Those Thighs

Sound poem for "those thighs"

Brenda’s got a baby Tupac once hip hop cried

And I remembered the tears that formed in the corners of my eyes

Thoughts a pondering upon young girls vulnerability

And their precious once of a life time virginity

Their world centre is fake love man lust

Legs open wide

To be used and abused

And with an evil plan on his mind

He whispers “…But baby I lurve you…”

As his hand slides up those thighs

Promises of the world with its diamonds and gold

And its blitz and its bling

And its never gonna be a 30 min fling

“…I’ll be by your side you know, for life, you’re my wifey…”

Don’t believe those lies

With false futures foretold of happiness and 

Swimming in a pool of bliss

With the everlasting warm feeling of that butterfly kiss

Wake up realize sterilize those reoccurring thoughts

Young girl you’ve been bought

Sold into the slavery thinking that this is how I ought to be

Everyone is doing it so why cant me

Open those thighs

Following what seems to be the majority

Mind set in one way thinking

Blinking eyes clouded with delusions

Stinking into a pit of confusion

What does it mean to be a young woman?

In a society that boxes you in with no variety

Anxiety builds up as you wonder who the hell am I?

Images bombard your visual perception

Music video bum shaking

Lyrical song sexing

Social networking bra posing

Pretending to be older with the breast push up

Thinking that dinner means a quick feel up

A first kiss is a skirt lift up

And then you just widen those thighs

Breathless faces blind your sight 

Taking you away like a thief in the night

Each featureless face cutting a piece of your heart

Stoned faces camouflaging in your memories

Histories of masked faces blurred into one

Your hearing drowns in the sea of moans and groans

You feel alone cold

Iced in the walls of castle black in game of thrones

As your mind wanders to places unknown

A cyclone of daydreams and regrets for leaving the friend zone

Second hand ticking

Clock watching

Eyes closed to present

Wishing you didn’t open up those thighs

Smiling faces transforms into evil grins of satisfaction

Attractions that once existed no longer taking action

The game has been won

It is done

Until the next man comes to you 

Saying that he loves you after two days of knowing you

Wanting you to be a part of him forever

Adamant that he needs you and believes you to be the one

Like neo in matrix who rescued humanity

You are his savior who brought him out of insanity

Sweet-talking you until he has you like putty in your hand

So you can just open up those thighs

There is more to you then what is in between those thighs

Who you are and who you be is not in the valley of those thighs

Made to perfection were you

Known since in the womb were you

Made in the image of the most high were you

You are internally magnificent

Uniquely designed intended planned considered

Premeditated

You weren’t a mistake

Non-accidental but instrumental

Influential

Significant

You are beautiful

Every patterns of your skin

And character trait equate to something great

Don’t believe the rubbish the world throws at you

It is okay if you just close those thighs...

Psalm 139 - You are wonderfully made and known since in the womb

"Brenda's Got A Baby" (Lyric's only) by Tupac (1991)

"Brendas Got a Baby" (Music Video) by Tupac (1991)

Copyright © 2016 Sonneteer Articulates (aka Traysi Matthew, Traysi Speaks) 

All rights reserved. No portion of this post may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or by otherwise without the express written permission from Sonneteer Articulates (aka Traysi Matthew, Traysi Speaks)

The Colour of Life

Sound poem for "the colour to my life"

Often I wonder what life would be like without You in it

A part of it

Not always there from the start of it

Waking up and not feeling You there in it

The capital L that forms the word life

My life not the same without You in it

A dullness it would be

Gloomy

Void of all things colourful

Murky

Like seeing life through sun shades only

Lonely

Slaved to a world of colour blindness

Dimness

But You have brought the colour to my life

Painted it with a freedom

My chains have been broken

No longer in captivity

I have been set free

You have shaded my life with a love that blows comprehension

I am loved and I know it

So I can walk paths with my head held up high

You have known me since in the womb

And continue to know me as I have grown into maturity

Every cell of my body cries out in thankfulness

I am grateful

I recognise you in my life

Stepping out from darkness into a glorious light

Vibrantly I now see a new richness

That has me enclosed in a spiritual bliss

And like taking the first breath of my life

I feel You in me 

Inhale exhale

You be the air that I breathe that travels through me

Bringing the being into me and making me completely functioning

Like oxygen

I am breathing the goodness that I need

You be the very essence that makes up me

Bringing me back to life

From rebirth all the way to eternity

The colour to my life you be

The colour to my life you be

Copyright © 2016 Sonneteer Articulates (aka Traysi Matthew, Traysi Speaks) 

