A Girl's Story

I  knew this girl.
She was raw.
She was uncensored and unafraid.
She was honest - to a fault.
And serious.
All the time.
About everything.
And intense.

She lived her life like that - intense.
She thought hard about everything.
And cried plenty - and waaay too easily.

If you asked her a simple question,
She would break it down to a science
And answer you through philosophy,
With language that breathed literature.

She was a very complex creature.
But, oh God,  I loved her!
Because she was so authentic
And so genuine and so real.

She was who she was
And people just had to deal with that.

Most of them didn't.
But she didn't let it bother her.
She was always on the outside.
She didn't quite get people.
And people didn't get her.
They said she was a little weird.
No.
They said she was weird a lot.

But she didn't let that bother her
Because whether they said she was weird or not
They had to admit that there was something about her -
This thing they couldn't name or define

And it wasn't a bad thing either.
It was a good thing - whatever it was.
It was a special  and powerful
Potential.


Life can be this thing - this place - this big, scary mass of people and

Challenge Day 26: I am what I am

I am not what I am
Because I am not
What I should be
Or could be.

I remember when I was much younger, I wrote a poem about myself, trying to describe where I thought I was, or, more specifically, WHO I thought I was. And what I saw in myself didn't quite add up with who I thought I ought to be. There was a great divide.

So, I wrote a poem. Quoted above is one stanza.

Challenge Day 16: Back up and start again

I was about to get discouraged
Because I set this goal
To do a post a day
Then all sorts of stuff
Started to get in the way

I wanted to feel like a failure
And then I remembered

Hey, I set the rules.
So I'll just back up
And start again!

Challenge Day 15: Resisting The Urge To Stop

I make the decision
With every new day
To keep going

Because I MUST.

I have a legacy to leave
To my children, my brothers and sisters

I must go forward
I must take charge
I must open doors
So they can walk through

Others have done it for me
I must do it for them
And for mine
And for me

The Will To Rise

Don't bury me, I'm not dead yet.
There's too much life in this body
For me to give room to regret
There's too much left to do
And too much time to do it in
Too much in me still dances
Too much inside me still laughs and sings.

I've made many mistakes
I know you'll never forget
But don't bury me,
I'm not dead yet.

The.Legacy.
I bequeath to you today an unusual gift. Intangible and yet priceless. Not to be categorised among 'the little things'. This is a big thing - this is a big gift.

And it is necessary for every day. For the million and one little things that can go wrong. For the dark times. The sad times. The awful and bad times. The times of deep despair and despondence...

Sometimes falling becomes commonplace. An easy thing to do. And each time, getting up feels more like a chore. An increasingly difficult task to master. Sometimes finishing a race in which you've stumbled many times seems silly and unwise. Sometimes, giving a thing at which you've failed a second, third, fourth try seems like cruel and unusual self-punishment.

A fall can look like a fail. Especially when it's repetitive. The fallen can be branded a failure. Rising - or trying to - in the eyes of the onlooker, can seem like a symptom of stupidity. The fallen one, in the eyes of the observer, can be easily underestimated, underappreciated ... the fallen can be buried before the fallen is dead.

But don't listen to them! They don't know you. And they've never caught a glimpse of your heart. When the whole world decides you're over and done, know that I will NEVER give up on you. When everyone else has walked away, look up. See me waiting to see you rise.

Because I have given you this gift. And I wait to see you use it.
For all you are and ever hope to be ...

... I give you the will to rise.

Prayer for the Self

Dear God,


I pray this feeling never goes away.


I pray I feel this agony
Each and every day


I pray I feel their pain
I pray their cries burn my heart


Let me live the situation
Till I find a solution.


Give me no peace
And give me no sleep


Make me desperate
Make me restless


Let my respiration
Be filled with desperation


I am the solution.
Help me to find me.


Copyright 2009 Ruthibelle

I Must Not Forget

Most days, I want to think of myself as something pretty special. I want to tell myself that I am truly one-of-a-kind. I want to believe with all my heart that I'm a fighter... a survivor, and that I made it this far because of my hard work and on the raw force of will-power alone.

But other days, like today, I face the truth. I look myself in the mirror and tell myself what a lucky person I am. Because had my parents been any less devoted to my success, had my teachers been any less relentless in their demand for excellence, had the foundations and principles of my life been only a shade different, and had there not been a God, I would not be the person I am today.

Days like today, I remember: I may have seen this much and come this far, but I did NOT do it on my own.

I've spent the last four years living in Kingston: going to school, working, and getting acquainted with urban life. Yesterday, I sat at home in rural St. Mary remembering, for a good long while, how easy it is to forget the people and places that comprise the 17 years that precede the last 4.

