Sometimes
I love a flower
I want to pin it to my chest
like a flag torn from the ruins of a lost land
wear it as evidence that I’ve been feeling
that I’ve survived this age of spectacle
What’s with all this surviving?
I consume it like sugar hoarded during wartime
boil it down to syrup
bathe in its sweetness
let it be the first thing on my tongue at the dawn of revolution
I want to become its fragrance,
Thread it into a garment,
wrap the world in it as a silken reminder
that beauty is here within these fences drawn
Can I hang it from the highest peak?
Proclaim a new era under its petals,
Declare:
I have seen softness survived the machine.
I would sit alone beneath it,
sulking in my patriotism,
as if devotion where uniform I could wear,
as if love could make me sovereign.
A wise friend said if you love the flower,
leave it alone.
you did not colonize its bloom,
you must let the petals fall
without rushing to make a poem from the silence
you become still enough to hear a miracle
humming inside the stem
anxiety is the echo of war
still playing on loop
in the background of our breath
and we starve
because of an Earth made profitable
and love, transactional
still this flower gives
you cannot buy your way back into belonging
you must recall your name before profit had a tongue
I am made from those who fed strangers
and their existence undocumented
deed without translation
I love louder, the thump of my efforts -
imprints last forever
back into the soil we’ll go
only the brave fall all the way inward
the emptied are those who become conduits
I leave the flower
I let it exist.
It’s wild boom takes roots in my reason
without my fingerprints on its meaning
in that unmaking…
I bloom.
-Gazi
I’m a centimeter from Divine
seeking something just to bind. The light switched rooms, didn’t shut the door behind. Attention spilt, I slip, still drawn to center,
by a gravity i crave to flip,
to slay, to sever.
Calling you by a name
that never was yours
the naming of the thing
built walls, not doors.
This house, full of absence,
a child at the edge,
just a gaze from grace,
Always witnessed.
Never fed
But saving face.
Make me a child of yours I’ve never been. Let my past dissolve in the shape of your skin
The sun in you. A warmth unbroken by the frostbite of now, I’ll deposit my love just don’t show me how you withdraw.
Conditional me.
Love ain’t capital.
It vanishes when counted.
The world wants itself back aching, wrecked, lust-wrapped, greed-stacked, lies dressed in velvet tempt the soul to bend its spine,
forget its height, unsee the climb.
I danced to cruel tempos, til ground was lost
I am held in all my searching In gravity-less stillness, no weight, no name where glory fades, and the heights feel the same.
Metal feeds metal. humans pay the toll Fruit never opened Warmth never showed. A mother, thin with waiting, passes all her bread.
who is really living in a world gone dead?
who is really living in a world gone dead?
I was born as the second coming to my bloodline. My father, Ra, a North Star to the feral woman growling softly, seeking vacation from a loveless life. Behind his celestial gaze lurked an underworld, a profound, magnetic abyss that drew her in. Oya, the tempest's lover, yearned for the storm to reveal the depth of her own fierce nature. And so, I manifested as a bolt of lightning, an overwhelming force of disruption, crashing into existence with a cry so thunderous it shattered the silence, holding mirrors to the shadowy corridors within and illuminating the depth of the darkness that lay hidden.
She could not bear to hold me for long…no. I was a river of red, an untamed flood in her heart, and she, a woman steeped in blues, sang the lament of a world she could no longer hold. "This child," she said, "is a spell, one I cannot confront, cannot undo." I was a myth reborn in her womb, a tale older than time, dressed in the flesh of the now.
I did not always bring wrath. Once, I remember a time when the Earth was still, and there was no storm. Delight passed through the quiet chambers of the world, where undercurrents spoke in whispers, where moss flourished without care. My claws gripped the soil, soft and inviting, as I ascended rocks to meet the Goddess at the hour of Jupiter’s gaze. I bathed in the purest waters, thanking them for their cooling embrace. It was there, in that sacred moment, that I left behind traces of myself, secretion that would later become the first sighting of honey, an elixir of sweetness unknown to the human tongue.
