Self Love #1

I, once, purposely lost myself, leaving clues in detailed caligraphy for a man to follow perfumed with the smell of US in afterglow...because I did not want to find me, boring, alone, ugly. Clues I followed, though, through tears, gentle smiles, apologies spoken to shards of broken mirrors to find a self I constructed for another to find...attractive. The journey led me to me and I disproved the destinations' findings.

I have spent time, like it is not a recession, on other people's dreams, listening to their fears, massaging their broken hearts; and their accounts are full with not a dime to spare for this brotha...NO MORE!

I want to know the intonations of my laugh, the depths of my dimples. I have learned the color of my love, paprika, and the names of some past lives, Jimmy, Edna.

Before I painted on canvases with selected colors, quiet pastels from my minister parents to keep things wholesome, simple watercolors to be erased by the academy. Now, I finally own rich hued oils to paint my white picket dreams with some acrylics left over in case I need to add some thing.


I understand all my jokes. I love all my favorite songs. I love my body even when it may be adorned in an unfavorable outfit. I have been there for myself not all nineteen years, but a good majority. I can bring myself to climax. I am perfect enough for me, and everything I need.

I love me.

http://twitter.com/uphii I change it every so often, but this one is STICKING!!!

-Marcus "Marz" B,

Travlin' Light

Interacting with my parents now is amazingly refreshing. All three of us are adults, with our own bills, beliefs, God we pray to, and the only thing we have in common is my childhood. They wonder the road they paved. I laugh knowing my detours along the way. My sister looked so pretty in her prom dress. I changed my outfit because momma asked me to, before she asked me to clean the kitchen, change the curtain rods, catch the cat and hold him hostage in the basement, set a table, find some gospel music to play in the house.

DISCLAIMER: "GOD IS LOVE" BY MARVIN GAYE AND "JESUS IS WAITING" BY AL GREEN IS NOT GOSPEL!!!!

or so they say...my spirit grew weary of singing like a slave years ago, especially after finding freedom from religious bondage. 

I danced when no one was dancing. I jumped and marveled at being a few feet closer to the sun, to God. I laughed when no one understood what was funny, didn't I know I was going to hell for wearing high waisted girl pants? 

We've both grown together, separately. He was the first male to find me attractive at fifteen, and I'm jealous he took the virginity... and perturbed I didn't give him others. I know he wold leave me with a bad hairstyle, twenty unnecessary pounds, poor credit, but I want to KNOW!

We've both grown together, separately. She has a boyfriend now, and walks around with a Parallel Bible. She secretly wants my approval. I now give it freely.

past midnight

Every ghetto every city, Philadelphia is Bedstuy with fewer street lights and more trash, more trade and angrier tears. As the kale greens simmer with chili powder, garlic, brown mustard, and sea salt I bite my lip wishing there was a cute boy to see me bite my lip and decide to relieve my teeth's night post. 

You don't realize how big your dick is until you start having sex with other men. A year ago, I was a virgin. Soon, I wonder will I long to fill my bed with warm brown bodies that remember my name because it has two syllables opposed to the man they had the night before with four- D'Angelo. Sometimes I wonder what the weather will be the day I decide to become a bitter black gay man, I hope it's sunny with light cirrus clouds and a fragrant breeze. I have a knack for attracting the rich ones, almost went to Paris, but I opened my mouth when he was flaccid and he didn't like the words that ejaculated hot and sticky, burning his face; and, didn't sound like his name... 

I long to laugh with children, walk runways, dance naked, eat grapefruits in a field planting the seeds, write my love with my tongue across the thighs of several brown deserving men.

I used to pray to be beautiful, I pray that others realize their beauty now. 

The sweet potatoes are done now.

Love. Peace. Afrogrease.

twitter.com/QueeNiggeratti FOLLOW ME!

AMAZING!!

-Marcus "Marz" B.

Whispers to God for a Past Lover.

I knew I could never love you because you did not love yourself. I fell in love with the idea of you loving yourself and realizing it was a reflection of me. You had 56 years of bad luck prior from the mirrors you left shattered. Words like bricks you beamed at my head, so fast I was too smart to realize you never wanted to look in that mirror.

Yet, I stood, erect waiting you would see my brown skin, my masked smiles, my pained eyes filled with visions, my words exposing the dreams I had when I slept alone, with you in my bed.

