I Wrote: A Poem

I Wrote
by: Arch Nemesis
© 2009


If tears were ink
To an outsider
My face would appear tatted
And my pillow ruined
But what they don’t know
Is that
I’m writing you a poem in saline
Those were the words I typed him
Typed him
Before
Before
Before I came to my mother lovin senses!
Consensus, please
Why is it that I have to wait
For you to decide if
You want to be with me
Honey see
You knew I was crazy before you met me
Saw ass
Got tail
Now want to play friend
Well honey I don’t sleep with my friends
And you know more of me than I of you
True
But boo
You’re buggin over an email
She mailed you
To which you replied
Didn’t deny
Yes I read
What you said
Told on myself and let you know

Now you automatically go into emotional limbo
When I have the right to place judgment
On your lack of tact to leave it open
On my laptop
And you wouldn’t be concerned with not trusting me
If I didn’t see what you wrote
Which could have me not trusting you
But you flipped script
Got me stressing out over this bullshit
That you got busted in
Thinking that I cant tell that
The only thing stopping you from not being my lover
Is you wondering if benefits come w/ being friends
No
My final answer is
You will only be my friend
You’ll be first hand witness to what you could have had
Nothing worse than tasting perfection
Then watching someone else add too much salt to your plate
I will not continue to feel sorry for what I apologized for
Cant help who I am and you blame me for it
Say you forgive me
To remain distant
Forgiveness is active
Not passive
And this passive aggressive shit is annoying
Thank you for your honesty
But honestly
You talked enough for me to listen
To the bullshit that you tried to convince me as truth
Loved how your parents loved w/o pinpointing reason
Then cant be w/ me after an apology
B/c you’ve got to take time to think things through
Well you thought it through
This is the end
You needed space to think
Which gave me space to see that
You may not be the one for me
You don’t get to decide my fate
Can’t see through my crazy tirades
Temporary blackouts
Couldn’t turn them into kinky trysts and voyeur adventures
Tried to make sense out of purposeful senselessness
While I held who you were
And who you had become
Grew curious as to where I fit in
Never judged
Just dove in and said let time define the space
B/c my understanding of you could be wrong
Me thinking things through
Can only take me to the limits of my experience
And maybe everything about you that annoyed the shit out of me
Was meant to make me grow past my insecurities
See past the previous bullshit issued to me
Or maybe showing affection to you was enough to make me smile
Make me feel I was alive
B/c I have so much to give
But I wasn’t allowed to issue my opinion
You said it yourself
You’re capable of convincing people of things that aren’t true
You’ve done it for years
Well you convinced me that I was something you kind of
Chose to do
And could choose not to do
Like now
By leaving me to wonder was it all even worth it
So here I stand
With so much more to say dangling on my lips
Ready to spew secrets out of spite
But cant
Because I actually cared
And unlike you
I understood that people make mistakes
I forgive
Actively
Besides
Nothing is gonna hurt you more
Than knowing that you can only be my friend from here on out
Now these were the words I wrote
After I smiled at giving up on someone
Who couldn’t make up their mind about actively forgiving me.

Perceptions: A Poem

Perceptions

by: Arch Nemesis

©2009

Perceptions
Are merely deceptions
Assigned to you
Lingering in your eye sight
As if lies like
To play with your emotions
Chasing after tail & feather
When you’re allergic & ticklish
Wondering why you’re shivering
And itching
But I guess
It is all about your perception
Cause from here
It could look like the Harlem Shake
But fool you live in Texas
Keep chasing her or him
Just because you figure
This time
Will be different
Believe me
Leaving the movie on pause
Doesn’t change the ending
It just means
You will pick back up where you left off
On pause
Or making up the ending in your mind
Going against the script
Changing the plot & characters
As if you cant see
That they will never be what you want them to be
Cause their actions
Are hell bent on proving to you that their not.
Stop Watching
Time
As if it is a thief in your store
& you just so happened
To have shape shifted w/ God
Like
It’s destined to stop for you
Like
This life is your command
Make believe them perfect
Instant
Like On Demand
Falsehoods more dangerous than Watts
Where Robin Hood
Steals from reality
And gives to the pathetic
As if
Meter races get extended
And don’t change name
Like
Just because you add a ball to a track runner
It won’t change games
It is all about the depths of your deceptions
Color coded based on a technicality spills in Aisle 5
And you came to clean up
With your own set of solutions
Part Peroxide
1/3 hallucinogenic oxymoron
And 4 quarters full blown lie
Making
Perception
Wearing your mama’s good draws
On a bad day with holey stockings
Trying to show off your best assets
Putting them up on the foreclosure auction block
With no collateral
When your morals got its lien on
In clubs
Holding up walls
Like Jericho is running through your veins
And you
Would rather hold up something not worth holding
Than to love yourself
To prevent your own soul from falling down
But maybe
Through your deception
You gain the altered perception
That maybe,
Just maybe if you save this soul
And succeed
That you will feel you have the strength within
The strength needed to believe
That you were worth it all along
No matter what anyone else said or did
Erasing all of the falsehood perceived within
Getting to the point of understanding
That they need to earn you
Learn to get past the hurt in you
Punish the lies before they baptize truth
But what do I know
I’m just a poet who wrote this poem about you
Standing in the bleachers calling the plays
Because I’m too scared to talk about me
Too afraid to be a player on that same field
Because I am unable to see past the defensive line
Deception preventing me from seeing
That I am only one letter off
From coming to the conclusion
That it is just a defensive lie
My deception
Being projected in your reflection
B/c it’s safe there
But I guess it just all depends
On my
Perception