I sang to a cosmic lover, his name carried on the breath of distant stars, tracing his fleeting form across the canvas of the night sky. In the dream state, we met—his presence, a pulse. The exhale of his breath summoned a soul from the tomb of forgotten time, a resurrection steeped in the echoes of lost rituals. A transmission of psychic flame, a rekindling of an age-old ceremony. My hunger for the world I once knew became ravenous, as if I were consuming the very essence of existence itself. Must I love with such aching, a bloodlust toward the instrument that plays its dissonant song upon my heart? After an embrace such as his, I questioned the truth of all things, as the world before me pleads the fifth, its secrets locked away in shadow.
Now, I walk in a city where neglect reigns, where the ground cracks open to remind us that life pulses beneath the surface, yet the concrete is but a cruel metaphor for a soul left to wither. How easily we forget the warmth of breath, how easily we slip into the indifference of existence when death’s refrain echoes through our every step. The plague of apathy, like a spectral shadow, haunts my neighbors, and yet the Sun, life’s eternal witness, shines down upon us all, illuminating a yesterday that has already begun to fold into tomorrow. Yesterday, beneath the weight of tomorrow’s sound, yet I defy the pull of time, listening to the pulse of today.
My bones ache with the capacity to hold space, as though I emerged from the earth a moment before my own decay, saved by the hand of fate itself. Yet, neglect...a ghostly presence, lurks in every corner, in every house I try to call my own. I pierce into my skin, digging deeper, attempting to re-engineer my DNA, and find that I’ve dug into the Milky Way, unearthed Atlantis in the folds of my being. Insecurity knocks, yet there is no door to answer. I sit in silence, watching as the unknown sways to the rhythm of a siren’s call while I sleep.
Here is where the lost are gently found, where the wanderer's steps rediscover their rhythm on the winding coast of memory. Feet, once uncertain, find their grounding in shifting sands. Spines unfurl, taut with tension, as limbs awaken to a force they can no longer deny; hips sway, irresistibly pulled by a familiar hand, and love…love is longing to be claimed by what was always just beyond reach. Remember how you were molded, before flesh and thought began to shape you. Yes! remember the essence that existed before all else. Pleasure, a fleeting ghost, dances just out of reach, as close as I'll ever come.
Good morning, my dear. Forbidden desire visits me in the stillness of my subconscious’s monologue, a seductive threat, a kiss waiting to be stolen. Look out the window, what have you become? The trees stand bare, their bark stripped away, a vulnerability that endangers their very existence. Look closer, and see who still stands amidst the wreckage. How ironic! There is no escaping the civilization that I am Mother to.
-Sekhmet (Gazi)
I long for those quiet, awkward silences that often stretch between people to become something more. A stillness where hearts can breathe together, where even the empty spaces hold meaning. Let the moments of silence not be marks of disconnection, but of deep understanding, where unspoken truths hum like a quiet melody between us. I pray that the cries we hear in the night, the raw, visceral sounds of pain and longing become the precious calls of our souls, inviting us to witness and to understand. May they reveal, with a gentle caress, what it feels like to be held in the boundless, unconditional love of the Divine, to know what it is to be enveloped in love so deep that it peels back all that it is not.
If I am to embody the change I yearn to see, patience must be my compass, my guide. Without hesitation, without shame, I embrace love as the salve for all wounds, the balm for every ache. I know that love, when poured freely, will crystallize into everything I need, and in its overflow, it will become the source from which I can give to others. There is a strength within me, an unyielding force that grows ever more potent as I recognize that it is love that sustains me, that fills the vacant spaces, that grants me the courage to face each new day. It is love that has shown me who I am, and I have found that love reflected in the eyes of those who see me with grace, who hold me in my most fragile and radiant moments. In their presence, I am reminded of the truth of myself, and in their love, I have learned to be whole.
How rich and complex this world is, a swirling dance of contrasts, of beauty and decay, of joy and sorrow. I am too filled with contradictions. There is such disparity you see wealth hoarded by few while others are left to sift through the dust of their forgotten dreams. We are shaped by what we hold, and yet so often, what we hold is a hollow thing: empty words and heavy hearts. The division cuts deep, yet there is beauty even in the brokenness, in the fractures. I tread carefully in the space between, accumulating the texture of every hand I’ve ever held, the warmth of a palm pressed against mine, the roughness of calluses earned through hard labor, the tenderness of a touch meant to comfort. I carry the depth of every gaze I’ve ever met, the sparkle of eyes filled with hope, the weariness in eyes that have seen too much, the fire in eyes that refuse to be extinguished. I am marked in the colors of every story told. The ones spoken softly in the dark, whispered between old friends, shouted in the face of injustice. These textures are the fabric of my soul, and with each one, I come closer to understanding what it means to walk between the extremes, to seek the middle ground. But how do we find it together? At once, in a moment? How do we meet one another in this place when we are pulled in so many directions?
