The moon looked at me with her loving-healing eyes.
Followed me all the way home, asking
‘You? are you okay, do you feel better?’
She went to every place, ever pain, every sorrow, and every triumph
lost my way eyeing her luminosity, soaking her full infinity
Found my way home in the dark, her glow stayed in my heart.
She said to me, in full gentleness ’ hey you, you are not alone’
Who is this ugly -beauty filled with confusion, illusion and a revolution.
Imagination and chaos, inconsistency and harmony.
Can multiplicities exist in unison?
Can immoral and moral go in tandem?
Can maddens create stillness?
Can the past create the present and the present the future .
Can change be truth?
Can agony be healing?
Can love be hate?
Can a rebel be subservient?
Can laws be lies.
Can many be one?
Could this be me?
The color
She woke up terrified, alone and hopeless trying to process and write her dream.
These were the protagonists-
Her
The rapist
Her mother’s priest/pastor
Her friends
A bunch of women who were trying to kill her
A few white men, maybe women- who vowed to save her or maybe she hoped would save her. In the end, she wasn’t sure if any of that had happened, both her wish and their promise.
************************************************************************
She was in what appeared to be a rooftop party. Power had gone out so she decided to take a nap. She’s not sure of where this place is or how she found herself there; she doesn’t know whether this is in the past, the present or the future. The setting is blurred.
Her ‘friend’ this guy she had met at the office a few times appeared on her bed. It astonished her how these men end up on the same bed with her whether to rape her or please her. She knew she was too much both in size and in love. She doesn’t know if its power or powerlessness they sniff on her. She does not remember the how; all she remembers is this-he was there next to her pleading to get in between her thighs. From her encounters with this fella it seemed like he was a reasonable guy. He ‘said i want you’ she said ‘no.’ At first he teased and smiled trying to disregard her ‘no’ but when her eyes reaffirmed the NO so did his penis’s refusal to abide.
She had said to herself many a time that if anyone ever tried to rape her again, she would not go to the police, she would not write another poem nor join another sixteen days of activism campaign but squeeze the life out his cock. And that is what she did. He strangled her; he tried to push himself inside her. She smiled at him, a sort of pretext to consent. Her fake smile made his grip weak and his cock hard. She playfully grabbed his cock lust allured him to completely submit to her. The fireworks in her eyes weakened his power. The more he strangled her the more he died. The more he became hard the more the millions of sperms saw their demise in the power of her fist. His boner became boneless .She cried for help, she could hear her friends from afar, maybe from planet Mars but he reassured her that they couldn’t hear her nor they would come for her, and that he had locked the door. She killed his manhood with the grip of her hands. The more he choked her the more her hands got powerful and squeezed the life out of him. The more he tired to prove his masculinity the more his man parts lost and her womanhood won. The more he forced himself the more his limbs became lifeless, the more he suffocated her the more he became breathless. His lifelessness gave her glory and triumph.
When he died and she was free she stormed outside. Her childhood friend asked ‘what happened to you?’ with disgust in her eyes. By now her hands had dead sperms, her shirt was wrecked with blood, her top torn revealing her wide brown nipples shrunk in horror, her voice strong with conviction. When she said ‘I won, I am free, he tired to put his filthy …‘ To Her friend, she interrupted and said to her ‘shh, hush’ told her to be quiet and talk less loudly since poppa and momma were at home. Her friend didn’t want to hear the details, she couldn’t bear the shame it had brought to her. Seeing her friend and her presences in general could have perhaps evoked a similar memory, which she herself was the protagonist?
But now all she wanted was to take a shower and borrow her friend’s cloth. Or not, maybe she should keep the smell of the sperm on her hands for evidence.
Her friend said she will find some cloths for her but must have forgotten trying hard to make sure that nobody heard what had happened, especially the housekeeper and her compatriots. Her friend then decided to ask her brother and his friend for help. Her bother’s friend went to the room upstairs to unravel what had happened and confirmed the death of the rapist.
All of them seemed to focus on his death and not on her survival. The highlight was of course the death of a MAN.
They were now deciding what steps to take, ‘should we call the police but where are they? Or should we let it slide? ‘They murmured to each other.
Then at random her mother’s pastor appeared, he said he was there to take her words. He also told her his full name; that is when she recognized him. She used to go to his church with her mom when she was a kid. She was almost relieved up until he told her ‘you’re going to have to explain to your mom how you ended up in bed with a man, you are also going to get tested for HIV.’ He never looked at her eyes.
She was not scared, nor did his attempt to shame her or the mention of her mom alarmed her.
