relationships – Page 10

I Promise You a Woman

I know what kind of girls you’re used to.
I know that
kindergarten fingers on small hands don’t know how to hold you
like I do see
she pushes buttons on your heart like that
cause she’s not hip to the fact that a man can lose focus too
but see she’s just a little girl
so she plays catch with your emotions
cause she feels that if she hits you hard enough
you’ll start coughing up tokens for her to play games with
see
I know that your body to these little girls is merely a myth
And every trip to your mouth is a quiz
enveloped in living water that she ain’t learned how to swim in yet
so she apologizes for getting lost in your kiss
and every vibration of your body simply doesn’t make sense to her
and every word of truth coming from your lips is like a puzzle
that she ain’t figured out yet
and she’s insecure because what she’s selling has failed
and its cause the way you love to her is reminiscent of fairy tales
see
they mistake my trust for you as some kind of façade
don’t know what a real man is so they think you are a God to me
mistaken the heavenly embrace of your arms for wings
cause I told ‘em I’m willing to fly away with you
and they mistakenly discern that you grant me wishes like the milky ways
and the stars
cause they see me praying for you
and your mind they can’t dissect
your ways are hidden from them like the life of tiny insects
so she dismisses you as too perfect and she ain’t ready for all that yet
you’re just too nice for her
yea, I know what kind of girls you’re used to
But what I promise you
Is a woman

I promise you support sweeter than any tea you could fathom
I promise you words of love and not temper tantrums
I promise to be strong so when it comes to bearing my burdens you don’t have to
Because I promise to help and not hinder you
I promise to cry tears on your shoulders so I can properly communicate with you
And I promise to bear soldiers and little soliderettes for you
You see I promise not to walk in your shoes
cause I’m woman enough to know that you’re the head of me
And like the neck I support you
Cause what I promise you
I promise you, not a little girl,
but what I promise you
is a woman.

Wk#4: #Rebirth Weekly Love Challenge – You Can’t Leave

Wow, this month is over already. This is my final Love poem submission for Lisa’s Weekly Loooovveee Challenge for the month of April.

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 ain’t 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.

************

Special thanks to Lisa for hosting this months Love Challenge, it was fun! Whoop! 🙂

Bad Relationship Advice in Movies

I don’t speak much about relationships on this blog. But what I don’t understand is how grown men and women continue to model their relationships after these Hollywood style movies, especially within the Black community. From Waiting to Exhale to Scandal these shows are far from realistic as far as strengthening a relationship is concerned, and are doing nothing more than rotting your attempt to be successful at building a strong family unit. If you’re going to dedicate yourself to these kinds of shows at least understand when you’re being lied to. At least then you can receive back some kind of substance from having watched it. For instance, “Think Like a Man.” First of all, how did Steve Harvey become such a relationship expert? But that’s another post for another day. But here’s a movie where grown men and women play children’s games. Women, Steve Harvey tells you to think like a man. The bible says that Satan thinks like a man, and that the inclination of the thoughts of men’s hearts is only evil continually. It looks good yes, but everything that looks good ain’t. Why do I want to think like a man? I’m a not a man, I’m a woman. These movies got many of you walking around thinking like the devil and you don’t even know it. There is nothing of value that you can take from this movie and apply to your real life relationship. Far as Scandal is concerned, there is just nothing healthy about the way Olivia controls the men in her life; she may as well have them on strings and yall are eating it up. What kind of advice can Ms. Pope give me that will help strengthen my marriage? In the real world we say, “I want to be a good woman,” but then we turn around and give energy to shows that are not representative of what we say we want. Our mouths are in a conflict with our hearts. (And let’s not even talk about Empire that yall love so much. I’m still asking myself why Denzel Washington could win an award for Training Day and not for Malcolm X. But I suppose we’ll always be nothing more than Pimps and Thugs instead of Gods and Kings, but that’s another topic for another day). It’s not just about entertainment. Subconsciously, you still take something back from it that you implement into your physical life. The kinds of things we expose ourselves to: music, movies, books, etc., all have the capacity to affect us in some way. There is always something that we take back from the experience and make manifest into our physical existence. I’m not condemning anyone; I ain’t got stones to throw at you that don’t first belong to me. I’m in this same boat. It’s just that I’m at a point in my life where I am beginning to do away with those things that do not prove to be of value to my life. Personally, I cannot continue to give myself to anything that no longer grows me. There are certain things that I am no longer willing to even allow occupying my consciousness. As a unit I just think that we must learn to understand the messages given us and how they are teaching us to operate in the real world. There was a point where I lived for this kind of entertainment, especially because of the love I have for my people. Anything we did or was a part of I wanted to support, even if it was a TV show. But I notice that we tend to upgrade everything about ourselves except our minds. It’s time to get started on that.

