mama

I can’t concentrate

or I do a bunch of other things to not think about you

I’m harder than I think, find it easier to cry over a lover than my mother

but the women I date remind me of her

in some way or another

if I had the money, I would take you away from all of this.

I would.

I listen to myself talk to you and I sound like a mechanical, emotionless version of myself

have to detach my heart from my throat

so when my words come out of my mouth, they’re not drenched in blood.

I love you

more than my life

I’ve given you my life

it isn’t enough

if there is anything African women know a lot about it’s taking care of people

and guilt

because we should be doing a better job

of taking care of people

or maybe that’s just me.

it’s not that I’m angry

I’m not angry

or that I want anything.

just once though, I’d like to be able to call someone in my family for help

instead of always being the one that is supposed to help everyone.

this poem is a waste of time

and I never say shit like that

you hurt so much and I can’t fix it

the heartache of missing home, a broken heart that hasn’t healed

like the wound that has infected your leg

and that the doctors want to amputate

the pain will go away if they amputate

but what of the heartache?

if they amputated your heart

would the heartache go away?

I don’t mean to be morbid

I want to know what it would take

love letters to you don’t matter

the degrees I earn then leave the diplomas with you don’t matter

the books I’ve written & dedicated to you

the shows, the reverent way I speak of you

the prayer the prayer the prayers

the believing, the working and working to take care of you

it doesn’t matter.

your pain trumps it all

like an anvil dropped on an ant

or a butterfly set on fire

and I believe in love

more than your average human

I invite love in, take off her clothes, run her a coconut-scented bath, write to her, cook for her

in love’s name and wherever I see her in another, I reach for me, I mean I reach for the me I see in her,

open palms, full of believing

I should cry now. my mother is in the hospital. I am a hard rock. I am surprised at myself. I am not crying

my tears have so much company inside of myself

there’s a water park in my chest

this poem walks away from the crux of what brought me here

to these words

people who love me want to hold & comfort me

I act like I don’t need comfort,

swallow what feels like the beginning of falling water inside my nostrils

and the corners of my eyes,

into my brain

thinking myself into not feeling

I write poems for strangers and lick their day

leaving syllables sticking to their armpits, spine, fingertips.

I like to write uplifting poems

we can get through this poems

strong Naija woman poems

I do

I like to write poems that make goosehumps all over you

remind you of what’s in your chest

I like to write poems that illuminate the point

of all this

I don’t think this is uplifting

I don’t feel particularly sad or depressed, not distraught

like you’d expect one to feel when their mother is in the hospital

I don’t feel much actually, now that we’re talking about feelings

feelings are dangerous you know

especially mine

I have more feelings than opinions and trust me

I’m opinionated.

{this is unfinished

but I will stop here.}

I have loved you for millions of years

I wanna write this to say goodbye to you

if I write you a million poems, there’ll still be that one thing I wanna say

I can’t lay beside you without wanting to make love to you

your nature and mine make sense together but sometimes you just irritate the fuck out of me

I break my word a million times to be beside you

I can’t and I won’t and then I do

I don’t want to miss you when you’re right beside me and I do

I’ve seen this all unfold before, I know what I’ll do

I should stop

I want to write an epic goodbye poem

I’ve started two and neither are done

I want to write a poem that’s beyond all this

but I don’t have those words

I have half-verses and a church in my chest that praises and curses your name everyday

I want to run away to somewhere inside myself that makes all this angst seem outside myself and I’m untying myself

from you

it hurts, chrysalis hurts

in unison we’re out of sync, haven’t been in tandem for I don’t know how long yet we always find a way here to this in between

this is the same

as before, different, mostly the same

I have loved you for a million years, painted your face with my eyelashes, ran 100 yard dashes into your arms, I’ve held you for millions of minutes, placed words together like a jigsaw puzzle in a million different ways to render poempictures of you

I have, yes I have

this is ruining me but I’m not ruins, I’m not mad at you

if there’s something I’m supposed to forgive you for, I forgive you, I love you, goodbye

where i is, how i feel

I asked you to hold me

a long time ago

you didn’t or you didn’t the way I wanted to,

it hurt

I remember these things randomly, unexpected memories traipse through my day that I shrug off,

make a joke about,

no bitterness

a part of me still shivers when I remember the love we made

but that doesn’t mean I want you back

it means you knew how to fuck.

a friend said today that I look so content

I work at this

I don’t chase butches no more. I don’t chase no one no more.

just working on making my dreams come true

and laughing

and being a good person

and being honest

and saying stop when I mean stop

no when I mean no

yes when it feels right

that’s it

it ain’t fancy

it’s hella simple

I still love you

I just won’t let that love kill or define me

that’s what done changed.

