For New Orleans… A Woman Scorn

 

She lies ravished

Violently brutalized and depleted of all natural resources

Left with little human contact

Playing on the back of your conscience in market driven magazine plots

Misleading media headlines that attempt to downsize the reality

Of facing America at its finest

Drenched in undisrupted classrooms with empty hallways

Inside of schools that can’t open because the students haven’t came back and

The teachers can’t teach because the system decided it was better to lay them off than to

fulfill their commitment of back payment

She boils with the stew of empty kitchens where the only thing cooking is

Toxic fumes, liquid waste and human remains

Inside of houses that bear an X on the door to say that the Military has been there

Where modern day pilgrims are now marching in to conquer the stolen land of

Residents that can’t make it back to their homeland because of lack of resources

And no money which means no travel,

No food, no work, no house, no home

No help from the government that is

But it’s not just the government that is the problem

It is each of you that still sit complacent

Waiting for the next person to help you out of your situation

As if you can’t be them when you are them, just a few states away

And although fema and the bush administration should have stepped in faster

We should have acted years before by electing the right officials

And learning that politics represents demographics

And no vote means no voice

And I’m mad that Katrina bears the marks of a failed system when

It wasn’t Katrina that failed New Orleans but the good ole US of A

And every other expert that cosigned on the dotted line and then

Hid behind the military shield when the results revealed

Errors that even a 5 year old mind would have knew didn’t add up

And it still doesn’t add up when I see my brothers and sisters

Dying in foreign countries to rebuild their land

When ground zero sits less than a day drive away from my door step

It doesn’t add up when we’re giving humanitarian aide to 3rd world countries

While people die stranded here on our soil

And don’t have jobs here on our soil

And is forgotten right here

And we pay tax dollars to build democratic systems

In third world countries when G. W. Bush and his gang

Has made a pure mockery of our democracy

And after all the lies

And phone tapping,

Oil stealing

Non Bin Laden catching

Vacationing

Lack of action taking situations that he’s placed this country in,

No on hollered impeach

But they were ready to send Clinton to jail for getting a blow job.

She lies silently waiting for revenge that even Da Vinci knew would eventually come

Silently allowing the pilgrims to rebuild on the new voodoo soil where souls perished

Vowing to remember those that turned their backs on the innocent

Bound by death requests to make those that forgot, remember

And they will rebuild beautiful homes on stilted legs

With levees strong enough to withstand 3 Katrina’s

And business will boom in a new tourist society

With beautiful hotel rooms and tours that will escort visitors to the ninth ward

To the astrodome,

To the superdome where devastation hit

Up and down the streets of New Orleans

And she will sleep until they have rested comfortably

In their ignorant bliss

And then she will strike with the vengeance of a woman scorn.

 

 

Before I touched you

I wanted to love you

Create a map to heaven on the span of your back

Angel wings and lamb skin

Natural like tree roots and honey

We comb hours through gridlocked simplicity

Kiss mountains of Sinai beneath twilight moons

Crescents perched towards perfection

Suckled moments of ecstasy

Renewed dreams and cherished vows

Exposed bare without hesitation

We breathe sandalwood

Clenched fists

Closed eyelids

Curled toes upon touch

Traced Braille across your shoulders

Kissed desire on your collarbone

Found Jerusalem in your Bethlehem

I am the Bast of your Ra

You my Sekhmet

Together we conquer Babylon

Eshnunna

Nippur

Isin

Eridu

Ur

Lagash

Rapiqum fall upon your fingertips

Heed the span of your Nile

Oya secretes through your whisper

We love in prophesy

Layers delved in truth

We love in space where there’s no existence of time

Imperfectly perfect

Just right for one another

You ever fidget

Like twist and turn just trying to get comfortable on the couch

Tossing side to side, readjusting pillows, 

Throwing sheets kicking feet from under covers

Too busy running to sleep

Have your legs ever felt restless

Circling square places

Have you ever inhaled but still...couldn't...breathe

Tell me

Have you ever nightmare'd on defeat

Woke up citing Psalms and quoting Scriptures

Unable to recognize the verbal warrior within your throat

Fingers positioned in praises and "Thou shall not take thy name in vain"