Morning After

This poem was written the morning after I found out that Stephen Gitu had in fact lied about having a girlfriend. Check out my blog entry called HIV, Maybe for the full story. Who knew that a year and a half later I would come back to use the poem..... I should have gone with my instincts. Enjoy.

Morning After
By: Arch Nemesis

A.M. Hours
A midst the sunrise
Squinted eyes
High expectation
Moral devastations
Mental relays of social commentaries
Questions after
Knowledgably intended for before
Rewind rejected
Fast forward, expected
Getting played,
Detected
Now stop
Focus on the present
Because the truth is
For you
The morning after isn't just a pill
But a reality
And my reality happens to be this game that's in my head
Now it's too late to go back to before we went to bed
Or to fake like it never happened
Expecting more than what it was
And obviously it meant more to me than he because
He
Just shook my hand
Casually
Yet with intent
And I shook his hand back
It was surreal
It was like a hooker's morning exchange
Except with class
Because I owned no nightstand
No dollars pressed into my palm or left on my pillow
Though the aftermath had me preferring such
Because maybe a quantity would signify his judgment of my quality
Yet instead
I got a hand full of life lines
With the possibility of shortening mines
But I said nothing
Trying to play this big girls game in which I had now entered into
And I said nothing
Teetering on the line between hoe and emotional pro
So I still said nothing
Silently loosing count of the cells that are counted for life
Yet I still said nothing
I couldn't
I mean I should have but I guess the look on my face made him reply
And he said
Well I didn't know what else to do
And my thought was
We've passed the line of stranger about 8 hours and 2 Olympic acrobatic stunts ago
And so he leaned in and gave me a kiss
I thought it was forced
A common courtesy to appear nice to me
And I still said nothing
Plastered a smile on my face
Thinking I got what I deserved
A morning after response for the educated woman who took a turn at a not so educated game
And if there was a score being kept then I indeed lost
I should have checked my mate
Collected my $200 and went past go
Hit those shoots and ladders
Closed my eyes as I walked past the candy shop and ignore the urges to end up in candy land
But I now had my battle ship sunk
And he wouldn't be the uno for me
Yet he left me without a clue of how to play my hand
And if this were a game of spades my hand would be written on my face
No ace, no deuce
Just 2 jokers
Staring at each other
With extended hands
Expecting nothing
Since I asked of nothing in the beginning to ensure my safety in the end
Therefore I get nothing in return
But a palm full of life lines
Wondering if their's would end mines

HIV, Maybe

By: Arch Nemesis

If I give it to you plain would you listen
If I told you I slept with guys without protection would you judge me
If I told you that I knew better would my previous statements show it
If I told you that I haven’t gotten tested because I figured my results were God’s way of confirming me Jesus’ kin
Would you condone it
My choice
My choice to remain ignorant
I mean
Its bliss right
But the suffering of not knowing
And yet wanting to know
Doesn’t equal to the amount of bliss I thought I received
It outweighs my days
Interrupts my night
Shuts down all forms of intimacy until God releases me
See
I aint speaking nothing into the universe but my results could say that I have HIV
And nothing else matters
Not how much money I make
Or the truck I drive
How many friends have done me wrong
Or the real reason I cry
See
One night does not equate forfeiting my life
And those dudes aren’t sitting here with me
Or maybe they are
Intertwined in my veins for eternity
And there is nothing I can do about it
But know
And
Just maybe
I don’t want to know
But
I’ve got to know
And what better place to learn a lesson than to teach another at this here show
See
I get scared too
Afraid to broadcast my sins
Yet if this will save another
Then I will gladly go
So
Waiting
Sitting
Standing
Pacing
This here is truth
Wrapped up in my sins
Disguised as my redemption
I’ve got to get tested if for no other reason than to know how long I’ve got to hold my nephews and goddaughters
How long I’ve got to enlighten every inner city kid
How Long I’ve got to thank God for the life that he allowed me to live
Cause I’ve said that I’ll die for much less than this
How can I renig now?
My block aint got ish on this
My Fam aint got ish on this
My Jordans, AINT got ISH ON THIS!
I said I was hard
But turn Snitch Figa the moment my mortality confronts my morality
Shakes in that there foundation
Praying for temporary salvation
And I dare not patronize God with amendments to previous prayers of never sleeping with anyone else until I get married
Just asking Him to let me teach another way
So here I stand,
Your answer key to my test of falling in lust, live, love, fantasy, daydream, and make believe
With guys who I let have the opportunity to infect me
Snitch Figa on the verge of losing my street cred
But it takes a real woman to stand on stage and have her HIV results read
And God’s decree read…….

