Savages

Savages

She and I are similar because of life and the cruel lessons it taught us. When the love that we thought was real betrayed us, it changed us. What we always thought being in love was supposed to be turned out to be just smoke, mirrors fantasy. Ever since I opened my eyes and became totally uncivilized, I’ve been attracted to wild things with reckless, broken hearts. I'm not lying to her and promising to try to fix her because I believe in my heart that who she has become is much more beautiful than what she was. Her pain is a part of her soul and she wouldn't be the same woman without it. Because of those old scars that she bears, she's able to see mine and translate every line accurately to truly read me. She gets it, from the words on the pages I spill in ink to the tattoos that mark my flesh. I understand that the walls that she has built aren’t meant to protect her from the world. The real truth is that those walls exist to protect the world from her. I understand this because the walls I’ve built serve the same exact purpose. Of all the suitors and fans that she has, she can’t bring herself to love any of them but it’s not because she’s cold. They call her foolish because all the so-called "nice guys" in the world can’t make her blood warm. They don’t understand that not in a million years could a lioness truly ever love a gazelle. To her, they will always be prey. She has evolved to love only lions and everyone else that is anything less is just wasting their time.

But, what happens when two people who have become savages collide like two forces of nature and eventually, inevitably fall hopelessly in love? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how the rest of the story goes. It will either be an unexpected journey to a beautiful end or a tumultuous path to a beautiful tragedy. All I know is that only savages can truly tame each other.

Copyright © 2015 Keith Kareem Williams
All rights reserved

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For You

For You

I wonder if you know that every drop of ink I spill today is a tribute to you. I wonder if you really know how often my thoughts are consumed with the parts of you that infatuate me as I eagerly anticipate the next time I get a chance to make more memories with you. I find inspiration in the strangest places and you inspire me in the strangest ways like no one before you has been able to.

I’m in love with those lips but not just because of how soft they feel or how sweet they taste when we kiss. I am haunted by all of the dope conversations we’ve had, and the power of the words you whisper to me that always seem to be exactly what I need. If I didn’t know better, I might think you used magic or something unnatural to trap me because I never even noticed when I became so wrapped up with you.

I hear your voice in the rain and remember your tears as I watch the heavy droplets fall from high up in the sky down into my eyes as I look up, amazed by the heights from which they’ve traveled to reach me here where I stand on the ground. I feel the same way about your love. There is something genuinely different about you and the way your soul speaks to me in language that I understand. With a dangerous smile, you brag and tell me that it’s that Goddess Love you give me and I’m a little embarrassed, but I’m honest enough in this moment to admit that I have to agree.

I don’t gift you flowers that will quickly wither, then eventually die because you say that you rather hold my hand in places where they grow naturally and should be, free to live and grow, just as we are. Today, as it rains outside and waters those gardens, your vibe waters me and helps me to grow into a better person, a better father, a better author and a better man, so ALL of the ink I spill today, every single drop is For You.

Everyone is free to believe, or NOT believe in anything they choose but, when I look at an amazing woman, mind, body & soul...I’d have to ask an atheist, “How can you NOT believe in God?”

– Keith Kareem Williams

Books By Keith Kareem Williams

Writing…“Death in the City” day 35

Writing…“Death in the City”

day 35

As I work on this novel, I'm falling in love with the story more and more with each drop of ink I spill. (That's a really good sign because my readers and I often feel the same way.) A recent post from a friend on Facebook reminded me how much I enjoyed and revered Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.” I went to my bookshelf and picked up the worn copy that had miraculously survived the decades since I last sat in a college classroom. I remembered how reading that book, along with Zora Neal Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” had inspired me to write my first novel, a book in which I could realistically tell the stories of the people that were from where I’m from. No superhero, pulp fiction-ish, over-the-top tales of magnificent, fantastical drug dealer adventures that would never, and have never taken place in any of the streets that I know of. No literature draped in absurdity to mimic reality TV. Just stories about real folks caught up in real situations trying to survive in the city that I will always be in love with, that we were all trapped in under the shadows of skyscrapers. That’s how “Water Flows Under Doors” was born.

There is a place and an audience for all kinds of literature. There is validity in every genre as long as the stories are well-written by authors who respect the craft and put the work in. I believe that every book written is a temple where readers will gather to read your words and see the world through your eyes for a short time. If done correctly, you can alter the prism through which they see things and even change their perspective. So, as I write “Death in the City,” I’m mindful of all those things. It has evolved into something much more than what I first envisioned it would be when I wrote the first sentence. As I bounce between the lives of the characters on these pages, it has become somewhat of an anthology with these lives, and sometimes deaths are all connected as they intersect. I find myself fueled by the same enthusiasm I had way back when I wrote my first book and THAT is a beautiful thing. I wish that the professor who encouraged me to become a novelist was still alive to read it but I’m sure that somewhere, Professor Leo Hamalian is smiling. My grandmother, Cynthia Brown is smiling too. She passed away long before I even published my first book but, when I decided to finish the book I started writing in college, I was filled with self-doubt. She came to me in a dream only once, and in that dream I was sitting in front of my old computer wondering if I was a good enough writer to make a career of it. She touched me on my shoulder, pointed at the computer screen, smiled and nodded her head before she left me again. That reassurance is why I’ve never lost faith in myself or my talent, no matter how hard it may have been to sell books in the past. The success that I’m after is about way more than my own personal ego and desire to win. It’s much deeper than material wealth, although it’s nice to keep the bills paid.

All of Her

All of Her

“Why not take ALL of me?” she asked me with tears in her eyes and as she cried, my heart began to bleed in my chest.

She told me to take her eyes because after what we shared, she never see the world the same if we weren’t together. For her, to be apart would be the same as draining away all of the colors that she had become so accustomed to seeing brighten up her days. Even with those big, beautiful eyes she just couldn’t see that everything had already started to turn gray for me.

She asked me to take her lips because if it wasn’t me, there was no other man that she wanted to kiss. She tried to tell me that she had no use for a voice that wouldn’t tell anyone else that she loved them and truly mean it. What she didn’t know was that I knew that I would never love another woman the way that I loved her either. She was only one that understood the true meaning behind every line of black ink in my tattoos and the truth in every drop of ink spilled to create chapter after chapter of my books. I was in love with her pain, her joy, the depth of her thoughts and the lightness of her soul. To me, she felt like something from a dream that would be gone whenever I finally woke up. I had grown so accustomed to the worse that I couldn’t find a way to believe in the best, even as I held it in my hands.

In the end, I was afraid of her because to love her the way that I did was to risk my own death if she ever left, so I foolishly walked away first. I couldn’t have been more wrong when I thought that leaving her would have hurt less. To this day I can honestly say that a sunset doesn’t go by when I don’t feel the full weight of that decision in my chest. I can’t even describe the pain and if I’m being honest, I’ve never quite been the same.

I remember when she said that I might as well take the rest of her because there wasn’t going to be much of her left for any man that came after me. I suppose the tragedy is that I took most of her and left behind most of me, even if she doesn’t know that I did.

Copyright © 2016 Keith Kareem Williams

All rights reserved.

***I’ll find a way to elaborate on this in the pages of “Sometimes Brooklyn, Mostly Mars Vol.2.” ***