Wk 2: Love Poems Challenge: A Love Like Music

Welcome back everyone for another week of Looooveee with Lisa Tetting’s Love Poem Challenge brought to you every Friday. This one is a re-post, an oldie but goodie. Enjoy.

A Love Like Music…

the instant birth of calm
and racing anxiety slowed,
and slick,
and subtle
like splashes of sunlight chipping at our faces
warm and comforting
like tapping footsteps
love me
like drumming fingers
like dancing
bobbing heads and bodies contorted
into the full figure of violin
and singing like half notes
like puzzles brought together and connecting to the sky
we love like wireless
find us anywhere
find us weak and fractured
our experiences tugging against the others existence like tendons and muscles
our faces pulled back like nostalgia
an orgasmic melody of words to virgin ears
potent, and suspect, and anxious
like balls of flesh torn into stuttering syllables, and time signatures
and melodies and pianos
we play poetry like pianos
like fingers are feathers
every nerve tickled by the slightest touch
a Katrina of waves pleasurable and strong
like euphoria
brushing against the shores of truth
love me into music
like base that split atoms into frequencies that scrape the sky
that loves like stringed instruments
this is a love that sounds
like music

************************************

And that’s it for my contribution to Lisa’s Love Poems Challenge. Click the pic (or the link below) to see how you can join the fun!

New Challenge for National Poetry Month!

Dear Young People, how NOT to use Twitter

Today in Indie Author News, I found some great Twitter Tips. There are tons of Social Media outlets to use for your Self-Publishing business (or any business) but that doesn’t mean all of them will prove effective for you. For some Facebook is more effective, for some Instagram and for others maybe its YouTube. Despite your chosen outlet, we are all seeking to enhance our social media skills to be of service to the online community. So for all of my twitter people out there, I have the perfect link filled with all of the twitter tips you need to get started, but first I have a tip of my own for Young Twitter Users venturing to build businesses:

Tip: Create a separate business account for your business

Throughout our life we will learn new lessons, take part in new things, and overall become gradually different people. The older we get the more wisdom we will acquire (some of us). Experience will show us far more than words ever could and pain will become a great teacher in our lives. Needless to say, today we may not be the same person we were yesterday. Sure at 18 you probably loved to party and hang out with the home girls (or guys). But the truth is that you won’t always be that person. After turning 25 and witnessing some things you may in fact decide that the party life is just not for you anymore. Perhaps now you’ll desire to start your own business. If so, here’s the thing with social media:

If you’re going to use the same Twitter account for your new business as you used when you were rambling about your drunk friend at the club, I’m not here to judge. It’s just that you should probably take down some of the tweets that are not associated with the business itself. You are using Twitter obviously so that you can make new connections and to network with professionals and non-professionals alike. As a result, you want to project a certain professional image. Of course you have to be yourself, but you also want to be a proper representation of the new direction in your life as well.

It’s not that you want to necessarily be the physical manifestation of the business itself, (then you’ll just be boring. People will feel like they’re talking to a computer), you want to allow people the opportunity to see who you are as a person so you should definitely be yourself (as specified in one of the tips). For example, one thing that I’ve come to learn is this: People often want to feel themselves a part of something. They want to see that what you have to offer is of substance, and that it will be of benefit to their lives in some way. They want to see that you are offering more than just the product itself, or that the product itself offers more than a good price.