This Poem was created for an HIV awareness event in D.C. called Seeing Red. I got swabbed while on stage in front of everyone and then waited for the results. I performed this poem and had the nurse walk up and read my results outloud. I was HIV.... Negative. THANK YOU JESUS!!!!

The story is this. I liked this guy a few years back, and I thought he was feeling me. I always saw him hanging around this other chick. I became cool with her but not close. So one night he was over my house and I asked him about her. He said that they were just cool friends. I call her on speaker phone and asked her what was up with her and Stephen Gitu. SHe said they were cool. At that time it didnt dawn on either of us what was really happening. I didnt know that she was a private person and didnt want me to know who she was sleeping with, and she didnt know that I was asking because I was trying to get with him. So.... communication failed. He and I kicked it that night. Protection, but it broke. So, we hung out and then a month later he and I kicked it again after a house party I had. Afterwards he was still too drunk to hold water and his mouth opened and said that he was gonna be in trouble from his girl because he wasnt gonna make it home that night. WHAT THE HELL?!!! His "girl" was my friend who I had asked on the phone. The truth was out. Well two days later I was BURNING!!!!! I mean tears, sitting on the bed, iced veggies between my crotch... horrible. I thought that I had an STD. I never had anything in my life. I called and spoke with my girl and told her what was going on and that she needed to go get tested because he was with me and I was going to get tested too. I went and got tested, shot in the but....

Sidebar: There is this one shot for one of the STDs that gets shot in your butt. It burns like hell and shut my whole entire right side DOWN!!! I was in pain from my hip to my knee cap! That alone was enough to make me want to shoot him in daylight.

Back to the story: So the tests come back. I am HIV Negative, I didnt have an STD, but a really bad yeast infection from the condoms we used. SO I was relieved. I kicked him to the curb and never talked to him again.

Months went by. I started dating this dummy named Reggie. He was diabetic and had to use needles regularly, and he had gotten out of a relationship (this is what he told me). SO I wanted to be responsible... he and I had the adult talk about getting tested together, the consequences such as pregnancies, disease, etc. We both came back negative. But as the months went by.... and his bi-polar girlfriend got released from the hospital for suicide watch.... it came to light that he slept with her two weeks before he slept with me... which made our HIV test null and void because it hadnt been 9 months like he had told me. So I failed again.

Guy three. Hot & cute dude.. I know, a set up for failure. But partying and having fun... we hooked up, unprotected. Sad yet so true. And it was around this time that he and I both revealed our HIV status.. both were negative from our last tests. But..... Stephen was trying to creep back in the picture. He was trying to add me on facebook, talking about " We need to act like grown-ups and let the past be the past" Well since I dont know what rewind looks like any more, I deleted him and ignored all requests. But My homegirl, the one who shared him with Me, she was hit up by his girlfriend who emailed and said that anyone who slept with him needed to go get tested because he broke out with the Shingles and she found out that he had HIV and was going around trying to infect people. I was floored! I know that it has been a year and a half, but it was too close to home now. And shortly after it came to the light that D.C. has the highest HIV/AIDS rate in the country. Not what I needed to hear. I shut down, pushed everyone away and stayed busy. So when this opportunity came for me to perform, I asked if I could get tested on stage and be used as an example. Thankfully I was given another chance...... I cried, people in the audience cried, and the people in the audience who were HIV survivors living with it... breathed a sigh of relief that they didnt have to invite me into their home... it was a stressful yet blessing filled night. I hope you enjoyed my truth.

WTF!!!!!???

Simply put.... WTF????!!!!!!!!!

So, there was this guy that I was kicking it with. From my perspective, we were just Frienefits! There was nothing said up front about why the two of us were even kicking it with one another. HE fit into my schedule. He was busy with Softball and I was busy with my Extracurricular activities. He would come and kick it with me at my spots before Softball Tournaments began and I missed those days, yet understood he had to do what he loved to do. NO prob there. He also has the most adorable lil girl that I have ever laid eyes on. His daughter is sassy personified, and just brilliant. You have no choice but to smile when you see a pic of her. He makes a wonderful father and I know that takes up time too. Coming to think of it... I never even asked for his time. I let him offer it.

