Um it's not her it's you

Why do we do this?



Why? do we profess crazy shit to no good people and then blame them when it literally blows up in our faces?

If you dedicate yourself to someone is actively not trying to be about not one thing in 2011 this grand and fantastic fabulously rainbow and glitter filled year of our Lord then you should in fact probably go ahead and let that grenade WOOOOOOORK.

We as the soft hearted knights of romantic honor need to be more guarded with our affections. There are some people out there who are genuinely not ready for our favor and that is really ok. Everyone gets on the bus in his or her own time. No rush HOWEVER, what Black Jesus has taught me this year is that if someone is pressing snooze in life you need to get YOUR ass up and go about YOUR day.

If someone keeps hurting your feelings then you want your feelings hurt. If someone keeps walking all over you then you like footprints on your back.

Love your neighbors without loosing yourself. Help your friends without risking yourself. Guard your humanity for it can be lost and damaged and it is a bitch to get back.

Prophet in music.

NO Adele.
No I don't want to remember. Thank you. But I appreciate you reminding me. Adele's album 21 makes me want her to be heartbroken for life. I feel like her in a healthy happy relationship might just be the worst thing to happen to my ipod. She hits the notes and presses lyrics into my mind that gives me the feeling that Black Jesus came down from heaven to save just me from myself.

"when was the last time you thought of me"
well shit. right now asshole. You know I can't erase you from my memory. I LOVED you dickhead. When you love someone they take a piece of you with them when they stomp out of your life with your heart in the bottom of their shoe.

Adele is that kind of artist who makes me KNOW for sure that I am not alone in my loneliness and despair. She let's me know that it's ok that I'm handicapped in love.

She throws all of her inadequacies out on the table and is bare and raw and real and humble and brave and indignant all at the same time.

" But I know I have a fickle heart, and a bitterness, and a wondering eye and a heaviness in my head . . .but don't you remember? The reason you loved me before? Baby please remember. . .me. . .once more. . ."

And you know WHY my heart is fickle? Why I'm a little bitter? Because of the LAST bitch who hurt my got damn feelings. Jesus is lesson learned. The Lord is a timid deer. He has brought me this far and he would like me to live to see a cure to my Lupus and that can't happen if I let my whole self get lost in love.

"You used to love me"

ha. Well. I also used to shit my pants. Really. And when I was a child I did childish things but then I because a woman and I put away the things of my childhood. (except for cartoons, and ice cream, and you know board games).

"You used to love me"

maybe you still do. Maybe I still love you. But on all that is holy and Tina Turner's wig just because you love someone doesn't mean you need to BE with them. And that is the lesson that is being eased into my the soft place at the base of my skull behind my ears with THIS song.

And thaaaaaaaaaaat is the point isn't it.  that's the entire entirety wholistic all inclusive point of it. Isn't it? The reason we break up with people. There is ALWAYS a reason. but then we break up and we fall in love again 10 minutes after that door shuts and in those quiet moments we turn to that empty space in the bed and we think to ourselves wait . . . Why are they gone? OR we deal with someone who has left us and we have to fight every adult instinct in our body to not beg them to come back. Some of us don't fight, and we do beg but really that is rarely successful.

Adele is brilliant in her honest portrayal of a broken relationship and the truth of something that cannot and should not be fixed. Memories fad and bad memories sometimes fad the quickest. For those of us who have suffered trauma at the hands of loved ones this is a blessing but we must be vigilant. Faded memories should never lead to ignorance and repetition of the mistakes that lead to heartbreak.

This isn't a blog. I'm just having a good hair week.

Poetry and Me

“Poetry is not a luxury “~ Audre Lorde 

What if words have soul potential?

What if words are capable of curing maladies one letter at a time

We just haven’t figured out how to “work” them yet?

What if words have a real and bitter

first kiss cosmic wormhole cool breeze

Summer sunlight promise?

What if words have veins and bleed?

What if every word is pregnant

With starlight and sunsets

Moonshine and rising tides?

My voice knows

That words can cast kingdoms

Built on veranda’s with no

Houses surrounded by moats

With no dragons.

My words throw keys

That unlock emotions

And rip through silence

With the vision of necessity

What if words could pull terror

To its knees?

Wake up addicts from their haze?

Words were meant to be a crutch

And free papers

Ice and a torch

Poetry is meant to be a

Traveling foundation

And the Bard,

The Bard is meant

To be the vessel

Where dignity swells up

Puffs out

And leaks through

The Bard smears emotions across lines, and stages, and

Crowds

And the sentiment creeps into minds

And through ears tickling spines

In a back and forth vertical motion

With familiarity

You see Poetry lives through me

But it’s owned by no one

Poetry is truly free.

“Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.” 

I was not born a poet but I made to be one. The first time I heard (not just listened to)

 poetry I was 15 years old. Staying with my Uncle Jeff in California and I saw a show called Def Poetry Jam on HBO.



I was mesmerized. It was rap without the music. It was hip hop at it’s core. It was beautiful and it lit up my soul. Every hair follicle stood on end and my toes stretched towards the screen. Poetry entered me that day and made a home in my heart.

Then I started to see poetry. In song lyrics:

I didn't mean to take up all your sweet time...
I'll give it right back to you, one of these days
- - - Jimi Hendrix

In movie dialogue:

The jail you planned for me is the one you're gonna rot in.
---Celie in The Color Purple 

In Jamaican sayings/proverb:
He who feels it knows it

I saw poetry in dance:



 And for the first time I saw my world in the colors God painted them in. . . .

