Aida Rends

babble on paths

do you want to be rich
or have a habitable earth?
do you want to be famous
or have air to breathe
choose choose choose choose

bob marley say
revelation is revolution
reveals the truth 
say choose choose

do you want the five eyes
to starve so you can thrive?
do you want your sisters
dead or alive 
choose choose choose choose

this is love this is love this is love

I’m a messy girl in a messy room. To be fair, I live in a very messy country. Place. I don’t like to say country. Gives this place too much credit. This place could change, and become a country. A nation of nations to redeem the land and the people. Just like I could clean my room.

I walk around but I can never seem to take the same path. What is that? I’m distracted. I walk around but I go a different way. Cul-de-sac. Palm tree. Broken bottle. I go a different way.

It must be so hard to be a parent, especially now. Like, aren’t you scared? I think a lot of people are, kid or not. I know I am.

I question happy endings. Endings more than happiness. What in human/geo/astro time tells us that anything ever ends? There are more beginnings than endings. Where a river ends it also begins.

The Human Zoos of Modernity

Greetings! Following the writing of Dionne Brand in The Blue Clerk, I recently wrote a piece about the human zoos of modernity for the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law and Justice (where I’m an articles editor). Click the link here to read Part I. Parts II and III will be coming out later this week.

here come the coyote

here come the coyote
down the mountainside
here come the coyote
see them stride

here come the coyote 
down the little hill
here come the coyote
see how they chill

see how they play 
in the past or today
mirrors of our future past
coyote is really a gas

coyote is really a scream
awoooioooiooiooooooo
see what i mean?

short shanty

i started taking no thing for granted
gee how my life has loosened up!
perhaps my first view was slanted
yr wiser when yr not a pup!

first try tang poem in honor of june jordan

tree can mulch bird swing
coyote bottle seat word wing
car kick squack sky snatch
lighter fluid good-bye catch

sunset blvd east

i wanna be adored
by multiple niggas
at the same time
next question.

feeling alive
never crossed 
my mind
now that you ask

only two more stops
three more flights
five more mouths to 
feed and then BED

the stupid yellow 
string isn’t working
the stupid yellow 
string isn’t working 

hm hmm. hm
hm hm uh uh
spider bite tree 
apple sauce flee

8 pm already 
god damn god damn
viet nam HOT DAMN
pancakes for dinner

letter to a friend #2

I see you at the grocery store the other day, give you a hug and kiss and you tell me that you miss me. Finally, I have the courage to tell myself that I don’t believe you. The fact is, we are not good for each other and never have been. And maybe you are scared of me, and perhaps I deserve it, but for better or for worse I am finally putting this love down.

canstand

can't stand
manufacture of
hand make
with the
hand maid

so go
some place
new to
feel real
a gain

can stand
make model
of you
in youth
can stand
to make
tippie toes