At this juncture the story was leaked and a journalist had come to report. But she came to report the death of a man and not an attempted rape. That was her pitch. Manhood lost in the hands of a woman.
And then she found herself running, they had said he started moving and that he wasn’t dead,DEAD. She was running and running and found herself in planet African Union (AU). She doesn’t know how she got there or what path she took but her running weak knees had journeyed her there.
She was a hot mess, her hair big in glory and terror, her breast protruding in defiance. She was seen but invisible.
One of the ladies in the kitchen started chasing her with a big knife saying how could she have killed so and so’s son? Mr X was the most powerful man in the commune. She started chasing her shouting ‘I will kill you, how could you kill him, he was such a nice man!?’
She run passed a group of white men smoking in the mirrored square balcony, she cried for help: she thought they saw her but they didn’t. She yelled but nothing was being heard. She found another woman. She pleaded for a way out, to save her but the woman said ‘oh you are the one, you must die, you must be punished. Can’t help you’ and instead led her to a dead-end.
The African Union seemed like a massive spaceship made out of glass. In front of her was a library. If she enters she can’t make any noise. Behind her was the lady chasing her with a knife and somewhere in there were white men maybe a few white women. She made the choice to report and expose this lady chasing her, who was apparently a member of the working class at the AU to the white men in suits.
She thought maybe they control this planet AU.
She doesn’t know what they were doing at planet AU anyway but they seemed safe, powerful, untouchable and in control.
Thus, she told them everything. They seemed shocked even kind but she does not remember if they laughed at her or helped in the end. Or if they were silent
And then, in that same space and time she found herself hungry and eating all the delicacies of planet African Union. But it left her hungrier.
She doesn’t know (still) if she washed her hand before she ate or if the stench had gone.
She doesn’t know if he lived or died.
If he died her hands will always smell of sperm, if he lived her heart will always smell of fear.
If no one has seen God then why is he referred to as the father, if God is gender fluid then why is he a he in the first place? Why are the bible and other holy books adamant on making him a male figure and epitomizes on his chauvinism?
Why do people find it shocking to think of God as a she but super cool with him being a patriarch .As it turns out, folks are not even alarmed by a black God but a female God is against the very throne of almighty-ism .To most ‘reducing’ God to a female reduces the might of God, makes him a tad weak, makes him not the abuser but the abused ,makes him the queen and not the king because the queen is always below the king . Imagining God in the embodiment of a female sprit is blasphemes; it is disgusting, it is unpleasant it basically compromises the ability, power authority of God. It questions the very essence we relate to God- as the superior being that is aggressive, a dictator, uncompromising, unemotional, the dominant macho who demands all sorts of obedience, the brutal demanding ruler who is permitted to whatever .The so not gentle, unsentimental provider .the masculine ,the grim unsmiling serious dude looking from up above. God is expected to perform, to be driven and alert and excellent. Perfect. To be the savior. The unkind, unforgiving, the autonomy never to be crossed and checked.
And then the women to be saved, to be looked after. to be sinful, imperfect, when in truth it is the other way around –it is women that are the saviors, protectors, care givers and unconditional lovers. One can argue and say that these roles are constructed in the framework of gendered roles, that is why it is imperative to conclude in a gender-fluid God but since society considers God to be male I sometimes think of a female God and her love, soothing and healing.
God is represented as the violent, rough and stoic, noble where as the female is seen as the seductive eve, as the sexual temptress. The attributes and manifestation of God looks like the breadwinner status given to men and like a lot of men I know especially one man in particular the head of the household.
Yes when God was white y’ll were cool but when perhaps the idea that she might be black is posed y’ll become colorblind . When God is a he it is all dope but a she is a big no no.I ask y’ll to analyze and digest on perhaps the very philosophy that any thing white and male is superior vis a vis anything black and women as inferior .
Meanwhile, anything that challenges the aforementioned conventional notions must be rude. Rethinking these socialized misconceptions is expected to make people uncomfortable and outright defensive.
All of this is not to say that I have mastered to free myself from years of conditioning I am still not familiar with the custom /ritual of praying and referring to God a she. I tend to pray to the God in me the kind, sensitive God the all accepting the non-racist, non-sexist, non-classist God.
A bit of context and background
Allow me to walk you through my own personal experience.
