Tag: wordpress

Photography

My beautiful sister Pamela
My beautiful sister Pamela, Photo by EC

Honestly, I can’t teach your ways to anyone, nor do I know much about you. I don’t talk about you a lot either, or cough up revelations about how I came to enjoy the way your eyes capture and then freeze our lives. I do remember however our first real encounter. It was the 11th grade. Mrs. Luno coupled us for the school yearbook, and we walked the hallways of Harper High School like we had been together for years. You wrapped your arms around my neck and let my pupils kiss your face. Together we recorded, froze, and transformed time into memory. We followed Jesse Jackson and Arnie Duncan through interviews and meetings. You even let me choose what to see and hold you in my arms during assemblies, plays, and basketball games. Letting me control the way your body felt in my hands, and in seconds we created images both tangible and symbolic; both real and fantasy. It was the first time I came to appreciate this kind of relationship with technology. We had so much in common: Your shutter and my pupil, your film and my retina, and our capacity to record the past; your memory card, and my brain. I still don’t completely understand you, but goodness, don’t I love holding the camera!

Guest Feature – Touched by an Angel

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We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love’s light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

Touched by an Angel – Maya Angelou

Writer’s Quote Wednesday – Love Is

So as I pondered what to present this snowy Wednesday morning (Yea, you heard it right, it’s snowing in Louisiana again in February, insane. Thought I left this in Chicago, but I digress). I decided to switch it up this week with a song. Today’s Writer’s Quote Wednesday is Jah Cure’s Love is:

Love IsThis song is all about the quote:

“Love is the answer for every question”

We walk around here with our Bachelor Degrees and fancy titles. We hold forums on the state of the world. Everything from poverty, to racism, to religion. We cough up varied professional reasons why the world is the way that it is. As a result to these reasons more questions spring from our natural yearning for truth and for understanding. Some of us profit from these dictionary type languages we hold with one another, professed scholars and philosophers. Self-made experts in the field of such and such, and a how-to book that promises to give you the answer to the question of your existence and how to perfect your life. All of this and yet the answer lies in the simplicity, yet depth, of one word: Love.

It is no secret that the physical is a manifestation of the spiritual. And as the snow falls this cool Wednesday morning I am reminded that the hearts of men are just as cold. But love. Love is the heat with the potential to melt the wicked from the foreskins of our hearts, and so that we may feel again. It is the answer to every question, every solution, and every situation that exist. The world has grown cold because the world is void of love. It is the umbilical cord that connects us to our creator and all of creation and yet it is missing from our lives. Indeed, this powdery morning I am reminded that Love, Is.

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Don’t forget to check us out every Wednesday for exciting quotes (and songs!) as part of Writer’s Quote Wednesday, hosted by  Silver Threading.

Simmering Thoughts

I find that they are always best. Simmered thoughts. Anytime I feel the urge to transcribe my heart into the air I always find that it is best when thoughts have simmered a bit. A constellation of colorful expression brilliantly placed alongside a sea of feeling. A slow cooking of perfection, a lucent idea, crafty creativity, and steamy emotion kept just below the boiling point. Always showing up within those moments of contemplation and stillness. Somewhere between inspiration and writer’s block, a reflection on the world you carry inside of yourself is sure to produce a tasty remedy. A collection of thoughts, and experiences, and advice not yet given, boils down into a sudden birth of writing. We will see what becomes of it.

Not Another One

microphone

No
This is not another one
Not a sex poem,
not a hood poem
Not a “I’m black and I’m proud!” so let’s try to be real poem
Not another marching
No more killings
(and please let’s do something other than sit in)
not another “We shall overcome.”
No not another one
Not a slow one
Not one 2 bore you
I’m not that one
Rising from my falls
I am that one,
but don’t you worry,
cause not another dialogue
No not another one
Not another long-winded one
nor will I give you a fast one
No not another fast one,
you see my words no need 2 map it
So what am I a rapper or a poet?
Not another one
yet just another one
these words I encourage your minds 2 freeze it
Just freeze
Cause this is not another one about Jes-
Us
not another one about Just
Us
Not a kemet poet
and can you believe I have a twin but this is not another Mary Mary Duet
Not another Allah, Buddha, Osiris and Horus,
not another number 2 define me no matter what the score is
For only the Truth knows what my sentence is
She with the gun in her hand you mistake for the pen
Keeping the laws that my father gave
and promises kept sacred from the grave
Watching this pen bleed life onto a lifeless page
Sent from the mighty one,
but don’t you worry
this is not another
“So like, I’ll just leave my footprints in the Sun” one
No,
she’s definitely not another one
yet just another one..

To Live

Arundhati Roy

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty…. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.” ― Arundhati Roy

False Leaders & Mentors

Speaking of Black History Month, there’s a desperate need for fresh leadership within our community. A lot of people look to figures like Al Sharpton and Benjamin Crump as leaders but the truth is that men like this are leading a lot of you astray. These men do nothing for black people except manipulate situations and line their pockets. While it is true that young black men are murdered, the aftermath of these kinds of events is sadder. Not only are black men murdered, but afterward your leaders come in and the objective of the situation is altered. Trayvon Martins parents are rich from their son’s death. Al Sharpton took them under his wing and collected garbage cans filled with money and Mike Brown’s parents are well on their way. There is nothing fake or conspiracy theory about the deaths of these men this is conspiracy fact, but it is the aftermath that is manipulated. For what reason does a mother need a lawyer when her son is murdered? She needs a lawyer only when she is told to sue for civil rights transgressions. Meanwhile, your human rights are continually violated and your leaders do nothing about it. The saddest thing about the deaths that continue to pile alongside the streets of black communities is oddly not the deaths themselves. The saddest thing about it is the can of whitewash the leaders of these people hold in their pockets, prepared to spill deception at the first sight of blood. How long will we continue to give birth to death still lying on the bed of Sharpton’s dream?