Dream Big

2023

Be sure to cater to your own desires. You own ambitions. Your mind and heart.

Be sure to really listen to what it is you feel and understand that not everything you feels is just your feelings. But also the comments imbedded in you from childhood when family picked at your insecurities.

For example, am i really insecure about my birthmark and careful who i take my shirt off around. Or am i still reflecting on my mother telling me it will continue to get bigger. So my thoughts are her thoughts. Her projections onto me. The damage that parents and family can inflict on their children.

Be careful that your thoughts are as free as possible from the thoughts of others. Free of The destruction that others bring you. Every jab from your older brother that you hold on to. Or every slick remark from your father that brought you down.

Be cautious and conscious of what it is you really feel. And take heed of what the people that matter say. Allow yourself to be built up and don’t dwell too deeply in the negative. It’s a year to get away from the fears of your younger self. And grow into the self belief your older self knows is there.

For too long you’ve let others poison the purity of your minds deepest caverns. Allowed that pestering voice in the back of your mind to fester in self hatred.

You matter.

You’re a king.

This is interlocked fingers
And letting loose your deepest secrets.
This is images of old love.
And arguing like old couples do but we’re only in our 20s.
This is sun kissed bliss. 
This is finding my way back to a soul i knew in a past life. 
It’s the colours of a sunset. 

I want to speak this in a different way.
celebratory of all the parts of me that are in a better space.
the growth i've gone through.
to year 2022.
to the ocean and how she heals me.
to Mya whom I love the most dearly.
to the balance i've found in darkness and solitude.
to all the broken parts of me too that remained bruised.
to the parts that are fresh and new, and barely breaking though. 
to me. to you.
to better routines and being willing to laugh even on my worse days.
to all the Challenge filled nights that help me ease me pain.
to all my challenged filled nights that give me pain anew.
the least i want to do is help her discover herself too. 
the woman i see when my eyes lock hers.
a imagine so pure and wonderful.
a soul so pure.
a beauty that leaves me craving the sensation of breathing her in. 
I hope we can be in our 2020stwinning.

Stuck in the monotonous motions of work again.

Work. Sleep.

School. Sleep.

Barely eat.

The patterns that defined the worst parts of my history. Full circle to the days i was sleeping on Irven’s floor hoping for more for myself.

I would run on 3 hours of sleep a day because my mind was never at rest. Because i was too bless to be unhappy. Because the pad took place of my mistrust for therapy.

Locking myself into my room for three days. Functioning at the bare necessity.

It’s all apart of life though.

Sometimes the lows feel unbearable. you find yourself sinking past the point where you can find any light. Life’s Aphotic zone. You try to crawl yourself out the hole but you find you’re digging the wrong way and u thoughts are burying you further. Yk?

Idk.

We move.

We live.

I write to ease the pain.
I’d rather this than to drown alone.
It was never my intention to snip my angel’s wings.
To have the rain be everlasting. 
For my presence to be a hassle.
I’m just tryna get back to better days.
Better ways for my ‘better half’.
Crawling, Back into the depths of myself that i had wished to never meet again. 