Audre says that, “The white fathers told us, I think therefore I am; and the black mothers in each of us-the poet-whispers in our dreams, I feel therefore I can be free”

My poems are my diary. What I can't say I will often write. My Poems will ideally out live me. They explain me and understand me. My poems love me and share me. They are a privilege and a honor. They were never mine to keep. When I don’t write for an extended period of time I find myself uncomfortable, unhappy and off balance. That is because I have poems that are constantly boiling up within me that need to be released.

I am a knight of expression and I place my armor on a round table of dreams and lyrics. My quest is a journey of self discovery and revolutionary dialogue. I am a warrior of passion. I leave the memories of battle laid our in verse so that I may project the truth of mankind which is neither good or bad but real.

I am a wisdom hunter. Thirsty for knowledge. Brave in desire and constantly weaving fantasy into the perception I chose to dispense among my brethen.

Poetry is not a luxury for me. It is sacred calling that combines faith, glory, honesty, gods, love, everything sublime and everything degrading into something divine. With the passing of Gil Scott-Heron I have found my footing again and my writing has increased exponentially. Art is often the mother of change. If I want to be the change I want to see in the world then I have to see myself as an artist with the potential to change the world. It's really that simple and that got damn hard.

Vanity

Love does not hurt. Love loves you first and then waits for someone to catch up to you.

That is a TRUTH I had to learn the hard way. While living in Cleveland I have met, dating, flirted with, and obsessed over an array of interesting women. Often these women were not worthy of the beauty and artistry I bring to a relationship because they themselves had nothing comparable to offer. They were ill fitted for me because I am interested in being a complete human being and I struggle to fulfill that purpose. The women I chose were not.

The women I sought relationships with have been poorly suited for me in that they were not successful in trying to be their true selves. I do not judge them for this. I do not pity them nor do I blame them for the consequences of our failed encounters. My choice is potential mates says more about ME than it does about THEM. I am supposed to be a Diva of art and change.

I chose these women because I was afraid of my potential. I was afraid of what I could achieve with the right person by my side. When you live your right life

My historic line-up consists of: the girl who swings from lovers like Tarzan swings from trees; the girl who changes soul mates like I change socks; the girl who has a girlfriend but needs more attention so she seeks a mistress; the girl who wakes up every morning promising to be a better person, fails, then gets up the next day promising the same thing; the girl who loved me only when she was drunk; the girl who loved me as a filler for the girl she would rather be with; the girl who loved me for my money (HA jokes on her); and lastly and unfortunately most significantly the one who left me torn, brushed, beaten, by way of violent mental illness and antagonism disguised as love.

Thankfully after all of these failed experiments I eventually learned how be the lover I was meant to be. Not for anyone else but for me. I needed to be broken and emptied so that a true essence of  self appreciation grow inside of me. That enchantment could only fill me up after I had been ripped apart and gutted.

Grace came to me in a whisper with a slow purpose.  It soothed me after my love turned hard and gray. Grace reminded me that poetry is a savior and words are my shield. Grace was a hail of wood and dust that came crashing down on my head and flashed in front of my face like a rainbow of brown faces with high cheekbones and wide smiles. Grace walks like family and smells like home. Grace was my older brother asking me “where is she now. . .because I just want to "talk"” reminding me that I always have more than just myself.

Grace told me that love may be difficult, it may require work, it can be loud and tedious and obnoxious but it does not scare or frighten and it does not ever hurt. If your love hurts it is not love but a shell of the emotion mutated by fear and it should be pitied and shunned.

Our true selves deserve more and better. Our true souls recognize the energy that seeks to protect us and embraces it. When we try to fit harmful energy into our lives we bring our world into disarray and we find ourselves off balance. This lack of balance permeates into every aspect of our existence and ultimately causes the mutated melancholy we now know as depression. I have found a place for Melancholy in my life and I have embraced the moments of sadness for the wisdom that follows. create brilliant art. 

I look to the artists:

Charles Schulz

and

And Nina Simone.             

They conversed regularly with Melancholy and used it to create wonderful art and inspired millions with their work.

I have found a purpose in focusing on the future and I find that using them as a beacon is both comforting and steadying. I too will go Melancholy’s table and I will leave my worries there. If I give proper deference and show enough bravery I might just be able to leave with a piece of wisdom because I have a feeling my Sadnesss does not want me to go away empty handed.   

The gift No

After the music stopped

I place my ego

On a muted alter

Conceded defeat

and left my armor

for the next suitor

I removed the love from my

eyes and knelt in the void

left on the floor of my mind

there beneath my knees

are the scraps of our history

we who were once

Two stars a budding comet

Poised to rip through

Cushion of normality

Stalled by an average reality

And plagued by the treasure

Of stability

where love has opened us

it exposes the lining of our

souls, the brightness of

the moons circling our hearts

and plays the notes

of galaxies

roaming lazy through

our bodies

 

we were mates in mind only

fool in happiness

for moments spinning

on a pinhead

and every second was brilliant

every minute sweet

regrets were infinite

oh but the journey

was sure a blinding

treat is not a exercise

I'm eager to repeat

Abra Cadabra

She’s magic to me

And that’s all that matters

She’s precious

like sun in daydreams

She’s hope and light

like the moon in nightmares

Her hands are rivers

To my fire

her lips water

For a mouth too long parched

There is dancing in her eyes

heat in her hips

A story in her walk

And peace falling heavy

From her perfect fingertips

Her face greets me at dawn

And settles me to bed

My soul is at ease

When she is around

My heart is pleased

When she is near

There is a quiet of spirit

So thick and rich

Any mortal could tear it

Which makes us fragile and brilliant

Hard-won  and resilient

So until she welcomes me

Forget my name

And if I should die

Before she is mine

Don’t put a headstone on my grave

Just write patience in the earth

And let the rain wash it away