“…the instrument behind all this poetry…..yea…U don’t really wanna know bout the degradation it took to straighten my pen into this position…what it took to have the courage to wear my feelings on my sleeves….and to bleed words for a living.”
Tag: poetry
The Day You Give Up
“The day you give up the fight is the day you have lost the battle.”
Disappointments
Like Decembers steal color from the trees…like the sky when it erases the sun and we are left to do without the light…like life …wrapped and stuffed into bottles of deception…like whitewashed hopes and American nightmares…
Memories
Dear memories,
how dare you stalk my past,
shackle my thoughts to your smile,
and then ground my mistakes into a trembling apology
as if anyone escapes history.
You Can’t Leave…
You can’t leave me
not now
not ever
not while my kiss is in your bloodstream
and not when your tongue has danced on the insides of my mouth
not when your teeth have carved “I luv u’s”
on my heart like hieroglyphic images
to remember when were far apart from each other
like
long standing memories
And if I 4get to say I love you just use the seal of my kiss and put them in parenthesis
but not for a Greek tragedy
so you see
there aint no leaving me
Not unless you wanna leave you
and then our bystanders can tell stories of those days back when life made sense
back when you were already a man of pride
and serious eyes were already making love to the tears of my innocence
Not unless you want them to weep at our footprints
But if your heart continues to cry my tears
And my heart continues to cry your tears
Then it will be impossible for you to leave me
Because our hearts will be tongue tied for years.
Struggle
“We must embrace struggle. Every living thing conforms to it. Everything in nature grows and struggles in its own way, establishing its own identity, insisting on it at all cost, against all resistance.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
What I love most about this quote is that struggle is such a powerful teacher. It passes down the knowledge of self, which without such cannot be obtained. If not for the hardships many of us have been through we would not have understood who we were as individuals. It is a healing experience to transform the mind by having endured struggle, pain, obstacles. No discipline seems pleasant at the time we receive it, but what in creation produces a greater reward than enduring struggle? Show me a better teacher than pain.
Guest Feature – Exerpt from Ntozake Shange
i can’t hear anythin
but maddening screams
& the soft strains of death
& you promised me
you promised me…
somebody/anybody
sing a black girl’s song
bring her out to know herself
to know you
but sing her rhythms
carin/struggle/hard times
sing her song of life
she’s been dead so long
closed in silence so long
she doesn’t know the sound
of her own voice
her infinite beauty
she’s half-notes scattered
without rhythm/no tune
sing her sighs
sing the song of her possibilities
sing a righteous gospel
let her be born
let her be born
and handled warmly.
The PBS Blog 