Tag: guest

Guest Feature – The Prophet

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise on your lips

– The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

Guest Feature-We Love Like the Sun Rise

jeff_hall_silky_smooth_love

We kiss like the night
But we love like a sun rise
We love
like were far out there
Like
halos and moon rocks, and cosmos and jelly fish
We love
Like gravity
We love like autumn
the season where everything learns how to fall and we do
Fall
In love that night
You know, one day I’ll understand the earthquake crack from your pulse
I am the rhythm to any love song that made you want to exist.
So when the sun rises–anxious as it always is—
begins to yawn over the cusps of day
I will be here
may the wind lay us back onto our bed spreads where we can hold,
where we can touch,
where we can love
like the sun rise…

– Brook Yung, (excerpt)

Guest Feature – Barter

Rose-for-your-words-poetry-33064141-400-291

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children’s faces looking up
Holding wonder in a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit’s still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

“Barter”
by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

Guest Feature – Mother to Son

1-maternal-love-michael-mcbride

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So, boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps.
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

 
– Langston Hughes

Guest Feature – Language

enjoy_the_silence

Silence is one part of speech, the war cry
of wind down a mountain pass another.
a stranger’s voice echoing through lonely
valley’s, a lover’s voice rising so close
it’s your own tongue: these are the keys to cipher,
the way the hawk’s key unlocks the throat
of the sky and the coyote’s yip knocks
it shut, the way the aspens’ bells conform
to the breeze while the rapid’s drum defines
resistance. Sage speaks with one voice, pinyon
with another. Rock, wind her hand, water
her brush, spells and then scatters her demands.
some notes tear and pebble our paths. Some notes
gather: the bank we map our lives around.

 

– Camille T. Dungy

Guest Feature – The Earth is a Living Thing

The-Earth-08

is a black shambling bear

ruffling its wild back and tossing

mountains into the sea

 

is a black hawk circling

the burying ground circling the bones

picked clean and discarded

is a fish black blind in the belly of water

is a diamond blind in the black belly of coal

 

is a black and living thing

is a favorite child

of the universe

feel her rolling her hand

in its kinky hair

feel her brushing it clean

– the earth is moving, Lucille Clifton

Guest Feature – The Blackman’s Guide to Understanding the Blackwoman- Shahrazad Ali

P_778469_821455

• It is difficult to get her to listen to new information about a new approach to living her life because she is so certain that she is justified in being out of order. She is mostly a lot of mouth. She can be a number of things, as already proven, but she cannot be a man.
• By nature the Blackman cannot submit to the woman.
• All the good things she says she wants would be immediately available to her if she drops her defenses, drops her suspicions and allows herself to melt into the waiting arms of the man who loves her.
• When the Blackwoman attacks the Blackman publicly she inadvertently gives the entire world permission to attack him also.
• It is not easy for a Blackman to be motivated if his woman doubts him, or if their relationship is so stormy that it takes his head and robs him of the ability to concentrate
• The Blackman can tell which woman is his by the way she submits to his ideas and instructions. And by the way she works to make him happy. His Blackwoman should take the position that his success is her success—their success, and work as a team.
• By letting the Black man be the head of the family she could revive him, and by getting behind him and supporting him he could be free.