To: the lack of formality.

My mother knocked down a birthday card I made for her earlier this year, and spent the rest of the day crying. The type of tears my father has no control or magical power over. The spell that she and I fall into, until we forget what we were crying for anyway. It becomes the best time to think of everything worth crying about.

The way I need him around. The way God seems to test patience into existence. The way my father falls ill on Friday evenings.Like breaking fast one hour before time and the guilt that follows you, for days after. The way news of death builds writer's block in my head one tombstone at a time. Christmas is going to be hard on her.

"The trees are naked." I would tell God on my way to school every morning. There have been people here who have clothed me and I am grateful for it. I now need a new closet to store under my bed, next to my other ambitions. There is a power much bigger than my self who is insisting that I not gravitate towards stages and audiences and these releases I used to have. For whatever reason, I am trusting that He knows best.

Co-incidence and fate sleep in each other's company some nights. There are a million things raging mutiny on the surface of my skin. Things not responsive to diet changes or the best of fabric softeners. Storms in my green tea.

There is still a light to be sought after.

Copyright © 2010 Arielle John

To: Don when it was possible.

I would have more patience with you
if warm air heaving over cut grass
didn't stain the room so humid.
Didn't heat my thoughts into losing form
If the last three hours waiting for you
would turn themselves in
like some amnesty for poor excuses,
You might have convinced me some afternoon

That would daze just like this one.
Except for quick coldness
now wrapping around
the tense of my limbs,
Don,
I am sitting in a waiting room again,
Learning how much of the breath in me
turned wind to your face.
the way how money and mother
wish to revive you again,
the way I didn't understand you.

I asked you, who will come after,
who would carry the inner tremors
of strain in your laughter,
too humble to think
you affected nobody out here.
But there will be no
gun salute at your funeral,
shooting skyward
makes a hurricane of bullets,
raining a memory
too recognizable to your flesh,
to your hands,
to my disarmed way of arguing life with you.
Just that my words needed not to come through
this way.

Copyright © 2010 Arielle John

to: the contained volumes of voice

Born on the quiet side of the sunrise,
Fingers of light
paired and resting chestward
checking the pulse of honesty.
Never cried till they forced me to,
drew on the deepest of breath
to sink the fears of my mother in,
till echo
and the resounding
of heartbeat and siren musicales
dug into nursing room walls like
birth sinking graves into new bodies.

I have buried the remains of gospels
in the hollow of my neck,
carried whole rivers
in the gulf of my chest,
and waited for levees to break
under the weight of the wind in my lungs.
How does it feel to stand on an island
in the freedom of air again?

Brooklyn has prepared itself
for hushing exchanged secrets.
for containing living compartments,
and quieting their voices in its sleep.
We might wake on mornings and find it
necessary to scream,
To announce just how much we live,
Here.
Mostly without being able to hear ourselves.

to: the emotional lapse of my speech.

She asks that I engage every word.
Till breath curls to hug every syllable at the waistline.
Till tongue commit to practice an trap all what momentum taste like.
How to learn to cheat reflexes.
How to iron the heavily accented,
whiff-of-a-British throatedness
for the sake of clarity?
Lady,
There is much more conflict in me than it have in this scene.

Copyright © 2010 Arielle John

to the white police leaning on my front gate last night.

You and I both know how well beyond 1am it is, wind pressing your arms into a fold, pulled to chest over the metal of your badge, surely you feel how far summer has gone from here.
It feels strange to walk on to my own porch, that I'm being watched, that I might look suspicious, collecting a parcel from the white civic that just pulled up, in front of you..well..in front of my gate so is in front of me.
and if you really need to know officer, is only two roti, one shrimp and one goat meat, I would think it too cold for west indians to be making trouble in these parts, this hour, in this temperature. Smiling "Goodnight Officer!" to all 135 degrees of you on my gate..sitting, and we both know how deep into the morning now is.

Copyright © 2010 Arielle John

to the anchor of my father's strides.

Leather jackets are heavy on the backs of island men. You won't be here long enough to get accustomed to it, so we will walk as slow as you need to. Turn these run-down, everywhere red-brick to flower garden scenic. Until this side-walk of another man's treasure, turns orange leaves to feathers underfoot. You give the ground enough faith to rise above itself, so brooklyn is road bumps and middle-road mini mountains. Take your time, I will remember you better this way.

Copyright © 2010 Arielle John

to: the way the sun falls.

Heya people. I'm embarking on a new series of short pieces that I will post ever so often. I am creating conversations with elements of life, as I have experienced it. These are the things I would say to these people/things/places if I could.


To: the way sun falls without evening.

this degree of awkward between us would have been bearable if we avoided each other completely. The frigid of your blank morning stares cringe capillaries to blue in my palms. The brown of me recoiling like back-stroking tidal waves on my limbs, your quiet glimpses have been turning me,scribing passages of braille on my skin, I never thought you could change towards me this much.