POÈMES

ESPACES LIMITES, IMAGINAIRES INFINIS

Du dehors au dedans, deux mondes, deux moi.
Je passe de l’extérieur, espace de productivité qui oppresse les impossibilités, à mon intérieur limité où je créé du possible.

À force, je connais les détails des coins de chaque pièce, les défauts du parquet, le grincement particulier de chaque porte, le décor devient routinier.
Je regarde par la fenêtre ouverte, plié.e au fond du canapé.
J’envie alors le dehors, j’envie les libertés.

J’envie les espaces non colonisés

Où les arbres dansent avec le vent, les oiseaux chantent en fonction du temps, et où les fols comme moi perdent leur tête dans les nuages.

Mon intérieur, lui, n’est qu’une zone de survie, limite. Je me réfugies dans les murs, dans ma tête.
Mais à mesure, je disparaît, je m’efface et je finirai par n’avoir jamais existé.
J’envie les zones de vie loin de la violence des villes.
Mais le désir de fuir se tasse dès que je ressasse mes impossibilités.
Alors, je ne fait que rêver d’infini dans des espaces limités.
Voyages imaginaires, évasions fictives. Je vis des libertés irréelles si chaotiques et si tranquilles. Un jour, j’ouvrirai les yeux et je ferais face à une nature folle. Mirage ou réalité, peut importe, j’y resterais.

TOO MAD TO BE RATIONAL

All my life I’ve been afraid of madness

And since a young age I’ve been looking for rationality like a mother figure to cling to.

I wanted to look rational, talk rational, walk, dress, laugh, cry, stand rational.

Anything but madness.

I didn’t want to be like my mother, locked up in one of those cold clinics, deprived of freedom for decade while her babies grew up.

I wanted my work, relationships, dreams, hobbies to be rational.

I wanted to escape irrationality at all costs.

My dreams were made of

Rationality

Normativity

Whiteness

Without it I would be screwed,

I would be sad, I would be alone, I would be locked,

I would be lost, I would be mad, I would be just like…

I needed rationality at all times as a way to ward off my hereditary fate.

Inaccessible, I would get lost trying to reach it.

I would become what I have always been, what I have always feared:

Crazy.

All this time, rationality had taken me away from myself, away from the world and from my sensibility.

I dug in the depths of madness and found a truth : white rationality is the only thing that makes black people lose their mind.

I’m not afraid anymore, I’m mad.

STAY BLACK

To become white, I have to remove a part of myself, I have to erase, I have to hide, I have to silenced. Because that is what whiteness is : nothingness.

So for me to be integrated, I must first disintegrate.

Let everything in me decrease :

The sound of my voice, the shade of my dense and insolent skin, the volume of my hair tirelessly defying gravity, the rage which keeps me alive, my overflowing gender, my disproportionate body, my irrational dreams, my hopes, my spontaneity, my rebellious soul.

To become white I must abandon all of my singularities

Becoming a pale copy of myself.

Translucent

Invisible

Silent

Static

I will undoubtedly end up disappearing.

To become white — which I never wanted — the only way is to transcend myself

To annihilate what I know is true.

But every time I will make a mistake

It will resurface

Culprit of all evils

Blackness, my blackness, our blackness

wild

animal

demonic

frightening

mediocre, infernal.

If that’s how some see it, it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t scare me.

Because on the dark side, I hear a call that sounds like freedom.

BLACK STAR

Every detail of your being

reminds me that we are children of the universe

made from stardust.

You shine, you dazzle me

and I pray that the light you draw from the sun never fades.

Cause in a chaotic sky

where time and space lose all meaning

you will always remain

the glow that I seek to find my way.