it’s fall 2019, and
spring, now rings surreal.
I know you been feeling yo self in this late august heat,
thinking you sweet for starting the story of a life-time,
yo life, line-by-line, typing away, a sorta wayward prayer, a dodging,
hodgepodging bullet points in this baits ii joint into yo journal,
each line an instance of divine rhyming, right timing,
the proper priming in proper place in space.
you speak, so often, of greetings face-to-face, and now
(in ‘22 at 21) many of these names included have begun to elude me,
I suppose, I shoulda concluded back then,
that them friendships,
freshly formed,
could not manage,
would not weather the storms,
the staggering detriments of time unwinding,
unraveling, you write the exciting (a reach..) climaxing social events,
not venting as you’ll surely do in years latter,
but merely mentioning the days’ matter(s)
as nobody on north campus,
you harmonize yo hippocampus—re-aligning,
re-minding yo mind in each line,
attuning to true north,
yo self-worth put forth by putting print finger to phone screen,
you fear yo notes app appears the lone,
literary love of yo life in isolation,
dense in desperation, immensely
wanting to be seen,
wanting to be
wanted,
to be Black,
back home,
untampered,
and veiled,
and now, sailed ships,
shoulda-woulda-couldas,
and slammed doors do come to mind as you
hammer in the nails of happy-never-after.
this was before, you knew who you were, and
before you knew who you were,
both, which now, at best, be a blur,
but at the beginning, I do believe
you was fiending, forreal, so forlorn,
for friends, for favor, forfeiting flavor,
forfeiting taste…
yet soon you savor satire,
chasing the silliness,
the williness, yo newfound
willingness to be vulnerable,
veering towards the vigorous,
confident comic I be coming,
and you soon to be,
coming up on october already,
all ready, this notes app steady,
these accounts earning a permanent spot
in the parking lot of yo mind,
mediated memories of meetings,
of may be’s,
thinking this may be,
it might be the most comprehensive
collection of self yet…
I do fear and I do fret ever so frequently,
thirst quenched from the satiated sensation,
lingering in the libation of remembering nearly everything,
enthralled by the re-call, the covert, completeness of it always
circling back—yea, you been balling and, now, I be bawling
cuz sometimes this journaling journey hurt.
yea, it’s fall 2019, and
you gon scroll through years of blurts and blisters, in between
yo tongue-tied twisters, them misunderstanding misters,
the guys that gotchu good, should wonder would they re-call,
whether you’d remember at all if you never wrote it down,
at this point in yo notes you can no longer nearly withhold,
nor deny the sheer gain of putting pain onto page,
since september, sincerely re-collecting
clearly got you feeling Godly,
remarkably proud,
got you re-living the past aloud,
fitting it fully onto yo phone, firm like a glove,
thinking you above while living so low.
you decide to believe,
misconceive that if you get it,
got it All on scroll,
then you must be holy, now,
wholly jotting everything down,
believing you knowing what’s up,
caught up, derailed in the details of disaster,
insignificant fixations, going nowhere,
and what’s faster now is how swiftly you find yo self slave
to the text that once made you brave.
it’s fall 2020, and
spring is ringing surreal,
really, really surreal.
so real, this collective fervor, forreal,
yo most meticulous, crafting of accounts
come to a halt, as does life,
alone on yo own…the days dwindle,
obscuring together, you wonder whether it’s even worth it to write.
despite the journal, yo journey,
the destination seems no longer worthy of yo time
cuz, now, you climb new mountains of music,
of improv,
articles every week,
every weekly,
class daily,
the daily,
the art of improvising daily,
improving daily,
proving yo self,
books on the shelf,
shifting onward, toward
be coming who we are in isolation,
not so dense in desperation,
but beaming in-spiration,
in Spirit — you did not write it all down,
but I still re-call, still can hear it,
still can bear,
the brooding and brewing of bonds,
brothers in shared trauma carried about,
the outstanding, seed-planting of several sisters,
blooming flowers for hours upon the screens,
the smoke and mirrors behind the scenes.
it’s fall 20, and
ain’t nothing funny.
