Olaseni Kehinde Precious was born in Akure, Ondo State,
Nigeria. She writes from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. She
believes the world is too complex for the pen to remain idle and influence
people with her creative works.
WORK TITLE: “To my fellow Nigerians”
To our future leaders,
Who starve their eyes of sleep, striving repaciously for bread
on the laptop screen till the day bleed to nightfall
Those Whose hearts have become a jungle, revenging for the
sufferings of our forefathers they say
They pluck beautiful apples planted by unknown farmers in
another man’s land
Help me tell them, they are writing a tragic story for our
land’s tomorrow.
To our future leaders,
With dark hearts and glowing skins
Whose in between their legs have become abode of evil men
Men in the high tables do not build a space for corporate
wear they say
Help me tell them, to stop campaigning for the ruin of our
noble land.
To our fathers,
Whose hearts are darker than darkness
They take silver from
their brother’s pocket and deposit stone; they carpeted their saliva with a deceiving
tongue
Help me tell them that their grey hair glitters the danger
of our land.
To our mothers,
Who flood nairas tactically from our fathers pocket
They empty the pot with their lying tongue; saying men on the
high tables wine and dine with looted bread.
Help me tell them, they sit together with those men of ruthless
practices.
“Alone in the dark, inherited creativity, interpreting bipolar mental illness, suicidal thoughts, and attempts, the cure for loneliness, the Sylvia Plath Effect, and the South African poet Abigail George”
I was 16 when I first attempted to take my own life. I was seeing a psychiatrist (he of the Einsteinian-hair, he had studied at a university in Vienna, his son went to the same high school my brother went to, the highly-prestigious Grey High School for Boys) at the time who was convinced that Risperdal could help me, elevate my mood. I was depressed, very, very depressed. I drank some red wine, and took some pills, and slept it off. There have been other attempts.
Anti-depressants, counselling, psychiatrists, a coma, psychosis, hallucinations (some auditory), but there also have been periods of intense creativity. The psychotropic medication seems to have not impacted my imagination, only my dopamine and serotonin levels. I felt down a lot in high school. I had no one to eat lunch with. One friend. Every year I had one friend. One black friend. I got tired of being tired (they call it chronic fatigue syndrome). Sometimes I thought I was just pretending. That was why I was attracted to acting in the first place.
I didn’t have to be me anymore. I still think at 40 what people think of me, I’m still dying for my mother’s approval. There were crushing-and-numbing lows that felt like a succession of deaths, clinical depression, insomnia (I found it very difficult to fall asleep, would toss and turn the entire night listening to my parents fight behind their closed bedroom door, I read into the early hours of the morning with a torch under the covers). I’m fragile. I was abused mentally, verbally, physically by my mother for most of my childhood. Later she isolated me from my so-called friends, from so-called family, and then rejected me because of the texture of my kinky-peppercorn hair. In her words I was an “wretchedly-ugly mistake”, who was “nothing special to look at”, “an intellectual like your father”, “take your smarties yet”. According to my mother, for years, I did not have a mental illness (see bipolar mood disorder), I was demon-possessed and needed prayer.
High school was difficult for me. I was bullied, and I was a bully. I was an obsessive-compulsive perfectionist, a high achiever academically but after the first two years of high school my grades started to slip). You would think that this would have been a warning sign for either my mother, or my manic-depressive father, who was also an over-achiever as I was. So, I felt pain every day, no one was pulling me through this pain, I hardly could get out of bed in the morning, there were no romantic entanglements with boys my own age (which meant no heavy petting, French-kissing, making out, distracted by sex, boyfriends, or popularity), no girlfriends who came to the house, no experimenting with the smoking of cigarettes. I decided I as an atheist, although I still went to church with my parents, and my siblings, my younger brother, and sister. I can’t put all my happy memories, and my childhood, and my elegant and narcissistic mother in a time capsule. I have the same nose like my mother.
My mother thought the obvious, it was drugs. I was smoking marijuana. It was my peer-group. I was hanging out with the wrong friends. She blamed anything, everything, everyone, family, estranged family, cousins, except herself. I take tranquilisers at night to sleep, fall asleep watching television. Then there are my sleeping pills, my father’s sleeping pills, my aunt’s sleeping pills. Then there’s Pax, Lithium, Zolnox, Arizofy, Puricos for the gout, Puresis, the water tablet, for my chronic kidney disease. It seems that all I’ve seem to do for most of my life is take pills to make me happy, scale the seawalls of the depression, but it is seeming, writing keeps finding me, and I keep finding writing. Books, plays, novellas, poetry, essays, and blog posts. I was a teenage runaway. Sometimes I’m stressed out. I know how to deal with that kind of currency now. I’m still insecure. I’m like the most vulnerable person I know. I can’t turn back time.
