Tag: poems

Cry Out

Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash

How does it make you feel

to see someone

mistreating themselves

to hear them poison their mouth

with self-hate language

or disrespect their soul

with insecurities

does not your intestines cringe

do they not wrap themselves around the wrongness there

the diseased spirit of a person defeated

does not your stomach turn into knots

does not the human in you cry out

now imagine

if you were outside your own body

and observing yourself

poisoning your mouth with self-hate language

and disrespecting your soul with insecurities

do your intestines cringe?

do they wrap themselves around the wrongness there?

do you recognize the diseased spirit of a person defeated?

does your stomach turn into knots?

when you are self-hating yourself

does the human in you

Cry Out

It’s National Poetry Month!!

 

Grab your copy of I am Soul for just 99cents in ebook for the entire month of April.  Want a paperback? The Nubian bookstore signing is next week! (4/12) Be sure to stop by for a signed paperback copy and save on shipping. Meet me in person and let’s take pictures and stuff!

https://www.yecheilyahysrayl.com/

The Most Irritating Thing about the Self-Care Movement

the fact that everything is a movement now

like the importance of self-love didn’t exist

before Instagram memes

like healing is a status update

like self-care ain’t a journey but a tweet

like healing ain’t a process but words we hang

on our Facebook walls

and pretend we ain’t cover trauma in hashtags

I see healing differently

mistakes are opportunities

failure is strength

and self-love and healing is a process

paths that we aren’t always sure to take

we become masters of ourselves

only to begin again

like a battle we don’t know if we’ve won yet

a journey, healing is

and we master the parts of ourselves

until there are no more apologies

in our throats

until everything we do doesn’t sound like

sorry

until we value ourselves like we do

likes on a post

until burden ain’t heavy no more

cause we learned how to carry it

until we no longer carry it

until we’ve struggled so long

we don’t know what quitting is

Introduce Yourself Author Interviews: Poetry Edition

We interrupt your regularly scheduled Author Interview programming for this special announcement.

National Poetry Month, a celebration of poetry which takes place each April, was introduced in 1996 and is organized by the Academy of American Poets as a way to increase awareness and appreciation of poetry in the U.S. For our April Author Interviews, I’d like to feature as many author poets as possible. If you have not been interviewed on the blog, head on over to the Introduce Yourself Author Interview page (linked below) and find out how you can get involved! Stay tuned for next weeks final author introduction for March.

*All authors are still welcomed to participate in the interviews. These interviews occur every week on Monday’s. You don’t have to be a poet. I would just like to feature poets for the month of April in honor of National Poetry Month.

>> LEARN HOW TO JOIN. CLICK HERE <<

 

Yecheilyah’s Book Reviews: The Unveiling by Camille A. Frazer

Title: The Unveiling
Author: Camille A Frazer
Pages: 132
Publisher: Frazer Mill Publishing (December 12, 2017)
ISBN-10: 0999523007
ISBN-13: 978-0999523001

The Unveiling is a powerful poetry collection from debut author and poet Camille Frazer. She divides her poetry into sections. The first encourages the perception of a bigger picture and lessens the emphasis on the individual. The division between the individual and society is examined in the second. She asserts that violence has crept in during these crisis times.

The poems cover a wide range of issues on the human condition. We gain knowledge of things like faith, hope, love, and beauty. The poems are beautiful and powerful, making you want to reread them for a deeper meaning and time for introspection.

This is definitely not a book that you can skim through. Camille A. Frazer has seen suffering and tragedy during her work as a children’s advocate. Though as she shows in this refreshingly optimistic new poetry collection, tragedy does not have to define us. Through her poems, Frazer examines humanity’s current direction and illustrates each individual life’s importance.

Her poetry shows a steadfast belief in the possibility of a better world in the future. Every person has a purpose, according to Ms. Frazer, and is capable of kindness, contentment, and forming enduring relationships. She desires that you would be motivated by her work to discover your own gifts and then spread them to others.

The only thing stopping this from being a five-star is that the cover doesn’t do it justice.

Rating:

Lyrical Factor: 4/5
Presentation: 4/5
Thought-Provoking: 5/5
Authenticity / Believable: 5/5
Overall: 4.5 / 5

The Unveiling is available on Amazon.

Camille is also one of our featured authors. If you missed her Introduce Yourself interview, CLICK HERE.

A New Book Review and a Book Signing

Don’t you just love being surprised by new reviews? Yes! I am Soul has a new review and it is just in time for the next signing. If you are in Georgia and have not yet grabbed a signed, paperback copy of this book, I’ll be at the Nubian Bookstore on Friday, April 12th in Morrow, GA. The signing will take place from 5-8:00p Eastern Standard Time. This means you good people can stop through on your way home from work. See how I consider you fam? Lol

Here’s what the reviewer had to say:

Grab your copy on Amazon here or order a signed paperback HERE.

And if you think you’ll make the signing, be sure to stop by the store. Details below:

Aborted Purpose

Photo by Alexis Chloe on Unsplash

 

I know too many women aborting their purpose

Manipulating our daughters so that their dreams are tied to two horses

And the black family unit is pulled apart in both directions

And our sons are Willie Lynching their seed

On Fallopian tubes

And walking away

They forgot what grew there

They forgot there are trees with their DNA

and we gave birth to boys who never became men

I know too many women aborting their purpose

We forgot the generations of women we carried in our ovaries

at conception

So we miscarried Eve’s redemption

now the hand me down fabric of expired womanhood

dangling over the degrees of our bedroom walls

we traded our integrity for dried ink on top cream colored paper

the folded crease and stained remembrance

of what we used to be

before the glass ceiling defined us

the faded glory of the black family unit

before we were Diva’s

and Bosses

back in the day when we were content

being Queens

we traded our crowns

in exchange to do bad all by ourselves

now the stress

and the guilt

of 70% of black women

whose descendants will stare down the barrel of a gun

cause she couldn’t admit

that it takes more than a black mother

to raise a black son

YouTube: New Poem Added! Listen to “Grief” #Poetry #Spoken Word

I wrote this poem in honor of my dad last year, inspired by a real experience. I was listening to Pandora and Yolanda Adams “Open My Heart” came on. I usually turn the station because the song reminds me of my dad who died of cancer in 2000. This time though, I allowed myself to feel. I allowed myself to grieve. I put this video together when I first published the poem to this blog but I am just now getting it uploaded as I am getting my YouTube grind back! Listen to the poem below, read the poem here and be sure to subscribe for more poems!

SUBSCRIBE HERE