Misunderstood

"Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are at home. Understanding nourishes belonging. When you really feel understood, you feel free to release yourself into the trust and shelter of the other person's soul." 
— John O'Donohue (Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom)

1 + 1 + 1 = 1

Your eyes search mine and i

wander to places you can not find

Because i am afraid you will see

my heart is in fact on my sleeve

You look at me and i float

a wisp of cloud forming shapes you wish for

At one moment i'm an angel

flying through high heavens fighting your battles

At one moment i am a lady of the night

Ready to make your heart take flight

At one moment i am the sun

warming you up cold nights and lighting your path

At one moment i am a mother 

nurturing you and making you a father

It is when you look at me

that time stops and all i can do is feel

But then you open your mouth

and as from the abundance of the heart

the mouth speaks

your heart is slowly revealed

since to make you the one i've resolved

i wait with bated breath as the words flow

for a hint of wisdom

a sign of the holy ghost

a spark of David's passion

coz i have learnt my lesson

That if Jesus is not in your heart the wicked one is

and all he does is destroy, kill and steal

And i've had my heart stolen

It only came back broken

So this love will not be born with me on my back

And you between these legs

This love will not be stirred by heated whispered words

Or urgent curious hands

This love will not be shrouded in pretense

but will be the meeting of whats between our ears

a perfect love to drive out all our fears

souls in sync and our minds agreeing

all in total obedience to the Father's will

...so help me God...

like DAVID

Being a Christian is like the easiest thing in the world. It's like just because you came from Africa you are African. For example from my roots, we have this thing where when relatives come over to visit you have to go into the room they are in kneel down, clap in a certain way and greet them in order of rank. This is actually one tradition that i've come to respect because from a young age you are taught to respect your elders so you never have problems with authority etc. I could say that i was born a feminist though because i detested other traditions like women were not allowed to sit on the stools, benches or chairs, only men were. Like while men lounged around women had to do the cooking and face optical abuse from the smoke even though they had all been working all day in the fields. I was so appalled at the systematic objectification of women that our tradition seemed to cultivate. But back to my point, what being african to me means is these traditions which were handed down from generation to generation. And i may not agree with all of them but i like that we have an identity. So what people generally say is that if you are black skinned you are African but i think it goes deeper than that. It goes back to treks through forests scavenging for berries and wild fruits at a young age during christmas visits to the rural areas. It it goes to waking up before sunrise to go to the fields, bathing in the torrents of a crocodile infested river then getting home as the sunsets carrying buckets of water on the top of our heads. It goes back to sitting around the fire eating roasted peanuts and maize listening to grandmother tell folk tales. It goes back to dancing  outside in the middle of the night to distant drums on a full moon night. it goes back to sleepless nights because you had heard that hyenas were witches' transport and you were too scared to fall asleep because you could hear them laughing outside. That's were it goes for me at least. So when i say home is where my heart is and add that my heart is in Africa i don't mean it as in that is were most of my kind are found. But because that is where i learnt virtue and family and there is space and air and people (well not all of them!) they work off the land and they literally reap what they sow and there are pumpkins and you know how they say a child is raised by a village? what else can i say?

If you got what i just said you can move on to now. I said being christian is easy. Because the basic requirement (correct me if im wrong) is to know and acknowledge Jesus died and He is the son of God. Throw in a stellar church attendance and voilà, you got yourself a christian. But does black skin make you an African, i mean for real for real? Does going to church make you a christian, for real for real? YES and YES. You see, these 'labels' African and Christian are identifiers. Like if you are filling out a form, are you going to say, "you know my skin is black but where it counts i have american ideals so im not in fact african but american"? So on your form you just fill out AFRICAN because people can identify you as someone of african descent who is as is most commonly accepted, black. And under religion you fill out christian because that is the doctrine you find most acceptable and because you have no qualms about frequenting the establishment where like minded individuals who also adhere to said doctrine gather.