I'm saying

If you can not tell me this

Then you have no idea what it means when I say I'm chasing my dreams

In the middle of my downward moment I see something that makes me wonder…

Did Harriet ever really think she would make it

Whippings marked bare back naked

Unable to push nor pull another mule

Undone moments away from insanity

Restricted shoulder to shoulder amongst rats and men

Holding in torn apart pieces from ravage beast

Chattl’d from one hand to the next

Disabled by seizures, hypersomnia, and migraine headaches

Temporal lobe epilepsy

I wonder when did Harriet get tired

Unable to be sold one mo’gin

She simply said

“There is only two things I have right to, liberty or death, so if I could not have one then I would have the other”

Having to leave her brothers for the sake of a greater cause as she walked across Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania

Even checked her own hands when she reached free land to see if she was the same woman

It is at this moment that I recognize to give up is to disrespect her spirit

Ignoring the graves of Southern trees bearing strange fruit

Leaving Emmet’s casket open but allowing him to be slain in vain

Forgetting the names of Nat, Douglas, and James

Before Langston, Sterling and Zora

Telling Mom’s Mabley she could not have that mans last name

Making it ok to pay tribute to these great names by dipping that hatred in rap hooks that hide their chains

We Willie lynch ourselves on traditions developed to keep us two steps to the rear

Developed a deeper sense and still can’t hear

Jezebel nursery rhymes behind hypnotizing drum beats

Wondering why the more they’re fed our children still don’t eat

Hormone meats have our daughter’s breast hanging before their feet but we still can’t see

We ain’t sold the cow because we’re giving away it’s milk for free

Bragging on a history that blazed trails but we still ain’t paved a way

Zora been said most us “color’d folks be branches without roots”

Steady floating and drifting but ain’t caught on

We busy selling our soul for riches we’ll never own

When God’s grace is the biggest gift we could ever get

I imagine Martin done wrote 50 mo’ speeches on the inside of his grave

Tired of rolling over from our disgrace

We’ve thrown ourselves into a place of slavery gone backwards

Fought for our freedom just so our fears could recapture it

It is moments like this that I see Harriot digging through the valley  so she could climb that mountain

tripping through ditches

having to look beyond her sight to see her vision

knowing that deeper than the white man, Satan was truly the root of all evil

I wonder if she knew that we’d break through being a diamond in the rough

just to encase ourselves in stone

I mean concrete

I mean pride

Suiting up our bodies to battle but not shielding our mind

Too busy blaming others to see that we've been our own Goliath the whole time

I wonder if Harriet would have turn back around dropped her head and picked back up the plow

took those whippings in buried defeat

If she'd known we be our own biggest enemy

Steady headed off to battles but not ready for war

Preaching for change when we've made church the biggest whore

From Griots to Pastors, we've ruined the whole lot

So what's the use of having bad apples when plot rotten seeds

I mean if you were Harriet, what would you have done

You be a good girl

Find a good strong man

Bare his 2.5 children manifesting his wealth

Love is to be unbridled

Not restricted nor restrained

Love as if you’ve never been hurt

Laugh long and remember deep

For love is patient, love is kind

It does not envy, it does not boast

These things my grandmother told me

Years of experience induced wisdom

Pine needle stitched broom jumping ceremonies

Patchwork quilted into Sunday cornbread passing

Neckbone sucking

Dressing stuffing

Sweet Potato Pie

Pot drippings

Blessed across closed fingers and bowed heads

Grandmother said that love wouldn’t be easy

He might stay out late or even cheat

Forget to love you the way he promised his soul would keep

Bury his shortcomings in rolling stones from whisky drunk nights of infidelity

Catching hell on the midnight train to Georgia

Go out and marry you a military man

Pray if he must cross foreign sands he returns with every bone and muscle still in tact

