You weave your liar’s web, waiting to entangle your unsuspecting prey.
Binding them with words of sticky sweetness.
Injecting them with poison disguised as affection.
Using your wicked charms like silken threads to strangle your hunted’s mind and soul.
Assailing innocence with fabricated falsehoods until the once thriving being lies lifeless.
Another fatality of your fallacious dance.
I’ve been practicing writing haiku, thanks to inspiration from Twitter. One day I had the idea to do a series of haiku based on colors. I have really enjoyed writing them, and I hope to add even more as time goes by. I’ve aggregated the ones I’ve written so far together here so that they could be viewed all in one place. Enjoy!
Red // minds drenched like a hot / summer night after sunset / hearts aflame with love
Green // sinking peacefully / in the fertile tapestries / of your verdant thoughts
Blue // sitting here with you / beneath endless oases / of serenity
Yellow // laughter bursting forth / from beaming faces; framing / revelry with sound
Gray // somber reflections / ensconced in melancholy / heavy on my heart
Purple // sensually spiced / smoke wafting past entwined limbs / silk-swirled opulence
Turquoise // seemingly serene / beneath chaotic stillness / toes dip playfully
Orange // vibrant sprays of light / playing on the edge of night / laughing at the dark
Indigo // fathomless visions / undiscovered secrets that / haunt me in my dreams
Pink // poofy taffeta / swirling fairy dresses of / innate innocence
Gray(2) // floating in the calm / waters of you; basking in / your tranquility
Brown // smooth against my skin / sweet upon my tongue; immersed / in luxuriance
Tangled feelings, jumbled thoughts
far too many shoulds and oughts
I sigh and try to understand
why you never took my hand
I held it out to you, unaware
that soon I’d only hold despair
My heart was finally ready to love
spreading its wings like a newborn dove
But its cautious flight has crashed and burned
the wings are broken, feelings spurned
So back I go into my shell
where all I have is a living hell
I don’t blame you, you never asked for my heart
I should have protected it from the start
I just want you to know that you’ll always be there
a piece of my soul, handled with care
Wow, this is an honor! I am very proud to host my first guest post ever, brought to you by the amazing and very thought-provoking Owl of Owl’s Asylum. And now, without further ado:
Fuck Who You Will: Owl’s Thoughts On The Interracial Discussion
In a lot of ways I am eternally grateful that while I was sticking my roaming penis in various shades of female pudding like a new customer at an ice cream stand, I never felt the urge to justify it. My justification was I wanted to ejaculate or I wanted companionship of the not so obligatory type. And sure, on more than one occasion I would not have been peeved about a committed situation. Of all the regrets that I might wrestle with during my bouts with insomnia, starting a campaign to persuade Black men to sleep, sex, suck, suckle, or other words starting with ‘s’ to fulfill my need to be accepted for where I place my private limb is not one of them. I suppose the term ‘where’ is misleading–it is not a ‘where,’ but a ‘whom,’ correct?
And let us not make this post another means to eradicate the self-loathing that stems from those unable to be firm in their decisions due to social critique. There is a serious, fundamental political reason why the disdain exists. This is not quite one of those topics where the social contempt is completely superficial. This I understood even when I was entertaining and entering my erectile projectile into women of the European persuasion. My reasoning? I wasn’t blatantly searching to mount, or have my Self mounted by, white women. Sure, at a point it was exclusive (well, I think ‘extended’ is actually a more precise word). However, I have also been with (I love that euphemism, ‘been with’…laughter) Latino women, Chinese women, and…Well, that’s enough of my sexual resume for one blog post. My point here is that I didn’t need to conjure up some long winded treatise about human loving or ‘color-blind’ bullshit to feel comfortable about feeling comfort. I felt not one drop of cognitive dissonance pressuring me to bash Black women for my choices. I didn’t at any moment feel any pangs pushing me to pen a piece about my exploits as a Black man boning ‘Becky’s'…or ‘Linda’s', or ‘Lu’s', or ‘Maria’s', or…I just didn’t sense the necessity of expounding at length about something I was doing for the sheer pleasure of my penis without an exact rhyme or reason outside of the exploit it Self. And for the most part, it was never something I planned. It just sort of happened as a consequence of time and place.
