Creative Promises: Are You Living by Your Own, or Someone Else's?
Poetry & Process: Promise
Welcome back to Writing Under the Palm Tree, Poetry & Process series. This week, we’re discussing the cascading cast of promises that permeate all parts of our lives, sinking deep into us like waves of water dissapearing between so many grains of sand.
Then there is the joy of reveling in your own promises.
“Know the world inside you.
Don’t look for yourself inside the world.”
~ African Proverb ~
The piece Promise Promises I’ve made enlist me to make more, more and more still More, 'till my blood, bone and skin pour shrill. Promises of doing more, being more. Where is the promise of being enough I'll break it down, before breaking down. Watch me promote prophetically, the most promising post-pain side of me, aside from me I'm on my way home watching the green world as it waves bye to me. All these promises, don't pull me into myself but into dark corners that pay no mind to me. What is the point of promises, poking through surfaces, poking through skin. Will they make me feel something new, something ancient, something cold. Something patient, something bold. Boil me down to viscous essence. To a substance with more questions than answers, an essence with more edges than manners. I am here with all my major manners to manage. I'm a a mirage for the damaged. A visage formed of your language. Let me languish, in an uncertain anguish it will warm me. What forms me? What formed me? What's for me? Too many galactic questions inform me. If you were to take a tour of me, I am a well formed bundle of nerves. Metaphorically, I have been here and away too many times. I am a smooth edge, you'll never corner me. What forms me? What formed me? What's for me? What's for me? Olu Ayo, March 26th, 2025
The process
This was a strange one to write. The words lived alongside me all day.
It started with one word this time, not an image. Promises.
We are all living with promises. There are the promises we’ve made. The promises others make to us. The promises companies, characters, politicians, and family members make to us. We are awash in promises.
Whether the promise is implied or made explicit, we internalize it. Moving through the world I have realized that promises may be the linear lengths that bind us, keep us bound to each other.
From the basic promises…
I promise to love you.
I promise to keep you safe.
I promise to look out for you.
I promise to think of you.
I promise to share my future with you no matter what lies in your past.
To the commercial ones…
I promise to deliver this product as advertised.
I promise to provide this service as advertised.
To the more political…
I promise to advocate for you.
I promise to represent you.
All these promises got me thinking: what are the promises that punctuate are lives most in an unbroken circle of serrated edges? What are the promises that matter most?
Are they the promises we make to ourselves, or are they the ones made to us? Are they the promises that help us answer the galactic questions gathering silky in our hearts, the questions that grow, threatening to smother us? Or are they the promises others make to us?
It’s a question I am asking through this piece. These questions haunt the halls of my mind.
It is part of my mindfulness practice to consider the things I take in. What promises am I taking on? Which ones am I honoring above all else? From where am I drawing strength, from within or without? Do I work with what’s within or without?
There is a dangerous sense of limbo that I wanted to convey in this piece. A sense of allowing certain promises made to me to push me to the edge of myself. Years ago I let certain promises of what others could do for me, could be to me, take me to a crumbling edge.
I had to see the edge crack, crumble, careen away from my feet, and descend into oblivion before I took a mental step back.
In writing this poem, I realize I want to be in community with people I build with, create with, re-imagine with, but I want to show up with a steel core. I want to show up knowing who I am, what I stand for, and what I value.
I need to show up with my promises, the promises I’ve made to myself.
The promise to always be learning, always be growing, the promise to always carry myself with dignity, the promise to not forget where I’ve been, where I’m going, what I’ve built and what I am building and with whom.
What about you? How do you honor the promises you’ve made to yourself?
Share your thoughts in the comments below.
These times are like shifting slabs of earth trying to remove us from our essential selves. We need to remind each other of the ways we can stay grounded in who we are and what we’re capable of.
In addition to the wisdom we share, we can also turn to the wisdom of the African Ancestors. There is a saying that goes:
“Know the world inside you.
Don’t look for yourself inside the world.”
I cannot think of a time when such words were ever truer. Knowing the world inside you, which is a major part of why I have leaned so much into mindfulness practices, is the only way to stay rooted in the truth of who you are.
The truth? The truth is you're more potent, more capable, more knowledgeable, more creative, and more teeming with your certain brand magic than you know. If you don’t know, do the work to find out. Do the reflective work, the introspective work, the therapeutic work, the self-excavating work to find out.
In my experience, society puts limit after limit on us. The message is always, This is your lane; stay in it. Respectfully, fuck that. Your lane is what you make it. Your lane is where you put in the work, where you persevere, where you learn the skills, where you learn from other experts in that lane, where you read, review, analyze, and compare resources to be among the best in that lane.
The truth is that the mind is limitless. The truth is that you’re limitless.
In this harsh world of categories, of hyper-specialization, of exclusivity, of tribalism, let’s revel in the joy—the sunlight—of being limitless.
Some thrilling news to share…
I am excited to announce that my poem, SWEET REMEMBERINGS will be published in Issue 2 of wildscape. literary journal. To me, the poem is a series of embodied emotions meandering into one piece: celebration of the Nigeria I knew before I left, remembering the sweet simplicity of childhood back in West Africa, and mourning what I lost when I left.
FALLING, my short story on remembering, regret and restoration, and all of that happens while a man is falling thousands of feet through Swampscott, Massachussetts, will be published in a short story collection by Free Spirit Press in late April 2025.
Lastly, I was fortunate enough to work with a marvelous and very talented team: author
of Stilletto Press, and co-narrator Jynelle Brown as well as Your First Voice audio producer Allan Monteilh, in voicing and co-producing Resistance: A Love Story. I could not be more proud of the work we all did on this project— you better believe there’s more to come. Support Black creatives and give it a listen!
There are more exciting announcements to come. It feels like all the seeds I have planted for months and years are now trees reaching for the sky and bearing fruit.
Thank you to each and every one of you that rocked with me through all of this both on and off Substack.
You all inspire me in your own perfectly particular way.
In solidarity,
Olu
Poetry & Process Series
The Night Before Ritual: From Scattered Writer to Morning Creator
Welcome back to Writing Under the Palm Tree. We’re glad you’re here. We’ve saved you a seat on the proverbial grass.
A pleasure working with you. And to read more about your process!