race?

So many souls walk about
craving the inquiries that have no answer
They believe that a utopia exists
to break the monotony they fashioned

Endless complexities are invited
by the senses that try to offer claims
that will not assuage the deepest cry
These sobs are not the whimpering of a face

Facing oneself can be a struggle
A necessary desire to listen to spirit
Below the surface of the gig
lies the basic solution of truth

zari alexxxanderr-caine 2018
#blackpoetboy

Photo credit: Pinterest

OUR HANDS

We use them each moment of our lives to accomplish, direct, lead, guide, comfort, hold, create and assist ourselves and others.

Our hands

The people we touch in ways that express how we feel is done by the tactile fashion of our hands. There's even a saying that alludes to the idea of being able to count how many people we are connected to by the fingers on one hand.

Our hands

Instruments of whatever we choose whether it serves us or not. When we reach out it's with our hands on a physical plane. The sensation of touch is crucial to our growth on many levels.

Our hands

Take a look at your hands and ponder on the magic they can be or the weapons they can be also. It's with hands that we bring comfort and affirmation and with the same hands that we clench them into fists.

Our hands

We give and take with them. We point and create with them. We hold and let go with them. We direct and lead with them. But most of all we serve ourselves and others with them.

Bless your hands for the building and the loving and sometimes for the giving of correction. Honour your hands for the power that they have to change the world. The Universe has hands. Yours and mine.

Our hands

© zari alexxanderr-caine 2018

Photo credit: Tumblr

We Owe Nothing Part 4

Presently on earth, there is a deep culture of debt and the crux of this matter is crippling everyone of us. The idea of owing is a broken link set on the premise of greed and abuse of the power of others by those of us who believe that earning is king. How is it serving us this far? Poverty is an engineered ideology sold to the masses by virtue of the insidious device of religion which politics uses to create elitism via egotism and then economics tops this poisoned layer cake with the power to segregate in favour of the scrambling and partitioning of continents, cultures, creeds, language, kingdoms, realms, and ideologies etc.

To this day, debt is used to subjugate large swathes of the world and the gap is growing according to who rules the ideas of owing and repayment. The most hardest working people are the most poverty stricken on earth.

The questions are what is owed? Who is owed? Why is it owed? When was it owed? How was it owed? On this earth, we are swimming in plenty and yet we all think there's less. How come to be rich is easy for some and for others it's near impossible? What does the God we created think on the matter? How is it working for us this far?

I suspect that we can answer this question in many ways and indeed, we have, however, a few won't give way to balance. Does this mean that we give up and let the agendas of the few annihilate the many? I don't think so.

The idea that we owe something to a deity and a system is anathema. We know this deep inside us and yet we allow baseless ideas to pulverise our resolve. This story has and will not end until we all agree that the answer is a universal one steeped in the spiritual reality that we are powerful beyond measure.

I don't process to know everything, however, I am aware that what I am seeing on earth is not healthy. I strongly agree that we have the power to change whatever it is that does not serve us anymore. Growing up means opening to new ways that foster the growth of our species. We are custodians.

I don't know where we got the idea that we are owners. This actually is the crux of the matter.

©zari alexxanderr-caine 2018

Image Credit: Pinterest, words mine

We Owe Nothing Part 3

When all this is stripped back, I am convinced that we will discover the fault lines that our chosen self-oppression was built upon. We will realise that all the pain of the eons that we crafted has not benefited us much. Our evolution has been truncated in ways that we have chosen so as to control others.

When we talk of love, what exactly do we mean? In many of our holy literatures, a sliver of inspiration shines through about what love is and then we ignore it in favour of fear, which is debilitatingly destructive and yet we act from this thought above love.

We are such a bunch of sorry people who meander on earth causing all the mayhem with exacting revenge, requirements, retribution without a get out clause. Most of us are hurt, badly damaged, maligned, rejected, dejected and damned by the ever stringent, inflexible and unethical behaviours of those who think they are better.

And we are all under the same sun!

History has shown us that repetition is the mother of skill. However, this skill is being misused because we all do not agree about what history is consistently opening to us. We are proving ourselves to be the antithesis of what we have crafted.