Now, yes, I don’t subscribe to the narrow view of politics as most. Never have. I understand that every act is a political one. Anything one does can be rendered as a use of power, for or against one’s Self. Cool. Duly noted. Many arguments can be raised for my behavior. Yet, none can in my opinion be more convincing than I was just fucking. If any statement about my actions should be made with regard to social or political concerns it should be about my insatiable sexual appetite at that time (‘at that time’…more laughter). I wasn’t making some grand statement to the world about my humanistic views; I was just fucking who wanted to fuck me within certain proximity. I was not saying to the global community that I loved everyone. Far from it. I was being very specific. I love vagina. Still do.
True indeed, my disposition presently affords me the ability to consider the needs of Black people to see Black people engaged in lustful frolicking if not embracing each other in a more stable romantic being. The image of the Black woman has been forged in the United States in such a way that they are considered ‘undesirable.’ The culture stemming from the demeaning of the Black woman in the United States has help to create a buffer group. This buffer group was able to be manipulated into furthering the economic stratification based on skin color that we still notice now. There may not be a plausible ‘solution’ to the internecine ‘color wars,’ nor would I want to provide reactionaries an excuse to act puerile towards those that do choose to be interracially bonded, but I do desire to at least be of that number who can provide an image of Black men doting Black women to the highest degree within my ability. That’s my offering. Yet, even that is my decision, a personal one based on political consideration, but one I will not justify with anything more than I want to be with a Black woman.
Now, in closing, this piece was sparked by a statement by a purportedly Caucasian male that was spread to further audiences by a Black woman who is expressing her insecurities about ‘dating’ (BIG EUPHEMISM there!) white men. As a writer in the age of social media, I fully understand the urge to express every notion and whim that enters our mind. Albeit, that expression does come with a price: your thoughts can be read; that is figurative, and literal. Fuck who you want. It doesn’t have to become an attack on my brotherhood. Fuck who you want. It doesn’t have to become this organizing of Black women to encourage more of the same belittling and demeaning of a group of men that where created during the worst atrocity known in the human’s story. Fuck who you want. If I have sex with a homeless woman, somebody will say something about it. If I have sex with a woman that is three feet tall, somebody will say something about it. If I have sex with the most desirable woman on earth, somebody will say something about it. I promise you this; I will not write a scientific study on why my choice in women should be something that all men opt for to promote our evolutionary existence. Not going to happen. Fuck who want to. I am.
This is a somewhat older piece I wrote a while ago, but it embodies so much of what I have been lucky enough to feel again that I felt it warranted an extra posting. Whether or not I am lucky enough to keep feeling it, I am grateful that I have. <3
There you are before me
Caramel skin glistening
Supple and soft
Muscles bunching beneath
Liquid brown eyes fathomless
Gazing into mine
Long graceful fingers
Stroking down my arm
Sending shivers
Sweet succulent lips
Capturing mine in a feverish dance
I place my hands
Behind your smooth bald head
Press my breasts
Against your broad chest
Mold my thighs
Against yours
Feel my heart
Beat madly with
Desire
Your hand reaches down
Seeking
Finding the moist recesses
Of my very being
I moan against your lips
And you smile
I melt against you
Whispering your name
We sink to the bed
Caught in a desperate embrace
I clutch the sheets helplessly
Powerless to stop the
Desire
I taste myself on your tongue
I rise above you
Hair trailing down your stomach
As your muscles tense
And I hear you groan
And my knees grow weak
We join together
In an ancient rythym
Lips entwined
Reaching
Finding
Utter satisfaction
Even though you’ve gone for now
Your taste still lingers
On my lips
Your scent remains
On my sheets
Your essence still
Holds my soul captive
Until the next time
We’re overtaken by
Desire
The lovely and wise zaji asked some questions on Twitter, and I decided I needed to take some time to process them, so I answered them here. 
So I guess I will have to say it’s probably been close to 10 years since I truly made something cool from scratch. I crocheted a really thick blanket for my older son using a pattern I created myself. I started a second one for my younger son and didn’t finish it….YET!
It’s becoming quite clear
I’m not on your mind
I dared to think,
‘Maybe this time is different!’
I guess that’s more than I deserve.
Finally it’s clear to see
That love’s not meant for me
Every time I think,
‘Maybe this time is different!’
I’m hit in the face with reality.
At last it’s crystal clear
When I dare to hope and dream and wish
Whenever I think,
‘Maybe this time is different!’