But you know David, according to God Himself, was a man after God's heart. There were christians, lots of them im sure in those parts at that time. Some probably even more pious than David. But no one else in the bible was described this way. So like what sets David apart? David was an exceptional man. A passionate man. One given to bouts of loss of self control, some that was shunned by the christian community im sure. But God was David's home if home is where the heart is. And the point of all of this was christians are judgemental and conservative enough to make it seem dull to someone enamoured with the flashy lights of a rushed world. But i wish that we would live like David. Live like people who have been redeemed. Like people who need not be worried about meeting world standards. Like love was all the reason needed. Loud with wild abandon like David. With music, rejoicing, no shame. Im not trying to imply that there aren't people out there who have fun with it or that if you are not a hardcore Jesus freak it nullifies your right to be a christian. But im saying that Jesus gave up his life for you. Not just a sunday, His whole life!! So you better start living your life like you know how huge it is for someone to die for you. Encourage and support your brethren, dont try to tear them down at their every mistake but instead lift them up because redemption means not having to carry around guilt and shame all the time. But sometimes as christians we are the ones who perpetrate this horrid idea that you have to pay for your every mistakes when in fact that price has already been paid. And finally play your music loud, dance till someone shuts you down, check your motives, follow the land's and His laws and if you miss one repent, make you heart beat for God. like David.

 I really want to be like David.

So help me God...   

Passion lives here

Two thirds of the world's labour is done by women and still women own less than 5% of the world's wealth

Everyone asks about the meaning of life... an elusive, intangible concept. They want a divine explanation for something to believe in. 

Ask me and i will tell you. Life is in the wombs of 51% of the world. Life is in the tears of little girls sold to brothels and the blood of women beaten to a pulp because they came home too late to serve dinner. If today was your birthday and you were looking forward to a special gift, is this life a gift you'd want to have? Is it a gift you can live with?

I hate it when people say things like, women are too emotional to head a business successfully. Im actually too angry to go further on this one so i'll live it at i hate it.

But what is life but emotion huh? We are governed by reason, logic but what is all that without emotion. The over-reliance on logic and reason is the reason the world is in a state if you ask me. If women, the so called emotional creatures, could have more of a say in how we run this world would it not be a better place? 

I have been spending a lot of time on my new favourite website www.TED.com :ideas worth spreading and i have to say i have learnt. There are two talks in particular that have stirred my passion. 

The first Chimamanda Adichie - the danger of a single story

She talks about the dangers of hearing a single story about a place or a person therefore having a one warped idea about that place or person. Follow the link to hear about this in her context and i will talk about it in the context im most passionate about. The single story that frustrates me the most

This story is centuries old and it has been told, been demonstrated, been enforced until it has become the norm. Unfortunately the one story that is told the world over, that unifies us all as a  race is a callous, ignorant one. The world has a single story of women. Chimamanda says there are people who determine what stories are told, who tells them, when they are told, how they are told and which versions are accepted. Needless to say men have told this single story of women, how they are to emotional, too weak to do anything. It is very sad that the story we choose to agree on is the one story that exploits, abuses, dehumanises and basically robs dignity out of 51% of the world population. Really?

Chimamanda closes her talk with "If we reject the single story of any place we regain a kind of paradise".  If reject that single story about women, we regain a kind of paradise.

The second talk is Viktor Frankl - Why to believe in others

Ok this one you have to really see the video because Viktor is the one. So why am i emploring ya'll to believe in women. Is it because i empathise with all the pain the abuse and inferiority causes us the world over. Is it because i have enough drive and smarts for three men but the fact that i am a woman may still impede my career.  What makes us human is the ability to empathise. Without empathy we are just robots moving along the path of time responding to selfish commands like hungry, tired, horny. And i guess men don't empathise with women's plight because they think that they are superior creatures. In the same way most people don't empathise with rats used as guinea pigs. 

According to Viktor, the surest way to make a person the worst version of themselves is to take them exactly as they are. He says The way to make someone better than they are is to over estimate them. So to all the men in the world, you are right.. we are as you say we are. But i implore you to overestimate us... As maybe your equals? as competition? as the change the world needs? just a little!

Beyonce - Who run this world (GIRLS)

... so help me God...

