Music

They said I sang well. I used to love feeling the vibrations of my voice against the insides of my throat. More than that, I loved how they were strong enough to thwart the barrier of my skin and palpitate against my palm. That very palm sensed my heart-beat as well, but my sound usurped that sign of life.

It was my life.

I would rather breathe in music.

Flash

I breathed in as he flashed his torch on me.

I could feel my pupil contract at the speed of light, to a dot that drilled through my brain.

I thought it would disappear. I thought the world would.

He turned it off.

I felt my pupil bombard, growing as a web to entangle the remnants of my being.

It spiraled to the boundary of my eye, to seize light from the dark.

I breathed out.

Was I blind?

Or was I dead?

Black with Envy

Tell me, oh White!

Why does the world hate me so?

That when I leave a mark on you, they say I have tainted your purity,

When in fact, I suck into my indelible void, all that attempts to obscure you.

I guard you.

Tell me why the world hates me so, oh White!

That they chose you as the herald of light, the merger of rainbows,

When in fact, I am but your complement, the template of your existence.

I encode you.

Tell me! Make me understand!

Why they adorn me in death, when it is you they saw last, before they closed their eyes to life?

Why they revere you as the backdrop when it is I who outlines their subsistence?

Why I am smoke whilst you are fog.

And then you accuse me of being Black?

How dare you, when it was you who stole the colours from my being.

An Ode to Water

Oh, Water!

You are tasteless, and yet I salivate in your longing.

You are colourless, and yet you deluge my life with vibrancy.

You are odourless, and yet you dissolve my senses.

Your beauty lies in my eyes.

My eyes, they shed you, as an ode to you.

My Line

Inspired by the debate in French art between the 'line' of Ingres and the 'colour' of Delecroix, here goes:

An ivory sheet, and a pencil.

That pencil tempts me, and so I caress it and let it flow between my fingers.

I let it flow on this ivory sheet, hovering at an exact distance.

Contemplating on what figment of my imagination, I will realize today.

I make it stop in an upright position, as does a fearless soldier who is ready to drop a bomb on my command.

It drops a dot.

I let it seek refuge on my index finger, and drag it across the ivory sheet.

Proud of its sacrifice, it leaves a mark on its motherland.

You deserve it.

But alas, the pastels attack!

They extend from one boundary to another, parallel and harmonized in their invasion.

Their vibrancy dissipates laterally, as they appear to move against The Light.

Nevertheless, they smear their power across my ivory sheet.

They overshadow my line.

You did not deserve this.

You are still the Maker of my world.