Is it really that easy to forget the pride in my father's smile, the warmth in my mother's arms, the loud, cheerful rings in my siblings' laughs? Is it so easy to forget music-filled streets and Miss Mabel's corner shop, and the names of classmates who stayed home to help build their parish, while I was whisked away to urban Jamaica with lofty dreams, in search of something (supposedly) better... in search of something (supposedly) more?

I sat listening to my siblings' jibes. My sister is a woman now. And my brothers have beards, or stubble... How weird that they have lives -whole lives- that I have very little knowledge of. How weird that my parents are growing old. How weird that my teachers and neighbours and classmates have never forgotten my name, or my face, and that, with the extra wrinkles in their tired faces, they smile when they see me, and remind me -again- why I should never give up. Why I should never forget.

I must not forget past classmates carrying babies in their arms: theirs and their little sisters'. I must not forget street vendors missing teeth, the sight of once-firm flesh now sagging, jangling and dangling as they offer passers-by their wares. I must not forget scruffy young men, congregating on street corners, already beggars, drunks and drug addicts... I must not forget that for every step I take, someone gets left behind. That for every rung on the ladder I climb, someone stands on the ground, wistfully looking up or cluelessly gazing around... I must not forget that they toil relentlessly. And I must not forget why: because too many children, by virtue of location alone, are abandoned and forgotten. They're bright. They're smart. They're awesomely talented. But they're oblivious to how much they're being robbed.

They have no access to what this world calls success. No access to urban Jamaica and all the secrets it hoards and hides... They remain where they are: seeds of potential. Undiscovered. Undefined. Unfulfilled.

They look at me and smile. And I think they feel proud. But, really, what's there to be proud of? I am no better than these. I am a daughter of St. Mary soil, just like anybody else. While I am in Kingston trying to realise fairytale dreams, they are at home fighting through the despondence of habitual disempowerment, finding new ways to survive a world that denies them the privilege - nay, the right- to fundamental amenities.

And it's a long road ahead of us. We have a far way to go. But if we ever expect to look in the mirror and feel any sense of accomplishment, it must be because we never forget. It must be because I never forget.

I cannot forget... help me to remember... I must NOT forget.

Why I'll Never Forget Ayi Kwei Armah

"What do you do when people, free to choose, choose what they want??" -Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

I think I felt the book more than anything else, and that affinity made me appreciate it more than many other texts I'd studied. This one got me.

It's main character, the man (yes, the man - he remains nameless) experiences life in corrupt post-colonial Ghana under Nkrumah's rule. Different aspects of the man's life are affected by the corrupt politics that pervades his society: work, school, church... everywhere! (Sounds familiar?)

The book gives an allegory of people who lived in a cave and thought that was all there was to the world. Then one day, some of these people ventured outside of the cave, and realised that there was a whole other world out there to be explored. They went back to the cave and tried to explain this other world to their friends. But their friends refused to believe it. They refused to listen, and chose to remain the cave. Then Armah pops the question: What do you do? What do you do when people, free to choose, choose what they want?

Those words haunted me. I started to apply them to everything. And that was around the same time we studied Toni Morrison's 'Beloved'... and we were looking at Caribbean intellectual traditions in Caribbean Studies, and all our lovely slavery history... sometimes history can be depressing. Especially black history. We've certainly come a faaar way! I never wanna go back.

So that's how Armah's book got me. And why I'll never forget it. I mean, really: What do you do? What do you do, when people, free to choose, choose what they want.... especially when they're making the wrong choices???

Dying Friendship

The voice has changed
The tone, the look
Disinterest
I can smell it...

Conversation becomes
Burdensome obligation
Terse, insincere laughs
Tell it...

Looks of longing
At everything else
Everywhere else
But me...

Hasty flight
Quick departure
A perpetual need
To leave...

Always in a hurry
Hurtfully impolite...

Countless conversations
Cut short in spite...

Telling signs.
Telling times...

You don't have time for me,
I ain't got time for you...

*And so the friendship dies. (This last line is not a part of the poem).

Love Affair With Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

-Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes

One day I'll write a poem, or an essay -a book probably- on how profound this poem is. But for now, I want to talk about the man who wrote it, and when I met him, and why I've been in love with him ever since.

I'm weird. I sometimes fall in love with dead people: authors, poets, singers, songwriters, activists, artists... maybe it's safer to love them dead than alive. I especially love African-American history. MoTown music (late 1950s onward). Martin Luther and friends (1960s). Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad (1859). Rosa Parks and her indispensible 'but' (1955, pun intended). The Harlem Renaissance (1920s-60s). And especially Langston Hughes.

