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Posts tagged Poetry
You Are Living
May 11th
A gift for my mother and grandmother… Tracing the story of three generations.
called you sunday past
hallmark said it was time
for some contrived day
invented to sell cards and FTD bouquets
and add to radio morning show trivia
give you lip service between station identification
and the phrase that pays
but I refuse to equate your status
to that of national egg month and secretaries’ week
because before it was the fashionyou took your daughters to work…
I.
all three of them in pigtails
when your young wife went away
your dreams snatched away with a shock
so in the midst of depression
economic and otherwise
you raised three little girls
who would raise little girls
who would raise little girls
who would one day hope to
raise little girls to be just like
the great grandma they never knew
who somehow held your heart despite
seventy years of loneliness
empty beds, empty wallets, empty cupboards
I met you fifty years after the storm
loved to visit your farm and trailer home
find peacock feathers and arrowheads
in fields that you plowed
building on the dreams of ancestors long since passed
now I build on yours
you slipped away with your daughters by your side–
and their daughters
who for some reason never considered it a failure
that you came eight years short of your hundred-year promise
your littlest girl
had a littlest girl
who had a little girl
… so that promise is unbrokenII.
standing in afternoon windowpane shadows
laughing melancholy memories
about how grandpa Arbra used to notice
your every six-month pictures of your five-minus-one
and say “you shore do have a lot of grandbabies”
we never bothered to correct him because
what’s the harm in overestimating your hand in creation
maybe it’s just that he could see the futureso your fingertips trace the photos
like the wings of a butterfly
“look here at Arbra and G.S.
they’re both gone now”
and you choked on a tear
“and this… is my mother…
it’s almost scary how much
your mother looks like her.
you know, Les, I feel so cheated.
I never had a mother.
I never had a grandmother.
I don’t even know what kind of person she was
or what her laugh sounded like.
all I know is my dad never loved another woman
like he loved her”
and all I can tell you is that
despite having no example to follow
you made the best mother
and the best grandmother
and I’m thankful to know the sound of your laughter
and I’m thankful to have known what makes you cry
and to see the pride
and tears in your eyesIII.
we’ve been to hell and back
on many an occasion
told me I was special from day one
tuesday’s child… full of grace
sprang from the heart of a woman-child
with but an eighteen year headstart
on the marathon of the ages
I’ve grown accustomed to hearing
about your beauty and poise and contagious joy
how bubbly your laugh and beautiful your smile
and sparkling your green eyes
but your beauty to me comes not from
how many heads you still turn
at high school football games
you were beautiful singing me to sleep
“I love you Leslie…
oh yes I do…
I don’t love anyone…
as much as you…”
at age three those words made me cry
you were beautiful while trying to hide your pain
while staring it in the face
because I had my father’s eyes
you were beautiful when your second
little girl
slipped through the fingers of your heart
and into eternity
you were beautiful when you held me
in steamy bathrooms wheezing
unable to afford hospital beds but
providing the best medicine
you are beautiful now
when you smile at your baby girl
walking across stages
chasing papers
and cry with your baby girl
picking up the pieces of her heart
you are beautiful when you pray
and beautiful when you speak
you are beautiful when you sleepand beautiful when you… live
you bear not only an uncanny physical resemblance
to your grandmother
but a spiritualemotional one as well
you have begun the next pattern
in the woven tapestry of life
and as long as words are spoken
and dreams are unbroken…you are living
for mensah
Jan 2nd
i no longer believe
in the concept of full circle –
only constant revolution
i don’t mean that
to sound cliche.
i also stopped trying
to understand photosynthetic
organic intricacies of
friends and love and such
all i know is that
things interact and
now i can breathe.
i’m thinking it’s hard to imagine
where the time went absent of
mirrored conversations and circumstance
shared and bared –
i didn’t know i missed you.
my friend, you have taught me
that it’s okay to be on your way
before you’ve found it
and for that i’m grateful
you may have saved me by being –
pharaoh chasing
forcing moses to step into the water
even when drowning seems eminent,
“just write.”
so i am.
for you,
for the dripping shrinking icicles
my words are becoming.
i swear i won’t let
them grow cold again.
and if i drown in the resulting
deluge, so be it
i’d rather choke and lose myself
in my creation
than slowly fade away.
Um, title?
Feb 14th
So I go through this weird dissonant thing every time I go to update my blog… I feel an urge to chronicle the everyday, but yet a desire to wax philosophical too. Forgive me if this is kind of scattered…
I am kind of aggravated at the moment because I can’t find this one particular poem that I wrote long ago. I’ve looked everywhere. Notebooks. Web archives. All over my computer. *sigh* I guess it’s gone forever. It’s probably just as well, considering the subject matter. heh
Speaking of poetry… I think jumping onboard at FreeVerse is the smartest thing I could have done to rekindle my muse. I am a hundred miles closer to being back “on it,” evidenced by the fact that I actually want to read and write again. For the longest time, anything remotely concerned with poetry would make me run away, I think because it hurt so bad to think about the fact that I haven’t written in like… three years. I’m not entirely sure what my deal has been. Stress? Being mentally tired? Numb? Too busy? I don’t know, but I’m going to find out… and break out of this funk. In a week or so I’m going to have a little retreat of sorts, right here in my apartment. Mike will be out of town for the weekend, and I’m just going to focus on ME. Not CAP. Not work. Just me and my words. We’ll see what happens.