25 to lyf

i was caught out by the rain last night
outside your window laying my soul bare
they arrested me for indecent exposure
because the raw explicitness of my core they said
would suck the innocence out of an unborn baby
they sat me down and tried to understand
how it had come to this
and i told them my guess was as good as theirs
all i knew was
one day i woke up
my firewalls breached
and my heart was gone
and suddenly the virus, love took over my system
i knew cause of the sudden pop ups of smiles
and random shutting down of default programs like self defense
 and i guess when i saw the signs
i should have reported the crime
but i tried to talk you out of it
 we reached a compromise
so when i tried to file a suit against you
they said they'd get me for aiding and abating
so i tried breach of contract instead
but none of the promises we made were legally binding
so i sued you for negligence and reckless endangerment
they said i was a willing accomplice in this
so i finally got you for emotional distress
but you got out on bail
you took out a restraining order on me
and i had to do something
so i tried to kill your memory
and they got me for attempted murder
1, 2, 3 ... 25 heartbeats in chains
a prisoner of your love
25 to life

Ode to all the people i killed

O that once again, maybe someday

In the sweet folds of time

I may come to forget your face

And that tortured look in your eyes

You were without question

A threat to my sanity

Inspired in me emotional congestion

An insult to my vanity

So i belittled your intentions

In the name of self-protection

Suspected you of evil motivations

Even without all the right information

And in my haste

I rushed to check mate

Everything around me

Shadows of all the people ive killed

Ghosts

All the things you left behind

Lost

In shame i run and hide

Unassuming you came under fire

Of my misdirected ire

You didn't deserve it

I was projecting

Im not brave enough to visit your grave

Eloquent enough to plead my case

But im torn enough to crave release

So im taking all the blame

You are dead to me now

Maybe its for the best

Im such a fool i want to scream and shout

Because you were the best

To all the people i killed

It was my insecurities you were billed

For whatever price you had you pay

Im taking back all the blame

...so help me God. PLEASE God help me!!! ...

...like in my dream.

In my dream you were faceless

and every time i reached out

i felt your hands envelope mine

In my dream i was senseless

and every time i sighed

i took in more of you

and let out more of me

In my dream i was smiling

and it hurt

like needles of joy

and i liked it

In my dream i was running

there was no finish line

not from anything

just trying to leave myself behind

In my dream you were everything

i smiled and i wished you were there

i got angry and i wished to kill you

your name a side note to my every thought

In my dream there was SOMEthing

something stuck to me 

and i wasn't scared

you stuck with me

because you cared

We were holding hands and

finishing each other's sentences

and loving with such passion it stopped the time on all Rolexes

giving with reckless abandon because we believe in our cause like terrorists

and during dry season content to feed on nothing but our memories.

I want a love...

...so help me God...

walls and thorns / creepy letter to my unborn children

and to swim in the maze of your consciousness
to search the cracks in your unconscious
to erase the lines you dont dare to cross
to build bridges
to realize your ideals
to feel your pain
to see your visions

and to swim in the depths of your soul
to touch you heart
to touch your core
to escape your fears
to breathe courage
to live bravery
to slave honour

and to make you better than the best of me
to give you better than i want for myself
to break down my walls and cut down my thorns
so they cant exist in your world because you dont see them in mine
to crack down the walls and invite the light
to cut down the thorns so fear can take flight
but still your life isnt my fight
as if that would mean i wouldnt try
if my best would get you your perfect
i would make that my life's work

Choke hold

he got me in a choke hold
.

my self esteem affects my self perception
coz every time i stare in the mirror im scared of my reflection
.

and im scared that you got more needs
than i could ever meet
.

i can give you so much love your heart will take flight
but i dont wanna hold you back from other pleasures in life
.

and i wanna know
if i was a cat id be dead for sho

Insecurity - Sekou the misfit

david foster wallace

Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.




Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.



They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.



And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving.... The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day

let it play......