For this reason, it’s very important to build persona when networking online (this includes blogging). However, that persona should be a reflection, not just of who you are personally, but also your business sense and skill set. You don’t want the owner of The Best Company Ever to see pictures of you doing something wild and then you lose that connection. This same thing can actually also apply to Facebook most especially. Social Media is not a small thing anymore, it is practically everything. Employers and professionals alike do check out social media pages. I know many young people just don’t want to give the impression of being phony or fake, but that’s beside the point. It’s not about not being who you are, its about being of service to the people, and to therefore navigate both the online and offline community accordingly. You wouldn’t walk into a job interview wearing pajamas, so you probably shouldn’t portray the same nonchalant behavior online either.

Whatever you do, just keep it professional, and keep it you.

Psst: Also, if you’re switching your personal account to a business account, please also change your Twitter name. SexyChick_5 just isn’t gonna work.

Check out more twitter tips here:
http://www.indieauthornews.com/2012/07/twitter-tips-for-authors.html

Friends

Echoes off the tops of our lungs with undeniable ease. Friends. Like random hellos, or a courtesy goodbye. Like a sporadic gesture among the land of foreigners, friends too has become a strange language; its value in a strange land as it falls off the edges of our tongues. Words have no meaning for many of us. They race from underneath the spaces of our hearts to descend empty into the air. To land idly among the elements, or on the tops of buildings and of trees. After all, “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” We chant this saying from infancy to adulthood, carrying perception on our shoulders like truth. Meanwhile, words will go on to hurt and heal, afflict and inspire. Friends. Technology says we can find them on Facebook. Fly away with them on Twitter and update relationships instantly. Though I’ve never known a friendship to be built so fast. What kind of lessons do we learn in a world that laughs at murder because words after all have no meaning, so “I hate you” doesn’t mean that I might as well have killed you. Friends. There is no greater person than one who is willing to lay down his life for his friend and yet, the word leaps as it wills off the edges of our tongues. Such a light hearted fantasy. Everyone is a friend today, though not everyone is willing to die for you. Friends. So often do we fill it with air and toss it around among our peers; an enslaved basketball among the bars of netted string is this word. Nothing more than a one syllable title we release into the air to become captive to whatever it wills. But what does it truly mean to be a friend?

Lasting Marriages – Miracles in Disguise

Circa: 2012, me and Hubby on the way to New Orleans to port for our 7 day Cruise

“As far as I’m concerned, if a Black man and woman make marriage work in amerika, they’ve accomplished a miracle. Because everything is against them. Just being poor is one of the biggest obstacles. Most of the arguments are about money. It’s hard to be loving and caring when you can’t pay the bills and you don’t know where the next dollar is coming from”

– Assata Shakur

This excerpt from Assata’s autobiography is so on point that I had to share it with you. This I do not limit to Black people but all people. Marriage is something I think we take highly for granted. It is one of the oldest institutions in which requires so much work and yet receives so little praise. I just want to take the time to encourage all of my married people, especially my married Black people, since our divorce rates are higher than any ethnic group. As Assata has mentioned, it is a struggle to focus on the love you have with one another when there are so many other distractions surrounding the basics. Trying to live life, fulfill a career, rear the children, pay bills, it all gets cloudy sometimes. But we cannot allow this to damage the beauty of the coming together of man and woman. I have been married for seven years now and we’ve been together eight total. One of the things we love to do together (aside from travel) is movie night. It started as something sporadic and has now become a tradition. Now movie night is every night! Lol. It gives us the opportunity to enjoy each others company after a long day with life. When we come into the door and we finish our dinner and all the miscellaneous things in preparation for the next day; when the lights dim and the surround sound begins, we try to leave everything else behind us. No smartphone. No internet. No talk about work and bills and blah blah blah, just me and him. It nurtures our relationship in ways that are probably far more impactful than we can realize at this moment. While I still consider myself a newlywed as compared to some of you veterans, I just want to encourage you to find an activity you share with your hubby or wifey that no matter what happens in the world, it does not get in the way of your bond. In the words of Lena Horne “It’s not the load that weighs you down, it’s the way you carry it”. So shift some of that weight, get rid of some even. But find something to do together that makes the whirling world stand still. Be honest and open with each other concerning your flaws and doubts and feelings and allow the love that brought you together to be a kind of therapy within not just your marriage, but in your life. Marriage is work and anyone who tells you different is a liar. It is not easy and sometimes it can be a real struggle. It is for this reason that if you are married and have been for some time, across nationalities, if you are still married, then you are a living miracle. Never underestimate that.

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