yet still, you—still we-call it so fondly,
in solitude you found yo self protruding inward,
so few words spoken on any given day,
though I could not say fasho,
since the journal,
the (re)mind-expediting expedition,
ain’t necessarily survive the perdition of summer 20…
but 21, well, that’s another story—
revived, glory be to God!
yes, fall 21, against all odds,
followed a spring so surreal,
we was reeling! we was perhaps,
still healing from past lives,
the past alive, trippy, tremendous, and
the hive(s) of five-hunnid folks,
stupendously stacked in one humble hall,
angelic, the journal, once again,
be-came, be coming a sacred relic of re-counting,
I mean, we was surmounting some serious shiz…
tryna go bout our biz but busy as hell.
and well, it was in this time,
when you be-came we be-came I be coming me,
I still be coming me.
and yes, the junior-year journal does resonate differently,
as I am, not yet, so divorced…
of course, as of now, I recognize everything we went through rather righteously,
them days recorded so densely in tense desperation,
the suspenseful intents to soak everything in, write everything down, and
around this time we was
so severely wrapped in social buzz, the
does this make me look good?
am I doing what I should?
I could go on,
I can’t get off,
we was off…writing, re-writing,
we-writing us, writing away,
writing a way to the past,
abnegating our future,
upsettingly mischaracterized,
steeped in a plotless, pointless story unstructured.
yet still, we will write it down,
we will write it all down, cuz
there’s nothing we can’t miss.
though we-miss the days of ‘20,
that heedless haze,
we-miss the days ‘19,
them simpler ways.
back then, you barely put bullets points per line per week,
but now, we speak in paragraphs…we speaking paragraphs!
graphic detailing, off-the-railing, definitive hailing,
hurdling while journaling,
notating them names, them events,
they interplaying games, all that
we went and witnessed in ‘21 was fundamental to
my mental state/being…well, these notes app statements’,
they notoriously piercing meanings still stays a fixture, forreal,
as it’s fall ‘22, and
the last spring, once anew, rings surreal, as I am now
steering straight ahead into this hallmark fall,
parking myself parallel to hell, to heaven, I heed these,
bleed these pages with pride, each stroke,
every line of story, a stride toward destiny,
and not desperation, this ego gotta be dissolving,
and though I’m not absolving myself of fate, fear, fault, or failure,
I learned nobly from this notes app,
approval ain’t coming from nobody else.
I ain’t tryna paint no perfect picture of the past,
but do believe I’m forging this finale at my fingertips,
toeing the lines, these lines, finely put, appear to me as history aflame,
illuminating my lingering bout this labyrinthine nexus,
campus’ infinite complexities mandated by my Maker
‘cross some crass thirty-two hunnid acres,
a long series of sentence fragments.
mainly epitomized in the magnetizing musings
navigating night-life, my weekend perusings,
produce paragraphs of re-call, wandering,
wondering for and about a late hour,
a great two hunnid words,
wading through slurred speech,
writing the deeds done at dark,
situating myself into the sonder of some random night out:
unearthing unearthly feelings,
functions traversing realms,
the poetics of appealing to peers, sobriety peeling,
clipping away at the clubs, still coming in
in parts, in parties, bars, and low bars went to,
money spent too, high-spirited energies pent-up, now, released—
the days’ deceased, yet the nights stay alive,
forever, in these little lines.
trust, I’m checking for this trek in the morning,
every morning, I gaze at this digital paper trail ablaze,
amazed, one, by the maze I manage, and
two, by the realization (in ‘22 at 21),
that though these words won’t write my world whole,
they may patch holes in my hollow mind,
align my soul with sacred time, the cyclical,
and make holy the moments most harrowing,
the most cynical, the most obscene.
but for now, though, slime,
it’s fall 2019, and
as you go on,
re-counting these vast names, wide-ranging,
the games you gon be changing—
chill out for a second, chile,
cuz you ain’t capturing it all…
yo troupe know that’s the Truth,
and ruthless as it may seem,
in these four years I gleamed,
it’s the moments that don’t make it onto the page,
eternally ephemeral on the stage,
unpictured, undocumented, but imprinted,
encaged in my mind, those instances,
‘less I stand corrected,
may be the most divine.
Acclaimed MiC Columnist Karis Clark can be reached at kariscl@umich.edu.