This is For the Girls - AWDF Book Slam

The Broken Mirror (To Teach a People to Hate themselves…)

Who are you?

I am Angel.

No, really, who are you?

I am George.

Stop playing around!

I am Hanson, Ferguson, Manson, Johnson, Ellison, I am…

Zombie. Lost in the ways of my people, my identity, my heritage

I am the soulless black-white being that haunts the screens of materialism in the face of my destruction

I am that shadow in the mirror for Self no longer exists to merit reflection

I am who I am that does not know who I am but cares not who I am for they say who I am is Shameful.

Damn I’d rather say Angel  ‘cos Adwoa Konadu Boateng is a mouthful

I am that being whose history has been exterminated, rewritten and coordinated to suit the inadequacies of my present self

CNN and BBC lay out the fragments of my present just right; a primitive tale of wars and poverty

No way I’m gonna be African now, not when these pieces are made to tell my whole story!

I am a Christian, A muslim, A Buddhist, …so long as it frees me from the jungle rituals of a Tarzanic people

I am the beautiful black girl that burns out her curls for blonde bangs

I am no longer the black washed away with this hot white bleach

I am the slave to the trinkets of my age

I am an individual that stands alone, not the US of my ancestral past

I am the successful experiment of a mind removed and replaced with a self-defeating fake

I am…

 Zombie with no soul but a self-destructive spirit

I am you and you are me

But how can me be you and you be me when you seeks only to overpower me and me seeks only to devour you?

How can Us live when exploitation is the sole element of our new programmed system?

A system which allows us to enjoy a westernized eduacation designed to drift us farther away from who we are

A system which designs me to fail from the onset because I conceive myself as the redemption of these poor people who happen to share the same skin colour as mine

A system which ensures my indoctrination, “school”,  from the malleable years of childhood to solidify into an adulthood of programmed robots

A system which assures me that it is okay to be enslaved in my mind for that is the only defeat to my inherent inferiority.

I am the product of a system that preaches to me in church to love my neighbor as myself but not when that neighbor goes to the mosque

I am the product of a system that reincarnates the greedy kings of the past who sold their own to the oppression of slave chains, only now it’s not slavery but colonialism, not colonialism but capitalism

Chale, forget the label, as long as someone is getting exploited and people are getting paid, we are right on track!

I am the product of a consumeristic system that teaches me to prize the surface, glorify the shallow, and fear the vault and enjoy the hollow

I am the product of a system that pursues profit to all the ends of the earth and the sky, and the water, then include the non-profit maker in the firing squad of global warming

I prize you for the richness of your ability to imitate carbon copies and preconditioned magazines  of what beauty’s image should look like rather than what you really look like as a human being

I am the product of a system that drives me to the despairing insanity and loneliness of self-hatred and suicide cos my hips are too big, and my tummy’s too flabby, my nose just ain’t right, like a ship lost its way and found its way to my face

I am the product of a system which thrives on hate under the guise of religious/ human duty, or simply, Shee-it, I don’t like the shape of his head.

I am you, you are me, but me cannot be you nor you me for me cannot give to you to give to me to give to them to give to us

That is barbaric, jungle-consumed, unnatural, definitely unproductive, primitive thinking.

I stare hard at my black shadow in the mirror

My heavy uncontrollable mass of curls, and my ugly flat nose

My tongue which is lost in speaking the language of my ancestors

My soul which has been wrenched from understanding Nature’s need for a unity

My mind which cannot decipher the truth who I was, for my past is hidden, who I am, for my present is told in fragments, much less where I am going

And I see, not Angel, not George, not Adwoa, nor Kweku

But a person who hates herself so deeply Self is eternally lost in the cracked shards of a broken mirror 

WHEN REALITY BANGS

'And I trusted you' by Bloody Mary99

“Close your eyes. Free your mind. I’m not about to whip out a ring and ask you to marry me. This is not a fairytale I’m going to pretend to create for you. It’s reality.”

Flashing lights dancing on love rainbows….shooting star streaking across the sky…no.  That was not what happened. 

I felt something hard strike my back. Felt my skin swelling in response. I bit my lip to keep from screaming.

“Keep them closed,” he said as my lids flinched to open.

I felt his fingers on my neck, fiddling with the collar of my short dress. A ripping sound and the cold air enveloping my nakedness told me he’d just ripped my dress off. I stood still. Tears running down my face. 

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered. 

Soft feather-like kisses caressed my collarbone. His long fingers trailing a smooth path on my curves, teased my hairs to an upstanding position. I shivered. Then he took my small waist in his arms, knelt down between my legs and kissed my womb. So soft. Then hard as though his life depended on it. A hungry moan escaped my lips.

Then he bit me, in that small patch of tender skin, that cleft between thigh and punani. I shivered till the pain got unbearable and I clawed at his head and whimpered. 