Age 10: "Mom, There's this boy that likes me in class, and I like him back".
Mom: "Marcus, you leave that boy alone and keep focused on your school work".

Age 14:"I'm gay"
Dad:"Pray, and stay focused on your schoolwork, you're really good at that Spanish, stay focused".

Age 16:"Yes, I'm a homosexual".
Mom: "One day a girl will find you attractive. Just keep praying and focus on your schoolwork"


Just keep praying and focus on your schoolworkJust keep praying and focus on your schoolworkJust keep praying and focus on your schoolworkJust keep praying and focus on your schoolworkJust keep praying and focus on your schoolworkJust keep praying and focus on your schoolworkJust keep praying and focus on your schoolworkJust keep praying and focus on your schoolwork...The day I stopped praying to a God in heaven, and to the God in me, and put down my books I was able to find you.

I told myself we could remain friends. I wanted to hold onto that feeling of love I told myself I'd always have, but it was fleeting like your ambrosial scents, your self reminders you were bisexual, me remembering why I liked you in the first place-the things I knew I could possess if I read the correct book.

The day you left I prayed.

-Marcus "Marz" B.

Grown

Strolling Bedstuy streets, searching for that third high, the first and second lacked the passion to incite me to climax, rising action meeting falling action. The books on my shelf mock me, and I mock them back.


Books: "You thought you were going to be a professor and graduate from college".
Me: "You think I'm going to read you today."


Armed with almonds, the Holy Qu'ran, Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars, a smile, a prayer, and a semi- erect penis I charge the day and it runs away from me as we play tag. I laugh in between sips of my white wine sprinkled with cinnamon. My past used to be so present as if it were my future, it's where it needs to be now. I need to find my future, I get to create it, or so they say.

They-Say Vision - Res

They say adulthood is difficult, it's just childhood in drag, when it gets to scary I make a scary face at it.


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-Marcus "Marz" B.

