“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”
– Harriet Beecher Stowe
Tag: struggle
No Smooth Roads
“Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere of a high aim the very roughness stimulates the climber to steadier steps, till the legend, over steep ways to the stars, fulfills itself.” – W. C. Doane
Burdens
I don’t understand why some of you burden yourselves. Life is hard enough that we don’t have to add unnecessary baggage. Like, why do I have to buy the organic egg vs. the regular egg? The organic salad vs. the regular salad? And what’s wrong with tap water? 100 yrs ago we couldn’t have dreamed of buying water and yet here we are. I bet you they ain’t tripping over water in Africa though, or in some third world country where they drink water you wouldn’t even bathe in. Goldberg gonna be selling you air next though, then there’s gonna be a debate about which air tank is the healthiest. There is just so much more important things in the world to worry about than what we choose to carry. Sometimes it’s not the load that breaks us down, it’s both how we choose to carry the load and the load we choose to carry.
Break the Chain
Thought I saw her self-esteem in the carpet.
Her back bearing the burden of bare floors
and
forks that scraped the bottom of clay plates
Thought I saw pain on the side of her state
of mind.
Thought I saw her spirit cut low like the grass.
Scattered pieces of forgetfulness floating fluently throughout her bones
that
clung its skin like melted wax welding its warring arms wildly in the sun
I asked her
Why she allowed herself to suffer she said, “I’m waiting for a change to come.”
I walked on…
I felt metallic liquid lick my cheeks, the blood of one who’s hung.
His body shriveled up in the bowels of his own sadness,
His face “a raisin in the sun”
I can see that his faith had fallen down to his knee caps.
But his eyes bulged boldly on and his life sped passed me in just a few years
Till my taste buds could create a meal from the salt I saw dancing in his tears
Telepathically he told me
that he didn’t die right here beneath this oak tree
But, “stepping foot inside this land is what killed me” He said
And like a mad woman I stared deep into a dead man’s eyes and said, “I see.”
I said.
“So why do you hang out here like one whose been hung?”
He told me, “Cuz I’m waiting for a change to come”
I walked on….
And this time crossed the Jordan
And I could hear nothing but the soft laughter of children in my ears
Shouting…jumping,
till I realized I had not entered the promised land,
but this was a street court filled with Jordan fans
Where
hope bounced back and forth to the sound of merciless concrete
polished “Niks” was like knives reaching for revolution in the air
it was cold
but the men were hot
contradictory
the American dream tied around the wings of the goddess of victory
these were project kids with $200 dollar Nikes
unknown vehicles hitting the streets
and then the seats
were suddenly empty
I realized then that I had been standing in the middle of a blank street
a court turned into a corpse
Low income homes now funeral homes, they trampled upon one another
fighting to “one up” one another
silently and still
I saw it
pieces of paper scraped up and scattered to the four corners
(Guess that’s why were still fighting one another for street corners)
a
basketball balled up and clumped like a clot of blood
carved into the cracks in the streets where crack addicts one day roamed the streets
I asked
this balled up clot of hopelessness “Where are you from??”
it told me,
“I wish to go back… but I am waiting for a change to come.”
Diamond in The Ruff
I decided to seek strength when pain took it upon herself to become the choir director of humanity
in an anxious quest to play doubt on the strings of our faith she laughs…
coughing up the twisted humor of her bowels you see she knows
that our minds have been twisted by the craftiness of sin still falling from the fingerprints of Eve and Hiding behind the shame of Adam she knows
The ease to which we are apt to scream we’re not able like the blood of Abel, that at times
our lowliest moments give us in to unbelief like virgins vulnerable to the sensitivity of fleshly skin
Faith giving it up like cracking levees… overflowing with trial & struggle she laughs while you drown in sins pain made you promise to go back to
but you tell pain that we are not bed sheets fitted to the corners of her pride
We are not fools, babbling vain words in her congregation
We are not faithless because of her existence
Tell pain that we wait for her
like crouching tigers with gritted teeth
you tell sorrow that with much wisdom comes much grief
tell her, that we are not children
borne about by every sickness breathed from the viruses she plants in our immune systems 4 we are strong
you tell pain that from her humility is born
like truth when it touched its hands on the insides of Miriam’s womb, the Salvation brought forth from pain
a stake of stabbing wounds
You tell pain that the almighty made sure that everything had its companion
You tell pain…
that Endurance was made for her
Never Having Been a Girl
This poem is based on a true story. A sista I know requested I write a poem based on her childhood. And after hearing her testimony, this is the result.
