The First Tread from “Caramel Fever (Poem)”
is The Soulful Layers.

My Fever’s Cinematic Echo
When I watch Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever, I see “jungle fever” unfold as a wild, tangled pull—Flipper and Angie caught in a taboo storm of interracial desire, weighed down by society’s glare. I feel that raw energy resonate when I write, “I am not immune to catching the jungle fever,” admitting I’m not above its primal grip. The film shows it tearing through lives, exposing prejudice and chaos, but I don’t linger there. Instead, I turn to something deeper—my “caramel fever”—a flame that flickers differently, hinting at a journey beyond what Lee’s lens captures.

My Caramel Inferno
In Jungle Fever, desire crashes like a wave, leaving wreckage behind, but my caramel fever burns quieter, hotter, more personal. I feel it “increase the inferno throughout my soul,” not as destruction but as fuel. Unlike Flipper’s reckless fling with Angie, which unravels under outside pressure, my fever doesn’t answer to the world—it’s mine, igniting late-night scribbles and whispered lines. I’m not just chasing skin; I’m chasing something soulful, a fire that doesn’t fade but grows, warming the corners of my mind where creativity hums.

My Desire’s Many Faces
I’ve realized desire isn’t one thing—Lee’s jungle fever proves that with its messy, lust-driven chaos, all racial tension and broken bonds. I nod to it in my poem, but my caramel fever feels different, layered. It’s not a fleeting itch; it “increases,” spreading like ink across a page, steady and alive. I think of philosophers like Schopenhauer, who’d call desire a trap, but I disagree—I see it as a prism. Through one facet, I glimpse the film’s restless heat; through another, I find my own, a passion that doesn’t just take but gives me something to shape.

My Art Born of Heat
In the film, bodies clash—desire’s a battlefield, physical and fraught. But for me, my caramel fever transcends that; it’s not just her skin I admire, it’s the fire it sparks. I write “fiery murals scattered around the apartment rooms,” and I mean it—every line I pen is a brushstroke, turning heat into art. I think Aristotle might get it: this isn’t desire for its own sake but for what it makes possible. While Lee’s characters stumble through their fever’s fallout, I’m building something—words that glow, murals that hold my soul’s blaze steady.

My Fever’s Meaning
Looking back at Jungle Fever, I see Flipper’s story end in a loop—desire unresolved, a cry against the cycle. But I’ve found my way out, or maybe in. My caramel fever “murals the soul,” and I feel it as a kind of victory—a muse that drips honey and hums like Sade. I imagine Hegel nodding: jungle fever pulls me one way, the world’s judgment tugs another, and my caramel fever ties it together, lifting me higher. I call it “caramel” because it’s rich, warm, mine—a fever I don’t fight but wield, lighting up my pen and my purpose.

The Caramel Skin…

Treads

Thread One : Jungle Fever Vs Caramel Fever : Soulful Layers (Blog)

The Fourth Tread from “Leave Me Alone II“

“The Aesthetic Of Decay“

When I see “a gruesome suicide, painted in front of my eyes,” the image hits me with a visceral force, its vividness carving a scene of raw, unfiltered horror into my mind. The word “gruesome” doesn’t just suggest death—it drags me into a decay so deep it repulses and fascinates me all at once, an aesthetic that somehow makes the grotesque beautiful. I can’t help but think of Schopenhauer’s bleak view: life as a ceaseless churn of suffering, a canvas I’m forced to stare at, smeared with despair’s dark shades. For me, this suicide isn’t just an end—it’s a desperate claim to power in a world that offers nothing but pain, the last stroke I imagine on a portrait of collapse.

But the fact that I see it “painted” shifts everything—it’s not just happening; I’m making it art. I’m the one holding the brush, turning chaos into something deliberate. I stand back, not caught up in the mess but watching it unfold, a chronicler of ruin. It feels like Schopenhauer’s resignation creeping in—I know the will to live is a sham, yet here I am, still compelled to look, to record. Whether it’s “Kali” or some suffocating system I’ve conjured, its end isn’t a victory—it’s a self-inflicted fall, and I’m the one staring at it, unflinching.

There’s a strange calm in that distance, a Buddhist echo whispering that nothing lasts—not Kali, not the systems I’ve built in my head, nothing. They crumble, their power fading into a smudge of paint I’ve left on the canvas. Nietzsche’s words hit me here: “What does not kill me makes me stronger” (Twilight of the Idols), but I wonder—maybe it’s not strength I gain, just the grit to keep watching as it all unravels. That gruesome suicide I’ve painted isn’t just a finish line; it’s a truth I can’t escape: everything mighty—gods, rules, me—rots away, and I’m left holding the brush, tracing the outlines of impermanence.

So I find myself caught in this aesthetic of decay, a twisted kind of freedom in the wreckage I’ve imagined. That suicide I see isn’t only suffering—it’s my quiet rebellion against anything lasting too long, against the lie of forever. The Bible’s voice cuts through: “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19), and I feel it in my bones, a truth that ties me to the dirt and the divine all at once. Schopenhauer’s gloom, Buddhism’s letting go, Nietzsche’s defiance—they mix in me, and I turn the horror into something I can hold, something almost beautiful. What’s left is an image I can’t shake—not a scream, but a proof of everything falling apart, and me, still here, watching it fade.