Untitled

“Spare the rod, spoil the child,” my grandmother would bellow every Sunday standing at the podium on the elevated violet pulpit that separated her from the congregation. My grandmother was also my pastor, and she was giving another one of her “fire and brimstone” sermons that condemned everyone in the congregation to eternal damnation. Everyone was branded with a Scarlet letter, from Adultery to Masturbation, to Worrying. She had just admonished everyone to, “ live right because Jesus is coming back any second now. You don’t want him to come back and you’re sinning.” With that message out of the way, she began to quote various scriptures that seemed to come from a bible she created, because I could never find these scriptures in Ezekiel or Thessalonians. “A liar will not tarry in his sight,” and “God said repent,” were two other scriptures she quoted frequently from the book of Catherine. Although my grandmothers’ words did not make the canon, they were still scribbled fastidiously in the notebooks of the fervent churchgoers of Deliverance House of God Prayer for All People right under John 3:16 and a theological analysis of Psalms 23. My grandmother may have not been John the Baptist, but she raised eight successful children; and John, knew nothing about that subject.
*
The first memories I have of my father are of him beating me. Every morning I would wake to the sun shining across my face, and I would stare at the roof of the small apartment. I had been potty trained at eight months, but I would never go to the toilet--at least, not in the bathroom. My dad turned all the lights out and told me the devil would get me if I got out of the bed. Jumping out of my bed, because my crib was forfeited to my baby sister who needed it more than I did, I would strip the mattress of the wet sheet. After running across the floor, tiptoeing past my parent’s room , and depositing the sheet into the laundry basket, I would think I was safe. One day I wasn’t; I turned around and there he was, a giant against my feeble frame. “What were you doing?” “Nothing,” I answered innocently. I followed his gaze to my briefs. “Go lay on the bed and take off your wet drawers,” he said firmly. I ran to the bed to remove my underwear and lie face down into the mattress, making sure not to hit the wet part. Every part would soon become the wet part from my tears. Didn’t he realize it was only once this week? I can’t hold it long enough for the devil to leave the apartment. Why couldn’t I be good? “Shut up all them tears,” I would hear from the next room, and the jingle of the belt prong hitting the buckle. My butt cheeks would clench, and the floor would creak, and I would see his shadow grow along the white wall looking like the devil of the day time. As his shadow shrunk in size, it retained its grotesque shape, and my fear grew larger.
I would scream, stomp in place as if running away, grab for the belt, regret it when my knuckles were hit and he would scream, “now you’re going to get more for trying to grab the belt,” and wonder when it would be over. Then the belt would drop one end of the belt and hold the other in his hand. I refused to look at him, and the metal would jangle and every so often it would hit the side of my thigh. The cool metal against the fire burning on my skin would break the wall I rebuilt daily to contain my hatred for my father. Daddy didn’t do it though, I did this and it was I whom I hated.
*
My father has always had a vast belt collection. They all looked the same to me, I only know their difference from the way they feel across my skin. Throughout the years he began to play this cruel game whenever I did something wrong I had to choose which belt he would use to beat me. Standing at the closet with over thirty belts hanging in the old pine closet next to his suits and ties, my heart would start to palpitate. I would feel the leather and rub my finger along the material. I would feel how thick the belt was, take it down and see how heavy it felt in my hands. After filtering my options down to two belts I would bring the end of the belt to the buckle the same way my father would minutes from my selection. I would hit my arm with the belt. This one didn’t hurt as much as that one. I’m going to choose this one. My father had a way of making this one feel like that one, and every one.
*
Through the moonlit valley of the shadow of death I sleep walk wide awake. Intentions pure the devil stays at bay. The shadows are mine, and they leave behind my childhood. I am a man. Daddy thought mommy was me and tried to hit her with a belt. He realized she wasn’t me and dropped the belt, his fist would suffice. Mommy forgot daddy was daddy and used her fist to grab a knife. He don’t live here no more. His void can only be filled by me, I am the only other male in this house. Mommy needs someone to hold her. Climbing into the bed beside my mother a new life begins, a life as a man.
*
I hated the way my sister would yell when she got beat. I would scream Jesus repeatedly, and my father would yell back, “ You shoulda been saying Jesus when you did what you did.” My sister expressed her pain with screams that disturbed my soul. Screams like those of my mother. She would constantly break things and hide them, poorly. When my father would fin the broken item he would ask us both who broke it. I didn’t break it. Sometimes, I did break the thing, but I would reassemble the shattered object. For ten minutes he would ask who broke the object, and we’d both plead innocent. He’d then decide that he would beat us both. She would start crying, and I would roll my eyes. I don’t want to hear her screams, they made me feel like I was being beat. “I broke it,” I’d say heroically. “Now, you’re going to get more for lying”.
*
“Someone called me up the other day talking about their child called DHS on them. She wanted to beat her child all over the place with a switch. If you’re going to beat your children you either get a ruler and beat them on their knuckles, or you get a belt and hit them buttocks. All that running, hooping, and hollering is too much for me, especially in my old age. Tell them the more they run the more you‘re going to hit them. Bend them over a chair or the bed, and hit them until the Lord tells you to stop. The Lord will tell you how many times they need to be hit. Any more than what Jesus says is abuse. Children,” Grandma Pastor would turn to the children section of the congregation looming over the podium, “ you call DHS if you want to. I told my children, ’call DHS if you want and tell them to take your little sister too‘. If the state thinks they can do a better job of raising my children than they should have them. Don’t let these children scare you into not beating them with DHS.”
*
“I’m going to call DHS on you,” I screamed at my mother. She grabbed the yellow book and telephone. “ Here is the number, when you get done go pack your bags and be a good orphan” she said as she walked away briskly. Her nonchalance disturbed me to my soul. I put the phone down, and picked up the sponge to scrub the floors instead of just mopping as requested.
*
My father never said he loved me. He would take me on long car drives and he would rub my head, and that’s how I knew I was loved. The affection I felt and the privacy we shared on that car ride. Today, is extremely difficult for my father. He is an ordained minister, and decided to preside over his father’s funeral. He is in the middle of the eulogy and trying to remember all the good times he shared with his father- they are few. He hated his father., but still visited him in the hospital every Wednesday for several years. Grandpa had an advanced diabetes. He had to have both his legs amputated, and continued to drink Pepsi and eat gluttonously. He was a charmer and was able to get the nurses at the hospital to bring him ham and other delicacies to his hospital room. Grandpa was verbally and physically abusive to his entire family. He beat my grandmother Thelma in the head with glass plates, and cheated on her repeatedly. She recounts him as, “the biggest whore this side of Broad Street.” My father experienced overwhelming abuse from my grandfather. He was always confused why he had to be punished while his older brother, Daniel, went without reprimand for all his devious actions. My father discovered when he was 21 that Grandpa was not Daniel’s father.
*
I’m standing in the kitchen, hugging myself. My mother joins my embrace seconds later. “I didn’t even do anything, “ I utter confused. “ I know,” my mother offered trying to soothe me, “I know. Your father just has to learn to stop taking his issues out on you. He sees his father and he sees himself, and he sees you, and he can‘t handle it.” Ten minutes ago, I stood in the hallway telling my father why my science project wasn’t finished. He pulled his belt off accusing me of lying and wondering why I was always being bad. He brought the belt into the air, and struck me in the face. The belt struck my cheeks, then the back of my head. He hit my glasses pushing them back and the nose pieces scratched the sides of my nose, and eventually breaking them. My mother yelled hysterics in the background, as I recoiled from each blow to my face. “Go downstairs and get your project done.” My legs shook from all the nerves rushing over my body, and my synapses danced and erupted with confusion. My father lifted the belt once more, and they all understood to go down the stairs. My science project almost won the state championship.
*
“I beat you because I love you,” my father said to me one time as we drove to church. “You don’t understand in this world as a black man the trials you are going to encounter, yet. I am trying to prepare you to be able to succeed and ensure that you know the right way to go. I’d rather I beat you down than the police beat you down. They don’t love you nor care about you. They’ll shoot you and frame you and the paper will laud them for ridding the world of another one of us. So, be good and I won’t have to use this anymore.” He grabbed his black leather belt as the car came to a halt in the church driveway. The gold buckle reflected the sunlight into my eyes, as he rubbed my head. “I love you.”

