Build up border walls,
Build up greatest show on Earth,
Build up divisions,
Build up, build up, build up while
Infrastructure falls
Category: Book
All of Our America II
Wake up to the realization
That things are often
Not as they seem,
White picket fences
Are redlined
With a much darker history
Dark like burnt cork
Dark like the black night of masked midnight rides,
But also dark, with stars guiding
Like an underground railroad run,
Our history is our history,
We cannot cherry pick the plot,
But we can from our ends figure out how to continue the story
America was always a complex experiment,
A wild unruly flower
Largely grown from blood and tears,
And blood and tears still water her today,
It is how they are shed that
Makes the difference
Mapping a family tree
Going back centuries
Becomes a test of how much truth
One wishes to open up,
It’s a Pandora’s box of past
That leaves us staring face to face at times
With the sins of the mother and father,
Wondering how amends can be made for past wrong,
When guilt is a well that keeps dredging deeper
But our past is our past
And sometimes the good is not,
Even cannot be recorded,
And our past is still ours to handle,
We are living knee deep in it,
still collecting and paying for the past our own eyes may have never seen,
It was not our place to be there,
But rather to be here,
Being actors, witness to the present,
And reflectors on the past
Watchmen for our now,
To ensure better choices,
The best choices may be made to impact the future,
It is all connected,
And it is our responsibility,
As Americans, as world citizens, as humans,
As sentient beings to ensure we are guided wisely,
By not guilt, or raw anger,
But by complex thought
On what to do with the lessons and emotions evoked from the American past,
in this present,
It is all of our past,
It always has been,
Though history has affected all unequally,
It is our past to take on,
Our past as a present to grapple with,
In order to become closer together as a single entity,
As siblings,
Who can handle reality,
Who can allocate responsibility,
Who can be the e pluribus unum aspired to,
We are a people of all Nations,
It is remembering that which is the challenge,
And truly realizing that
This is
all of our America
No Lye
My hair lays up,
No lye,
However it may go,
With puff and fro,
Curl rivers it does flow,
If I distract
I do not apologize,
‘Tis just the price of beauty child
Proven, All Along
For long you have been trying
To prove wrong the naysayers,
To prove wrong the doubters,
To yes their no,
And no their yes,
Because you knew you were
Able and deserving
Of just as much as they thought otherwise,
You worked so hard,
And only you are left
To see the results,
Do they know from where they are
All you have done?
What you have accomplished?
Or was it yourself
You were really trying
To prove all this to,
All along?
Family DNA
DNA links us,
We are blocks
Blocks of a singularity called humanity,
Inside another grouping, inside another,
In another…
Inside of what is as a whole
life.
We relish and depend on our web
That is family,
But to a point;
Somewhere along the string of DNA,
As pieces of our ancestors get left off, we cut each other off,
We stop seeing the singularity of existence.
It does not matter if I still maintain our shared ancestor’s chromosomes,
But that we all spring from the same tree.
Perhaps we sense the absence when we meet someone who does not look familiar,
But is that not how we make friends;
Find loves;
From those that contain the familiar human qualities,
But yet seem
Different?
We are of the same tree,
Cousins all,
With DNA shared,
Even when distantly,
We are samples of the beauty
And complexity of the web
Of life,
And what we as humans call
Family.
Metaphysics of Me: A Memoir
I was born
A yesterday of yesterdays
Bare,
But skin to my back,
I find family in spectral hues of epidermis,
Find love
Where it was,
and where it was not
to be promised at first
I grow,
stirring,
Determined,
Bossy,
to say the least,
I am a strong stalked flower,
My curls
Lush chocolate petals
I am the butterfly
That from a caterpillar
changed its shape and color,
Before your eyes slowly emerging,
Wings wet
with new and dew,
I come to be through struggle,
Overcoming adversity,
My fears
Are not of darkened shadows
But of the void of unknown ifs,
Fearful possibilities
Of life unlived,
I am the philosopher
With a problem
For every solution,
I am a seeker,
a thinker,
a complex web
Of as yet thought thoughts,
Give me time
I ask,
-So ask we all,
I am building my legend,
Piece by piece,
I am a lover,
Of few,
And all,
Holding my treasured so tightly
For fear they might break,
I give and give,
Wanting so much to multiply the love,
Into endless existence,
I am a creator,
An artist,
The young life before me,
Is my greatest piece,
I nurture,
water,
feed,
teach,
tend,
inspire her
In ways I know,
And in ways anew,
She is my story,
with a story of her own,
I am a mystic,
Finding light
in new corners,
Unexpected beauty
from the universal source,
Finding truth,
In the metaphysics
Experienced as if new,
I am the ill and well
In one package,
My healing and my hurting
Are not easily untangled from each other,
But both toughen the core,
With scar tissue
My inner
And outer
Are reborn,
I am everything
In me,
A soul with many
Names
Titles
To identify me,
But my soul
Ageless,
Graceful,
As it floats through being,
The essence
In all aspects of me
What comes next
I wonder,
But dare not guess,
Suspense
Makes this life fuller,
With richness
So decadent it can be tasted,
Can be sensed
In the air,
In the textures,
In the living,
In the every
Next moment
That will,
And does,
Then still
Inspires.
She of Letters 