All rights reserved. No portion of this post may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or by otherwise without the express written permission from Sonneteer Articulates (aka Traysi Matthew, Traysi Speaks)

I am naked

Sound poem for 'I am naked' 

Naked I stand in unashamed celebration of self unabashed barefaced

Pushing up mouth and firming a screw face

Not giving a… to what you think of me

Window gazing me like I be a mannequin wearing something sexy putting it out there for the whole world to see

Google me

Judging me falsely accusing me incorrectly

Dressing me wrongly in black and white stripes

A convict untruly

On trial for embracing every single cell that makes up me

I am naked

Let your eyes examine me searching lustfully

The curve of my hips

The shape of my lips

The thunder steps of my thighs

The place on my collar bone to plant that kiss

The timbre of my voice

The laughter in my gaze

The way my mind thinks and analyse life

The things that make me tick

The brick falling tears in moments of sadness

The way my mouth smiles in times of gladness.

Listen to the rhythms of my heart

It’s the beating African drum sounding through mountains

Feet stamping two-stepping bare feet on dusty grounds

Pot lids clashing symbol bashing sounds

In bed it’s the soft snores harmonising lullabies’

Here is my nakedness

Admire the imperfections that pattern my skin uniquely exclusively

Floral wall papering

Black ink typed on newspaper sheets

Read me

Birthday suited and unhidden by make up places

Spaces of vulnerability I lay bare

Know me truly

Justly question every aspect of me

Assessing my abilities.

Stroking my deficiencies’

Labelling my limitations because society doesn’t understand or accept me

Unloved

Rejected

Impossible to recycle and squash into the box you feel you need to put me

My needs neglected not part of the agenda

Dehumanised into a commodity

An article of trade for you to sell me

Meaningless it seems my life

Ears closed to words that would cut deeply through me

Dividing flesh and bone

If I accept it forcefully

Watch me fly high in the sky

And be someone clothed with an unexplainable greatness   

Doing above and beyond imagined and dreamed

Naked am I

And with it myself brings a butterfly beautiful individual

Internally and emotionally dancing inside me

Loving endless flaws that have haunted my existence

Becoming my eternity

Infinity

Slicing through time aging sharply with me

Becoming me

My blemishes enabling fulfilment and  

Blissfully making me

Embracing those parts unseen by others

Forgotten not by self but knowingly remembering who I be

Look at me and admire my nakedness

Take in every inch of me

And learn to understand me

Shhh.... hear my song

It whispers through the trees and dances on an autumn breeze

It freezes with morning drew and falls with brunt red leaves

It believes and sees the beyond and hopes and expects and captures peace

It sighs 

It pauses 

It murmurs ‘look at me’

Copyright © 2016 Sonneteer Articulates (aka Traysi Matthew, Traysi Speaks) 

All rights reserved. No portion of this post may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or by otherwise without the express written permission from Sonneteer Articulates (aka Traysi Matthew, Traysi Speaks)

Tick Tock

Sound poem for 'tick tock'

I watch the second hand slowly tick tock transforming each second into an hour and I stand still. I am so confused and I wait for the unknown and allow the uncertainties and anxieties to flood me completely clouding my judgement as it consumes me entirely,

I feel like my time is almost up.

That this is the beginning of the end and I close my eyes and see my life flash before me, childhood years merging into teenage tears, 

Glorious rebirth, wedding bells bliss, laughter and baby cries and the endless sighs.

This feels like the end. With someone there in the shadows holding a gun to my head playing Russian roulette with my life like I'm a game board and in-between the trigger being pulled and barrel going bang all I hear is tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

The sentence of my life is all mudded up and the full stop is not where it should be. Surely there is more to me and my life story. Chapters waiting to be written with endless plots and conflicts and me as the main character aiming for my goals.

But I am frozen, not stuck in the realms of make belief of Walt Disney, I am glued into a place for what seems to be an eternity.

And all I want to do is let it go, let it go, let it go...

This feeling  that’s stopping me from being in the place  I know I should be. And each time I try to break free all hear echoing into the hollows of my eardrum is the sounds of tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

For months I have been daily placing a brick in front of me allowing the wall to be built up, it standing about 20 feet tall. A true work of art, I had no idea I was such a great builder. It stops me from going anywhere and does not allow anything to enter in. Nothing is invading my personal world. The wall is my sugar coated comfort zone, a welcoming barrier disabling my ability to make informed decisions. The easy way out that allows me to be in a state of drift, sitting on the fence watching my feet walk down wrong paths unknown.