P.S. I have been writing three times a week, just not posting. I am beginning to remember things that I told myself to forget...

-Marz

Sticks, Stones, and Glass Houses

If I were not gay, I would be too Afro-centric. If I invested in white supremacy and did not speak of that “slavery stuff“, I would still be in New York. If I lived in Philadelphia, I still am not studying (insert profitable major) and theology. If I was studying (insert profitable major), I would still be learning about the corruption of the world. If I was not socially conscious, I would still be a Muslim; because, I have chosen not to consume pork. If I were a devout Christian, I still am not married. If I was married I still do not have children. If I had children, a wife, worshipped White Male Jesus at a tabernacle, only read the bible, studied law and theology, and lived dumbfounded in the phantasmagoria of our culture I would be perfect. If I was perfect I would be able to fit into the perfect family, the one to which I was born.

My parents speak of others. They speak of the neighbors’ marriage, Sister Johnson’s children, Judge Maybelline, Oprah, Tyra, who is going to hell, and what they are doing to erase their name from the book of life. They are perfect. They live in a glass house in which they walk around naked. Those on the outside stare in with awe at the carpet arrangements and the sanctity of their marriage. A family so nuclear, pedestrians wait for the explosion.-it will never come, because my parents are perfect.

Bricks with, ”FAGGOT!” sprawled across them crash through the walls, and my parents cry out to WHITE MALE JESUS for forgiveness. I am their Jonah to bear. I sit and watch as the house begins to shatter and fresh air begins to flow through. I can breathe. My hands are cut from cleaning the ceiling I broke. My hands are covered with blood. My hands are trying to carry the weight of the bricks up to my glass room; hopefully, the floor will not collapse into the kitchen. I was once afraid that brick would one day strike me. The scars from being struck before are indented into my soul.

In the glass house, exists a perfect version of me. I loathe interaction with this boy because in his presence I am repulsive. My skin is too dark, hips too wide, penis too small, dimples too deep, actions too callow, words too infantile, nature too base, thoughts too perverse, soul too evil. I confront the perfect me every time I converse with my mother or father. They converse with him as I stand cloaked in black cotton. “Is the devil in the house of the glass people?” asks a persistent onlooker. I have been asked to stay behind the bricks I have collected in my room. I will be invisible and can frolic in the darkness.

Dried platelets and hemoglobin on my genitalia. I long to take these clothes off, expose myself to myself. I realize my perfection is afraid of imperfection. My existence condemns him and he needs adulation to survive. I am ominous. I wish to warn him. He has only barely escaped. I remember one day I was hit with a brick, no walls to break its impact, to ricochet its direction. I was hit from a close range and given the foundation of my wall; that was the day I shattered to pieces and a wind blew me into the sea.

P.S. I would like to thank all the people who voted me Best Teen Blog for the third year in a row. (MUAHZ!)

-Marz