Can we have an honest conversation about a black man’s pain?
The requirement to carry the world on shoulders. 
To be our mother’s keepers and our sister’s warrior. 
The desire to shut every emotion down because of how we had grown up?
The beatings we caught just cause we had spoke up?
The mistrust of therapy because his first therapist couldn’t make simple efforts.
Like looking me dead in my eyes and telling me i was lying about something that was sitting in my folder. 
How hard it is for a black man to hold on?
To man up!
To trudge on.
Working at dead end jobs because Bermuda doesn’t offer too many alternatives.
When the only sense our freedom seems to be when your friends are burning shit.
But what if you don’t escape and just let shit sit?
What if you take on other’s pains until yours gets pushed deep within.
Cause how are you supposed to acknowledge your pain when your 50 something year old Fijian landlord comes to you with her every problem? 
When you can’t make a single friend?
And your roomate’s alarm be 3am hollering. 
When you barely can tolerate yourself,
Because you’re too blessed to have any problems.
When you think back to ATL living and remember than a kid on the bus put a lit firecracker in your backpack and caused it to spark. 
And how your shirt almost caught on fire but you were too quick to react.
And you wished you would’ve just let it burn because that might’ve been easier.
But your auntie’s first reaction was blaming you for what happened.
You don’t let the fact that shit hurts show, you just show no reaction.
Or how you were a waste of a good student. 
Never living up to the potential others saw in you.
But when you were “one of the best scholarship interviews i’ve ever had” you still can’t get any scholarship money?
Or how at 27 you turn to jokes just to keep your spirit running?
I could go deeper and shit but what’s the fucking point.
I have to man up! like always and just keep on going. 
But in spite on all of that, the black man has to keep on flying. 
We have to break the curses of wife beaters,
Children’s spirit defeaters.
Of broken homes and broken societies. 
All while i’m dealing with the war that’s inside of me.

I.

I could write myself as the person i wanted to be. The person i need when i’m down on my knees. Hands raised like the villain that’s facing defeat.

Hands raised like God had forsaken me. But hands raised means i’m calling out to them?

I could write myself as everything that isn’t the darker parts of my history. Everything light and bubbly. But we’re all hurting to some degree.

Some of us hurt each other. Some of us hold hurt until it causes us to lash out. Or tuck it deeper within.

Some of us write to be new people. To live vicariously through our fictional selves. But the way outta this place for me is to write everything I am.

Everything that crushes me. Eveything that reminds me i’m human and i’m hurting too. Everything that connects me atomically to all. Truth.

I also write everything that makes me. I write her into everything because she has taken my soul to places that are beyond the words i could say. And beyond the things i can express anywhere but here. She literally is what Black Girl Magic means.

And i know that protecting her Beautiful black soul is a hard task. One that will crush me. One that will remind me that i’m human. But i’m up for every challenge. And i’m up to “volunteering as tribute”. I’m up to making sure she knows we are connected through all.

She is my truth.

Just as writing is my truth.

I thank God and the Universe for providing me the words to write my true feelings.

P.s. if you’re reading this drop a comment let me know you’ve been here.

P.s.s. If you’re her… thank you for being you.

~Dave 2022

As i sink will you dive in to catch me?
Or were you even gonna let me know i was slipping in the first place?
In precise words
Maybe you were sinking too and i didn’t let you know either. 
No we’re stuck in the quicksand
And sticking together like glue.

Peace to us who struggle together. 
Check in our your strongest friends it can only help them get better. 

The antagonist of this chapter of my life is the same person that greets me in the mirror each morning.
A lie of large proportions that “everything will be okay” whispered as we pass each other by.
But yet I’m smaller than i was, even smaller that the days i was at the foothills of Ginesh Himal crying out. 
I’m smaller than an ant, but with the strength of an ant i’ll carry on.
Navigating the bombs of self-destruction.
And the toppled over file cabinet of my memory bank. 
And the fraying strings of my mental.
I hold on to threads of my former self. 
Because how else can i sew a future
Navigating avalanches.
The beat i dance to is like a poem within a poem

“Heaven sent messages
The connection we made is as important as my afternoon nap is.
Ive been trying to get back in.
Back into a place where my smile is genuine”

The path i forge with my pen is towards freedom.
Freedom from the binds of loneliness and depression.
One single message to those that care that i’ll be alright. 
Even if i’m not going to be alright.
In every poem a problem is solved.
Writing’s the best solvent. 
And this shit is coming full circle for me.
I’m unavailable.
My minds on DND.
Please don’t even wait for the *beep*.

I discard secrets on the pages left unpublished.
A contract between me and the universe to keep ‘em hidden.
The pad is the place of my purest healing.
She sometimes may even keep me livin’.
Shes a reminder of 2017’s memories,
And a keeper of my fewture visions.
My largest supporter,
But also the place that holds my deepest fissures.
The pad plays therapist,
Luckily the sessions are freedom.