With each brick that I place the voice of God fades a bit more and a bit more. The time bomb ticks louder ready to blow up the era where I walked with God, talked with God, listened intently with my heart and mind to the words of God.

Before each brick there’s a tick, followed by a tock, before each brick kisses a brick there’s a tick- tock, instead of the sound of stone hitting stone when bricks clash there is the ticking clock and like a comic with sound effects in speech bubbles, the sound effects of my bricks flashes white before me shouting tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock

My secure wall feels so sure right next to me, so close I smell the earthy-ness of each brick and the soil of its birth, flashing me back in time to visions of unknown hands forming each bar. I feel myself becoming one with it, in love with it, intertwined passionately like lovers refusing to part, with it. It is then I discover I’ve allowed it, this wall and the space within to become my world.

Each time I hear tick-tock vibrating in my brain it drives me insane in the membrane. Trapped and internally caged, emotionally imprisoned, I am enraged. I just want to scream like Janet and Michael Jackson trapped in their monochrome spaceship world as the place within the realms of my wall evaporates. Once my protector, the wall circles me like a predator not the one that versus aliens more like the one called Mufust that hunts in strife modem behind the scenes, planning and watching and waiting and lusting.

I’m its prey and its time for me to be devoured, consumed into its acids that will burn my life away. I am trying to run but the wall steals my breath away like a boa constrictor it slides into place and begins to tighten, slowly suffocating my life away.

I close my eyes and let a tear escape in a cry for help, my lips part silently, slowly, dehydration dryness covers each syllable, as I mouth words confidently and fearfully. Help me to break free, I believe.

Copyright © 2016 Sonneteer Articulates (aka Traysi Matthew, Traysi Speaks) 

All rights reserved. No portion of this post may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or by otherwise without the express written permission from Sonneteer Articulates (aka Traysi Matthew, Traysi Speaks)

The Inspiring Ninety-Three Year Old

I left home this morning with my ‘favourite ‘stuff-crap-in-and-go’ bag with laptop and lunch contained, two chatty children glued to my hands, and after days of rain and grey, the sun’s warmth on my cheek. I had a feeling today was going to be a good day. Yesterday I decided to set myself little goals for a week and I plan to do so every week. So I was in an optimistic mood. Kids dropped to school, train caught to Finsbury Park and with a spare hour before my meeting I found a coffee shop. Laptop opened, soya latte steaming, a silent prayer for a productive hour, I entered my writers zone – focused, dedicated, facial expression in a frown.

After about twenty minutes of non stop typing, a zimmer frame slowly pulled up to the table touching mine, followed by an white haired elderly lady in a flowery coat and a waitress carrying her tray. There was plenty of empty tables, why choose mine. She poured out her tea from the small white teapot, took a sip and placed a black notebook onto the table. Now I was curious. She uncapped a fountain pen and opened the book to reveal pages and pages of drawings. She was an artist. I watched her sketch, stealing glances at the black ink on white and her subject – three friends deep in conversation on a nearby table. I was in awe.

Being someone who naturally starts conversations and enjoys having a banter with random people, I had to say something. Besides I was now completely out of the writers zone and a distraction was welcoming. I asked her if I could see her drawing, she smiled at my question. Happy to share, she showed me the other pages inside her book. They were good; scribbled black ink illustrations with smudges to add shading and depth. She told she was an artist and specialised in portraits and she has been doing it for most of her life. Everyday she draws, she’s not as good as she once was, but she preserves remembering how good she use to be and determined to hold onto her craft. She asked me if I could draw, I laughed at that question and said I like to write.

We spoke for a while, exchanging stories and scraps of our life, our families, our passions and motherhood, scattered discussions like pebbles on a beach. She told me she was a great grandmother and mother of four. That she had travelled down from Hertfordshire, boarding the train to Finsbury Park, stopping off for a cup of tea, to then take three buses to the Royal Academy to see some person who’s name she cannot or forgotten to pronounce. She smiled when she said that and I was struck by the youthfulness in her pale blue eyes. I told her how I wanted to be like her when I turn at ninety-three. Her secret, she’s has not stopped living, every morning she puts on her DVD and dances and stretches around the room. She told me you have to keep on moving, both physically and mentally.