©zari

Image Credit: Pinterest, words mine

We Owe Nothing Part 2

Where we stand today, religion and it's attending cohorts have us all believing that we owe a moral monster worship, praise and obedience whilst also believing that we have free will. We believe that something went wrong and we all are culpable for it and so we require redemption by the death of a saviour that we flaunt with alacrity.

We contrived a place called hell, heaven, limbo, purgatory, nirvana, and such like to placate ourselves that we are but sorry excuses of beings. The madness intensified when a few of us pushed against all the hubris and then murder became a holy act to save the system. Politics came along and sank its fangs into our collective jugular.

Economics chimes in with its grandest stages of separatist profiling and its bounties held for the powerful elites. Heaven is touted as the reward for poverty on earth while the rich have a ball here. We agreed that all this was ok until some of us awoke to realise that a game was afoot and then the programming starts afresh.

The idea that something is owed and must be paid back with interest is an ideological poison that we keep administering to each other with fetid stupidity and we hurt. But the God we created and believe in demands a payment in forms that contain cringeworthy madness.

What do we owe? Who determines what is owed? How come it's not been paid after all this time? Do we really understand what is owed? Or is it all an illusion we continue to feed?

©zari alexxanderr-caine 2018

Image Credit: Pinterest, words mine

We Owe Nothing Part 1

We live in a world that we have created on perceived fault lines which we are convinced demands our obligation and forced salutation. We strive to repay what we have deemed to be owed.

What this is for we don't know but being the storytelling creators we are, we devised a plan, a play and an ancient story on which to build a system of reward and retribution which is as draconian as we could conjure. We then told each other that this is truth, when in fact it is a bunch of make believe claptrap.

We have agreed that we are debtors of the highest degree. This, we have done by the sheer force of our nature to boast upon ourselves the misshapen mantle of incessant owing. To solidify this myth, we created a God that embodied all the insecurities that we have and attribute to this benevolent being the powers of eternal punishment, psuedo-love, anger, and all the human proclivities to the highest extremes. We subsequently decided to worship this deity with fear and trembling.

We convinced ourselves that illusions are real and made them all up in order to maintain a hold on each other in the shapes of religion, politics and economics. We wrote self-styled holy books to keep the so-called faith and we use the same instruments as weapons to cajole, intimidate and twist each other up. Societies from time immemorial have been built on these fault lines with mild variations.

©zari alexxanderr-caine 2018

 Image Credit: Pinterest, words mine

KINGS and QUEENS

For the formidable heroes
In you and me
We stand tall looking ahead
Knowing something
So deep inside and strong
For this alone, we are the salt of the earth

When the odds come as they often do
We are not afraid by the hands of white and cunning
Because we know that there is gold and silver in our heart and soul beyond what the soil can hold

There's a place in our DNA that speaks a language only you and l recognise
We rise above the systemised conundrum
And see the real us in the mirror
Of kings and queens in regular garb we are
Making kingdoms with every step we take

We defer no longer to powers that refuse to see us
We build together a lineage of responsibility
No more blaming and gaming
We take the fall with pride
This is what real royalty do

For the formidable heroes in you and me
We stand tall looking ahead
Knowing something
So deep inside and strong
For this alone, we are the
salt of the earth
© zari

Photo Credit: Tumblr

#blackpoetboy

This is the poem of which I gave context about yesterday. I am accepting who I am now and basking in the freedom of it. When games lose the lustre and the purpose, of which is contrived, we have the choice to return to Self or sequester ourselves on the shelf of playing the waiting game. In this, I am done. I wasn't aware that I was jaded until a series of little things came to remind me of how 'done' I am with it all. It pays to listen to the little bells that ring in unlikely ways. So here is the culmination of a realised choice. I place it here so that you too may make it your own, when you choose.

HAVE PLAYED ENOUGH

I charmed my way into places
that others failed to gain
My powers were honed in learning
the words to choose and entice

The stage I built was simple
backdropped with elaborate scenes
The best of others fell like apples
as l scooped up what I wanted

Alas, I lived with the anxieties
these apples caused me later
Shiny things can only sparkle until they rust
I got lost in the labyrinth others crafted

Life wasted is a shame to the charmer
Dancing to the music others play
makes the movements contrived
The truth is that my soul didn't care for it

So, I felt the feeling of my true Self
and listened to me reading my lines
I left the play of smoke and mirrors
Finally declaring freely,
"I have played enough!"

©zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#blackpoetboy

"All the world is a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;" is the phrase that starts the monologue from William Shakespeare's As You Like It, spoken by the melancholy Jacques in Act 2 Scene Vll.

I have long wondered what it meant as a child and when I became aware of the adults around me I began to see the reality of what is called 'The Game' that everyone is playing so as to blend into the play of what seems to be life.

I have been haunted and delighted in equal measure, however, I discovered that I don't really care for it much anymore. As l am remembering who I am and as I am experiencing my spiritual awakening, it's become so vivid to me that authenticity is what excites and slakes my internal thirst.

To play the roles that are thrust on me has been a dire state of faking myself out with make believe notions that society has constructed to turn all of us into paper dolls. How did we get here? I ask myself. The dramas that we create that constantly blights us like frost to a grapevine is not serving us like we care to admit.

I guess that I have reached one of the seven stages of a man's life according to Shakespeare. This is an awakening for me. It's seems to have pushed up from the ground like a seed that cracks open all the way. I am sick and tired of playing the game of deception.

When I came across a quote attributed to the ancient Sufi poet Rumi, it was like a river surged through me and confirmed to me what my soul has been reminding me for such a long time. I heard then but now I listen.

The quote goes, "Half of life is lost charming others. The other half is lost going through anxieties caused by others. Leave this play, you have played enough." I don't know about you but for me this is the Universe saying "Wake up!"

And true to form, my poetry notebook fell open to a fresh page and with pen in hand, I didn't have to wait long until the pen released the words I heard mySelf speak onto the waiting page in fresh ink. It came steadily with a conscious ease that as I read what remained as a poem, I was visibly moved.

It's a declaration of personal independence from the empire of cookie cutter thinking and the pull to play the game whose rules I refuse to abide by. I am tired of the scripts written by others. I am done with the incessant rain of conformity. It's a neverending race to nowhere. I choose to be my unique Self.

Life is all about Self-creation.

I aim to keep my post shorter than I am accustomed to writing and with this in mind I will share the poem that inspired this post tomorrow.

© zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#blackpoetboy

SCORCHED EARTH

Lightening strikes the dry brush
The air is thirsty
Dead foliage stand as they fall
In a state of dying the forest floor begs
The stripping is coming
Sparks fly against wood, leaf and moss
Golden flames lick the dry season
And fires blaze here and there
Until the forest is ablaze with cleansing
That looks like tragedy
Everything feels the heat of change
The dead burn away
The new awaits its command

Scorched earth

Nature's cleansing ends as the winds
Finish the work of taking away
That which does not serve anymore
Blackened earth lays smouldering
All wildlife know something
New things are on the way
The heavy clouds empty
Sky water saturates the thirsty earth
The bald landscape is waking up
The sound of water is new life

Scorched earth

Our lives are like the arid regions of woodlands
We teem with deadened skin that feels nothing
We try to hide the thirst
And the dryness of old versions of ourselves
Clinging to the convenient but dead
Life strikes the dried places of us
And the raging blast does its work
Nothing is spared but the permanent
Then the rains of freshness fall
Something new begins to appear
Beneath the charred remains
A green sapling rises gently to the surface
New skin grows and feelings emerge

We realise nothing new without the experience of

Scorched earth

©zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#blackpoetboy

Photo credit: Pinterest

MY WEALTHY SELF

The law of plenty is more
than what can be held in one hand
The law of abundance is surpassed by
no other for it is supernatural

I was born richer
than every idea told in stories
This wealth that carries me
is the love of abundance to the enth degree

Poverty is the contextual field
that proves my prosperity
Living with lack is not my reality
I am the possibility without a doubt

Now I remember the truth about me
The Universe is the organising power
that moves me to accept my wealthy Self
I choose this whole part of me abundantly

©zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#blackpoetboy

ALL THE STARS ARE CLOSER

They said that I was full and lightless
They spoke words sharp like daggers
I heard the feelings of a night soiled
With the warped plunge of white lies

The picture of my frame was manipulated
With caricatures of gnarled thoughts
That said I was ugly and defaced
They used weapons of insidious agendas

My throne was stolen and razed in flames
My sky was choked with plumes of thick smoke
The originality of my presence is systematically eroded
I was rotated on islands that belong to another

And so, the night sky called my name
The sun blazed its gold upon my crown
The black panthers guide and flank me
I can see all the stars are closer

The diamonds I see in the distance
Are alive for they are not stones
They are the eyes of the black panther
As they walk with the king

© zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#OurBlaqStories

Photo Credit: Taken from 'Black Panther the Album by Kendrick Lamar, The Weeknd & SZS

AFRICAN STORY


The rich velvet soil speaking like a womb
The rains of life falling like gold
Upon the majestic swollen horizon of clarity
Arid scents of nature's purring range

Colours so bright that black makes them dazzle real
Cultures of a thousand millennia coexist at home
On the ground that formed their frames
Histories inside histories tell of themselves in words

Wealthy in being is celebrated
A hidden conflict renders the story famous
As the momentum catches a fire
Kingdoms within kingdoms supreme

A continent called the land of origins
Where the first drew breath
And commanded the names of all that live
Mother of mankind and hope of the world

Our history is famed by the stars
The moon and the sun attest to the
African story that never dies
We will tell it as it was, is and is to come
© zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#OurAfricanStory

The Call of Transparency

We seem to love the dark more than we are of light or it seems that way more than we admit. It's like the dark promises more with it's lies and false friendship. We have trusted the twisted logic of hiding behind the screens made of our duplicity.

How we chat and edit ourselves with pensive bother like a writer who is convinced that every word will create some idea that cannot swim but yet dives into the pool nonetheless.

We know deep down from our core that transparency is the natural medicine that heals the dark sickness that most of us inflict upon ourselves. We know and yet choose to please the lies we bought, buy and choosing to continue to buy. Why?

The tragedy of holding to false standards has become a norm more than the opening up that gifts us the peace we crave. Our storytelling is impregnated with the slices of a cake baked with contempt. We try to steer the river only to discover that water has a way of becoming a porous wall of truth.

I have come to admit to myself that my transparency is my truth out loud even if it brings ridicule. I have decided to honour myself when I present and express myself. Whatever it may be, the practice of guidance opens a space to say what we mean and mean what we say.

We all have the same chances to shine our true light. And the magic in the moment is that when we honour our truth nothing is missing that we must augment. What we know is unapologetically freeing and is at ease with ItSelf.

The idea that hiding is the king on the throne is but the broken systems we have built to convince ourselves that the light must be feared. The question is that how has it served us thus far? Has it not caused us to be the victims of our handmade suffering?

Secrets have become the currency most of us transact with. The thing is that secrets become like acid that can't help but burn through the toughest part and spill out like a fountain and damage more than it was hidden for.

All stratas of industry is replete with some degree of hiding the truth because fear is the commodity that is sold and owned. Relationships are not exempt. The lack of transparency in all our relationships is harming us on levels that we cannot even fathom.

Most importantly, it's in the relationship with ourself that the pain really strikes. Any wonder that we attack each other like we attack ourself! When we build walls to keep our perceived tenderness and truth hidden they become our self-styled jailhouse.

Imagine if the sun was uber guarded and in denial of what it is! Everything on earth would die in a frozen grave. The soul is the truth originator embedded in us all. It never lies because it cannot.

When we recognise and allow our soul to speak we only hear freedom from drama. We learn that living our truth is courage in the light. Conversely, when we lie we are keeping what is killing us. Being real is what we are at the beginning.

I often imagine what our world would be if governments were transparent. If every relationship allowed transparency as its foundation. If corporations did business with transparency If every part of life was bathed in transparency.

Imagine what the world would look like! Hiding doesn't pay us at all. The dark only exists to encourage us to see the light in the light. There is contrast for a reason. We have a choice in our creating of what we call real. What we call it is not as important as how we experience ourselves within the light of our highest truth.

