'For Colored Girls'

This poem is for adam’s rib/ protectors of life and of the heart of man/ this is for all those years. For colored and light skin and insecure and chocolate and thick girls and too much and not enough and seen but not heard/ this is for you. This is for me.  This is for us.

This is for light skinned girls/ when men assumed that because of your lack of hue, you were see through, a shallow body of water without depth or dimension/ this is for you/ the blue eyed blondes of the black community, I heard light skin is fair skin, but who referees these race games when color complexes cause us to question fair play/ this is for you

This is for the insecure girl who brings countless men into her womb only for them to pull out as boys/ she is unaware that it’s not really about sex, not about being wanted/ she’s just unconsciously trying to raise the boys she births into the men her father could never be/ baby this is for you/ a slave to everyone’s consciousness but her own/ she teeters on schizophrenia simply because she does not recognize her own voice among the many/ be still and listen and see and know that all you must hold onto is you/ this is for you

This is for chocolate girls/ when soap and water and steel wool rubbed vigorously was not enough to remove the unclean negative connotation they said was your skin/ this is for you/ for the victims of those “dark as night” “jokes” because I promise/ not a simile exists for the darkness of lynchings in the night/ there is no metaphor for the contrast between the fire of a burning cross in the foreground of a tar baby midnight sky/ this is for you

This is for the thick girls/ stallions/ thick legs, thicker shells who are sick and tired of getting superficially chose by dudes who synonymize curves with heauxs—pump ya breaks/ her body is holy/ her womb a fertile river estuary, every curve a bend in the great river Jordan/ if only you were invited to swim in its waters/ you are not dirty enough to be purified by her rushing currents- step in unworthily  and you will drown/ lungs fill quickly with the thickest of liquids, quench your thirst with this elixir/ no one woman should have all this power but baby know that you do/ this is for you. For all of you.

so this is for the black women.  Then and now.  who have ever questioned God's love-- His intention, His direction, His presence—I offer this poem to you as some sort of meager reparations for a lifetime of perpetual misunderstanding and misinterpretation. For those times when we couldn’t comprehend the divinity within ourselves let alone live in a way that summoned the rest of this world to do so. See this is a dedication & a call to action. See we are human. So nothing human can be alien to us. We’ve seen the assata shakurs, the michelle obamas, the sojourners, the audre lordes, the maya angelous, Shirley chisolms and angela davis’s. We’ve seen IT happen. there is no excuse for this mediocrity we dwell in. change has come, greatness has been achieved so this if for you. Colored girl. Black woman. Stop waiting for someone to honor you. & honor the divinity within yourself. 

breathing & breaking...

that's the theme for tonight.
closed eyes.
&
good music. maybe a slow, heartbreaking ballad. or better, a levee breaking worship song. a serenade unto the Father.
&
lamentation.
&
a compilation of worry, fear & doubt exchanged for faith, prayer & trust.
&
a complete surrender.
all the while tuning into Him & Him only.
i need You now.

i support this #2

i support people finding their passions & doing what makes them genuinely happy, what brings them joy.  because logic to me is-- if i'm happy & doing what i love to do, what i'm passionate about, then i'm going to encourage you to do the same. perpetuating a cycle of purpose & joy. but maybe that's just me. 

Tribute to Black Arts/ Dedication Piece

Dedicated to the lives Nicolis Williams, Eric McWhorter & Kashief Cross

the hardest part about having a music box heart is deciding which melodies to play/ i long to hold 16 gigs and play every weeping willow ballad ever written, every riff and run of travailing prayer in your garden of gethsemane/ when you asked God to take the pain away, to remove this cup from your hands, i heard you/ and, if i could, i would take every cup from your hand/ take them back like shots of hard liquor, if it meant it would keep you from stumbling through this life in a drunken stupor of struggle/ let me be your drinking buddy/ i will match you shot for shot, treble clefts & half notes of sorrow until my heart is just as full, if not, overflowing-- i was created for this here—the other day, my heart wept for the lives of 3 young men I never had the pleasure of knowing in this life.  They were friends of my sisters’.  I could tell the caliber of men they were by the weight of their tears, I wanted so badly to mend their hearts, to apply pressure to their wounded spirits, hold them until they healed-- I am my sisters’ keeper.  It is my job to unrealistically want to fix everything that was ever broken in them, everything that ever made them feel less than what they were called to be-- we were created to love each other.  Created to build one another up but we don’t.  & therein lies our weakness as a people.  We are too strong in and of ourselves to love ourselves wholly.  We don’t love the skin we’re in & so consequently we find it hard to love those that look just like us.  Because we don’t love ourselves, we women shoot poison darts of jealousy & pride from our eyes then criticize our men for shooting physical bullets of lead & tin not realizing that the loss of trust & esteem between ourselves is synonymous with the loss of a physical life. We play this dark skin light skin game & then quickly blame the man for oppressin us. C’mon here, look at this-- Look at this pot callin this kettle black… We cut ourselves off from each other so easily & insist on doing bad all by ourselves but we just cutting off our own arms & legs.  All this hate is is self-mutilation & so we walk around society crippled, walkin through this life with a limp & sway  tryna get a handout from ppl that look nothing like us. See somewhere along the line somebody told us we weren’t beautiful. Somewhere along the line somebody told us we weren’t capable. They told us we weren’t worthy, told us we were lazy & ignorant & stupid & somewhere along that same line we started to believe them… & somewhere along that line it became our truth… & we began to tell ourselves that untrue truth… & we began to tell others this untrue truth on some “I aint neva gon be nothin & you aint neva gon be nothing either” type foolishness & we believe these lies.