The sentiment rings true: people love in the ways they need to be loved. We pour ourselves out in the ways we are thirsty. We pour from vessels that are both brimming and bone-dry, depending on what we’ve known, what we’ve lacked, what we’ve craved. The need to give is bound up with the need to receive, and in this delicate dance, the one who observes becomes the greatest lover. The observer, steady, patient, able to witness, they are a keeper of truth. Their gaze is a sacred thing, capable of digesting the rawness of existence. They do not flinch from the wreckage. They do not look away. They stand steady in the presence of sorrow and joy alike, able to hold the fragile beauty of it all. And so, there is a dying world before me, a world bruised by neglect and worn by time, with a quickening heartbeat yearning to be carried back to the forgotten song of its first dawn. I do not flinch. In the past, I’d miss the cue from the prophet disguised as a beggar. So now, I live reminded I am in a world gasping for its breath and exhale my longings.
How can I turn away from the planet gasping beneath the weight of our indifference? The question lingers like a whisper on the wind: When will we, the makers of change, choose to love as our fate and at the hands of free will? How many lifetimes must we live before we understand that the cure for all this is nearer than we dare admit? It is not far off, not a distant dream, nor a far-flung hope. It resides here, within the space beneath our skin, in the rhythm of the blood that courses through our veins, in the silent, sacred language of love that speaks louder than words ever could. It is closer than we can fathom. If we could only see it…if we could only choose it…love would make all things new.
12/18 -Gazi
Image by Corinne Bobrow-Williams
A moment’s not a lifetime,
like 400 years isn’t a millennium.
The water in me’s not a river,
It’s the Atlantic singing me hymns,
flatted fifths cradling me,
tucking me into a galaxy where I breathe easy.
Rain whispers like silk,
folding, making something from nothing.
Lies are loud,
but the things I must listen for
they slip away to better endings.
We must die.
At whose hands?
The Creator or creation?
I’m on the other side of the wall,
you calling for Christ,
I for signs in the flight of birds
Die, my friend,
get a taste of what made you.
Meet the One firsthand, illusions cannot break you.
-Gazi
And I’ve found
myself most identified
with the tear,
a soft traveler down my cheek,
gracing me
with the holiness of shrinkage.
A baptism in smallness.
It’s only here
in the narrowing
that your breath reaches me.
like wind making a song
through the bones of my spine.
You hum me whole.
There is no place
where we are not,
your presence curled
in the hollow of my ribs,
my breath
a prayer inside your mouth.
Still,
I scramble
for a border
But metamorphosis
has no neutral ground.
It thrusts,
a wildfire lover,
demanding I master
the mirage of separation.
My shadow studies the script
of a well-lived life,
reads it aloud
to the morning light
that spills like grace
across the foot of my bed,
as wind chimes
speak to me beauty.
I think of you then,
Your absence
shapes my wanting
into worship.
You left no footprints,
And still I built temples
from the white noise,
hung psalms from ceilings
you would never touch.
There are days
when the longing
feels like union,
like desire
has your fingerprints
and there still pressed
against my skin.
And maybe
this is the cruelest kind of intimacy,
to be sculpted
by what will not come back.
Good grief,
you were never in vain.
You are
the quiet
I have been answering
my whole life.
9/4 11:11pm -Gazi
She is plutonic
grasping on to the depth of all
hoping that she won't fall out of place,
and expose the lack of grace that surrounds her existence
Is it that eye fear leaving the abyss?
knowing that the surface requires me to learn to exist
without pain
you might call that the mundane
but my ability to see all that is restrained
is the very thing that keeps me welcoming the rain
and the toxins in the water keep the illusions the same
manifesting cycles to remind me why I came
to learn love, not the depicted complacency
that has me running from experiencing that are anchoring me
hoping to try on skins,
eye emerge from diving in,
there's something about a union
that forces me into my yin
but the echoes of my life,
make me cultivate that within
scared exchange with my past
I've gained from what's been
my essence you cannot pin
I'm burning down to break in
I'm a product of my roots
the world was birthed from sin…
-Gazi