lettin go, bein FREE

i love you so much

i love you so much

so much more than you love that pain in your chest you’ve made the love of your life

you keep your failures closer to you than you do me

I revel in all that we could be

you tell me with your actions and your silences

all we won’t be

and what can I do but pine and write this poem and shake my head?

baby it’s a shame you don’t know your own name

or the colors we could create with our dancing

if we were to dance with our heartbeats as the drumbeat

baby

you know I love you so much you make my flow

sound so thorough

you make me giddy

I made me steady though and I know that

you want me sometime, later, later

you don’t believe in now

you believe in what’s hurt you

I want you to fly with me

you want to cry without me

baby

I can’t be the martyr who holds heartache in my arms in lieu of you

the breath in your chest

is enough to stop a monsoon in its tracks

but you don’t hear me though

that smile you got locked away smoldering in the back of your throat

could make last month’s eclipse come back to catch a glimpse of you

if you just believed it

but you don’t believe it

you’re twisted over all the things we can’t change

refusing to understand all that we can

we can. we could. we would if you opened up

if you could be bigger than your swag and all the sexy braggadocio you roll with

we could unfold potential

and BE

potential is the excuse we use to hide from this moment

making love to potential is like kissing smoke

I want lips and arms and laughter and faith and to make it happen.

give your word and move with it in your chest

I’ve loved you for so long already

and you still ain’t ready

and I don’t know when you gonna be ready

or if you ever gonna be ready

you

hiding from your own brilliance

it hurts to see your shine when you think you’re in the dark asking to borrow a flashlight when you are the sun

I love you

more than you know, more than you realize you deserve

and I have to let you go

because you’re holding me back

baby

if only you knew what’s in me for you

you run so much, so far, so fast

I feel you on another continent of feeling when you beside me

I see the you you think nobody could love and I love you

I love you

baby

baby…

SOON COME: Poems Painted & Spoken {Wed, June 23 @ 6pm}

Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Reception 6PM, Program 6:30PM
Poets & Playwrights presents

Soon Come: Poems Painted & Spoken

by Yvonne Fly Onakeme Etaghene The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center 208 West 13th Street (btwen 7th & 8th aves) New York, NY 10011 $8 online (http://www.gaycenter.org/node/5226) $10 at the door

Soon Come: Poems Painted & Spoken is a multi-media art exhibit and poetry performance by Yvonne Fly Onakeme Etaghene and will debut Etaghene's visual art. Her art is acrylic and spray painted visual poems passionately splashed on canvas and wood surfaces in order to share the colors of her soul. The space will have life-size poetry hanging around you, video art as well as a loving, tender, soul-deep performance of Etaghene's poetry spanning the last decade of her career. The poems shared will be about the revelry, magic, heartache and angst of love. Etaghene gives you these poems and paintings with open palms and heart, reaching to love you, ever more, ever deeper.

like dawn, like dew

{ love poem to my friends}

i love you like the breath i was born with, you are the song i move with.
this poem in my bones is for you
you make me feel like sky, like honey, like red soil in my homeland feels on my feet
i love you like dawn loves to yawn good morning
like dew loves the blades of grass she always returns to
the moment you enter my arms, i feel at home, i feel like who i always was but needed you to remind me, you give me hallelujah and amen all day
you bring me bliss without even trying and i love you
with a tremendous tenderness these words don't do justice.

Performing @ Wesleyan Univ, April 23rd & 24th!

Performing @ Wesleyan Univ, April 23rd & 24th!

FYI: I'm performing tonight and tomorrow! Roll thru if you're in the vicinity and/or spread the good word!

Friday, April 23, 2010, 8pm to 10:30pm
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY
April (Asian, Asian-American, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern & Queer) Awareness Month
200 Church Lounge (at 200 Church St.)
Middletown, Connecticut
(Please email cawkwardrich@wesleyan.edu if you're interested in performing, before Thursday night.)
***FREE

Saturday, April 24, 2010, 8pm
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY
Solo Performance
200 Church Lounge (at 200 Church St.)
Middletown, Connecticut
***FREE

in my bones

you wiggle into me like a monsoon with attitude

the sweetest kind

like a waterfall falling upward into my brain

you hacked into me

love geek

with computer keys and marmalade and breakfast

you bring me to the brink

you make me believe

this is how it starts

with the songs I hear making me think of you

like they were written for you

you whirl into me

no joke

like bluegrass

the blues

afrobeat and jimi’s electric guitar

your voice all raspy and baritone with your lips closed

you

got me wrapped in you

you sing to me with your toes

you look at me and you make me believe in the dead

baby you could make an atheist a believer

in fairydust and poems

the way you say my name

sounds like poems you wrote for me and

your poems move mountains in me

my yes to anything you want from me

falls from my eyes

I’d be lying

if I said I don’t want you here

all these broken promises wrapped up in my bedsheets

I will burn the bed and sleep on the floor with you

because from the emptiness, there’s room for you

for all of this

I write you poems like this

trying to figure out if I like you

when I know I love you

you make me rock and twirl and whine my hips

I can’t even breathe without looking into all I see us being next year

it’s so

far past what I’m used to, what I’m used to, I used to stand still, I feel my feet running with my head turned back looking to you, looking for you, expecting you here

