the tuna thickness bolts the drain.

The fat they tie me with; gelatine cobblestones.

They hang me high, my limbs will sink.

I cannot unearth their Achilles heels.

I am one in four limbs.

Conduit of mirror planes,

I hold brute truths on my head.

They descaled the tuna as it shook.

They run far to bruise my jelly walls.

They compile my faults in shadows.

I am rained on by ceilings.

Lute of my anthem must sing.

I drop what the fisherman brought.

My heart is open, humbled flesh.

Turns brown at the echo of sin.

Lately I feel a compulsion of meteoric magnitude. I am completely overtaken by a need to senselessly express myself. I’ve been buzzing for years in secret. I am reaching my limit. I will sleep and lustfully write; just like my lineage intended. I come from an incredibly deep lineage of strong mystical women on my matriarchal side and a founding Mayor on my father’s side.

Being peculiar is enviable and I have dealt with all the wrath of plain personalities that would come ready to tame me with whips of shame. Ruthless anger I could never unravel and understand.

I am almost reborn. I don’t think there is anything cryptic about me but people seem confused by what exactly I think. Maybe that’s because they are subtly attempting to force a perspective that does not exist; they cannot see beyond their unconscious prejudice because I am too visibly Black and too visibly a woman. I occasionally pierce their walls of assumption through radical authenticity. I haven’t felt safe to express myself aside from when I have been alone. There are always people waiting with their staplers to attach me to a bulletin board. Compartmentalise me into a project, a puzzle of sorts.

I am Grace. Call me as such.

There is nothing exceptional about me. I live and breathe and that is as important as my existence gets.

I have not manufactured myself and I have been forged by suffering and pain and sorrow. I was a very sad person and I spent a year in total isolation forging a fire within myself.

I do not want to be labeled but I have given myself notes of artistry and authorship. I am neither. I am Grace.

Alas I’m dipped, purple fusion of stars.

Purple moons.

I diluted my ink, smoothed my grain and learnt to rest in empty vacuum.

purple supernovas.

Purple meteors that I float and sing on.

I sing a song of distant wallowing, my nectar tastes of twisted purity.

I collaborate with the hands of mystery, forthcoming my disputed fate.

Still, my soul is certain of this purple shade.

The purple that melts into my deepened, darkened skin.

blinding ideas, weaving boredom.

matted pearls and opaque crystals.

boats of nothingness, seas of blanch.

chalky lanes, screeching silence.

trekking, scavenging deeper for your wash.

Now you are engulfed in obscurity.

Peels of The Fundamental.

Coated, coats, coating your pupil down to the lens.

No indefinite continued progress of existence.

Etiolated space.

De-colourised thoughts.

Spiralling purity.

A bloat of insanity.

Fibres and branches of albinism.

Silky braille.

Tallied scores of nature.

Vandalised stability.

The shades of empathy.

I cross blades of breath in depth, I swim waves of mystic bubble.

Go call on your science fiction, let me buzz in psychic space.

Crumble all your crusts of bread, let the bones dance again.

CRUMBLE ALL YOUR CRUSTS OF BREAD, SO THE BONES GO ON AGAIN.

Nameless saints can touch the light, will all beads be dropped again?

Will the jars be kept away?

Are you sure we feel the same?

Do our hearts contract the same?

Our minds will grieve again, the loss of souls around.

Oh I have kissed the sparks of air.

Is strangeness seeing what isn’t there?

The being parade and flood the earth, above they stomp; exalting the very thing you’ve cursed.

Here goes the song on my skin, the touch of Life and I listen on.

The trumpet has blown and so we rise.

I will walk with you, just hold me.

I fly enveloped in your arms.

I dissipate in The Outstretched hands.

I die to be reborn a wave of pulse.

I am carved to be seen in layers.

I fold to return to womb.

Carry on with the outside lens, watch its mirror blur. Soon you run up vanishing steps to fall back into yourself. Beaks of birds hum your sound, the real world lies inside.

Deep and vast, Dhamma ploughs.

Heaving platitudes of doubt but magic pixelates around me.

Cloaked in disappearing rays, the clouds I poke through.

Cloaked in magnitudes beyond words, the veils I see through.

Shell shocked trembling hands, announce bare Truth.

Auspicious presence preludes my next step.

My next move in stillness folds.

My next body is one inhale away.

I See, I Feel.

Jousts of visions buzzing through, muddy feet in blessings of rain.

I am cracked at the moulding seed, lying flat in the operation theatre.

The Yods move in artistry,

I weep with grace.

Azur is alive again.

My breath is saved again.

Not done, not finished, not done.

My projection accelerated, this is not about leeches, this is about Us.

Pseudo forces all around us,

Is strangeness feeling what isn’t there?

I stretch my hands.

I know for a fact that many physicists I have met contain tremendous creative power and many scientists consider their personal artistic rituals to be “trifles” ( to quote Hans Christian Andersen). I want to share how the study of Quantum Mechanics in my second year awakened a fire absolutely interconnected to whatever drives me to write. I don’t write as much as I used to, instead I feel first to write. Many people would not think of the study of Quantum Mechanics as a somatic experience technique.

To truly understand what is really being studied in this field we have to go back to my time at Vipassana. At just 19 years old, I flew across the world (from Europe to Africa to be precise), to experience a silent meditation retreat. Having had no idea what it would bring, I left thinking I’d be met with utter zen…only to experience a rude awakening. At this retreat I believe I experienced true physics. I learnt the practice of observing reality as it is.

There is an unspoken rule amongst Vipassana meditators where it’s best to not share too much until the person can experience it for themselves; this is because it is incredibly difficult to describe the experience of your mind constructing your reality in real time.

To feel pain and to feel it vanish in just an instant without reacting is incredibly difficult in practice. That very experience inspired the line “there’s pulse beneath pain” from my poem ‘It Will Rain Loaves’ . The layers of reality slip ever so slightly once you mentally detach yourself from your own suffering. Even observing reality as a human is nearly impossible to do without reacting in some way and therefore affecting reality according to your reactions. In quantum mechanics, we can deduce this as the collapse of the wavefunction. Mathematical derivations aside; we cannot exactly calculate a guaranteed outcome from a single measurement…we deal with probabilities. When a measuring device interacts with a quantum system, its wavefunction (all the mathematical information we have on that quantum system) collapses into one specific measurable reality. It’s like trying to unzip a folder on a computer full of infinite files and only retrieving one.

You can make your own conclusions as to what that means for our reality as humans. I like to think of it as a deeply intricate mystery that is not necessarily meant to be uncovered. That being said; there are tiny pieces of reality that are worth paying attention to on the tiniest most miniscule scales. Just as a painter maps out every stroke, why can’t I approach a science as pragmatic as physics through an artistic lens? Who is to say that life itself is not the medium of a physicist?

Share