The Bluest Eye commentary

 

“The Bluest Eye” was riveting and provoking. It caused my mind to ache and my neck to stiffen. Toni Morrison’s words are large translucent cells, once you enter the heaven or hell of them, you stand there, transfixed gazing out at the real world with disinterested eyes. The compact bacchanalia of many black somebodies’ sorrowful, brain washed, conditioned lives, pushes you to the brink of insanity. You know this woman , this deranged soul , this dipsomaniac ; you have heard stories of him from your wisening mother , which she heard from her grandmother, because, her own mother was a victim , similar to those of Morrison’s silken embroidery of viscous locutions. For a few moments, YOU are the character . You feel their pain, the normalcy in their abnormal pathology , the violence in the selfish , misguided, deluded breaths.

Then, its over, and Morrison , with a passionate pen reminds you that this is not your life , but someone  else’s . The pain demands to be felt, but its not yours to succumb to.

And you’re okay, but not as blind, for those blue eyes are lucid and piercing in their intent.

_Aaliyah Abdul Haqq August 5th, 2014

Trying to heal before I’ve been hurt

My best friend ,  with her newly growing umber locks, warned me to hurry and catch my balance in love …to stop falling for that marvelous french boy, before it was to late. We all knew that he loved his home , in the once french ruled islands of the Caribbean. But I thought he also loved me, or at least cared. It felt like he did in sporadic moments , when I’d be  so ineffably pissed with him that he could sense it, as I passed him wordlessly in the halls of our small miserable school. He would pull me into a hug and ask me what was wrong, or come sit shyly besides me and coax my pen from my journal to explain once more what I knew shortly after I met him…his life was a maelstrom of everything wrong that had ever happened to a kid (or perhaps in my adoration of him, I am too sympathetic) . But I listened, because the tune of his voice is my favorite melody and the absence of it ,for too long, springs tears in my ducts and a dull ache, made vibrant by the histrionics of my imagination, in my heart.

But, now Easter vacation has come and he’s gone back finally to visit the land that cradled his infancy and blossoming adolescence. He told me , un-quiveringly , on the last day of school, that he wasn’t absolutely certain he was coming back. So I sighed. But, I didn’t believe him at all. I thought I knew he’d be back  for sure, for his education and for me. But now, as the days go on, five days exactly have passed, my certainty wanes . How many times had he complained of Trinidad and longed for his home’s sun?

What did this country really hold for him? He says he needs no one, that he’s alright with being alone. But I think  he’s just inured to the old loneliess that consumed him, he learned to mask it ,and move on with his existence . But what of a life, that goes past teenage years, passes smoking mary`jane and distrusting everyone? Am I really supposed to believe that he wants no more from life? I didn’t believe so, but now I feel that he might become so intoxicated with the possibility of getting his old life back..it’ll all slip away. He’ll forget education and me, while under the haze of  marijuana and rum. Or maybe, it won’t be the same.

The maybe is what I hold to. Maybe, he’ll think of how I adore him and know its not weakening to be loved, but empowering. That’s all I really want him to know.

p.s Of course there’s more, but for now i’m finished.

“I’m gonna tell God everything”

He whispered as the nurses dragged his dead mother away, forgetting one of her amputated limbs. He cried soundlessly as the army troopers stepped over his strategically wounded father, a “mis-aimed” bullet through his defiant brain. A nurse played with his hair, another wiped his parents’ blood from his starved sunken in chest.But no one seemed to feel the pain that he did, because their families, mothers and fathers ,were safe back home. And this child was just one of the few who would die today. The nurses laid him down on the hard chair, expecting him to fall asleep. And he did very deeply..never to wake again.

Only the photographer, whose camera’s lens was his only expression listened and heard. And didn’t let the boy’s words go unheard, as the cries of his country did.

All these disasters _short

You were going to leave anyway. I decided that hurting you would make it easier on myself. Is it the loneliness I can’t stand, or the missing of you that breaks my heart?Amazing that my attempt to avoid heart break is breaking my heart.

Avoiding earthquakes in my soul.Ignoring rivers in my eye.Smiling while suffocating under loneliness. Aha. I’m not allowed to feel pain, am I? Once you break the soul of the one who trusted you, sympathy is not something you can expect to get.

I’m sorry . I’m sorry for all the things that I have said.

Like ocean waves to the shore, your words are always coming back to me.

And like vultures hovering over, I killed you while you were dead.