and you’re here

you rock me

when I was done with stones

you wrap me up in egusi and I can’t even—

say—you—you take the words out of my throat

and they sit on the floor between us

stretching and slithering away

giving us privacy

I want to blow glass for you

I do, and make you a house out of whatever you want—verses? brick? dance? kisses? my breath?

I’m at a loss

for words.

I don’t lose words

words find me when I’m lost

but I’m at a loss for words

all the ones I find still feel absent of what’s between the two of us

can you understand what I’m saying? I’m saying nothing

nothing gets said in poems like this, you have to feel it like a raging beat tearing your chest open

how can I confess what’s all over my face? how can you not know I want to have your babies?

do you want me to say it? do you need me to tell you?

I am telling you

in front of strangers, the birds, my past can bear witness

the priestess in me I be know I know no other way

but to give it all up to you

step aside and let the love crawl through my bones and stamp the beat out

can you hear it?

tell me you can hear it so we can dance to it

tell me you can feel it so we can rock to it

tell me this, tell me, tell me, tell me, please tell me you are here with me

I need you, I need you to—just breathe here with me right now

you give me shivers and little fireflies in my belly

and I want to hold your smile in my navel

this feeling in me strong enough to lift an anvil with my thoughts from across the room.

you take me home across an ocean with your arms

do you remember that I love you?

(for my friends)

I love the way you smell

and how you walk and the jokes you make

I love the way you love and the way you are

I love the things you say and how you think and the reasons you breathe

I love your dance

I love the way you are a new miracle every moment

I love the way you look at me and know me and hold me when I need you to but don’t know I need you to

I love how you make me laugh, how you understand about me

what I don’t understand about me

I love that you hold me in the highest regard

that you are home

that you speak my language

that we create languages

I love that you read my poems

that you write poems

that you are a poem

that our poems make poems with words, without words

with gazes and breath

I love that you are here for me

I love that I can be all of me with all of you

I love that you’re loud

I love that you love me

I love that I didn’t see you coming

I love you in this place in my chest

I loved you from before we met

in my last lifetime on another continent with different names and faces

the same eyes

I love your eyes

I love your love

I love that the bigger my spirit spreads, the deeper you love me

I love that you’re proud of me

I am proud of you

I love that I see me in you

I love that we love like this

I love that this poem could go on for another ten thousand words

and I’d still have more to love about you

i wrote this for you

(on Sunday, March 21, 2010, a group of Queer Nigerians in New York City got together to have dinner and all be in the same room for the first time. this was written after that.)

I wanna be close to you

you and I who are from the same place, soil, laughter

I wanna be close to the places our souls overlap

this is where my smiles live

egusi and pounded yam and pepper soup

are all ways for me to be close to you

you cook in the kitchen

I come up behind you, hold you and lay my head on your back

I just want to be close to you

feel your breath

know you’re real

know there's more than one me

know someone else has the same rhythms in their blood

has the same blood

know someone else has this many vowels in their name

I want to know someone else whose name sounds like a poem when it’s spoken

round sound full with beats dips valleys drums and heartbeats vibrating in their name

I want to know someone who knows Nigeria this way

I want to look at you

you who looks at me and looks like me

smiles like me

you who I know already and don’t

and want to

and you who I love already

who is family

you who are who I’ve been looking for

you who are me

you who have taught me in one night more about home than I can put into this poem

I wanna be close to you

us sagging jeans, tight jeans, bright colors, dark colors, shy, outspoken, exactly the same, completely different, beautiful earrings, sexy boots, sneakers and barefoot

so much flava

Edo and Jos and Patani and Lagos and Yoruba and Igbo and Urhobo and Ijaw and Delta State gets the last word cuz she the one writing

I love us

I want to touch you

like how you want to touch a rainbow or a newborn or run through sprinklers in the summer

I want to be with you, be around you, call you by your full name, the whole thing, the long long name that everyone tries to find shortcuts to avoid, gives you nicknames you never asked for and American names and French names and English names but baby I only want to call you by your proper name, the whole thing, and I will say it twice everytime so you know how much I love it

I want you

I want to feel you breathe

have summer with you

always make you feel understood

when no one understands

or maybe they do, but not quite the way you need them to

I want you

I want to flirt with you

playfully

with no intention of anything but being playful with you

to tease you

and eat the crepes you make

(and plantain and yam and stew and goat and fish)

