My only enemy is the rampant thoughts plaguing the inner me.
The questioning of everything.
My better half is probably better off flying under other wings.
I’m a spec of dust to her galaxy.
Dirty Thirty trying to keep my hands clean.
Making it through by any means
but by the thinnest string.
all this weight on me is sitting heavily.
The big Dirty
16
When i think back on the past decade and the connections that wove through my 20s there is one that stands alone. I guess in a sense Jawonday and I shared many similarities…. Which reminds me the first time I heard his name in high school.
“Hey! I met someone that looks and acts just like you…”
Someone as … Out there as I? Impossible…
But then I met him. And instantly I was able to count in another brother. I soon came to realize that maybe we truly were two peas in a podcast? I mean some of the ways we were similar were scary at times.
I remember the jokes that didn’t land and the laughter that pained my stomach. I remember camping both for Raleigh and just because. I remember late nights by a fire and early mornings culling casuarinas. I remember arguments both ignorant and passionate. I hope the ways in which our spirits mirrored each other live on through me. Maybe one day we truly will Get It Green?
Jawonday was a friend I jumped with in spontaneity and sat with in silence. He challenged me and I hope at times I did the same.
He always asked the questions of me that I forgot to ask myself.
Thus, I have a question to pose for all hearing this.
How many hours are in a day? …
And we were always told to get at least 8 hours of sleep growing up.
Then what I will say next is divinely designed. What will we do with the 16 hours we’re awake to honour Jawonday’s memory? Each day… how can we turn 16 hours into a tangibly better Bermuda? How can we utilize 16 hours to challenge our own beliefs and step into becoming people our community needs.
To carry Jawonday’s legacy let’s dedicate 16 to #16. Everyday. Love you like life dear broski and I will carry you with me as I carry on.
Love to everyone grieving this loss and strength to all celebrating a unique soul.
Shrine
This is my shrine.
The words I write to worship her godlike.
An exercise in losing cursed energy.
This use to be biting the low hanging that was dangling right in front of me.
While watching the serpent slithering through the vines that got to strangling.
Or having to do it my own way like Banyan Trees.
This is sacrifice and abandoning.
This is my scripture only it’s filled with sin and darker scenes.
I pray her moon shines light on me.
disappearing act
Am I a demon?
Clearly transparency isn’t needed.
No one seems to see through to the cuts I bleed from.
Praying I could … like Sue Storm.
I need an Angelic message.
But maybe even their wings couldn’t lift me outta the patterns I stand it.
This life thing’s too demanding.
Every sleepless night another question of my manhood.
Haikuski
The Earth calls us back.
We all must repay loaned time.
Broken ground, peace found.
Mission Accepted
Mission complete.
But nobody was accepting these side quest visions with me.
Flipping through sheets.
Attendance is empty but staying was free.
Don’t even tempt me with kicking my feet.
I’m in my yard with the demons defeated but yet it’s still more bitter than sweet.
Lost chosen family before getting the green.
We never did see where all our decisions could lead.
Giving we were still tilling our seeds.
And callousing hands
And culling invasive roots grown to trees.
Someone please starting rooting for D.
The F Word
Lend me your heart.
Or do I already occupy most of the space there?
You’re the center of my displaced fears.
It’s Jah, I, then you,
even though you hold the heaviest weight here.
Those troubled Sargasso Seas had started to taste weird.
My fate’s clear.
Jah wash over I, these words are my spiritual Faith’s care.
Fissures and craters are forming within which means my healing is falling behind eerily.
I hold better days near to me.
I gotta find peace of mind.
Even though these shattered pieces of mine are getting harder to find.
Tell me how to define something that’s been missing my whole life.
I’m a product of closed fist striking both the seed and the wife.
I know haunting alcoholic figures.
I thought the only way through was to punch first then try to heal all the demons.
I’m as much my own man as I am a collection of all the sins of the Simmons name that I’m bringing.
I’m Raleigh and Get it Green, but also a shortened temper inspired by this environment that I’m breathing.
I use to toss my pain to the side to use as a weapon when I need it.
But that always left my spirit split.
I remember my brother’s grief of growing up first, and all the nights full of screaming.
That is the curse I’m defeating.
Forgiving and releasing.
I use to put a muzzle on and shut it up because they said a man needn’t speak it.
I was full on emotions alone for all the nights I had to eat ‘em.
so David tell me how such a shattered man could take active steps towards his healing?
And find his life’s meaning?
idk just yet either.
These words are for a future* full of freedoms.
For I&I.
If?
I’m season one A-train. Running at full sprint away from everything I should be.
I’m too fragile to be a man. I grew up in a space that taught me men shouldn’t show emotion. Closed fists and razor sharp tongues were the way problems were solved. Bricks flew through windows. I knew beatings before I knew tears. But ironically it has made me all too sensitive as a young adult. How can I always be one bad remark away from breaking down, but afraid to show emotion. I use to carry nonchalantness as frequent as I carried my school backpack. Now my tears are ‘on-go’ from any setback or step backwards.
As a kid I defined manhood as a closeness to God. All the male role models I had were “men of God”. My grandfather and Bro. Vaughn and Brent. But the older I get the more I see that those so called Men of God only claimed that title to save themselves from troubled pasts. Their closeness to God was sometimes a facade. My closeness to God feels like a facade. How could it not be? I call out and hear no answer. I don’t want to be the kid that only calls on their Heavenly Father when they need something. But yet it seems like I’m stuck in a state of need, so under what other premise can I pray? I try to give thanks in all moments. I try to carry a Godly borrowed strength with me. Because I’m too far from God and too fragile to be a man.
If a man fails to live up to his boyhood definition of manliness does that make him not a man?
Fewture
Whispering to the past like where did it go wrong?
But the glimpses through the rearview glass are like relapses
and the rabbit hole tends to go on.
Wanting to change what was is holding me back like fake crash outs
but I’m hunting for better days like my name’s Gon.
Heaven knows the secrets I hold.
The man that I am because my past and my present are cold.
That’s why I focus on what I can change, my eyes are on the future I’m molding.
David deserves the best in life forget what his demons Told him.
All praises to Jehovah.
I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions , but 2025 will be a year where the past loses its grip on me. My only connection to what was is the guidance it will give in navigating what’s to come. I want more for myself. This is the year I make more for myself. The year I focus on what I have and make space for all I’ve yet to receive.
Dream Big 