So Mensah knocked me out tha box today by writing about me in one of his blogs. I mention it here because I want to make sure I remember how much that meant to me. It’s not that I’ve doubted our friendship or anything (well except that one um… year… but we won’t go there lol) … But seriously it means the world to me that there are people who understand me, especially my moody, angst-ridden struggling poet side, and support me unconditionally.
I’m really enjoying work. So much less stress and drama than at my previous employer. I do my job, feel needed and appreciated, and take my butt home at night. I am paid fairly, have my own office, and a big flat panel monitor. What more can you ask? 
I’ve been enjoying the Olympics. I have a mini-crush on Apolo Anton Ohno. heh He screwed up his chances in the 1500m, but hopefully he’ll medal in one of the remaining three events.
I’m getting sleepy so I guess my other topics will have to wait. Good night, friends.
Poets and writers…
Jan 23rd
Poets and writers, check out The Free Verse. It’s a new messageboard/portal, owned by the former co-owner of Fireseek.com, Mensah.
Overdue
Jan 3rd
I take satisfaction in
the fact that
though she had you last
you didn’t love her either.
A poet is someone who is astonished by everything…
Nov 8th
Went to Def Poetry Jam last night. First, I will say it was outstanding. Each of the poets was very good, though I did enjoy some more than others. (One of the poets was an angry Jamaican lesbian with some serious “issues” to put it lightly. LOL Another I thought dwelled a little too heavily on the “I’m Palestinian and don’t have a homeland” thing, but hey — that’s her thing, so cool. I guess my real beef with her was that a lot of her stuff just made little sense.)
Anyway, Poetri and Black Ice were the bomb. Mike thoroughly enjoyed himself too, it seemed.
So you may be wondering with baited breath… did I get inspired to write again? The answer is yes. However, I have also come to an epiphany of sorts about why I have not written in so long…
I am not passionate about anything anymore. That realization almost makes me sick to my stomach, because I have told so many people in the past that passion is my favorite quality in people. I don’t care what you’re passionate about, as long as you’re passionate. I once dated a guy in the Air Force who was passionate about clouds. That was what attracted me to him primarily. Somehow, somewhere, I have lost my passion.
True, sometimes passion by its nature is a fleeting thing anyway. I mean, I’ve gone through poetry spurts when I was passionate about being brokenhearted or pissed off at a guy or in-brand-new-love passionate or… angry with the hiphop scene or… something. I think when I came to Florida that graduate school and the lack of an arts scene (and lack of friends?) in this town sucked the life out of me. Made me numb and disenchanted with so many things.
So what to do? I’ve got to find my passion again. I think I will pray that God will help me find a passion for Him again first and foremost. I think about the fact that I love my husband with all of my heart, but it’s sad that I’ve never written a poem for or about him. He came at a time in my life where I had already lost my creative energy. I will pray that God would spark a passion for my husband in me so strong that it breaks through this non-poetic funk and comes out in verse.
I think something else I need is some interaction with poets. Mike mentioned that I should start a scene here down at the A.R.T. (the place where he plays jazz). It’s a thought.
I want to find a passion for something — anything — that is so intense that I write again. I used to be the kind of poet who wrote on napkins, deposit slips… whatever was handy. The words just HAD to come out.
I was born a poet. God created me to write, and it is tearing me up inside, even to the point of occasional depression, to not be functioning in that gift. I’m tired of this and ready for change.
We all have wings, but some of us don’t know why…
Aug 26th
I’ve gotta get back in my element. I was having a discussion tonight with Michael and he was saying how musicians bond with other musicians through playing, not through eating pie at Perkins or whatever. (Nothin against pie, but u know…) Anyway so I started thinking about how much I miss my words. I don’t know what the deal’s been, but for about 2 years now, they’ve been elusive. I’ve tried several times to figure out why, but then I get frustrated and retreat into my “I don’t want to think about it” mode. Maybe that’s a cop out. Maybe I’m afraid to write for some reason…
Mary, I know you understand this… When you’ve strayed really far from God, the last thing you want to do is pray, even though you know that’s exactly what you need, and you remember how great it feels when you’re “on point.”
That’s how it is with my poetry right now. I remember what it feels like to just let go… It’s funny, I still think in poetry. Why I won’t/am afraid to write it down, I have no idea.
I think part of it, like Mike needing to be with musicians, I need some poets around me. As much as I consider my whole experience of being Firesook an abusive relationship, I miss the synergy, for lack of a better term.
I need some collabos. Anybody game? (Mensah, u better answer me. Punk.)
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