Lace and pearls

If the world was lace and pearls..all of the prettiest things , would we be happier?

Would we stop killing because the shine of sunlight on a pink pearl was too lovely to spill blood on?

Would boys stop making girls cry because lace is too  pretty to spoil?

Would hunger pains stop in the stomachs of men and children because truffles and hot chocolate are abundant?

I doubt that pretty tastes and things will stop world hunger, rape and pain. Yet everyday we see shinier buildings and expensive dresses. Sitting near those buildings are dying children. Why beautify a world that is dying in pain slowly?

The lost mole

He didn’t realize that he had strayed from his subterranean domicile until a hand-less yellow stick burned his molish nose. He turned his head blindly towards the unseen sun, a large baking pot, and hid his head in the darkness of the burrow he emerged from. The sun, this novice giver of warmth, warmed the hairs on his rear end. He wiggled in his comfort and fell asleep.It was only when a chilled quick draft shot under his hind legs, punching his chin, did he start awake. He stumbled around, to find his warmth-giver departed…long departed for the grass beneath him had also cooled. Sniffling, the lost mole thought something like this: Well the darkness from which I was born, was a constant friend, although cold-hearted earth was her soul-mate, she never left me alone. This new ‘friend’ I have made is a sly one, she slips away just when I entrust my back to her. To the one that lasts, I shall return to.” 

But when he recoiled into the moonless dark, and found his constant shiver-inducing companion, he longed for nothing more than radiance. He couldn’t help but wonder if she had returned in search of him, or if she even loved him the way he had come to adore her. When the curiosity and yearning had filled his entire being, he made his way back to the surface, desperation for her driving him on. He broke through the Darkness, though she tried to make him stay with her familiarity and her incessant dark ways. He strove towards his new love, wondering…forever worrying that she wouldn’t be there …but praying to his God that she was.

And she was.

She bathed him in her rays for hours, as if her only thought was of him , his fury body and hairless face. He thought : I MUST  be the one she loves. Feel how she caresses me, and heats up my tender insides, dispelling all of the coldness therein. I love her. 

But again ,she left. He waited for her, though his heart ached in her absence. But she always came back , sometimes though, as time progressed, her warmth seemed reluctant or hardly there. But he stayed , forever longing for the warmth she had given in the beginning.

Never did he remember her, the darkness, who stayed where he could find her, even after he left. He was a boy-like mole.

Drifting waves

These shores seemed to be so near before, as if their coasts fit perfectly together. But as time runs forward, and continents shift, they moved and broke , until all the pieces that fit could no longer be found. Instead they lined up as in a row , totally unrecognizable, and keep the islands from meeting again.

February miscellany

For some strange reason,very late night showers never seem to satiate me.Their warmth diminishes in the coolness of the dark, keeping my bones chilled. I always step out shivering, with the sudden realization that I may never step naked out of a bathroom to man whose eyes could only be intoxicated by me.

But for now, the boys with the sweet smiles, and wild eyes will woo my heart enough. Of course, they’l never see my virgin flesh, but they’ll see my heart all the same. I’ll give them the care and words I truly think they deserve, and i’ll try only to see the good. But some have the whispers embedded in their souls from birth

_liyah haqq 5:54am

Here to stay

I held his hand gingerly, afraid that he’d pull away again. Amazing, how I understood his need to get away from my consistency, yet refused to let him go. All he knew was change and instability. I was what he had prayed for all those days climbing trees in the sun for the Caribbean dollar. Now that I stood before him, lovingly, my attempts to keep my love out of his reach having failed, I was too surreal. He couldn’t risk grasping at what may not be there, could he? So I waited, and continue to…wait for him to realise i’m here to stay.

THE FLOWERS in her hair

The flowers in her hand fell to the floor in bunches of salmon and creamy white. Her heart crashed through the polished rosewood floors to the reception room downstairs, when she walked into her dressing room for her veil, and found her groom beneath his best man in haste fervence. She covered her mouth, shook her head and chastised, ” You couldn’t wait until after the ceremony? Ahh, pass me a faggot while you’re at it. ”

Her groom groped for the box of cigarettes, and threw it at her. She lit it, watching as the two pulled up their trousers.

“You want a green card Louie and I want my family off my back about marriage . Let’s get to this. Bye Steve. He’ll see you later.

She stomped out the cigarette , put her veil on and went to the edge of the marble stairs as the music began.