Remember that most church men tell lies posed as facts

Wait a minute, let’s take it back

Grandmother said love would come courting removed hats

Baring gifts of chocolate with corsages

Love would sing the Song of Solomon while

Kissing the Berlin Wall across my skin one brick at a time

Would be giddy

And happy

Love would be gay

And we would grow old together

Celebrate 30 year anniversaries with traditional gifts

Crying softly as we part with the kids

In a house grown too big

Distant memories filling every crevice

Love was supposed to make single women jealous

Move mountains and build bridges

It was supposed to be stronger and deeper

Higher and wiser

Vowing lifetime commitment

Grandmother said only death would do love apart

It wouldn’t hit

Nor hurt, belittle, disrespect or disgrace

Love was supposed to drop me to choir practice on Saturdays

Sing hymns on Sunday

Work Monday through Friday

Sneak midnight kisses

Closed hands and crossed fingers

Love would linger and savor me slowly

Leave me never

Love would love me forever

These are the things my grandmother said to me

But I have found that grandmothers lie too

 

Where is love....

 

It is deep within the closet
Behind the locked layers
Years of what should have, could have, if only we tried harder but I tried hard enough
That I feel you penetrating layers of sealed/taught restraint
And maybe, truth be told, I’m scared as I find myself going full speed forward
Against fore warned “do not get caught up in the façade”
But years of perfected lies couldn’t deceive this feeling of you and me
So excuse the insanity while I “futurize”
Indulging in poetic melodies
You strum the songs of my heart
Tell me that traums have the ability to become true because…
I believe completely in you
Willing to slay the seven head dragon
Can’t be conquered by Hebrew armies
Knock down the Berlin wall of random concubines
And wrap you in these sheets of Oya
I want to go down by the riverside
Dip past transgressions in your vision
And prophesize the future into reality
Because tomorrow may never come
I want to live in today
Encase myself in the shield of a fantasized love
And be reborn on the threshold of make believe
What of love at first sound
Filtering through airwaves
Veins split wide open
Hoping
Soaring
Believing
Like Donny said, I want to be loved in a place where there’s no space of time
So even though you don’t believe in fairy tales anymore,
I can see through the smoke screen
Because I’ve slept with a broken heart
Woke up and nursed it back to life with prayers and broken winged promises
Yeah I know mama
That you saw your destiny approaching
Because this little light of mine
Saw the God in you
Her trash was my treasure and you’ll always be good enough
And if I dialed the wrong number
then I’d rather dance or die
picking the spikes of your porcupine
learn to handle you gently
because Diesel ignites at a virtually constant speed
So yes, I get it
I can be your flower child
Make love not war
We be too blessed to be stressed
I give you my words
Dripped in your meanings
Because you too, make me wanna be in love
And unlike the others, I know that love’s a verb
So I’m crushing
On your lip service
Amused by your musings
It is what it is
I want…
What I want…
& that is…
You

Maybe we can have scrabble inspired weekends
Slow stroll away Saturday into prayer blessed kitchens on Sunday soul fixings
I wanna Harlem Renaissance into a BB. King blues
Langston Hughes some Angela Davis into an oral fixation
We can Chain of Fools until that Change finally come
And I’ll Sing A Song For You over your Sexual Healing
Rebel Music a Maya Angelou poem until all caged birds fly free
I wanna Dr. Martin Luther King your intellect
Malcolm your passion
And Teddy Pendergrass… your ass
Excuse the analogy
But I want to ease my noun into your pronoun until we create profound dialect
Let your Niagara Fall into my River Nile
We can trouble the water your thighs into a new great wonder
Promising to go gently, I wont hurt you as long as you open wide,
I’ll humpty dumpty your insides back together again
Slow, no fast
No slow
No fast no slow
No fast….
No slow vibrate between the sheets into sweat soaked dance movements
I know this is study week so let’s international politic orgasms into algebraic expressions
Playwright hickies on my insides while I suck your clitoris into a thesis
Stroke your body into a 4.0 from head to toe one molecule at a time
I want to dissect your mind and regurgitate your essence so I can swallow it all over again
Let’s be lovers and friends
Leave the labels at the doorstep
Karma sutra new positions until your navel cums
Make your neighbors cum
Oil paint the wall in skin impressions
Wrap your knees around my hips and take heed to this delivery
UPS couldn’t make it and FED EX doesn’t do pornography
So let’s just 911 your moans into meditation
Go nam myo ho renge kyo until your mouth tingles
If life is about creating yourself then let me create you in hues of
“you came so hard that the bed sheets changed colors”
Then Picasso the wet spot into a picture frame
I’m just saying
We can Nostradamus fiction into reality
But of all the seven deadly sins, I’d rather gluttony your mind
Until your desires become my envy and we climax in conclusion

