Here be no Models*
I am the nudity that slithers shortly before dawn because NEPA did not bring light and everywhere is hot.
I am poetry that won’t let you sit still. My rhythm draws blood with each line, until you are hot and shivering.
I am the mosquito’s hum.
I am the impromptu Braille around your neck. Touch me here, feel my bumps, and read my discomfort.
I am the crawcraw of the neck.
And when the baby cries, let your tired breasts slap wetly against his face. For his nourishment is free, while you yet live.
On the Day of the Supplementary weaning, flirt cautiously with the idea of Cerelac, knowing that this is nothing but an akamu baby.
This one shall grow to be stunted in body. A grievous harm, indeed, but the most tragic shall be the stunting of his mind.
Men shall, in words and in action, keep him tethered to his station, and he shall be reprimanded, overtly or accidentally, for ambition.
But if he should shrug off the shackles, and perchance, free himself, he shall be lost. Here be no models, no mavericks, only docile cows.
I observe all.
I am the intangible, yet very present and formidable societal unfairness. I am the gun which the privileged jump.
I am the head-start. I am the quicksand you were born in. I am the one who holds the pillow to the face of aspiration by midnight.
I am the reason for the creases in your face, the grumble in your stomach, your suppressed, silent, futile, rumbling and ever-present rage.
I am your father. I am his father before him. You’ll be no more, your story truncated. But I will be with your children, and their children.
I am the reason milk is sold in sachets.
I am the reason the churches are full and bellies empty.
I am the crib death. I am a weary sigh.
When you escape me — if you escape me — I am network, the cabal, the conduit into the belly of the beast.
I am avarice. I am wobbly chins.
I am the reason that you flavor your sweat with something by Prada. On nights when you walk down memory lane, I am the reason you forget.
I am the cosmic imbalance. I am the weight on Atlas’ shoulder, and the wings on Pegasus’ back.
I am for certain, you are the probability.
I am your father, and his father before him. I am you, your children, and their children after them.
I am everything. You are nothing.
— — — -
*[This is a reproduction of a thread I made in 2016 which struck something in me, this evening.]
