You Ain't Know!

Purpose Protected.
 Dream Driven.
Boldly Black.
 Huemanitarian Hustler.
Ms. Mom.
 Community Curator.
Fabulous Friend.
Serious Supporter.
 Brave Builder.
Pioneering Parent.
 Revolutionary Reverence.
 Going Gracious.
 Giving good.
 Living Love.

Rice Crispies, Coffee, and Toaster Oven Toast

Conversations reflect the art of living, beyond the FB/Twitter/IG/Snapchat definition of my attention. In these moments, I find poetry. My purpose magnified to see the beautiful ugly in everything, separating myself from means, so I can be the end. I take notes. I hear the allegory. The truth doesn't whisper. It shouts like thunder. 

So desperate was I to mourn that I denied the dream I carried. I refused to hear, even when I fingered cake batter like my grandmother. She gave me poetry, but, more than that, she confirmed my faith in something I could see. Words are a means. I am the vessel. I can see myself. I am bigger than the medical misunderstandings that come with defiance. I am just as much God as the collared ministers or the homeless man. I am no better, no worse. I don't have to live like either of them. I just have to know me.

How do you do that? Do you invest innerg creating situations to disspell the myths? Sure. I did. I pushed the envelope sealed with foolish expectations and surpassed. I ran, rode my bike, played ball, acted in plays, sang, and fell in love with life. I worked at savoring myself, spending hours writing songs with birds and squirrels. I dug in flowerbeds. I gathered nuts. I taught history by making it everyday. 

Chaos is not the human condition. It festers out of that lonely place where we feel less than. It smoke screens our truth until we lie under it, choking on smog instead of drinking alkaline. Poetry is the porch, the stoop, the corner. We are outside of our truest, flexing and maxing, telling the same sermon until the bling washes away. Honesty comes when the audience is a black empty space and nobody is checking for you.

Everyday, someone works. For you, with you, against you. Your biggest battle is seeing you for who you are. Then, you can see them. Then, you can hear the limerick vs the lie. I'm so much more than poetry. I'm a gift, a peace of the universe, a dream, life eternal. 

Poetry in Plain Sight : my first collection of poetry

Normally,
I write beautiful words
Dripping with obscurity,
Amalgamated allegories
Alleging and assuming
Acquiescence.
Today,
I sit in awe,
Fingering pages of print
Pressed
Between college courses
And career choice.
I wonder if writing
Wrote the stories
Only poetry can tell,
Draining ink pens
And leaving journals
Unanswered?
This is my book,
My life tree,
Rooted in the richness
Of Madagascar,
Miles of more than travel,
And moments where
Intelligence screamed to
Be more than loved: she
Needs expression.
Her limbs need to stretch
Further than fallacy,
Feeding souls hungry
For more than food,
And bear a strange fruit.
This is my book,
Porous words cutting
Through rocks,
And sitting on coffee tables,
Dressing up bookshelves,
Taught in classrooms
And archived as a National
Treasure: libraries need me.
This is me,
Written down.
Please, read.

My Hair 01/15

For every season,
a new cut, color or style
makes it way
beyond hollywood tresses
and into the bathrooms
of most of my closer friends.
And, we expect the change,
like hot flashes,
to be bolder than the last,
b/c hair speaks
some inviting language
we often forget
under flat iron steam
and that box 54 gold.
It defines a mood,
hidden under the I don't care
of a hat or scarf,
playfully sophisticated,
flawlessly funky,
and everything in between.
However we chose to wear it,
it's not perception,
not an excuse for psuedo-science
laden with ignorant extensions
of what you don't know;
ain't nothing wrong with me
b/c my hair is as much accessory
as new shoes.
It's all mine,
twisted,
 fro'ed out,
soft,
beautiful,
just like me.

#Nigeria 01/15.

Unselected humanity
papers the floors
of network news,
creasing
under the wait,
jamming office chair wheels
and stopping
business as usual,
for as long as it take
to be remembered
rather than dismissed,
tossed in the trash,
forgotten,
written out of history;
‪#‎Nigeria‬.

How we do. 01/15

Writers
spend time alone,
crowded by the comfort
of coffee shop banter,
seated
in between the next inspiring line
and a 3rd year philosophy student,
we inhale bits of the world,
scratching scraps of today
with a borrowed pen.
Characters dress,
sliding scarves from strangers
and making it a skirt,
and speak too easily
to be forgotten,
assuming headspace
until the unrented pages
of the manuscript
are comfortable enough
to be called home.
Scenes swing,
painting and re-painting
linguistic strokes of background,
of foreground,
of filler.
These wealthy words,
boiling in a waterless pot,
congeal imaginary places
to the reader's mind
and become as real as the taste
of jello in the summer time.
Writers
eek out,
 squealing and halting
until word birth
is paramount to
wherever we were going
and isn't complete
without it; we brake for ink
and let social media
be our inkwell
and our Quill,
scribbling at traffic lights,
before the doctor comes in
or half-time.
We are always inspired,
finding new ways
to smash this human experience
into 26 letters
and a myriad of thesaurus references,
auto-spell checks,
and character limits.
Writers are so much more,
but you may not know,
b/c you didn't notice
the pen
we left behind.

01/15. I'm not a Revolutionary

I'm not a revolutionary.
I live on the edges of revelations,
sitting on top of the cornucopia
and swing my feet for fun.
See, I don't hide between
the braided fibers,
other people's brick and mortar buildings
casting shadows on what I ain't got,
b/c my fingers already bleed enough
to fill the wells of your eyes,
pop those strained vessels
and ask you why are you stuck?
Stuck right there
sucking on pipedreams
that nobody sold you.
See you bought it,
invested your rusted pennies
in day old candy
and ran with happiness,
waited everyday for that fallacy fix.
I'm not a revolutionary.
I get pissed at stupidity,
so angry at ignorance
that I want to teach in the streets,
and you sit there,
drinking Monsters,
toxifying yourself by choice,
acting like I have no rights.
See, I am more than right,
I left,
quit the game,
gave birth to my own metaphysics,
 slipped it into some poet-tea,
and watch you,
b/c my aroma
is an elixir,
stripping you,
sip by sip,
leaving your purchased problems
in a pool
where you won't swim again.
I am not a revolutionary.
I breathe this battle,
the daily maintenance
of managing muse and mastery,
misery and magnificent,
like it's my life,
as if my children and grandchildren
need more than erased history
and incomplete reunion conversations
to make them wholly human,
wholly universal,
holy black.
I am not a revolutionary.