I have been writing and performing poetry since I was about 9 years old. The first poem I read was Maya Angelou’s “Phenomenal Woman” at a Family Reunion my family held. I performed it with such sass that my grandmother informed me to never perform like that again. The next time I spoke in front of a large audience was at the trial of the man that murdered my aunt. After beating her for years he finally decided to kill her in the middle of the night when after she’d finally gathered the strength to leave him. The mistake she made was telling him she was leaving. He slit her neck from ear to ear. I stood at the trial, looked him dead in the eye and words spilled from my 13 year old mouth that brought the court house to tears. I realized then that I’d been given a gift but 14 years later and I’m finally beginning to walk in my destiny.

This isn’t a podium for me to blast my accomplishments. What I have done is nothing compared to some and just enough according to others. I am a published Author, Playwright, Director, and Radio Show Host. My first book, “Think It, Write It, Speak It… Nothing But The Truth”, was published in May 2007. Wrote my first play,”Having Faith When Giving Up Isn’t An Option” in 2005 and it debuted February 2009 as “Bend, Don’t Break”. I’m currently directing my newest play, “Behind The Rainbow”, which will debut June 2009.  GSpot Radio Show hit the air in December 2007 and has had great success every since for the LGBTQ community. I am working on a collaboration book for HIV/AIDS awareness and I have a program for HIV/AIDS awareness entitled “Positively Infected” that will show June 27 in Orlando, Fl. I have done many other things but those are some of the ones that I’m most proud of.

All of the above is who I am today however in order to become the “Force” that I am to become I must release some things that I have kept buried for the last 27 years of my life. I was born November 1981. Decided that my mother didn’t have anything else to do that day so she might as well have me. Patience has never been a friend of mine and it wasn’t on the day of my birth either. Never saw the delivery table, decided in the cab on the way to the hospital that she and I just wasn’t getting along and by the time she hit the elevator at the hospital, I stepped right out into the world bald headed, eyes, wide open, and watching. Came into this world running and I’ve been running every since. My biological father is one of two men. Either the man that she’d been dating or the one that violently raped her. In my mind it is the one she’d been dating that has been nothing but a father when the trauma of her rape wouldn’t allow her to be a mother to me.

James Alton West was a man of many short comings but his greatest feat in my mind is being a father to me when no one had every shown him how to. After all, his father was never in the picture. He already had a wife and family so the only thing he had time to do with my grandmother happened in the bedroom. Later in life I had a chance to get to know my grandfather in a way that my father never did. We buried my grandfather in November 2008.

My younger years are a mixture of moving from city to city. Although my father was there, I was primarily raised by my grandmother. She is the image of a grandmother that is known all to well in the Black Community. Where fathers are usually absent and in working and trying to be both parents, mothers just don’t have the time to provide their children with the quality time they truly need. In addition to my grandmother, there was also my great grandmother, great great aunt, and a few aunts that helped to mold me. Although I have other sisters and a brother, I was the only child in a house where the oldest resident was about 92. That was my great great aunt Myra. She lived to be 102 years old.

My great grandmother died of cancer less than a year after I graduated from High School and my grandmother has been in mourning every since. Life ain’t been a bed of roses and I have to shed these layers because my future has a lot to hold and I must “SanKofa”.

Over the next few weeks I will release a life of heart breaks and disappointments. I will share with you stories that most would be ashamed to admit but the truth knows no closets therefore I will wipe my slate clean. In my purging, I hope to inspire you. Maybe something in my life will heal something in yours. This is my trail to blaze and my machete has begun cutting.