Dear 2017

Dear 2017

At times, you were my greatest enemy and my best love.

I fell in love with you at the very beginning.

All I wanted was to be with you.

You gave me so many experiences.

You let me see some of my idols this year.

 

Over time you give me some of the worst pain of my life.

To make me a better man, you gave me some of the hardest life lessons I had to learn.

You made me sit back and analyze my relationships with myself and my friends.

Even though you through me in the cave and threw away the key…

You let me drown in my sorrows…

Left me in Penrose walking until my feet bleed.

Trapped me in the prison of my own thoughts because you knew that was the worst sentence I could get

Then you released me back into society into a new place as a second chance at redemption.

At first, I didn’t think I deserve redemption.

 

Then you gave me new light.

Showed me that I do deserve happiness.

That I don’t need to be my worst enemy.

Helped me build new relationships.

Reevaluate old ones.

Best thing of all you showed me that through it all

There is always light at the end of the tunnel.

Lost soul

The thought of you gets me sentimental

All in my head

These feelings have me all caught up.

Reminiscing on our love and the way we use to be.

 

The memories of you infiltrate my dreams like Freddy.

Playing Russian roulette with a loaded gun,

Shooting new memories into my head to get over you.

This game doesn’t end well,

But I just want it to end

 

This feeling of pain controls me.

It has power over me

As much as I despise this feeling.

I yearn for this feeling …

It keeps us together

This pain is the only way I can keep you around.

Let go of the pain and I let go of you

 

Desire becomes surrender and surrender becomes power.

You have power over me,

I surrender my soul to you and

I desire to be with you.

I am powerless when it comes to you

Flashing Lights

She poses for the cameras.
Everyone tells her that she doesn’t need a career just pose for the camera.
Don’t use your mind just smile and get by.
Every day she keeps posing
Each Flash takes a piece of her soul each time

Wants to inspire change and help her family and people.
She has no support system.
They just tell her to keep posing and making that money.
Don’t use ya mind just use ya body.
Her eyes are the portal to her soul that is battered
From the words of the world telling her she isn’t good enough

Every night she lays down wishing she wasn’t alone,
She can’t give herself because she is scared to be treated like the others.
After prolonged exposure to others
The tighter her aperture gets.
Through the shutters you can see the loss of quality in her soul.

She is better than that.
She works to get out the fixed lens of her life.
Every night she studies in the books to prove that she is more than just looks.
Prove that women are more than just beauty.
Prove to the world she can make it.
While she grinds it out
She sits in the chair…
Puts on the vest to protect her soul and
Gets ready to show

Survivor

I have decided to stomp on my fear and stand in solidarity with all the women I know who are stepping forward as well.

When I was eighteen, I was assaulted by someone I loved and someone I thought loved me. It took me months of therapy and reflection to recognize it as assault because my mind just could not comprehend that someone who claimed to care about me would ever violate my trust like that. I couldn’t imagine how someone could hear me say no repeatedly, and still feel entitled to take from me what I did not want to offer. It makes me paranoid when people are in my space now. I start to get anxious when someone won’t take “no” for an answer. Survivors of sexual assault almost always have some form of PTSD and this is just a small example of how mine manifests.

Studies show that 1 in every 5 women will face some form of sexual harassment or assault in her lifetime. These are not odds that I can live with. I’m stepping forward to speak out against the notion that unwanted sexual attention can always be justified. I’m speaking out against the destruction of my safe space because “boys will be boys” and “these things happen”.

By joining the army of survivors that started this movement, I am reclaiming the control that was taken from me. The only way we can eradicate rape culture is by setting a better example for future generations. Teach your sons that no always means no. Teach your daughters how to say no with the strength of all the women she comes from.

There is a war raging against women right now and we have a long way to go until victory. But the journey will only begin if we all take the first step together.

By Kaniz

Beauty in the Dark

All it took was one night to get me hooked.

Thinking of that smile got me scratching like an addict because I need it.

Soon as I see you again I will grab you close and pull you in to smell that hair…

Your love keeps my blood flowing to my heart…

She is the definition of fine but I told her that her body looks better with mine.

Melt your imagination and mold it into reality
Your hearts my art gallery girl
Can you feel the pictures that I painted cause all of them are related

The thought is sensational it’s perfect bliss

I’m ready to take the Milky Way to your Hershey’s Kiss

Travel in your mind explore your sexuality

Its going down tonight on sight..

As I turn off your lights

Kissing your lips bring the hairs on the back of my neck up..

lay you down

Start tongue kissing in between ya thighs

Giving you all of me

Going so deep you can feel me coming until next week.

The way we flow got you saying yes in my ear..

Looking into your eyes seeing the passion burning..

Even in the dark I can see all your beauty

Afterwards baby just hold me tight

Don’t ever let go

We can rock like this

Cause I got plans to give it you all night.

I hope you don’t mind if I make you my habit.

I can only take you in doses because

If I take too much I relapse

I don’t want to change…

I can’t let go of this habit.

Crash

Driving down this path only ends one way for us
The longer we drive the more we die on the inside
As I ride I sit back and think

Growing up, you were my best friend.
You did everything for me.
To protect me and guide.
I was your everything.
Growing up we were in separable.
You made sure I had a soul…
For the price of yours.