I have found my young self in an evangelical setting – a born evangelist of sorts. However, even as a child I was always against so many aspect of my inherited religion .I was always bothered by the stereotypical remarks I hear around me. That is the evangelist dogma that utters sentiments of the God like Evangelist and the ‘devil like’ rest of us. Everything and everyone in my household that did not reflect and pertain to the evangelist notion was deemed ‘the Devil’. They criticized everything the world did; they hated all music apart from gospel music. They were filled with many stereotypes towards any sort of difference/s. To give an example when I asked why people in the Middle East suffered they said the Israelis were the chosen people and the others had the wrath of God. The same explanation was given to me when I asked why black people were slaves and mistreated, the same kind of biblical precedence were articulated to me .I remember thinking wasn’t it the same God that created all and also saying why should I worship a God that enslaved my people, that hates women. My intuition and spirituality detested this notion and i was always against it. Having said that, allow me try to portray what God constitutes in my head. GOD: the idea of God to me is that I have believed in still believe in ,the same God that saves me and only works for me. Not the one that enslaved me but freed me. God is the goodness in me. God is not a static being; God is not the picture of the white guy hanging in my parent’s salon. God is not the hate in me. My God is not my parent’s God or your God for that matter .God is what works for me and only me. My faith is love, my philosophy justice .So will this make sense to anyone, is it supposed to make sense? Well, my take on it is if it makes sense in my head that is what matters. God it the understanding in me, the good sprit in me .God is the innocence I believed as a child and spoke to and the one that spoke back to me.
Disclaimer
Bye.
Forgive me dear Facebookers,
I have deceived if not all of you ,a good number of you.
Okay, to the point.
As most of you may be aware I am a social media enthusiast, not for the sake of the usual gibberish, not to validate my ‘philosophy’ based on your feedbacks, not even to stalk and just be a voyeur (coz I know some of y’ll just do that), not to ‘show off’ about my this and that, no, not to get more likes either or be an ‘attention whore’ BUT with a very clear purpose –with the purpose of expressing my philosophy, my muse, my readings, my writing, my decolonial journey ,my revolution ,a space for my art and voice ,my search for justice, my space for seeking freedom.
So bare with me as I attempt to articulate how I stumbled upon a hoax, (a fake, a prank if you like) FB status update.
So yano I was just doing my usual run down on my timeline, trying to find something that catches my eye usually something conscious –enlightening, it is essentially easy because I have muted a lot of bs I am not keen on seeing.
At times I like silly things, funny/hilarious things it was then that I saw a friend’s status update that read ‘i’ve decided to stop wearing underwear.’ I laughed a bit after reading this status and as per usual my mind started to stretch and contemplate on what might have triggered the person to stop wearing underwear, it struck me,i wanted to get to the bottom of it.could it be that it is like the most freeing thing ever, like the first thing I do when I get home is take of my bra, shoe and panties –such a liberating phenomena i am telling y’ll ….in the midst of all my daydreaming about an underwear -less world prompted by that very status update I suddenly get a message from the same person. i was bombarded with the following message…
—————————————————————————————————————————
‘Sorry but You should not have liked or commented! Now you have to pick from one of the below and post it as your status. This is the 2015 Breast Cancer Awareness game. Don’t be a spoil sport. Pick your poison from one of these and change your status. 1 Diarrhea again? 2 Just used my boobs to get out of a speeding ticket. 3 How do you get rid of foot fungus? 4 No toilet paper, goodbye socks. 5 I think I’m in love with someone? 6 I’ve decided to stop wearing underwear. 7 It’s confirmed I’m going to be a mommy/daddy. 8 Just won R900 on a scratchy 9 I’m a lesbian. 10 I’m getting married. Post with no explanations. Sorry I fell for it too. Looking forward to your post. Ahhh don’t ruin it. (Don’t let the secret out). And remember it’s the 2015 Breast Cancer Awareness..’
So in a total jittery mode I start going through the options and I find number 9. i’m a Lesbin ‘captivating’ but drop the idea. for these reasons..
(1) because of the emotional toll it will have on some family members and how they would be harassed for my bogus action.
(2)I found the act to be belittling the LGTBQ struggle.Mocking a position people get killed for is not my style. I can’t insult a real injustice aimed at policing the sexuality of others like that
Then, thinking posting ‘I am prego’ is SO overrated and in total negligence to the consequence that followed i opt for number seven, in my head it wasn’t that big of a deal.Ha,little did I know right.
And then what ensued was the unfolding of pure drama after drama, damn, them efn likes started pouring like an unwarranted rain .The congratulatory remarks unpacked .The likes I could deal with ,it was the private messages that repulsed me-at times they were hilarious, genuine, loving, caring and at other instances very annoying, ‘very tabloid like’, gossip-ish, outright insensitive. While some friends took the road of totally dismissing my news others dug deeper to know the father, whether or not I had met his family yet …so on and so forth.