It was sixth form literature. We studied the Harlem Renaissance, one of the most profound periods in Afro-American history, a precursor to what would soon happen in the Caribbean when we started to develop our own (recognised) intellectual traditions (1960s-70s-now?). I always think it must have been awesome to live in a period when black people were defining their own identities (not that I'd ever trade places with anyone from that time. I'm fine here and now, thank you.)

The first poem we studied was Dream Deferred. And that day, Mr. Hughes won my heart. I marvelled at the simplicity of his language: the raw potent explosiveness behind his carefully measured words. Mesmerised, I started to research his life beyond class requirements. I began to read his poems with more fervency and passion, to feel reverence for this amazing man whose words helped to transform an entire nation. I wrote a whole book of (amateur) poems just feeding off the energy from his words alone. That was the same year I came third in the country for CAPE Lit. Langston really turned me on, I tell you! (no pun intended; and I studied Ayi Kwei Armah's 'The Beautyful Ones' that year as well - another absolutely powerful piece of work!)

One thing I've learnt is that history really makes literature come alive. Whenever I get the historical context for a piece of writing, my appreciation for it multiplies hundredfold. Reading about Langston's rise from Joplin, Missouri to Harlem, New York made him real to me. If writers who are able to articulate the feelings and hopes of an entire nation/race are dangerous, then Langston Hughes was lethal. He effectively captured the frustration and depression that afflicted African-Americans in 1950.

I felt his every word, and in my mind's eye, I could see him walking on desecrated black streets, passing dilapidated shops, looking into the faces of desperate people: broken men, women and children; reading the hurt in their eyes, and wondering... "what happens to a people who have lost the will to live? What happens to a dream deferred?"

I hope to grow up soon. And when I do, I hope to be a lethal writer too. Not like Langston Hughes. Like me. But with the same kind of intensity that makes the world turn on its axis, or that makes a little girl studying in high school many generations later sit up straighter in class, and start to really pay attention... and maybe even become inspired to write a legacy of her own...

For Broken Hearts On Valentine's Day

My friends behaving like V-Day without a significant other is dismal, depressing and impossible to get through. I dunno why they find it hard to believe that a body can be a happy, significant whole till the appointed time of enjoinment, even on Valentine's Day, but, to show that I am human and really do have emotions, and satisfy their need to see me bleed...

Miss You

I saw them in the lounge
Hanging out
And I missed you

Saw him look at her
With that look
And I missed you

I watched him kiss her lips
Watched her flip
And I missed you

I heard her sigh
Then type
And then smileAnd I just knew

That once upon a time,
That would be me
And you

But today
It's her time
Not mine...
God, I miss you!

I re-read diary entries
Then I cried
Cause I miss you

Somebody asked what's wrong
And I lied
Cause I'm too blue

I walked out on that life
I am done!
I am too through

Still

Days like today
I remember
And I miss you...

PS One of my friends said Valentine's Day is a farce...

Writing My Passion

In my times of greatest conflict, I find it easy to write.

Flip open a notebook. Pick up a pen. Write my fingers into a tizzy. Let my fingers lead me into alternative, imaginary worlds...

I wish I could write from my heart. I wish my heart had hands to write what it felt. I wish there was some process through which my feelings bypassed my mind and all the other regions of my body that seem to throw them into confusion, and just went straight to my hands, to my fingers, so I could write, and adequately, clearly, express what I feel.

I wish I knew what my writing voice was: you know, that style, sound and quality that is uniquely, distinctly me. I wish imitation were a difficultly acquired skill, instead of an educational necessity. I wish intelligence, uniqueness and individuality were more readily advocated and encouraged, so that more people would grow up discovering themselves – their true selves – in their own ways, instead of getting lost in a sea of shiftless imitators. Then, perhaps, perchance, maybe people would find themselves. And I would find myself.

To find oneself: what does that mean? To find oneself?

I need to find myself
Amidst all this empty drifting
To pour my heart into a bowl
And do some careful sifting

What I need is to be totally completely free
What I need is to be totally completely me...

Who am I?

In times of greatest conflict, I find it easy to write.

Copyright 2007
Writefully Mine
Ruthibelle

I Fell In Love With The Olympics

I'll be sad when the Olympics is over, because I for one, am in love with the Games. Or maybe not so much with the Games, as the feelings the Games unlodges inside me, the wide range of rollercoaster emotions it took me through... I'm crazy in love with it, and not falling out anytime soon.

I wish I could live my life like that: going from one Olympics feel-good moment to the next. Yeah, I'm a punk-ette like that (punking out on real life... lol).