I want to listen to your stories and see my face painted in the words you say

when you’re saying words that describe you

and somehow me too

and I want you, in the purest sense, I want your stories and the things that hurt you and the things that lift you, build you, make you happy, to come to light,

I want you to bring all of you into the circle of all our arms

this is what I mean when I say I want you

I want your spirit in the building, in the room, in the circle, here

I want to hear about who you love and why

I want to know about your little brother

your sister

your mother

your father

you

your joys

your confusion

you

I want all of you to come here

sit here

be here

breathe here

it’s—it’s just wow.

to know you

to know you like this is wow

when you speak, I feel it in me because I’ve lived what I’ve lived

you are my family

and I wrote this for you

I came home and I can’t sleep and I can’t watch any movies or read anything

all I can do is think about all of us

all of us

all I can do is lay here and think

and feel all the magic you are

this is the poem that is too small to fit all of this

how many times and how many people and how many books have told all of us that we don’t exist?

and there we were, recreating the recipes our mamas, daddies, aunties taught us to make and bringing them to each other from all parts of the city

to look into the eyes

of the ones

that don’t exist

tell me what else is that but magic?

and that is why I can’t sleep tonight

that is why even though I walked through that door with a broken heart, something shifted and brought laughter into me when I saw you

I learned awhile ago that even when I am tired and hurting and unclear

the thought of our queer Nigerian stories

always brings me joy

I started writing tonight because I thought maybe I should put it all down somewhere

like I can bottle the laughter in that room and conjure it up when I need to

when I miss her

or when I’m lost

or when I can’t get out of bed

or when I’m overwhelmed

or or or or or

this poem is the attempt to bottle the magic

a little bit of it

so on a tough day

I can uncork it

and hear your breath.

like

unbuttered toast

a broken zipper

cold tea

a clasp

with a gap

on a necklace

that won’t close

that post it note

with that thing I wrote

that I can’t remember

that said everything

I’m tired of feeling

the persistent drip

in the kitchen sink

that no repairwoman

can fix

the rage of a million heartaches

muted & amplified

by the million and first one

hesitant rain on wednesday

pen sprinting races

then breathless

running out of ink

finishing what

reluctantly began

no one telling you

what’s right

stopped mattering

last sunday

the fortune cookie with stupid advice

snow too stubborn to melt in the presence of sun

like

this

how do i be free?

{today a friend wrote a poem for me that brought tears of gratitude & honor to my eyes. this is my response. as poets, we joyously give so many words to the world but sometimes poets just want someone to write a poem for them for once, you know? with much love to claudia moss. thank you.}

say everything. set aside pride. bleed a little. risk something. speak the fear out loud so i can walk thru it. open. open. open wider. open bigger. open deeper.

speak give unfold unwrap unravel let go give in be wrong apologize recognize say what I mean

admit I don’t know

admit I do know

show the truth walk my truth

walk my talk. keep my word. be my word. be bigger than my word

courage in the building means more than cursing out a stranger when they piss you off

it means loving your lover

loving yourself

humble

on the humble

remember when tupac said “humility is sexy”? he was right

cry

cry again

cry for all that’s unsaid

not giving in order to receive reciprocity

not giving in order to be recognized

not giving in order to be thanked

giving just to give—that’s what love is.

grieving

not to disappear in the grief,

not to lose one’s self in the grief

grieving because it’s what I feel

and running from it don’t make it any less real

stop running

take off shoes

sit

listen

LISTEN

breath

breathe

open eyes to what eyes didn’t know how to see

until now.

if i whisper this tenderness into the night of my bed

& you're not here to hear

does the tender matter?

should I have given you the tender when you were here to receive it?

doesn’t matter

this is the only moment I have

and in it I am sending you tender on the backs of snowflakes and raindrops

I have to believe that that tender will make its way onto the curve of your neck

to rest there

like I would

if I was there

i love you. should i have not said that? cuz i do. should i have not felt that? cuz that's the only way i could not say that.

I wanna watch you watch me walking to you, wrap my arms around you, feel your arms around all of me. and melt

do you know how much I want to play it safe?

I want to hide from the simple fact of

I want you back and

ain’t no hiding from that

that fact is in my purse, on my palm, hanging from my earlobe, in my tea,

sitting on the bus next to me

coming out the mouth of an actress on the movie screen

it’s everywhere

it’s in my tears, in each step I run around that track, is under my breath

in my breath

is my breath

how do I be free

from the fear of exposing what I fear you will reject of me?

by letting you see the truth

the broken beautiful bruised perfect imperfect of me

the freedom for me

is in the offering of me,

not in whether

you receive