Now we argue when we around for two long constantly fighting…
Your voice triggers something in me and it brings me to my worst.
Your presence makes my blood boil
Every time you call my phone my mood instantly changes to rage.
How could a relationship start of so good and become so toxic?

Throughout all the pain
You have been there for me anytime I needed you.
I can always can count on you to have my back when no one does.
You blindly support me.
We are two addicts that are not good for each other but crave and need the other.

As I got older I learn more about your past before me and
It put a lot of things in perspective.
The first man you were with got locked up…
Then my dad left before I was born.
The cards you were dealt were a shitty hand
You hustled and did everything you did to make sure I was set up for success.
At the expense of your sanity you made sure I always had mine.
You tried to hide your pain like the tears behind a clown
Realizing this I understand the mistakes you have made.

As we ride in this car I realized that we are mirror images
We  can’t live without each other

As much I didn’t want to be you
I made the same mistakes

Everything wrong in my life I blamed you.
Blamed you for my emotions.
Everything that went wrong with my relations I blamed you.
Seeing how you interact with men made me never trust a woman.
I believed all woman were selfish and only looking out for themselves

I did this to blame you and not myself because I couldn’t handle it.
All the moments you tried to amend our relationship
I pushed you away, a part of me couldn’t do that
because if I do that
I would be accepting my faults.

Driving down this road I see we were meant to be…
Realizing we are on a collision course for a wall.
Even though we are going to crash
I will ride this to the end because I need you

Pleasure and Pain

The Drugs and Alcohol numb me so
I don’t have to feel the pain.

They keep me from having to deal with this harsh reality.
To inception where my body is here but my mind is elsewhere

A place where I still feel your skin on mine.
They remind me of your aura that brings peace to my life.
Where I can grab you, and smell your hair.
Where we are sitting down talking life plans
Texting each other each day
Talking weddings and life goals.

The drugs got me feeling immortal.
Feeling like I can stop bullets
Feeling like superman nothing can phase me
They bring me back to a world where black people aren’t getting killed by police.
Barack is still president.
A world where my grandmother is still here and we are watching SVU.

When it run out feels like a smack to the face with reality
Feel the pain and despair creep back into my mind.

The thoughts of what you are doing creep in
The pain of missing you
Thinking if you are thinking of me…
If you miss me like I miss you…

I pray to GOD to forgive me for my sins of now and the future.
I ask him that he show me a path and gets me off the journey,
Bring me to be the man that I know I can be

Until I hear from him…
I pour another cup
get as loud as I want
Because I love the smell of the noise…

Emotional

Growing up I was always told to not be emotional and don’t leave yourself Vulnerable.

You leave room for heart break and pain.

I have always had a hard time grasping this.

Death is a part of life,

This world is a cruel place,

Obstacles are thrown at us every day.

Pain and heartbreak are inevitable,

So why shy away from it?

It makes us stronger because it shows us

How far we came and what we can overcome.

My whole life I have been in a constant battle with them.

How to express myself worrying about how others will react and judge.

Constantly being told you are too emotional.

But the reason why people gravitate towards me is for that same reason.

I am not afraid of being vulnerable and I am emotional as it gets

My emotions should be tatted on my sleeve the way I wear them

It is the reason I stand out in the crowd.

These emotions can tell stories that you wouldn’t believe.

I am not afraid to show vulnerable side.

Vulnerability creates likability.

We do not like what seems too perfect.

We gravitate towards imperfections because we ourselves are imperfect

Embracing imperfections makes us more perfect

I wear these emotions as a badge of honor

As a warrior wears his scars.

The emotions show where I started

They show my transformation

No more hiding them

Time to wear these scars proud

an ode to thick thighs.

when i was younger, my mother used to tell me i was all skin and bones.

it was a wild thing to wrap my mind around because, you see,

i was never just skin and bones.

i was warmth and love and light and magic.

 

as I grew older, she started to see what I meant in

the swell of my hips and the curve of my thighs.

she worried that the eyes that followed me down the street would be

preceded by cat calls and wolf whistles.

evidently, there is nothing humane about the way this society degrades its women,

there is nothing humane about the way this society shames its women,

there is nothing humane about the way this society fails its women.

 

on the days that the sun kisses my skin with a little more passion,

I am warned not to wear anything too…much.

I wanted to smile

and scream at my mother that the day I give two fucks

about who I am too much for, I will have become too little for myself.

I have come to learn that the power in my walk shakes the earth beneath me

but the only ones who are afraid are those with unsteady feet.

I was raised with the notion that I must look to others for validation

when in truth, I have held the universe inside of me

since the moment I took my first breath.

 

I am a woman.

and for far too long, I have worn this title like an oversized sweater,

trying to shrink both the word and myself to fit what society tells me I should be.

I should be seen and not heard,

I should speak when spoken to,

I should swallow my individuality to protect the fragile ego of the patriarchal dictatorship,

I mean “democracy”,

we live in.

 

instead, what I will do is roll up the sleeves of this behemoth sweater,

pick up my bull horn and let anyone who gets in my way know

that the only way I will be silenced is if my body is laid down in the same earth that it came from

but until then, I would wear the word woman over my shoulders

with the same pride a warrior would wear their armor.

 

BY Kaniz