The Olympics are the Greatest Games On Earth for a reason... had me crying and motivated and then demotivated (looking at all the guys with their chiselled bodies, and all those girls just carved to a T), and then right back up there again...

I watched a woman win pole vault and keep jumping till she broke her own record because she could and she wanted to...

I watched a Jamaican man-boy become a man right before the world's eyes and watched the world turn into sour grapes gringos about it (Usain to the weerl, taking no prisoners, lol!)

I watched another Jamaican superstar, and a whole team of Jamaican and American relay super-star-ettes get humbled on international cameras and walk off that track like they were still people of colour on a mission...

I watched China get away with "bloody murder" and allegedly underaged athletes... (lol)

And I felt it deeply as once-great heroes fell before my eyes (Ato, you are dead to me), and others took their place (Usain, you are now my heartbeat, lol)

I watched all of this, in the space of nine days, and I'm left breathless and tired and emotionally drained and yet somehow pumped... even though I wasn't there.

I'm now filing the Olympics into that special place where I file all magical or magical-like moments in my life. I now look at it with reverence and deep, solemn respect. I now look forward to the Olympics as another great moment for me (even though Lord knows I ain't no athlete) because the emotional scope it offers is just any sap's dream. And that is exactly what I am: a big ole sap.

I cry for everything. So you know I cried when innocent-looking, fresh, young, first-timer Shelly-Ann Fraser took gold in the women's 100, right? And you know I cried when Sherone and Kerron missed that baton pass and rendered Jamaica gold-less in the 4x100 too? Bawled like a big ole baby, like it was me out there feeling the pressure of an entire nation and breaking...

Yep. I fell in love with Usain and Asafa (well, Asafa was always my baby, and I mean that in the most non-corny way possible, lol). And I fell in love with Veronica and Sherone (no I'm not gay) and Maurice and Chelsea. I fell in love with some Kenyan and Spanish and Russian and Belarusian dudes and chicks I dont even know the names of, and other people from countries whose names I can't even pronounce, and had never heard of before the Olympics and will probably never remember til the next one... They set my heart racing and then slowed it down and then speeded it back up again. For a week and bits, they had me eating out of the palms of their hands, drinking in their every moves... yeah, I fell in crazy, sweet love with the Olympics.

Now I HAVE to be at the next Games. And it's too late to tell me about money for plane fares and lodgings and food and expensive tickets and all that. It's already in my 4-year plan. I have to go see that for myself: up close, cause I need to get drunk like that again, on pure life and adrenaline and sweet non-drug-induced, oxygenic euphoria.

It's the natural high, baby. It's beautiful.

And I'm an unredeemable addict.

Mindless

It's too easy to fall
Into a feeling you fight to forget
Dude has that effect
Discovered my secret, untouched parts
Left fingerprints on my heart...

This by far
the most explosive year
of my short life
pity the poor sap
who's there
to share
when the fuse disappears...

Realising this nasty habit
of denying things
til the very last minute
then it's like freeze-frame
a fifty-second flashback
regret and shame
and little pieces adding up...

I'm not an actress
it's hard to tell lies
can't play mind games
or do deception/disguise
truth is like a haunting wind
constantly whistling in my ears
resonating in corridors of time
palpitating with heart and mind...

Even when little white lies would make my life easier
i still tell the truth...

How do you let love down?

How do you look into the eyes of the people
who support
and believe
unconditionally
and say you've failed?

The anguish
of looking into loving eyes
and reading disappointment...

How do you let love down?

I’m not blessed with the luxury of care-freedom
try as i might
i can't pull that off
i care
i really do
groomed on compliments and congratulations
i've been the star in their crown
was supposed to continue that show…

For things to fall apart now is killing me
Who am I if not who they expect me to be?

How do you let love down?

My Mind In a Minute...

...Can't see dark, menacing clouds or feel cold, bone-shattering breeze, but I feel a storm coming!... this feeling... this ever-present, somewhat subconscious irritation, a dull foreboding, an intuition, a knowing...

...NEED time for pause... need to find the button that puts life on hold... the one that brings everything to a stand-still, kinda tableaux, while you walk around and examine the intricate details of what just happened and what is about to happen... need that button for pause...

...Hard learning, inconvenient truths... the kind that slap you squarely between your eyes with a force that knocks the wind right out of you... leave you sprawled on the ground... floored... Wh-? What just happened?

...You Live, You Learn, You Grow: that's my life's motto... the first thing to slip through my lips when stuff leave me crazily distressed, or strangely elated... Throw 'you laugh' and 'you love' somewhere in there, and you have my life story...

...why do bad things happen?... you LIVE, you LEARN, you GROW...

...'aha!'... a moment of epiphany...