Daughter of the Village

Somewhere she still stands,
beautiful as the day God designed her,
Innocent as the fabric he used to construct her heart and spirit.
Try to remember that smile
the secret portal to purity
and those eyes that made approaching days more desirable.
Somewhere she is still preserved in a freeze frame, void of attacks on her soul.
Before clouds suffocated each individual sunray and doused the sun with unholy water.
She is paused,
Right there,
with majestic wings that float her inches above the toxic soil
and I used to hope she would never plant her feet in this earth because I hate to watch flowers die.

I pray for a stronger mind to recall her frown proof face more vividly
it was the medicine
and her laughter was our religion.
It might sound foolish to those who only understand destruction and confusion,
but to us,
this daughter of the village was our antenna to the Creator.

We were to protect her,
Don our war paint and battle dress and sacrifice our own heartbeats and breath for her,
We were to construct an atmosphere where double dutch routines were the extent of complexities
And tea parties weren’t social experiments with convoluted case studies and predatory registries.


Why do we kill love and breed hate?
And why do we capture butterflies but feed snakes?
And why couldn’t we keep her precious,
Keep her from men with mental death projectiles extending from their abdomen and wrists,
exploding with bursts of anti-estrogen chemicals and shrapnel
severing her physical self from the utopia designed to highlight the high points of life.

She is left shadow boxing against trauma, and hoping to escape flashbacks of the neighbor’s fingerprints that spin against her skin and turn into monsters.
And even through the mental lacerations and bruises she still remembers that she is the daughter of the village.
And even if we don’t protect her for her, she will protect us.
It’s a damn shame that little girls have to carry the burdens and secrets of the village in their hearts and grow up to forgive those who never have to forgive them.
They are asked to dig deeper and go through wars as solo soldiers.
Lock their tears away and wash the stench of their enemy from their sacred temples.
Stand up and breast-feed the future.
Wipe away life’s most wretched memories with one sweeping thought
and just get over it.
Just get over the emotional injuries caused by greedy grown man hands and angel piercing penises thrashing through bodies like tribal raids after dawn.
Forget about stepfathers and uncles climbing under unicorn covers and knocking stuffed animals to the ground to make room for the sickness.
Forget about Fathers and cousins fondling Gods beautiful light out of her wonderful glowing existence.

They say it takes a village to raise a child, and I do believe that.
But if that’s true, then my question is,
Why the hell do we love to destroy them?


By: Omari “King Wise” Barksdale
June 2007

A Song for Sarah

If you close your eyes your vision may improve

do not despair over lost connections

Live in the moments that impregnate tomorrows

If your beauty cannot be detected and appreciated

make sure you don’t deem yourself invisible

Your mirror is so lovely and full of power

thanks to you

Born on the sun, you are the day’s light

embrace your purpose

Never allow departing partners to make your pain into clouds that

block your source

Make mountains bend when you walk by

Make oceans wave when you plant your feet in sand

Make males into men when you speak

Let them go

whether they walk or run

let them go.

Breathe beautiful atmospheres

Grow in patches of heaven

exist as the individual perfection that is you.

The Meeting.

We were emotionally born at the same time.

Held captive in a space limited to our imaginations

and just for that short period in time

our fingertips shared the same prints extracted from sand dunes in Kemet.

My lips eagerly became familiar with every curve and dimple of you.

Searching for heat inside of a cold room

you were the first taste of warm ice cream I had ever enjoyed.

I felt your estrogen haunting my bones.

I had no desire other than to make your lady geyser create new constellations.

Ceremoniously transmit tomorrow’s life to you through symbiotic conclusions.

I gave you part of me to be born again.

Our flesh mimicked the subdermal divinity of Ausar and Auset.

In the morning

we were born again.

To give birth again

to a sun

from our merging stars

and no more

shall we wonder

what the future holds.

We are the reservoirs of light.

Gravity

Last night,
I screamed as low as I could,
you know,
like yelling at the bottom of my lungs

I made love to her, inside out
Watched six days go by,
On the seventh,
I caressed her soul with hands dipped in the essence of utopia

She is gravity,
peacefully binding me to her existence
We are two bodies melting together
so harmoniously that we made time feel guilty for being a reality?
We make escaping seconds return to be present and accounted for

The elements are my witness to her legend
Just above my lips and below my nose
is evidence that she is more than fantasy
During my voyages to the center of her earth
I saw civilizations being born
She reminds me of a time that existed long before my current temple
I consume the product of her spring to enter drunken states of Khemetian memory
She allows me to return to a time when DNA had not yet mattered
An era where stars ruled the sky making days last longer

What am I now that her breath is my sweetest memoir?
She is documented in my history as the day my life ended
I am no more than amoeba lurching through a witch’s spell

Barely holding on to this earth minus my gravity
Cursed without my beautiful one
my terminology becomes vulgar
My smell becomes wretched,
my body putrid
Disappointment was the first stage when she departed
Insanity now lives in the throes of my memory
I can't hold on

Honor You

Your heart is an endless love song.

No universe can contain you.

Boundless being,

you hold tomorrow’s beauty on your tongue.

Intriguing like lost lineages,

your mind is levitation.


My memory savors you like a well prepared delight.

you are gourmet movement of mental tantalization.

Hold me in your future,

the most beautiful space ever created.


Hold me on lips and let me dangle in your forever.


The galaxy created you in perfect amounts of lovely,

to explain aurora borealis.

You are the cooling of volcanoes,

the domestication of sunrays.

I think of you outside of times parameters,

more like sdnoces, setunim, sruoh, syad,

because I reverse time just to enjoy your truth.

The word we is an instrument,

divinely tuned to hold the pregnancy of our theme song.

I have died just to be reborn in your eyes,

perfect browns,

angelic ciphers of infinite love.


I want to live there in limitless measures.

hold me there,

without prejudice of my inability to have found you before pain.

I am here now,

in honor to you,

with your heart balanced on my intentions,

and your smile as my beacon to strength and service to you.