katrina, the levees broke. part two.

i'm really not much of an extrovert.  i'm a leo/virgo cusp baby so in short, my life doesn't make sense lol i look at both of these signs and i'm pretty much divided straight down the middle.  but lately i find myself relating more to the virgo in me as far as keeping my emotions to myself and things like that.  i'm realizing that i thrive in intimacy.  i feel most comfortable being me in small groups of people, even more when it's a one on one interaction IF we're close. otherwise it's just awkward lol but anyway i've been realizing lately that there's a certain discomfort i feel within groups of people. like even 5 to 6 people depending on who they are.  i literally feel myself pull back and take on the position of the observer.  more often than not, i feel like the more people there are, the more drained i feel.  and this isn't always the case but it has been for the most part.  i don't know what it is or how to better explain it but i can't take too many personalities in at once, it's overwhelming to me.  and i don't know if it's the third eye poet thing and being sensitive to the different vibes different people put out or what but it makes me feel so socially awkward sometimes.  like i feel like i suck at making friends and interacting with people and things like that. it's weird, i know lol but i try so hard to be extroverted and interactive and things and sometimes it works. in fact, a lot of the time, i can pull it off but it's not me usually. maybe it's the performer in me.  who knows.  it's strange though. awkward.  i want to be able to thrive comfortably in both spheres but i haven't gotten there yet.  not quite comfortable in myself yet i guess.
but anyway, i'm rambling.  what i meant to get at with this post is that oddly enough 9 times out of 10, i don't like being alone.  my thoughts become idle, and because i'm a writer, they tend to take me places i don't want to go.  and i know what they say about an idle mind but i haven't mastered control of my thoughts just yet.  as mentioned before, i let this third eye torment me sometimes. almost like i see too much.  i feel too much.  and so i have to make this daily, hourly, moment by moment effort to dedicate my subconscious thinking space to God because i can't handle this here bro.  it's a heavy thing not to be able to trust yourself with your own thoughts dawg.  so not only pray for us writers, pray for all those with any spirit of discernment or sensitivity to the heart of man.  because it's warfare everyday.

katrina, the levees broke. part one.

welp, it has been confirmed-- i am not completely crazy. well at least in this sense-- earlier in our DV meeting, me & prince had a brief sidebar about the burden of being a poet & trying to move through life with this third eye or sixth sense if you will. first and foremost, it's heavy. i mean it's both a blessing and, i won't call it a curse but it's not for the weak hearted. there's a certain sensitivity to the world around you that comes from being a poet.  & sometimes it's so hard to tune into yourself when there are so many other demands on your heart.  & it doesn't even have to be intentional pulling from you or people using you; it's just like a shadow or a thickness in the air you can feel when someone else is hurting or grieving.  it's hard to describe and even harder to carry this calling.  it's almost like having to be responsible and in tune to the welfare of all those around you and so in that... awareness, it gets so easy to lose yourself and your own sense of well being.  it's rough bro.  it's a balancing act to say the least.  and i'm far from steadying the two sides.  in fact, i doubt i'll ever master such a thing; all i can do is keep my mind right and pray i can keep a good hold on God's peace.  the kind that passes all my meager understanding.
in this season i'm learning to take time for me.  to be responsible for me.  be accountable for my own emotions as well as a reservoir for others'.  and in carrying another's burden i absolutely have to be more careful about making it my own so much so that i put more energy towards it than they do.  or that i let it take me over entirely.
lately i've been ignoring myself.  and i haven't been happy.  i've been holding too much the wrong way.  it's put a strain on my heart, my mind and my emotions.  i need to start taking heed to my own words & recognize that sometimes God speaks through ME to ME.  & mad gratitude to the kid boogie for helping me see that.  more often than not i become so comfortable in the discomfort of being on the giving end that i don't receive what God has for me in my own writing.  sometimes i need this third eye to see myself better.  i'm tired of letting this 'gift' torment me.  it's not of God.  demons torment.  i need this writing to take on its angelic form in me again.

'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.