Fate waits in the wings, laughing.
The only thing still clear
Is that my heart can take no more
If ever I start to think,
‘Maybe this time is different!’
That’s the moment I’ll turn away.
For Olga Nunes’ LAMP project.
I’ll never be able to understand why my heart chose you. Why it went against all reason and against my wishes and even against my orders. But there it is. Nestled in the crook of the deepest recess of my heart. Glowing. Warm. Sharp. Painful. Hopeful yet hopeless. This love I have for you. I wish I could it take back, yet at the same time I long to reach for you and give it all to you with every fiber of my being.
But I know that you won’t take it from me. That you will never be mine. Not because you don’t love me. I know you do, in your own way. But you can’t return my love the way I need it to be returned. And I knew that so long ago when I told myself I would never become just one of the myriad of women who fall for you. That I refused to put myself on that list.
Yet even now the ink made from the blood of my heart lies drying on the scroll with the names of the others. And as my heart lays bleeding, and dying, I can’t help but laugh at the irony.
Once again I have fallen in love with a friend. But this time with eyes wide open, understanding the risks, knowing the pain, remembering the heartache. And still I fell.
Tumbling down the red velvet walls of emotion, onto the plush upholstery of adulation and yearning, while the harsh reality still shines on me from above.
You are so kind. And careful. Not wanting to hurt me. Don’t you know that only makes me love you more? Only hardens the guarantee of pain? No. You can’t possibly. Or else you would surely cut me off, instead of being even sweeter than ever, with your texts and gifts and soft virtual kisses.
You slay me.
And it’s not your fault. You are who you are. You do not want to and cannot be with just one person. I get that. I have no desire to change who you are. I wouldn’t have fallen in love with you if you pretended to be someone you are not. But it makes the reality check so much harder. The numb feeling of inevitability and stupidity hits me anew with each thought of you. So, it only happens about a thousand times per day.
Why did this have to happen? I have no answers. I do not know if I will ever be OK. I do not know if I will ever get over this.
I only know that right now, I love you. Completely, utterly, heart-stutteringly.
And that’s enough for now.
Well, apparently it’s useless for me to promise myself that I will write in this space. The more sincere my promise, the harder it seems to be able to keep. There are words just below the surface that yearn to burst forth from my fingers, but they are held back. By what? I am beginning to think that maybe they are held back by the same force that has held me back from having friends or other relationships for as long as I can remember.
When I was a young child, I was gregarious, charming, hard-headed, outgoing, and outspoken. There was never much doubt about what I wanted. I was smart, too. Too smart for the public school I attended, it seemed.
Since I knew how to read and write in Kindergarten, thanks to a judicious Montessori school, it was deemed that there wasn’t much I could be taught in first grade, so I would go directly into second grade.
This was perhaps the first chink in the armor of my self. I was placed in the back of the room in second grade, and the teacher didn’t QUITE know what to do with me. I kept up all right in academics, after an initial dip of catching up time, but socially I was far behind my new peers. I had a hard time making friends, because I was considered a “baby,” and was generally shunned and ridiculed most of the year.
As third grade started, things had started looking up. People were talking to me once again, and I was back to my smiley, joking self. Some of my fondest memories of third grade was being kept in for recess with my fellow troublemakers, and having to hide the whites of our eyes in our arms on our desks, and the resulting hilarity as we tried and failed. I may have been OK if I had been allowed to continue on this track.
Third grade is also when my mother met a new man. He was tall and handsome and funny and rich. And within about three months of knowing my mother, he began sexually abusing me. I have already gone into some of these stories elsewhere on this site, so I won’t bother with details here. I knew that this felt wrong. I knew it WAS wrong. But I had never had a Daddy. I thought, “Maybe this is what Daddies do?” Maybe I just needed to get used to it. He loves me, right?
The pressure of the secret and the bad feelings started to cave in on me bit by bit, so slowly that only looking back now can I see the insane progression.
I have some really gorgeous pictures of me at 9 years old. One of the last times I ever thought I was pretty or special. I’m wearing a cute bikini, and the day is bright and the future is promising. I can barely look at them now without knowing that the very fact they exist makes them creepy. He took those pictures.
I started gaining weight after that. I’ll never really know if it was from puberty gone wrong, or something deliberate within my psyche that seemed to already know that I might be less desirable if I was bigger. It doesn’t really matter anymore.