What we agree to be our truth is who we are becoming daily. Does transparency factor in how we relate? I do not mean the eradication of  having no privacy instead I mean choosing to be open and true about ourselves to each other.

Can we at least try and see what happens? Can we?

© zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#blackpoetboy

REGAL NATURE

The ground upon which we breathe
Is home with a twist of the eternal
The dangling disk of gold smiles its approval
We speak a language only wisdom knows

Bare feet on marble and velvet earth
Robed in tapestries of ancient love
Painted in orchestrated colours and hues
We are ridiculously fashionable at will

We are always the consumate influencers
Now and always, the world does nothing until we do
We tried to kneel down and become small
But the ancestors reminded us that we are king

Famed for the awesome magnitude of ours
Inside our one soul beats Spirit's voiced sound
Called to move like the powerhouses we are
Proudly we make ourselves known with our regal nature

© zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#blackpoetboy

Photo Credit: Tumblr

OUR BLAQ STORIES

Then.

I grew up listening intently to stories told with an African voice through the sights and sounds of an African surrounding wherever I was in the world. I know the timbre of the African voice telling stories of characters created to teach a lesson, of days of dynastic majesty, of legends that lived and died and of the call to remember the African way of living. I grew up with elders with failing eyesight but vivid memories who, with every interaction they deposited cultural and historical riches into my spongy bank style world of memories. I was exposed to a broad spectrum of African tutelage without being sat in one place taking notes. It was more sophisticated than that.

In Nigeria, where I spent most my formative days, being the first son of the first son as tradition held, I was introduced to Nigerian folklore and traditional etiquette taught to me by the old mothers of the family spoken to me in the Yoruba language. My only grandparent, my paternal 'Baba' was the dean of my learning in these matters.  I learnt the tongue of my father's tribe through the stories of the carriers of culture. I would speak in English and they would return with our native tongue. The stories of our forebears was spoken with drama, . Everyday life was a production of sorts so as to teach the young about who there are.

Having a foreign mother necessitated the vigorous exercise I went under to make sure that my place in the family was secure and informed. At the time, I wasn't aware of this. I was just a boy interested in the drama of learning new and interesting things about Yoruba culture. I am more grateful now that I was given the opportunity to recognise and relate to the ways the Yorubas tell their stories. I do believe that because of those informal classes that I was given, the storyteller in me was nurtured. Even though I left Nigeria almost thirty years ago, I still draw from those hallowed halls of my cultural and historical tutelage.

Now.

I have been expressing myself through poetry for most of my life. I find it deeply enriching and easier than prose. Many would disagree with me. Especially being of dual nationality, I have been informed by a few close people that I have privilege of writing from the duality that I have experienced. I guess that they are true. Recently, my interest has been piqued by the quality of black storytellers that are flooring the literary world with works that draw all peoples to the ever increasing limelight on our blaq stories. From Chinua Achebe to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. From Wole Soyinka to Biyi Bandele. From Nnedi Okorafor to Octavia Butler. From Maya Angelou to James Baldwin and the galaxy of black writers, playwrights, directors, artistes, artists, actors and poets.

Black writers have always transcended the restrictive mainstream using a magical weave of imagination, wit and a command of the English language. The likes of the late Derek Walcott used English to lance the boils of colonisation, racism and racial indifference. So did Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, Cyprian Akwensi, Ola Rotimi, and a galant host of others.

I am glad to live in an age when we, as black people are proud to walk into any bookstore and buy works of literary magic by black authors. I am equally gladdened to  be alive in an hour that sees the emergence of us telling our story with unapologetic aplomb.

Our blaq stories is a treasure trove that the world has to appreciate for these stories of ours will not remain hidden because of the despotism of racist constructs and the false and twisted narratives that they spew.

I am loving the awakened sense of pride in our works, be it art, music, books, movies etc by us and others. When Alex Haley's 'Roots' came out in the 80's, it was a major shift for our stories being told in the light, however, then along comes 'Black Panther' and a siesmic shift of African and black awareness is happening.

This is what occurs when we tell our blaq stories.

© zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#blackpoetboy


Photo Credit: Pinterest

THE SILENCE BETWEEN US

THE SILENCE BETWEEN US

Our history is the same
And yet it's vastly different
Like the night and day of blame
Our telling of it is quite varied

We wear the coat of melanin magic
The taste of our lineage is incredible
Even so, history has twisted us into the tragic
Why did we miss each other by sea?

We are the same in this horrid game
Land apart by water and death
Sold into dangerous guile and shame
Our language lost and found but bitter

Mother lost her children to unimaginable pain
The islands cannot explain why
Alas, our spiritual DNA knows that we gain
Much from the remembrance of us

Harsh winds have blown us apart
We reach for each other in the dark
Our history proves that we are a part
Of a grander picture created by vocal crimson flood

Foreign graven images always lie lies
Of magnitude written by interlopers
We suffer beneath darkened skies
Because of the silence between us

©zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#blackpoetboy


I was listening to an audio book the other day and two words bounced out at me like a rubber ball from somewhere inside me. The words were, 'silence between' and I felt led to pen them down because I knew that something was about to speak. As I continued to place pen on paper I saw the title complete itself with 'THE SILENCE BETWEEN US'. At first, I thought it was going to be a poem about love and relationships but as I looked at the bold title before me, a sharp picture emerged of the frosty relationship between Africans and the African diaspora. I found it intriguing that one minute I am pondering on romantic relationships between the sexes and then in a heartbeat, a variable shift occurs on the subject matter of how the African diaspora is at war silently against the African.

As the product of both and the same, I have ringside seats.

My father is Nigerian and my mother is Jamaican of German and Irish extraction. Their coupling bloomed in their student days in London in the 60's. I was the first fruit of their marriage. They moved to Lagos after their studies were completed. I saw an explosive exchange growing up in our family that boasted of a further five siblings. Apparently, it was not part of my father's family plans that their son, my father would return with a foreign wife and child. My father was an outlier it seemed.

I grew up in the cosmopolitan city of Lagos and witnessed the wonders of being privileged and vilified with equal measured. It took quite a strong streak of determination to accept this as it was. My mother made sure that she found her space and filled it within the dynasty of her in-laws. It was ornery at best and  divisive at worst. The family politics was thick with a dynamism that struggled to reconcile itself. The thing is that whenever I went to London I felt more at home in my skin than in Lagos. And the other thing I witnessed was the open resentment that burned from black people of African persuasion against the Africans who came from source, so to speak. The Africans were jovial, comely, inclusive and open whilst the African 'other' seemed to be defensive, accusatory and suspecting. I saw it in the matter of how young people would come home with a boyfriend or girlfriend and the interrogation would begin. It always centred on the linage of the one brought home. And sparks would fly. Deep seated resentment would rise and splash like acid. I often wondered why this was.

This is an explosive subject matter even now that social mores have slightly changed. This 'wolf on the inside' among us must be addressed. The poem uses simple language to describe who we all really are. The tribalism within us is a plan set by the coloniser to separate us from each and by so doing they can use us to further their vested interests. Yes, the trauma is real but does it mean that it cannot be worked through? Does it mean that the ancient resentments fuelled by lies will stay and cause more schisms than already exist? Is it possible to love again who we always are though we may be scattered throughout the world?

Answers oftentimes hold questions within them.

I have seen the devastating effects of this perceived divide and it's so ugly that the next generation may begin to exhibit the same. My take on this is that if we wear the same skin we are one regardless of where we call home. If we wear the same hue then we share the same melanated DNA. We are simply family uber extended with gifts that we as magical people use to influence the world. When we meet we know that we see our reflection even though our experiences are diverse. We can help each other through the trauma of the ancient separation of the invaders. We are powerful beyond measure.

Our spiritual DNA knows more than what we think. The truth is that our ancestors are one and this has carried us from sea to sea, land to land, experience to experience, culture to culture and soul to soul. I have all of them coursing through my veins and I accept that my family is far bigger than the ones I call family.

This is an ever expanding conversation.

©zari alexxanderr-caine 2018
#blackpoetboy

Image Credit: Pinterest