Tag: poetry

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

for-colored-girls-cover
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow is Enuf Copyright © 1975, 1976, 1977 by 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.

 

Spoken Words for Silent Wars

gp08028

I speak for the people in places where hope

hangs its strings in the crack filled streets of Harlem
where iron style floors and bronze heavens

are polluted with “I told you so’s”
morgues loitered with toy soldiers

who died believing

defending a street corner

was keeping it real

Poetry’s Sorrow

writing-poetry-1

Poetry’s a soldier

a collection of Spoken Words in Silent Wars

rarely do you see it pull back

retreat

it is no coward

it’s weapons are raw

yet healing

but there is pain

hidden behind the curve of personifications,

alliterations

and similes there is sorrow

if poetry has one weakness it is this:

that most won’t understand what they think they know

 
for many, poetry’s just a quick fix for that euphoric feeling

 
like good sex coming from your words

but poetry is wise

and it knows  those who will never conceive

in order to give birth to a revolution….

Language of the Broken Hearted

beauty

Felt it was my job to hold every heart in my hands like responsibilities so I cradled you….
until our tears became waves of passion too deep to carry in a bowl
so they filled up our futures like child play
did we let deception play its numbers on our skin?
did we let it gamble with our bones…..
did naiveté captivate our common sense…..
did we know that our mission had a reason too deep to find within the contours of our childlike smiles?

 

 

When Death Gives Birth to Humility

rose

Have you ever felt guilty trying to console someone who has lost a loved one even though it’s not your fault? Like, why do we say we’re sorry in the first place? What have we ourselves done? We apologize because we’re sorry for their sadness, and also because somehow, their loss has humbled us:

“It is apparent, that death, it’s sting… produces a humility powerful enough to find itself a home even inside the heart of the one who holds the cup of “I’m sorry’s”

hoping our voice is somehow gloomy enough to produce the kind of sympathy that peels back the brick that found itself a place inside the gut of the bereaved.”