Waxing poetic on thoughts, theory & the times
“It’s a man’s world,”
they say,
But someone still
Needs to teach
The little ones,
Gender irrelevant,
How to do,
To survive,
To get by,
When a “man” is gone,
Not present,
Never present,
Or passed on;
What of little girls never taught
To change a tire;
Or mow the lawn?
We teach her
To understand dependence,
Believe it,
Then rip off the illusion
With age;
Man, woman
Mortality is the great equalizer,
Teach the little ones, all:
How.
A white feather,
From one of my ventures,
Resides on my vehicle dashboard,
The air through my windows on a hot day
Lifted and carried the feather
In flight,
As such things are meant to;
Scurrying to recapture my feather,
I am reminded
It was never mine,
It never grew from my body,
And yet now I hold to it
As if it were a part of me,
In a way, it is,
The remembrance of its coming to be with me,
And the miles,
Moments,
Mishaps and memories
I also collected with it present;
The feather,
Worn but white,
is a symbol
Of what I have been through,
Carried by the wind,
To always make a landing,
With grace,
Wherever I may descend.
Butterfly went home
After their first flight;
Home to cocoons
And caterpillars,
Who each longed to know of their possible future,
But could not yet understand
What air beneath one’s wings
Could feel like,
Each at their own time to cocoon
Metamorphosis awaiting at their own pace,
In their own way;
Not all will get to fly
For some time is much shorter
But they all change,
They all in the end are freed
Of corporeal vessels
Of various form,
Even if they will never know
The flight of a butterfly,
They all may appreciate
The diversity in their shapes
And the cycle
That unites them all.
Somewhere in all the movement
I set down the megaphone,
Still hearing the echo of my own voice
As it traveled
North, East, South, West,
On to, up and down Main street;
Social leaders don’t choose
the precise moment
When they thus become
Leaders,
“Accidental” leadership
–The moment chooses them;
Nor do they choose
Exactly when
their time eclipses;
Social injustice
Is a warfare,
Literal,
and of daily heartbreak;
The activist by Call
Resides on this ground zero,
Tending, carrying, soothing and rallying,
In rotation
With other ethical co-conspirators,
A Rotation
To protect the already traumatized
From too
Too much;
Gradually, I took my leave
When the marches thinned,
And logistics began
to overshadow the purpose;
The march marches on
In different capacities,
As it has always,
My prayer is that our call
And the response
Forever is remembered,
re-called,
And flesh tones
Like and unlike mine
find purpose, place, and responsibility still
In the movement
Of heart,
Of calling out injustice
invoking community love,
And keeping the justice system
In check
With a social justice
Call
And response;
A leader still,
My call
Is a labor of love,
unending
A different hat I will wear for now,
As I heal and grow,
An injustice-weary heart.
https://youtube.com/shorts/VE3QCMjQPYM?feature=share
I have not the slightest idea
What to write
Yet;
My fingers ache
For the outstretched movement of muscle,
To bring symbols to life,
With a scratch of graphite,
The flow of ink,
In key presses,
Or a screen swipe by impatient digits;
This mind is a cipher
of possible letter,
word combinations,
Awaiting the right alignment,
A key
–Inspiration,
To Communicate
Feeling and thought,
Forged in the furthest recesses
Of this artistically wired mind,
Bringing forth symbols,
Strung into messages,
All in an effort
to unlock,
and light up thine.
Brown,
A color often not given much love,
It’s a color often only liked by association,
I wonder
What is it about the color of wood, earth and chocolate,
That we avoid,
Black is beautiful,
And brown a twist
A darkened orange
Often left out of the mix,
My aunt once marveled about my skin,
As “brown and lovely”
I rebuked
Knee jerked,
internalized oppression
Creeping in,
Not letting me see brown as Beauty,
On me
Fast forward,
Black Lives Mattered,
And layers of concealer were peeled back,
To see hate self inflicted on me,
And others like me,
With little deaths,
Until depleted self-esteem
Threatened and began feeding on worth,
A self-love kick flipped my switch,
Rewound, and unwound
The mental emotional noose I was putting on daily for being in a vessel,
Beautiful,
But with “eyes” made blind to see,
Gazing mahogany to caramel through a distorted gaze,
In snapping out of it,
In waking up
I’m confident in identifying shades of me;
I am brown
and lovely.
She of Letters 