A few weeks ago, on the new moon, I set a task with my coaching clients in our monthly group session: inspired by Ru Paul’s Drag Race, series 10, episode 11, to create a poem about their ‘Evil Twin’: Our shadow self: the things and sides of ourselves we are ashamed of and hide from the world… Here was my own response… which resulted in a marriage of masculine to feminine! I called the poem Ibeyi, which is ‘twins’ in yoruba.
Ibeyi
Her ying
His Yang
They collide awkwardly
Bumping into each other
Like a couple sharing their life together
but living separately
Off kilter
He is Brutish at first
Angry, bossy,
He tramples on her paintings
believing them to be unworthy
Later, when she’s not looking
He picks up the pen
And tries to recreate her shapes
But finds his version to be missing something too
She is quiet unsure of her worth
So enamoured by her brothers long words
She takes a step backwards
willing to be more like him
But when the time comes
It is him who is frozen
Those puffed up words cannot hide
His fear
And it is her golden honey voice
That mends the cracks
Like a Japanese kintsugi pot
He helps her to sweep the space
listening carefully, head cocked sideways
after,
He asks her to show him how
they place the painting
they made
together
in the centre
A beautiful blend: sweeping figure of 8s
Golden meeting red
Lines and curves of shadows and light
The sun and the moon creating the perfect eclipse
