grafyé rasin-an
dwèt ou blé épi an san
twou-a pa ni fen
manman
Blan/Lò
Gadé mwen,
all decked out in white and gold like
I’m the second coming.
dripping venom instead of holy water.
wouldn’t mind the suburbs, if not
for the new age bros and vapid white feminists,
who have the gall to assume they’re part of the solution.
ki sa pwòblenm mwen?
thought you could talk down to me in perpetuity,
‘til I obliterated your ego with my doc marten boot.
we were never really friends, just friendly.
can’t feign austerity for your comfort any longer.
shower me in your hyperbolic platitudes,
wild, brash, dehumanizing for drawing boundaries – I’ll embrace it.
rather that than live sad, frigid, and fraught with fear.
Anvéwité
They taught us that the natives were all dead,
That indigenous islanders were long extinct.
Wiped out by European diseases, lack of weapons, poor luck.
But we know our ancestors, we know our histories.
They insisted that our minds were inferior,
Yet the “great nations” of the world were each built on our forced labor,
And when we claimed our freedom for ourselves, we became doctors, lawyers, architects, writers.
They claimed Kwéyòl wasn’t as good as French,
Et anvéwité, they were right about that at least – it’s richer, much more complex.
It’s the rough colonizer tongue, blanketed in the pure beauty of African and Carib languages. A shining example of our diverse heritage.
They’ll try to teach you false narratives about yourself, about the world,
Whether they intend to or not.
To survive this indignity, stand firm in your reality,
And stay one step ahead.
do you love me?
est-ce que tu m’aimes?
tongue dripping with silver,
kisses all over your body like Paris rain in the afternoon.
est-ce que tu m’aimes?
touch like the summer – wet, hot, unrelenting,
and enrapturing you all at once,
until every inch of you is soaked in sweat.
est-ce que je suis le diable?
peut-être, peut-être pas
est-ce que tu m’aimes, encore?
Sorry for your loss.
Grief –
all consuming and endless,
like probing through pitch darkness for a light.
Grief sends you into mourning nearly every night,
and rouses you with kisses from pain soaked lips at dawn.
Grief, like hanging onto the last few hours of sun before your mother calls you in.
before you realize the world is full of hurt people, bumbling around trying to process.
Grief,
used to push it way down deep,
Tried to drown and bury it, along with any other facet of my personality that could be deemed weak.
Grief?
Now I’ve grown a little older and it flows out like a river,
Sadness, joy, and love, all wrapped up in the freedom it takes to allow myself to finally,
Grieve.
Je me suis trouvé
pas besoin de raconter l’histoire,
je sais précisément qui je suis et où j’ai commis une erreur.
feuilletant Dostoïevski, allongé au soleil,
fumeur au Young Dolph, l’herbe fraîchement coupée effleurant mes coudes nus.
descendant dégénéré, dissident et perdu de vue de Ramsès II, bien que très loin des villes scintillantes de l’Égypte antique.
pas besoin de rejouer vos souvenirs,
je sais exactement où je suis allé et où j’en suis,
aucune indiscrétion passée ne me fait honte, aucune menace de mal de la part d’un homme ne me met en échec,
aucune chaînes d’entreprise pas m’apprivoiser.
ma voix est forte et claire comme le bruit des vagues qui s’écrasent sur le rivage,
Je suis un enfant de l’été, élevé dans la nature.
Je me suis perdu une fois,
mais maintenant…
Hayden Winston 
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