Smiles, Heart Beats and All That Jazz (Let I Dance)

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---Let I dance to the music queued in my thoughts. Let I dance. Let I dance along to the call of the Universe. Let I dance. Let I dance like today is my last and tomorrow is but a dream that I will never live out. Let I dance---

Everywhere I go and every heart I touch, I make sure I leave something that no one will ever dispose of because they can’t get enough of. Everywhere I go- everyone I see and every heart I have had the privilege to touch, a simple smile has been all I have left.

Everyday, every hour, for at least a second I smile for my heart beats; I smile and I make heart beats. I smile to give thanks, I smile in gratitude. I smile so much, in early days I did it more than I spoke, gave momma frights thinking she had a smiling mime for a child.  

This has become a lifelong habit, I feel it’s a predisposition that I have lost all control over, an inheritance from an African ancestor that now rests in their peace but has left me with a lifetime worth of smiles. Beautiful, character filled smiles, rainbow wide and bright but however remains the sweetest taboo.

You see now, I come from a people that find it hard to crack a single smile, my people they float in wells of depression and find comfort in states of regression, they gloat of peoples failures and toast to the weaknesses of others. My smiling heart belongs to a city that never rests for the wrong reasons, in this city of small town hustlers is a public that hardly smiles unless it is at the expense of someone else’s despair.

Be the Loner with the Smile...

Not only so but I belong to a culture where smiling is considered the weakness of a fool, where silence and anger are the norm. A culture that has left me reminiscing about the glory that is now gone, days when happiness wasn’t looked down upon. I’m religious about hip-hop, an era inspired genre where no season is ever dedicated to happiness. In this culture named hip hop is nothing else but raw negativity, rappers and heads walking around in side lip frowns, looking like they just caught a face-full of sun- embracing calamities, believing in sorrow- an empty tomorrow, praising struggles- grasping rage in abundant bundles.

But still I smile. Although I am born to a place that still wrestles with spirits of pessimism, inducted into a culture of misery vultures that honor and celebrate glooms-and-dooms. I go on ahead and I smile. In the midst of this cheerful complex, I maintain this smile. I contain this smile in the hope that it will become a contagious smile- that someone might catch it and never heal from it, go on to spread this smile sickness until they all start to commend it the same way they continue to do with these terminal sicknesses.

A little bling to the smile...

So until this cab driver greets me with a smile every other day, until these shop assistants act pleased in my presence, until this petrol attendant sings their words to me, until this brother cracks a funny punch in his rhymes, until this security guard pretends to laugh at my dry jokes, until this secretary lady reacts to my compliments, until this mother tells me a heart warming story while she wraps up the poone I just bought from her, until I meet a patient in a doctors room who spreads ‘positivity’ through their words and until I give out a coin to a street kid whose face shapes their life canvas in bright and colorful works of art…then allow me to turn up the tempo to my smile and dance.

Until bliss is personified in every single one of us then let I dance to the rhythms of the tales I tell. Let I dance to the stories that I speak, read and write. Let I dance to clouds of encouragement and tunes of paradise. Let I bask in this ecstasy. Let I dance to the beat of my heart. Let I dance.

*extracts from When Hip Hop Was Fun as performed by In-Q on Def Poetry have been used in these writings 

Until next post,

Africa Rising, Peace & Revolution...