I learned the hard way that if someone wants to be around you, then trust they will find a way for the two of you to meet up and kick it without any excuses, despite obstacles, all for the time they want to share. So, when he did come over it was ( and I will take blame here) almost like it was for sex only! I mean even enemies talk, but not us so much. And yet, I still thought that he was a cool kid, a tad bit insecure in himself, yet hella sexy, my ideal guy physically...just not there for me emotionally or attentively. So, sex it was, and sex it stayed.

Side note: He has this obsession or lack of obsession... borderline phobia of kissing. So, he lets me know that. So even during sex I am feeling like a hoe that I have to dodge his mouth when trying to get some passion back from him. I mean even hoes say they will do everything else but wont kiss, and that is what I felt like. The hired help, so to speak. This lack of kissing took me out of a wonderful moment ( did I mention that he is beautifully blessed? if not, well now I did) so it just sucked ( no pun intended) that I couldn't get any passion back from him. SO I take full responsibility for making myself feel like a hoe with a guy who didn't kiss me.

He also doesn't hug, hold hands, or much other affectionate stuff unless we cuddle after sex.....a shocker! I think his cuddling is the most affectionate that he ever gets and I enjoy it. It is just hard to connect with a person who you never, see never talk to, and when you do it isn't much talking, there is no affection there, but rather just pure lust with no point.

So I gave up. I played my part as the frienefit. I made sure I didn't ask for any of his time. I called to return a call as not to take up any of his time. And I went about my business. So, in doing so...going about my business that is.... I made up my mind on a lot of things. Those things being:
1. No more frienefit situations
2. I am not ashamed of this situation.... simply because I learned from it
3. The next person was not going to be faulted
4. I dont return back into history.....so I would move forward after him.

Shortly thereafter I started crushing on a friend of mine who I hang out with all the time but am just now starting to notice him in that way. He is not really my conscious type, but there is something about him that makes me gitty and all girly. So, the new guy has been popping up everywhere that I am (not in a stalker type way, but more like a... I want to kick it with you kind of way) The new person by the way is the guy in my Sexy Nerd Blog. Now, the new guy shows up to an event that I am hosting.. out of the blue. He has never come to this event before. But there he is. So... I make sure I make him feel at home because he came by himself and had a ball. I would walk over too him and wrap my arm around his waist and rub up and down his lower back. He reciprocated in the most gentle and gentleman like way that it made my heart melt.

At one point in the night I actually closed my eyes when he had taken his had off my back for a long period of time, and prayed that he would put it back. And he did....small prayer answered. He offered to buy me a drink, and I would have let him... but I don't have to pay for drinks at this event so I got him a free drink instead because I would have felt guilty for him having to pay for a drink I get for free. Otherwise I would have gladly let him be the guy and get it for me. Hope that didn't backfire. But I got hungry so I went and got a Salmon Caesar salad.... and I fed it to him. I wanted to share..... so I thought, what better way to flirt...than to feed him the food. He embraced me the whole time we stood up near the bar as I fed him. Then we joked about having fish breath. When it was time to go, I left early with him and we separated as he walked me to the metro and he went into the opposite direction.

So, Saturday I am IM-ing the old guy and said, "well since you are in my friends' category for like..uumm.... life, I need your advice. " To which he said okay. Upon relaying the story... the old guy told me that he was jealous that I never fed him!!! Sorry... frienefits don't get the romantic benefits. And I was thinking to myself.... when Was I suppose to have time to feed you again? And over the course of the conversation... I just blew up!!! I was pissed. Where was all of this attention when I was waiting for it? I could care less about time... I know that sounds weird, but I do like attention. An email that says hello... says a whole lot more than 3 hours of talking. Odd, yet so true. The times that we did spend together could have been more memorable if a hug, or a kiss were exchanged.

To which he replies, "if you would have kissed me I wouldn't ave turned away". WTF!!!? Why am I always stuck in these bitch ass situations where the guy leaves it up to me to do everything. If you want to freakin kiss me, BITCH ASS, JUST KISS ME!!! Not calling anyone in particular a bitch ass....just the bitch ass who waits for me to do it. I mean really. I am not one of those pushy girls any more... I dont have the energy or the emotional strength to chase a guy, plus.. I'm not even suppose to. So... if anyone wants me, they have to work for it. And the old guy wasn't making his "like" for me...if that, known so I moved on. And that is how I prepared myself for a wonderful evening with friends.....lol.

I just don't get it, when I am in your face, you don't want me, then the minute that I step away you get jealous (real or faux). But I don't backpedal either.... he can thank the bitch asses before him. I will NOT run after a guy.... Thanks Mr. TN III for teaching me that valuable lesson of stupidity. So, now I can go on to living my life having got that out of my system.