He still continued to abuse me, but added in delightful comments about how big I was. I’m not sure what made me finally snap but something within me rebelled. When I was 11, I told my mother what had been happening. Instead of believing me, her only daughter, she questioned why I would lie about something that serious, and then brought him into the room so that I could look him in the face and tell him what I just told her.
That’s the day I learned that telling the truth does nothing. Even when you can get people to hear you, they don’t listen. I took that lesson very much to heart.
After that, the sexual abuse stopped, but there was plenty of verbal abuse to go around in that household.
The next year I was in a different school. I was quite fat by then. I was followed home from school, made fun of, and was well on my way to my future social phobia. My mother thought that after this year I needed to go to a more sheltered school, so she tried this Christian school that had a “learn yourself” approach where they basically gave us workbooks to complete by ourselves. I completed their entire sixth grade curriculum of books in September. That’s then my mother put me in Catholic school.
To me it was just another place full of people that wouldn’t like me. I did get teased some, but not as much as before. I think maybe it was in some ways the best thing for me. I somehow muddled through my middle school years as my mother finally actually married him, a year after I told her what had happened.
A year later, I started high school at yet another Catholic school. Things weren’t great at home with all the fighting, so school was a sanctuary for me.
Then there was a boy. A senior, but that didn’t bother me. Oh, how I loved that boy. More than he will ever know. More than I could ever tell him. With him, I felt my first real stirrings of real sexual awakening. And I didn’t know what to do with it. I was SO scared. I thought that it would feel the same as it did with HIM, even though my heart told me it wouldn’t. I wasn’t able to get past it. I ruined things. It made the rest of my school year hell. I could barely stand to look at him and know what a screw up I was.
At home, my new “stepfather” had cheated on my mother and was thrown out. Then my mother decided to remember what I had told her. She said we could use it in court.
I was a bad friend that year. I stole some things from a very good friend that I loved very much. I also stole things from stores. I never knew why I did it. A counselor in later years suggested that maybe I was trying to steal back something that had been stolen from me. Or maybe I just wanted someone to ask me what was wrong with me, and actually listen to the answer. Whatever it was, here was another relationship that I had managed to ruin. Another link in the chain of descent.
That winter, while I was still a Freshman, we went on one of our ski trips, and another Senior from my school was there. His parents were friends with some other adults there, I think. I barely knew him. He cornered me in the bathroom, and tried to kiss me. I was a little flattered by the attention, but soon grew uncomfortable. He forced my hand down to touch him, and asked me if I would kiss him there. I started crying, and told him that I didn’t want to, that my stepfather had made me do that before. He said that I should know how to do it, then. I can’t remember how I got away from that. All I know is that was one of the last straws of my innocence, floating away from me. Men only wanted one thing. They didn’t want to know me, they didn’t care to know me or what I wanted, they didn’t listen. They just wanted to fuck me. That’s all I was good for.
Sophomore year, I thought maybe I could get through it now that I didn’t have to see the one I had loved. And my stepfather was gone. But I was wrong. It was harder. My old friend and some others wrote mean things on my locker. I knew I deserved it.
I tried to kill myself.
I spent nearly four months in a mental hospital.
I came back, and somehow got through the rest of high school. I didn’t let anyone close. Honestly, it surprises me every day that some of these people befriend me on Facebook. I didn’t know them that well. I didn’t WANT to know them. Because of they found out what I really was, they would look at me the way my mother did. With disgust.
I feel like I’ve drifted through life on the outside. I’ve only had one long-term relationship that failed miserably on both sides. I spent far too much time with my children in homeless shelters and on welfare. I really don’t have many friends, and the few I have reside exclusively online. I don’t know how to talk to people. All the therapy I have been through has merely kept me going. My kids are the only thing that keeps me living.
I WANT to talk to people. I have made a few tries here and there. Like at the An Event Apart conference. I’m pretty sure my feelings were so openly uncomfortable that they made others uncomfortable, too. Great way to make an impression. How does one even begin to change that?
I feel like most of my life I have been holding on to a chain that hangs in a bottomless chasm. And every once in a while, I fall down a link. One day I may not be here at all.
And all I want is to change that…
Copyright ©2011 Tricia M. Smith.
Thieves will be toad.
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