Silence lingers on every street corner of her heart
surrounded by the sounds of her own heartbeat
the only child
who knew that loneliness could be so loud?
Never remembering ever being a girl
womanhood emerging from her mother’s womb
responsibilities following her home wrapped in soft blankets and warm booties
yet infancy is kicked off too soon
removed
and replaced with scavenger instincts
tearing away at empty cupboards
hope falling asleep like heroine nods
quickly replaced with the tears of a three year old
silence tearing away at the soft eardrums of a toddler’s pride
never remembering ever being a girl
Quick paces of little feet turned nine
gotta get the cigarettes on time
crowded streets
little feet
unknown eyes that are watching me
(at least somebody’s watching me)
careful now these little feet
having never been a girl
Twelve times twelve,
twelve arrives
sadness in mommies cancer eyes
watch him do it and do it right
gotta give the medicine exactly right
the internal cries of that youthful voice (never really having been young)
somebody please tell me,
where is mommies tongue?
gotta carry cause mommies gone
will someone sing her daughters song?
The woman with the pink ribbons in her curls
the woman never having been a girl
Restaurants to wash myself
weed and drinks cause I watch myself
who cares for cute sinks when nothings left
seems like childhood just up and left
me sitting beside myself
empty benches now colored with the stench of my pain
smelly armpits reach out to beg for change
while relatives sit at home and count my change
whose willing to see this woman change?
Never having been a girl
Hustle proved its source of love
where does an instant woman find true love?
inside the arms of an abusive man she seeks her refuge from lazy hands
money giving light to dark places
apartment buildings giving substance to misplacement’s
where
where has it gone? My love? Where’s your part?
where oh where have you hidden my heart?
Numbers fade away like living water upon dirty dishes
this daughter of mine the result of these stitches
Entering the world as if she owns it!
Gotta hope another woman has not entered this world
praying my first child has the chance to at least,
just be
a girl.
Guest Feature – A Modern Day Slave Plantation Exists, and It’s Thriving in the Heart of America – Part 1
This post is part of a 3 day Special Feature Post on ThePBSblog, located under our Articles and Guest Feature section. The author’s name is Laura Dimon. Laura graduated from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in 2013. She has been published in the Economist, the Atlantic, and the Daily Beast. I ran across her article on the Prison system and its striking similarity to the Slavery Plantation and thought I’d share it here. However, it is a lengthy article so I will be breaking it down into 3 separate post to give you room to process the information. I will also wait until after this series (Friday 10/17/14) before adding my own commentary, though you may comment after each segment as you wish.
*******************************************
It was 1972. Thousands of American troops were battling communist forces in Vietnam. Nixon had won re-election by a landslide, but Watergate would soon usher in his demise. Space travel and technology were advancing rapidly.
Change was brewing across America, but one place stood still, frozen in time: Louisiana State Penitentiary, commonly known as Angola. When Robert King arrived that year, he felt as though he’d stepped into the past.
Angola sits 50 miles northwest of Baton Rouge. It’s the largest maximum-security facility in the United States and one of the country’s most notorious prisons. In the book The Life and Legend of Leadbelly, the authors wrote, “Tough criminals allegedly broke down when they received a sentence to Angola. … None of them wanted to be sent to a prison where 1 of every 10 inmates annually received stab wounds and which routinely seethed with black-white confrontations.”
Angola’s expanse covers a vast 28 square miles — larger than the size of Manhattan. Tucked away in a bend of the Mississippi River, it’s surrounded by water and swamp on three sides. It’s an isolated penal village — the nearest town 30 miles away — and it’s the only penitentiary in the country where staff members live on site. Generation after generation grow up, live and die on Angola’s land.
When King, now 71, arrived at Angola, his first impression of it was that it resembled a slave plantation, he said. And it used to be just that. Its name is derived from the home country of the slaves who used to work the land. Today, the comparison remains sadly accurate: Inmates are disproportionately black. They’re forced into hard labor and monitored closely by armed white staff on horseback. There is a sex slave trade behind the bars and many black inmates are deprived of basic constitutional rights. King landed a tough lot in life: He was born black in Louisiana in 1942. In his 2008 book From the Bottom of the Heap, he wrote, “I was born in the U.S.A. Born black, born poor. Is it any wonder that I have spent most of my life in prison?” He went to Angola when he was 18 for a murder he did not commit and remained there for 31 years, 29 of which he spent in solitary confinement, before he was finally freed in 2001.
*Note: Image Credits: AP, Peter Puna, Robert King
The PBS Blog 