Lemme give you some examples
Love u and here for you in any way!!’
pregnancy is not easy emotions, your fragile, excited but you have work to do and everything but once the baby is born you forget all that and the real work begins!
And SO many other illogical messages I couldn’t discern the meaning of.
Some unexpected international phone calls from London, to Canada, to the US some from x lovers whom I haven’t spoken to in ages- it was kinda of nice to catch up however bogus the reason lol
Whereas some completely dismissed my claim and choose to be silent, I don’t know maybe they did not believe me, or that I could get pregnant for that matter or did not really care!. Haha.
Lessons learned
First of all as some one who is a justice seeker ,an empath ,as someone who feels- I was compelled, tricked ,pressured to act and act without thinking (which is so unlike me btw).This whole bs game ,a social sensitizing campaign or as I found out ‘crap’ does not have a part whereby it mentions breast cancer in depth ,.where on earth is the breast awareness part of it all? Besides it is demeaning to so many people dying of breast cancer ,how can we reduce their deaths to a game ?
Meanwhile ,I felt a certain urge to share the status update assuming I was ‘helping’. It didn’t occur to me how this game helps people suffering ,dying ? These games are typical and go viral but imagine if I sent this to someone who lost someone to cancer, to someone who has cancer for that matter.
In fact it is like this whole fucked up ‘game’ barley mentions cancer, like a friend of mine mentioned ‘it is not like people don’t know breast cancer exists, and not like anything in that tells anyone anything but ‘let’s make a game and toss in breast cancer to make it sound cute.’
This is trickery, manipulation,it is using our soft spot for some meaningless nonsense, I still can’t believe I fell for it . Besides it is a kind of cheating -cheating to get an attention of sorts,
Folks are going to feel betrayed by it because it is just a game without delving deeper into the subject matter,which is breast cancer awareness.
Matter of fact i just figured it has nothing to do with breast cancer, it is just a game and breast cancer is used to get it to circulate. I guess it is a lil too late now,i realized the foolishness of the game after playing :(.Warning don’t get played
The other thing is the excitement -the reaffirmation to ‘real womanhood’ so to speak from many-M A N Y people.People’s reaction to the whole pregnancy issue was as if it was the best news after the birth of christ himself.Society was telling me i made the best decision yet,like it was the passage to ‘true womanhood ‘,like i became a woman- a ‘full woman’ if you like. The latest comment in my comment box reads ‘smart fuck’ ,when we dissect this meaning a woman’s role in society is babying and mothering glad you were smart enough to join the club(before it is too late).They almost felt i was complete,what made me incomplete according to them was the said pregnancy was conceived without wedlock- could write a whole blog about that tangent.Someone actually recently told me i should get married and make myself and father happy-the assumption in all of this being that i am unmarried ,hence unhappily ,like shut the f up! Like marriage was the ticket to happiness ,my experience tells me otherwise. Bruh, like i have one couple envy,like in the entire world -and not sure if they are married too. People should also be sensitive enough and refrain from obsessing on who the father is – what if i was rapped ,what if i slept with like two different men and condom breaks,what if i bought the sperm from a sperm bank…..if people wanna talk about the ‘father’ they will ,let them do that on their own terms.So basically i am saying fuck off.I will not get into the ‘you are not getting any younger’ narrative too.
FYI – I love, love, love kids ,so i don’t wanna here your lectures about it-save it!
The last silly and subtle thing is also how you start ‘enjoying’ your own lie, as somebody who tires to lead an honest life(saying i never lied would be a lie) it was really challenging. From time to time I thought of why most people lie the unreal gratification you get from it and how unworthy it is all.
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to after all talk about breast cancer and on a serious super serious note and with out the banter involved. I got the screening for breast cancer done like four months ago and urge all of you to do the same
‘Breast cancers found during screening exams are more likely to be smaller and still confined to the breast. The size of a breast cancer and how far it has spread are some of the most important factors in predicting the prognosis (outlook) of a woman with this disease.
Most doctors feel that early detection tests for breast cancer save thousands of lives each year, and that many more lives could be saved if even more women and their health care providers took advantage of these tests.’
Since all of this started in the name of breast cancer awareness the least i can do is encourage you to go do the screening now.
P.S. I am anxiously waiting for my period ,i don’t know what kind of energy i have sent out to the universe and thank you all for you contribution in my ‘social experiment’ even though it was unintended.
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afrowomanist 