I ran away to Johannesburg, and then to Swaziland, and wanted to go to the London Film School when I was 16. I’m designer playwright, keen diarist, hooked on becoming a memoirist, and inspiring ideas when I’m found hibernating in my room, lying in the foetal position on my bed listening to music blaring from my radio, and yes, I’m still running, carrying the cross. I’m only happy though when I’m a failure. I’m only unhappy when I’m adding another accomplishment, onto an already full list of accomplishments. Acting my heart out on the stage, drama rehearsals at the Opera House, lead role in the house play, Quiz, editor of the school newspaper, swimming laps in the local Gelvandale Olympic-sized swimming pool etcetera, etcetera. The everlasting list goes on, and never-ending on. I make money out of writing now.
I’ve lived with the naming, the shame-and-blame for all of my life. Whose fault was it that I was abused, or that I was molested as an adolescent, or that I was too trustworthy of men in positions of power, and thought that every female that I met was my friend. Last year, I baked a cake for my birthday. It was the most beautiful cake in the world. I decorated it with mini-meringues and African violets, but nobody touched it, put it past their lips. And so, my 39th birthday collapsed, fell to pieces around me. I cut out recipes from magazines, and in the kitchen, I have this burning desire, this burning search to be chef, and baker. I sleep with cookbooks next to me on my bed. And like the high priestess of soul, Nina Simone, or the actress-celebrity Dorothy Dandridge, Oprah Winfrey, Misty Upham, you can only bury your thoughts, your shame, the people that you hold responsible for not loving you unconditionally, or protecting you.
Or nurturing you, or saying that they were proud of you, you can only bury your feelings for so long. So, now I write about the stigma, the bipolar struggle, the anxiety and fear that depression brings up inside of me like a storm, and you will usually find me crying in the dark, stifling my sobs into my pillow at night, dark is the night, winter has moved on, and I shy away from autumn, I’m battling survival, my survival, and I’m so well aware of the women who have not lived to fight another day (Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Assia Wevill, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Donkin, Iris Chang, Petya Dubarova). I’m battling daily. There are days that I feel deceived with burning desire by every single man, woman, and child that I encounter. I think of my happy childhood memories. I think of my sadness, my introspection, my reflections that mirror my soul. Sometimes a certain smell will take me back to childhood. Usually my mother’s perfume. YSL’s Opium. To this day, that perfume gives me flashbacks.
Sometimes, just sometimes I think of the love of my life touching my face, and then I see him walking away from me in a parking lot, and I smile at this memory. I smile at the injustice of it all, that a man had loved me after all, and I ask myself, do you want even more heartache, more pain, more despair, then tell him that you love him back, that you only live for him. I smile at the memory of Ted Hughes, and Sylvia Plath, because after all he chose her to be his wife, and the mother of his children. Weddings are happy occasions marked by pomp and ceremony, and the happiness, and difficulties of both bride, and groom. It hurts too much on the inhale of the howl, and inside I’m a philosopher in the tradition of Nietzsche, and inside I’m a preacher. And sometimes, just sometimes the history of the bipolar, the madness life, the life that I live on my terms hurts too much on the exhale. In the bathroom mirror I write the narrative of love to myself.
There is a link between creativity, and mental illness, genius, and madness, and then I think of my extraordinary achievements, of my father’s giftedness, my mother’s own capacity for spells of melancholy, and giddy happiness, her talent for flowers. I see things that other people can’t. I hear things that other people can’t. I can’t turn back time to the good old days. I have moths, and butterflies, and swallows, and birds in my stomach, a reputation, an angel-tongue in my mouth. Love has passed me by. I made a conscious decision not to marry, not to have children, but it didn’t make me less unafraid of the world around me. I made a conscious choice not to experiment with illicit drugs. I don’t drink. And, yes, I thought the love of my life, and I would live the years together, from the infatuation-phase to the honeymoon-phase. It is better to have loved, and lost, than never to have loved at all.
