Metamorphosis

From submission to revolution

This is like a midnight diary
I tried writing when the lights
were turned off; sipping coffee
lukewarm, hot and brewing when
brought and when the lights were
not dim. Now there is an astral
darkness warming me up and
my cold watery coffee.

Now i am the mannequin you see
in the street side shop , my life as
a doll, plastic and street smart.
Here i wrote my first obituary
mechanically like an author,
driven to workaholic nights.

You see that drizzle, the tiny trail
of water that meanders and then
is lost on my window pane;
lost in the merger of shiny silvery
watery crowd of drops innumerable,
countless like stars. That trail
was once me; now it's a lake lost
in winter when frozen in arctic cold.

I don't know these woods,
I need not know. I don't live there.
I lived here, in your startling city lights
once. And then I lived like an animal,
far away from civilization and
coherence of my urban thoughts.

Now I live here, perhaps,
like a sad song inside your head,
refusing to play when you begged me.
Loathsome pride, you smirked
as you looked at me.
But this voice crept inside your skin,
now blue like death,
and ate into your flesh
like a parasite growing on you.

I can't recollect your face,
not anymore when
you shunned my music.
Tell me now if I ask you
to hum my tunes and play me
by the orchestra in front of an audience,
waiting to hear me from you, will you?
I was your secret once and now
a hideous secret.

It did not really bother me;
what annoyed me was my hindsight.
How I had blindfolded myself against
the flow of my music.


And when I gaze at the mirror
and the mirror gazes back at me
and I wait with tired eyes
wanting to be the fairest of 'em all,
then it strikes me that I have been
coloured always. So I wept a li'l
and then I become a black feminist writer,
now sipping the same watery coffee
and writing away in fury
under the blood red sky
wanting to go starry
and bright like yesterday.