The Poetry Marathon

Can we carve our names in a tree,
Meet me under a sky filled with stars,
Unmask me and leave me bare,
Show me how to love you vulnerable.
Change me like the coming of seasons.
Have me draped under a thousand shooting stars,
So I can wish upon you a thousand times,

Engrave our initials in stone,
So if we fail to last till forever,
Our love at this moment will last a lifetime.
And when I have forgotten take me back to the River’s edge
And remember how we left our hearts rooted in a place where we loved each other eternally.

We carved our names in a tree,
You met me under a sky filled with stars,
Unmasked me and left me bare,
Showed me how to love you vulnerable.
Changed me like the coming of seasons.
Had me draped under a thousand shooting stars,
And I could wish upon you a thousand times,

Dear You,

It has been 5 years since you left me.

I am 18 now and a lot has happened,

I often wonder if you will even recognise me if we met.

The five stages of grief often pay me a visit,

But even they leave.

I no longer sleep at night,

Because I feel alive during the night time,

Lie awake and chase away every approaching dream because I fear it to be my last.

I stare at the night sky and recreate the moments I was too afraid to feel,

So I am up at 4am trying to make sense of it all.

You left me in a world that breaks people,

And it finally broke me.

Dear you,

I am still failing to fall in love,

Maybe because there is no you in falling but I am there in failing.

I still break my own heart when I expect too much from people,

Still I am looking for that glass shoe fit girl,

To enter my life and leave it,

Leave me and have me searching for her the way my words search for you.

If I could have one more day with you,

All I would ask is if I made you proud,

If your death was worth it,

Or if you wasted your dying breath telling the wrong version of yourself that you loved them

Your Present self

~Baker

I cannot be a voice for the voiceless,

If everyone who wants to be heard wants to be louder than the next person,

But no one wants to listen.

We speak of doom but we are a society of sheep,

Herded by our own demise.

Where colour becomes coloursim.

Race becomes racism.

Where men call the streets home and women call it business.

Teenagers call it an insult.

And Americans call it a graveyard.

A place where the darker my skin is,

The deeper my roots are.

A place where being black has been the only thing that has stood the test of time.

And still the world grades us with an F in swear words against us.

A place where the black man has,

Developed a shell for each black insult they threw at him.

So his melanin became his armour and no one could hurt him.

And just when he learnt how not to care,

Learnt how to silence the world and be comfortable in his suit of armor.

They traded insults for bullets.

And masked murder as justice.

We all want to be the same,

Be the same characters in a never ending series.

Be approved by the same society that demands change,

But can never start it.

We will continue to fight a system that was never set up to protect us.

Continue screaming till our voices run drier than African wells in drought

Till someone hears us.

Till society makes a change.

Till the voice of every man is heard.

So don’t take this as another one of those inspirational poems or speeches

I cannot be a voice for the voiceless,

If everyone wants to be heard to be louder than the next person,

But no one wants to listen.

We loved, we created and we destroyed.

We loved the process of mixing our insecurities into our hearts,

Stirring the mixture with our red flags and pouring it into our lives.

We created a recipe for disaster, heated it with our raw infatuation,

Dressed it as love and wrapped it neatly before consuming our vile concoction.

As we set it in the cold we abandoned our posts and our creation.

We had seen ice in so many places,

But never had we seen ice come out of our hearts.

We had realised that somewhere in between adding too much pride,

And forgetting to put communication we left ourselves out for too long.

So we were forced to throw away our once thought perfect creation.

Destroyed our recipe of disaster,

And tried again with other people.

~Baker

Close your eyes and fall.

Fall into that abyss that lies silently behind your line of sight,

Fall into a place where your thoughts are violent,

But your mind is still.

Close your eyes and fall into the darkness.

Let the emptiness caress your soul,

Remove the warmth of life and become colder than the headstone,

As your thoughts run dry and your fears fill up with life.

Recreate the feeling of death, remove the pain and just be cold.

Let your demons crawl out of your fears and fall,

Let them fall down your cheeks, have them caress your face,

In ways that people never could.

Now, pray,

Not for your forgiveness or your salvation.

But pray for the eternal damnation you have survived since birth.

Silently and secretly curse Heaven and Earth

As you fail to take your mind out of purgatory and blow out the flames

Now focus on the darkness,

Let it envelope you, inscribe letters on your body,

As you emerge from the darkness.

Now open your eyes and submerge those thoughts

Regret your life and wish death upon yourself

Utter a silent amen to cement your undying beliefs

Return the skeletons in their closets and let the darkness free.

~Baker