But no… love hasn’t always been this unfamiliar to us, no sir… we have always excelled in love before we got to this place.  If not for love 400 years of slavery would have wiped us out. If not for love we wouldn’t have made it through civil rights sufferings & movements & protests & the fight is still young so where did it go? When they turned those fire hoses on us 40 and 50 years ago did it dilute our hearts? Did it water down our spirits? Did they beat it out of us? Or is this our own doing?  Are we beating it out of ourselves? Do we ciphen a little love out every time we stick a needle into our arms? do we lose it a little every time we sell a dime bag to our brother? Do we draw a little out every time we kill one of our own? Does it seep from our pores just a little every time we think hate towards a brother or sister we’ve never met?  How did we get to this place here? At this point we can blame no other but ourselves. Can I submit to you that this self-hatred & self-loathing we try so hard to cling to is the very thing that is killing us? We are a suicidal people, are we not? I heard somebody say one day that if you want different results you have to change your method of operations, heard em say that the insanity lies in doing the same thing & expecting something different to come about see if we know better then logically we should do better so why don’t we?  We deserve so much more than we allow ourselves. There are too many us dying today for us to wait until tmrw-- We’ve got to love on our brothers & sisters while they are yet able to receive it. Cain killed his brother out of a coldhearted ignorance that allowed him no remorse. Even colder was the attitude of sin that allowed him to make such an inquiry—am I my brother’s keeper?...  & sadly the apple hasn’t fallen very far from the tree.  We are a people desperately in need of reconstruction. Desperately in need of a de-evolution from this barbaric practice of hatred.  Go home & kiss your mother, hug your father, raise our sons more like we raise our daughters- like love is not taboo, tell your brother you love him, hold each other accountable, forgive us of our wrongdoings, & then look in the mirror & wrap your arms around yourself, allow God to smile on us again, let love glow warm on this brown skin of ours. baby can’t  nobody love us like we love ourselves… so if we not gon keep us, I ask you, who will?

GospelFest piece

There is something to be learned from the raw identity of an unedited poem… Something to be said of a newborn covered in afterbirth & insides like an inverted secret that speaks of innocence & of a master’s love & of Lord I’m available, use me-- God has a thing for unfinished pieces… for imperfect beings, for broken vessels & the like so in a world that thrives on excess & too much, there is a God that operates in the counterculture of knowing you are not enough.

She’d been absent for some time... A freelance writer squandering her inherited gift on those undeserving of her words. She was too loose with her anointing. Too reckless with her heart; she’d let too many wade into her waters unworthily & it’d begun to leave a ring around her river jordan insides/ she was a prodigal daughter caught between the world & her father’s home, frozen in time only by her own coldhearted refusal to forgive herself/ she couldn’t see how God could extract the venom that coursed through her veins more naturally than her own blood/ couldn’t see how her past could be immediately reconciled in exchange for a future with him/ not realizing that trying to fathom the heart of God is like trying to fathom gravity… like trying to understand the reason why the stars don’t rain down on us like the wrath of God  on the unjust/ baby you can’t hide behind the mediocrity of your past life forever… /can’t hide behind this gift & chalk it up to your own talent/ at some point you have to step into your role, dive into your calling no matter how hard or unattractive it may be/ no matter how unpopular it may make you & in spite of what they may say, trust me you are worthy to be used/ your transgression can be your testimony if you would only step forward to the witness stand/ I know your heart is heavy… lungs filled with the thick humidity of regret & fear, breath cut short by high altitudes/ but only because you put yourself on too high a pedestal to let God use you/ really who do you think you are?.../ how arrogant do you have to be to believe that your past is insurmountable?/ I understand your pain & how it weighs so heavily  on your soul but how dare you have the audacity to remain stagnant, to regress even, to blatantly refuse to move forward? How dare you deny God the pleasure of blessing your life? After all he’s done for you… you have the nerve to take up residence in the quicksand of grudge & doubt/ I know you’ve found comfort in this immobility… sought solace in this stagnation…/ but just as Jesus called out to Jairus’s daughter—I call out to you & your dormant spirit “talitha koum”… “my child… get up”/ Wash your face & straighten your back/ Break loose the glares & words & fear that held you for so long/ take up your bed & walk/ Shake the dust & debris of bitterness & guilt & failure & heartbreak & death & unbelief/ brush this dirt off of your boots & let the wind carry these burdens where it may-- this heaviness is not of God/I know you’ve been hurt/ I know you’ve been cast-off & handed down but you have to understand that brokenness is not the end of life/ see you can’t build up what hasn’t been broken, the master cannot finish a work that is already done/the people cannot relate to perfection-- He cannot get into a closed heart & so sometimes it has to shatter for his light to reach into those dark places/ move forward into the light & see just how beautiful your broken is…  tear down your walls/ let yourself fracture & fissure & come undone. See God has a thing for unfinished pieces/ your “not enough” is just enough for him, trust me on this one. .. take it from the girl who was so coldhearted she used to bleed venom… my child you are worthy to be used… so I charge you tonight… to get up. What God has for you is indeed for you, in spite of you. Stop trying to complete yourself, before you finish yourself. & remember, God is able to move most freely, in those of us who have already been broken in. 

random realization #2985

the big difference between social work majors & other majors is that we DO alot.  it's not really a major you can delve into the books and study for.  as opposed to other majors that involve studying and memorization.
it reminds me of the story of when Jesus was at Mary's house & long story short, He said sometimes we just need to sit & study the Master & His work rather than always going out to DO His work. Reflect-- Act-- Reflect. you can't spend too much time in either one because you risk the two extremes-- becoming stagnant in reflection & not doing enough or doing too much. sometimes we get so caught up in doing that we end up being uninformed because we don't take time to learn & study.
p.s. this-- scripture included was apart of our devotion time in social work policy class. that i'm still in right now lol
peace, love & light babies :)