Category: creative writing

Convicted

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His beauty was biblical. Much more than a body, he was diary. He was journal. A standing column of poetry. From the top of his head to the bottom of his feet, this was prophecy. Thought the teacher was a waitress asked her if I could have another round of him. Let’s be realistic, this thing was futuristic like foresight. Every time he opened his mouth I took road trips into his memories. For my blood racing, I could not hide the joy. Trying to catch my breath after falling into his smile we were connected. Too young to understand this love-at-first-sight thing, I could have been dreaming. Maybe this was just my imagination. I was dancing. Moon-walking into complete relaxation. His last name should have been Jackson cause he was a hit. I couldn’t lie. Ran home every day just to go to bed so I can wake up to the sunrise because it reminded me of him. He didn’t know it but my nose was so open I took notes. I was singing. A sucka to every sound of the harmonious humility that escaped like convicts from his lips I was convicted, because I loved him too early.

Yecheilyah Ysrayl is the YA, Historical Fiction author of The Stella Trilogy, Blogger, and Poet. She is currently working on her next book series “The Nora White Story” about a young black woman who dreams of being a writer in The Harlem Renaissance movement and her parent’s struggle to accept their traumatic past in the Jim Crow south. “Renaissance: The Nora White Story (Book One)” is due for release spring, 2017. For updates on this project, sneak peeks of chapters, the pending book cover release, and full blurb for this series, be sure to subscribe to Yecheilyah’s email list HERE.

Something Genuine

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The door to the patio is open, and the screen door shields me from the insects that I may enjoy the brisk caress of the wind on my skin. And as I inhale the fresh taste of the evening air, enjoying the end of a peaceful day, I think about the genuine that often come from writing. You’d have to excuse the poetic tone of this post. It’s my thinking voice I suppose. The one I use when I’m writing this down in my journal before typing it, twirling the pen between my fingers and tapping it against my lips while staring out in space. Anyway, back to something genuine. To think back on my own writing or to read someone else’s, I feel often that there’s a realness here. Somewhere between the heart and spilled ink is an authenticity few will express verbally. Something about speaking without moving our lips causes us to speak the truth of our hearts. Something about writing it down instead brings about a depth. Something about the movement of mental messaging brings out the emotional intensity many will not express otherwise. I wonder if this is why writing is often associated with therapy. For what is not spoken is often written. Not that everyone writes for such a purpose, but it is historical that writing is an exercise that has caused many to heal or to reveal or stumble upon truths otherwise unknown or not dealt with. Something about how the subconscious mind is uprooted when we write. It is an interesting thought I sought to share before the memory or moment escaped me. Speaking of escape, it’s time I publish this post and retire this laptop for the night. I’ve got laundry to finish and this breeze sure feels good.

For Those Who Are Sick

If you want to follow this blog, I warn you. We are emotional, here. We are sometimes frustrated, tired, and some of us are beaten and broken; looking for words that will bring calm to storms that have not passed yet. For the messiah himself was sent to those who were sick.  Some of us are sick. Walking mistakes looking to be healed in places technology has not tapped into yet. Waiting for the ink in this pen to heal the shattered pieces of our souls. You see this pen, all courage shaped in my hand, is here to lift the fallen, to restore the broken, and to heal the hurting. The people here, those who follow this blog and the person who owns it, do not all have it together. So, if you want to join us I caution you: We are not robots mechanically maneuvering our way through social media. We do hold ourselves accountable, I must add for excuses do not live here, but we are not fake. We do not inhale html codes and hyperlinks, and our blood is not made of oil. Though I cannot promise you that we won’t leave stains, for we ourselves are stained. And yet, we know that we will not always be this way because our mistakes make room for healing. So we look for evidence of growth in the strangest places, like cracked surfaces, rocks, and hard places. Welcome.

The Potent Word

 

Can I spit poison into your life just by speaking words into your skin? Or can I speak life into your life by cultivating peace into your heart? Words. So important and potent, life threatening and life creating. We must never forget the power of words, their motives and intentions, their power and potency. I marvel at how easily we curse one another. Every day there is someone trying to clean up the blood they spilled by gossiping behind someone’s back, or begging for wishful deaths to go back to its chamber of meaning. Never tell someone you wish they’d leave this earth, or that you hate their guts. You may indeed be charged with murder before the words escape your mouth. I often wonder why I have taken on the task of this kind of bravery, to become a professor of words. To become part of a community where the next murderer is just one page away from me. Perhaps I have a death wish, releasing words into the air with only the hope that they will bring back life. I publish each post with shaking hands, a trembling finger; a focused mind. Carefully crafting and considering the words I put into the air. Writers. The bravest people I know. Managers of the potent word.

Spirit Words

 

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Stretch your thoughts forward with much care. Hold them in your mind with the fragility of a newborn’s bones and then unfold them from your tongue like ancient scrolls . Let them drip oxygen on the page so that you leave the post just as pure as it was before your spirit left it’s imprint in our souls. Let your words stain peace that I may inhale joy that cuts through bone and marrow. For sticks and stones may break bones but deadly is the venom of a tasteless word. How dull is the stare of a ball pointed pen bleeding empty? Who knew words were spiritual; the invisible breath of life to nostril. There is nothing more powerful than a righteous tone with angels wings let loose in its time. Pen to paper or voice to air. Choose your spirit words carefully. It wouldn’t make sense leaving trails of bodies hanging on top blog post walls.

The First Sentence

What is this post without its beginning? I have heard over the years how important you are and your contribution to the writing process but I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t always put you first. Don’t always put much thought into you. So you test my patience with the very need to begin. Times where my mind is far too cluttered with a hanging word waiting to be pushed to the middle of this screen. You see though I trust that I can give birth here, I have since remembered there is movement in stillness. I have since learned to cherish you as something more than a good morning greeting thrown into the air and smashing into walls. I promise to not turn my back or kiss you gently on the morning after. No longer can, “Hello”, or “What’s up my people?” prove sufficient, for you are the commencement. The beginning. The start of this post and worth more than just some nightly fling. For what is the cake without its icing? The cooking pot without its lid? What is a post without its opening sentence? Must I risk my words boiling over the edge of posts and spilling sloppily into WordPress readers? All this mess that a conclusion of a sentence won’t clean-up for me.

The Gentle Rain

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I am from the earth. My skin soft like the soil. I watch as the rain slithers from the sky like perspiration from my brow. It brings with it the taste of tranquility, and the smell of clean. I let the water kiss the palms of my hands and muddy itself into the soil of my skin. Perhaps it will seek to filter my thoughts and purify my soul as it does the air. The winds are soft and polite this warm and yet cool morning; a mixture of bleak sunshine and splashes of gray. I hope to accomplish what needs to be done. Who knows, I may just give birth to flowers this day, a rose or perhaps a lily or two, with the gentle rain.