I told her my dreams, my poetry, my writing and the book I would love to publish one day. That I struggle with life’s busyness and distractions that sometimes knocks me out of my journey for weeks, months on end, where I do not achieve anything I had wanted too. I think I sighed at this point. Not out of sadness or frustration or guilt, but because I was at that place once again, where I am starting over, again. Despite being slightly tired of it, I was content with being there. She listened, sometimes leaning forward as she was finding it difficult to hear all I was saying. She understood the art of communication, listening without interrupting, she didn’t keep on saying ‘pardon’ but positioned herself to hear better. I liked that.

When I finished she simply told me I have to FIGHT FOR MY TIME. I smiled when she said that. It felt like someone had suddenly switched on a light bulb and I knew exactly what I needed to do. I am a fighter so I know I could do it. It was then I realised she was like an angel, my angel, sent to me to offer encouragement and a kick up the backside to continue my journey. She was the confirmation I needed, too keep on walking the path I was on. I was inspired. She had inspired me. I didn’t ask her name and I didn’t share mine, I think we were just enjoying the conversation and forgot. I quite like the idea of remembering her as the ninety-three year old angel with the zimmer frame. It truly felt like a divine intervention.

We said our goodbyes, I thanked her for the advice and conversation, I held the door open for her to shuffle through and before she walked off she said to me once again ‘you have to FIGHT FOR YOUR TIME’.

Waiting

Sound poem for 'waiting'

Often I look towards you hoping you will be there smiling with crows feet

Eyes sparkling happy to know I am there searching

Shielding sun from my face and allowing the wind to kiss me swiftly

Over the horizons I gaze into distances I stand

Hand shadowing my eyes in a casual salute that's comforting

Expectantly I wait with a secure surety 

I know you will be there

Despite withering and drowning into the realms of ambivalence 

At times falling and sinking the pavement becoming quick sand

I wait for you 

Always you are there watching at a standstill and abiding 

Guarded stiffly ready on full alert 

Demanding respect and attention but especially some acknowledgement

For being there always hidden in the penumbra 

You wait for moments where you offer some guidance and comfort

Assured security you be

You wait

Bringing to remembrance the times when it was clearly you 

That took control intervening appropriately
Working and moving behind the scenes with a mental nimbleness
My supersonic hero
Promptly coming to the rescue 

Bringing to me a deeper insight of things
Or just doing what you do best and defend me in the spiritual
Generally I do not notice at first
But as weeks and months fly by I look back and reflect
Pressing play and rewind
Thankfully it was you that was there waiting
Just for me.

Copyright © 2014 Sonneteer Articulates (aka Traysi Matthew, Traysi Speaks) 

All rights reserved. No portion of this post may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or by otherwise without the express written permission from Sonneteer Articulates (aka Traysi Matthew, Traysi Speaks)

Tea and Park and Me At Eight

A few weeks ago I soaked up the sunny warmth in a park that was my childhood stomping ground.  With a cup of roobis tea in my hand, a book to flick through and be inspired by, I take in, in its entirety, my views of Acton Park (W3, London). I am taken back in time to twenty years ago and I am amazed at how just being here with its sights and smells unlocks files of memories.

This park has a special place in my heart and I can't help but feel a love connection, a type of home sickness that can be described as time sickness. The long summer days spent here when the days just dragged on and on. The soon-to-be-faded photos in 80's colour that sleep in albums creased by too many page turns. The change I have seen over the years with the various landscapes, the removal of dangerous old skool playground equipment for something brighter and new, and the different people that breeze through eventually making Acton their home. 

I miss my childhood years and strangely wish I could relive a day or two; savouring the moment and pushing a new burst of life into a stale memory. I often think about the things I would change about my childhood and there isn't really anything. My childhood made me the person I am today and that isn't one thing I would not want to change. Below is the poem I wrote on this sunny warm day.

I love you Acton Park and I love the childhood memories you bring...

At eight 

consumed in the world of childhood memory
flash backs

I sit quietly and patiently letting them be
Like breathing for the very first time
It's different and seems new this time round
I notice things I haven't seen or felt before
the patterns that gracefully embrace my dress
my socks they are odd, slightly, white knee highs
and I thought I came here with another friend
I had vaguely pictured blond hair not auburn brown

I see me at eight running around 

waving laughing plaits galore dancing smiling in all directions 

uncertain as to which way the hairstyle should flow 

I wave back and say 'Hi' and the eight year old me runs away embarrassed at the interaction
the swings is the place I should be

I sadly remember and yearn to relive my eight year old self
Just for a day or two
or those key moments that are reference points in my time line
I sit and smile to myself
happy with this place
peering into the grassy distance
I see me at eight fading silently away