I have tried to take my own life four times now. I have relapsed more times than I can care to remember, but I still believe in the inter-communicative, inter-related, grassroots-secret of longevity. I love life.
FUNCTIONAL POTENCY AND OTHER RELIABLE TECHNIQUES REQUIRING EFFECTIVE IDENTIFIERS
We arrived at dusk and spread ourselves beneath what passes for a canopy since the sky was forever flaunting its. I set up my table which has hinged braced legs. The others brought tarot cards and scented candles. We welcome anyone who cares to pop in with the stipulation this is family run and propensities for peace guide us. “Is there a Tony here?” Tony is here, sending lightning bolts up people’s arses, even in death irreverent. His laughter starts our table a rocking. We won’t get anything done tonight regret he does not take us a little more seriously.
J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is trapped in suburbia waiting for the end of the world. He’s been widely published over the years, most recently at Rusty Truck, The Rye Whiskey Review, The Beatnik Cowboy, Mad Swirl and Horror Sleaze Trash. You can find him most days waxing poetic on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)—————————————————————————————————————————————————–what could be
i used to look atbeautiful women and dream about what could be
reality set in sometime around my late teens
none of them look at me and think the same thing
at least that’s how i’m explaining to myself why i am single still in my forties- ———————————————————————–of natural causes
it becomes more obvious each day i will die alone
i’ll be one of those stories on the news of some shut-in found months after he died of natural causes
my luck, it will be on the toilet
hopefully, with a smile on my face————————————————————————————————–in the sad facts
another morning waking up alone
entrenched in the sad facts that the world has decided you don’t get to be love
there will be no holding hands on a sandy beach as the sun goes down
no kisses under the stars
no sweet nothings whispered anywhere near your existence
insanity keeps you alive
keeps you the heartbroken fool that still believes
keeps you always willing to be punished yet again————————————————————————————-rivers of tears
if it wasn’t for laughter, these days would simply be rivers of tears
think of your pain as the last meaningful act on this earth
the love of your life decided to live on the other side of the world
the sun will come up again
so will the skin cancer
hope is only there for those that actually believe it exists—————————————————————————————–since forever left your arms
embrace the painlike an old lover
the distant echoes of years gone by since forever left your arms
agony leaves a bitter taste
the flowers all die before one last sweet whiff of a better tomorrow
they will feed you this bullshit that all things get better with time
The Anam Glyphs is another Beautimus Potamus book. This book shoud actually be read before The Splendid and Extrordinary Life of Beautimus. This book explains the Anam Glyphs that Beautimus would read every morning. This book also contains the same delightful humor. It also has some very good advice or suggestions that one could use their own life. I thoroughly enjoyed this one and the other on Beautimus. I am definitely a new fan of Ms. Peggy A. Wheeler.
Chaco by Peggy A. Wheeler is a suspense/adventure novel. It is about Chaco who is a “handyman” for Abigail and Russell walker. Chaco holds a secret that he has not told anyone. He has a Phd in physics from a German university.He has been watching the skies through his powerful telescope for solar CME’s. One day his fears come to fruition and the CME’s have not only knocked out power to homes and businesses, but newer cars will not run, no internet or cell phones. No way to communicate or cook. When people realize help will not be coming, people begin looting, killing each other and some lose grip of reality. Chaco decides the only way to keep himself, the Walkers, their granddaughters and the neighbors, the Pennymons safe is to go to a self sustaining commune the Walkers daughter lives in 800 miles away, most of the journey on foot. This is where the adventure and suspense begins and intensifies. I would recommend this for older teens and adults. This will keep your adrenaline going and turning pages until the end. It was difficult to put down and the adrenaline keeps going when you reach the end. I absolutely loved it and will be reading it again.
I come from Zambia, Africa. Unknown to most travellers, there exists a creature of myth & cultural memory called Chitapo. If you travel in the north, there are pictures around the Kafue area that depict her; in the south around the Zambezi also. She/they are part-mermaid/ siren, part snake, lurking in the depths of the rivers and lakes. Their enchanting song lures wandering souls into the water to drown. She is always hungry. In the half-awake, half-comatose state of grief, self doubt, fear of addiction or diminution, she appears to us. She’s beautiful and terrible, the snake ever poised and watchful, and we cannot look away… Do we dare embrace her? At what cost?