There songs that you can listen to all day and there are songs that you just wanna sing along to but you... you are that annoying little catchy song that keeps playing over and over in my head that makes me smile when i get to the chorus and whistle at the most inopportune time when i get to the bridge then i keep humming long  after its done. You are the song that i really hate but will go absolutely crazy if i forget it until i remember. You are that one song, that gets my eyes all misty when i'm happy ... that makes me smile when i'm sad. You are the song that i swear was written just for me. You are the song that was written about me, the song that sees the pain in my eyes when im smiling and the shame in my smile when im lying. You are the song that knows the answers to my questions like how many stars are there in the sky or how many grains of sand in the desert. You are the song that says to me hush, grains of sands are vast... but there is one grain you have to know-that of truth and there is only one truth you need to know - that there is only one star, the one that shines so brightly in your soul... the one that sparkles in your eyes or when you smile. You are that song that teaches about the sacredness of faith and how to get it when its lost. You are the song the birds sing in the morning when i wake up and my soft lullaby when i sleep. You are the song that whispers like a lover, comforts like a mother and brings peace like no other. You are that song when the harvest is bounty and the song when the barns are empty. You are the song that knows all my bads but celebrates my good. You are the song i respect, am sometimes afraid of. You are the song i trust. You are the song thats always playing, no matter how noisy it gets in my head, you are that one reliable song. You are the song that don't care how many bars i miss when i try to sing along, You are the song that actually goes with my discord. You are my song...

We follow your lead - Cheryl James (Salt)

A new year
  ill put on new airs
And i dont mean ill sit taller on my high horse
 just that i won't judge, wont snub my nose
Ill only give the best of me to share
Ill make all my my hay when there's still sun to spare
Put God first and never forget to pray
with every new situation, no matter what ill tune up the praise
Ill walk in God's wisdom and be brave
Be a living sacrifice, hopefully through me another will be saved
.... So help me God...

If you were wondering, in that poem you will find my new year's resolutions. I mean i would love to have said, i wanna finish my college degree, get a job, get a life, get these jimmy choos that have been haunting my dreams, get a smart phone, find love e.t.c. I want all these things but i know that 'seek yea first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you'


Ok, enough about me. Fellas i wanna give you a resolution or at least food for thought that you must thenaply to thyself and make a resolution. You will find it in the next poem by Cheryl James (Salt of salt and pepper)

We follow your lead

To be able to feed the wanting in your soul

 replace the essence that once made you whole

Erase the residue of degradation,

 remove the stench of humiliation

 and motivate you to a level higher than self preservation

  WE FOLLOW YOUR LEAD

Submit. You think we can’t? It would be our pleasure!

Sinking to depths that you can not measure

Naked, Exposed lips, hips, butt and thighs

Longing to satisfy the lust in your eyes

 WE FLLOW YOUR LEAD

Can this body heal your soul

Heat a heart waxed cold?

Release you from an enemy’s stronghold

We twirl our sex batons and video flesh parades

Trying to complete you with these desperate sexcapades

  WE FOLLOW YOUR LEAD

We want to respect you

Never want to hurt you

We’ll give you our bodies but we’d rather give you our virtue

When everyone deserts you we are always there

We’ll bend over backwards to demonstrate how we care

   Coz WE FOLLOW YOUR LEAD

If we are chickens, hoes, sluts and skanks

Its because you abused your rank

Hated your own flesh and abandoned your seed

God made Adam before He made Eve

  WE FOLLOW YOUR LEAD

When will you understand it’s the man that sets the tone

When you’re not around we smell your cologne and hope

We are one believe       

We bleed when you bleed

Respect yourself by respecting me

Set us free

  WE FOLLOW YOUR LEAD

Wave our hands and hip hop hoes

And answer to your tsss animal calls

Throw our dreams away trying to break down your walls

Chasing after waterfalls

   WE FOLLOW YOUR LEAD

You lie to our daughters and kill our sons

Glorify violence solve issues with guns

We are your mothers, your sisters, your daughters, your friends

We need you to be men

   WE FOLLOW YOUR LEAD

This is a men’s world, no doubt. It’s true

So the shape that it’s in must belong to you, coz

   WE FOLLOW YOUR LEAD

Its a heavy load to bear and an awesome battle to fight

But His yoke is easy and His burden is light

Put on a full armour of god

Pick up your sword and take heed

Let love be your guide

   WE FOLLOW YOUR LEAD