“Ssshh…the pain has only began. I would break you till your tears become blood and your blood becomes tears. Till you hate me so much you become numb. Till you would no longer feel hate nor love.”

I didn’t understand. But I wanted him. So bad. And not just sexually. I wanted his body, his spirit, his mind. I wanted him to become Me for an Us to be born. So I stood there. Listening to his strange demands.

Then it began. Mind-blowing joy and pain interspersed together so wickedly I thought I was going to die. 

His lips did unfathomable things to my punani, teased my clit to release its hottest, wettest secrets, all the while his fingers slid in and out my wetness. I grabbed his locks hard, my nails digging deep into his scalp. God, it felt so good. His big hands slid to my buttocks and drew me closer to the relentless damage that was his mouth. I lifted my head up and cried out. He held me tighter, moving his teeth and tongue faster. 

I felt myself about to lose myself, slip over the edge. I whispered his name, felt my spirit about to give in, to let go into that heaven only lovers find.

Then it stopped. The pleasure. He stopped. 

He slapped my eyes shut with his big palms.

“Eyes still closed.”

I felt like crying. I was panting really hard. My chest filled with indescribable feelings. Like being stuck in an out-of-body experience, only your spirit was still halfway in the body while the other was half wrenched out, was hanging out limp and confused.

He swept me off my feet into his arms and lay me on the soft furry rug that covered the length and breadth of the room. He bent over me, rubbed his slightly open lips on mine, light feathery brushes, breathing his sweet breath into my parted lips like God did Adam. I felt new, sucking in his breath. Felt whole. This was what The Very First Kiss of Creation must have felt like. My lips yearned to taste deep, suck his in but he simply continued with the teasing brushes, nibbling my lower lip, brushing his tongue lightly on my upper lip.

Then he delved deep inside my mouth with his tongue and our tongues danced an old dance, a dance choreographed from the beginning of time. He put my arms around his neck and my legs automatically wrapped themselves around his naked lower half. He whispered in between breath pauses, “I love you.” My heart melted. I pulled him closer, warmth spreading across my thighs as I felt his hard membrane on my inner thigh.

He let go of me gently and for the briefest of seconds. I couldn’t help but moan long into the rug when I felt the feather he began to tickle my nipples with. Round and round he went, setting my senses on fire. The warm wetness of his mouth warmed the other nipple while the other was made painfully hard by the feather. I thought I would lose it till he slipped the feather down my belly to the very heart of me. 

“You love it?” 

I nodded, grabbing his arm hard. The tip of the feather teasing my very tip. If my clit could talk, it would scream all manner of obscenities. I couldn’t lie still. My body shook as though I was possessed. I had been possessed. By him.

Then he slid his long, hard member inside me. I groaned so long he kissed me deep to stifle it. My legs pulled him deep, my hands wrapping themselves about his smooth, hard back and holding him tight. Our bodies became one, making outlawed rhythms in unison. One. Oneness. Universal. He had my head in his hands, holding me close, so close. He whispered how beautiful I was, how much he loved me…

“You feel this?” he panted, “we are one.”

Then the fluttering beginnings of an out-of-body experience began again. I welcomed it with so much pleasure. This time, this one time, it was going to be real, powerful.  “I found it, I’ve finally found it…” kept ringing through my over-sensitized mind. I loved him. I loved every bit of him. He completed me. He was me. This fiery feeling of love in body and soul and spirit brought tears to my eyes.

“It’s alright baby,” he whispered when he tasted the salt of my tears. “Just hold me. Love me. I would complete you.”

My legs held tighter as he pumped slowly, his waist dancing rhythms into my innermost core. Then his rhythm quickened and my pulse quickened to match it.

“It’s time,” he said. 

I kissed him hard. Then it came. The Moment. That moment when body exploded to stars…angels reached out for my fingertips. I smiled, preparing to let myself go in the holy arms he had shepherded me to. I sighed.

Then it stopped. He stopped. Pulled out of me so fast it was almost painful. My eyes helplessly snapped open. My body did not, could not understand this wickedly abrupt change. It convulsed and curled up, torn between pleasure and pain. I shook uncontrollably in this pain-pleasure as though I was being exorcised, only in this case, the demon was entering me not leaving me. He watched me quietly, calmly, his face hauntingly expressionless. The pain became so unbearable I let out a huge sob, a cry that came from the very depths of me.

He watched me groveling at his feet. His face, so cold and removed, made me weep harder. The pain was unbearable. I did not understand. He dressed up silently, my eyes watching him painfully.

He moved with even steps toward the door. My heart was in my mouth, too frozen in shock and agony to call out to him, he who had become the very core of my being.

“I never want to see you again,” he whispered, and stepped out into the night.

Death for me was not a phenomenon that ended after that day. Hate’s passion ceased to be as invigorating so could no longer be a comfort. Love? She was murdered the day he killed me. I tore her heart out with my teeth. I’ve been a killer on the prowl since.