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