VOICES

I saw the play VOICES last night at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre. It was an incredible blend of black history, American history, Negro history, our dance, our music, our stories. Yes, Negro. While we don't refer to ourselves as "Negro" the luxories we accept today came from the sacrifices of those who did.

The play is about a young woman writer who travels through time (sent actually by her grandfather). She meets people she has only read about in history books, and some she had never heard of before. "Baby girl" begins her writing journey seeking to tell interesting stories and not those old Negro stories she had heard so many times and had considered boring. No, she was going to tell GRRREEAT stories! After her journey she realizes her calling and is inspired to tell the stories of our ancestors. Stories she thought were boring she finds are rich, awesome and inspiring. Someone has to tell the stories of our past. Go see the play VOICES and see how "Baby girl" becomes excited about doing that.

quote from Maggie Kuhn

"Speak your mind. Even if your voice shakes."

freestyle poem # 144433399930220.2

in the space of releasing
letting go
moving forward
pleased
forgiving myself
for believing so many lies
so many times
honoring myself
for seeing clearly
loving myself
for loving myself
for choosing me
choosing life
dreams
passions
loving myself for loving me

I am

I am the lack that exists in my finances, and has existed in my finances for many generations and I delete myself from my molecular structure.

I am free, joyful, wealthy.

soldiers work - draft 2

slaughtered by force, by AIDS, by starvation
i want my words, our words, all of our words to heal
there is no fairy dust in our pens
only ink
blue black
like me, like them

what good is poetry
if it cannot keep them from
living in fear of death
of life

this was all planned i suppose
met over with tea and milk
"they no longer kow why they are fighting, nor whom
violence for violence's sake"

those are my arms in eastern congo
reaching for freedom
my sweat, my heart beating, my breath musty
that's me, that's you
hiding behind bushes, dirt, exposed

sexual assaults five times more that gunshots
they is not multiplication
they are women
real eyes that burn
real stretch marks and skin carried real babies
heavy hearts that hold hope
somewhere

dear God how can i make my words my life
mean something to them

in a bed across the way
a man is chanting
a woman is knitting
"the smell is awful" a doctor warns
"she's only fourteen" whispers an aide

four years old children should be
sticking out tongues and dancing to drums
eighty years old grandmothers and grandfathers
should be passing down stories and lies and God
not dying from or living with plunder and rape

sodomized men
fathers forced to commit incest
with daughters, brothers, sisters

she passed out before they finished with her
"eight or ten of them raped me"

parents and siblings commanded to witness
husband tied to the hut to watch his wife be raped
by men he cannot fight
there are no words for the coiling of his blood
the pain in her spirit

over and over several men gang rape a woman

look at us in our fancy goodwill clothes
with our notebooks and pens
ready to set the world free
we are numb to hearing about the commonplace assaults
as if we are watching a CSI marathon
this is real life there
as we eat steak and complain about organic or processed food
the economy, permed or locked hair
and the presidents birthplace

our sisters are domestic and sexual slaves
women and girls kidnapped
the evening grows louder with whispers
as armed men divide into groups
just after nightfall

soldiers work - draft 1

by force, by AIDS, by starvation
what good is my poem
if it cannot stop this
my words feel little now
i want them to heal

planned destabilization
they no longer know why they are fighting
nor whom
violence for violences sake

eastern congo
sexually assaulted victims
four or five times more than gunshot wounds
they are not numbers
they are women
real eyes that burn
real fingers that dont want to feel anymore
real heads that shake in dispair
hearts maybe hearts that hold hope
somewhere however faint

in a bed across the way
a man is chanting
a woman is knitting
"the smell is awful" a doctor warns
"she's only fourteen" whispers an aide

victims range in age from four to eighty
sodomized men
fathers forced to commit incest
with daughters, with brothers, with sisters
she passed out before they finished with her
"eight or ten of them raped me"
whole family olbiged to witness
children brought in
husband tied up to the hut
home, sacred
repeatedly several gang rape a woman
commonplace assaults

domestic and sexual slaves
women and girls kidnapped
plunder and rape
armed men divide into groups
just after nightfall

My dream (lesson) last night

In my dream last night I was sitting outside at a table with maybe two other people. A beautiful parrott flew right to me. I was afraid at first but then became relaxed. The man across from me picked up the parrott and broke its neck. Right in front of me. Easily, as if nothing was wrong. He laid the bird down on the bench and I was horrified. There was no sound. None. I could see mouths move and other motion but couldn't hear anything.

I remember leaving the table and telling everyone I could about the bad man who killed the beautiful bird. That was my mission. I told everyone. Then I ran into someone who told me to follow him. I did and we went to the place where it all happened. The same table, the same day, the same circumstances. I even saw myself sitting there. Everything was the same, except this time there was sound. This time I could see what I didn't see before and hear what I couldn't hear before.

I thought in silence we were having a friendly lunch but as it turned out, the other man sitting next to me, who seemed very kind, was actually threatening the "bird killer" and told him that if he didn't kill the bird right then, then his family would be killed. I could see sorrow in the man's face as he put the bird's head in his hands and saw him cringe as the neck snapped.

I woke up remembering sooo many details about this dream. When this happens to me I know it's a lesson for me to surely remember. A lesson for me, a lesson for all who hear it. It's too easy to walk away and tell everyone what you think you know about a situation. It's too easy to judge. Too easy to lable someone. There is always something we can't see, something we can't hear, something we don't know.

Circumstances

Who you have in your life is what you have in your life.

Sending prayers

I called a friend yesterday whose actual voice I hadn't heard in about five years. Facebook yeah, but her voice...the melodies that rang from her belly...five years. I glanced at some of Facebook posts and noticed that she had been in the hospital and that she was home.

I called her yesterday. Lola. Sweet Lola. She told me that she had recently been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. I am in denial. Even typing that I misspelled terminal brain cancer so many times I'm wondering what's wrong with me.

She said she was having lunch with a friend of hers and her vision started fading, then her hearing. She was taken to a hospital and they began tests to see if she was having a heart attack. "It's not my heart!" She told them.

And it wasn't. After an MRI they saw the tumor. I am sending prayers for Lola and if you are reading this, please pray too. Pray for peace and healing for Lola. This vegan, yoga instructing, poet, dancing, beautiful woman whose presence has blessed this planet.

II. Donna (D.W.)

I took a long nap after my conversation with Lola. I fell asleep thinking about how incredibly fragile our bodies are. How short our time is on this Earth. We never know what someone is going through. We never know how long we have with the ones we love, and the ones we don't.

My cell phone vibrating on my lap woke me from my nap. It was Donna. My very good friend. "D.W. is dead." She told me. "He overdosed and he's dead." D.W. is her nephew and was twenty years old. Too many of those years using drugs and alcohol. Over $50,000 in those years spent in rehab and too many tears to even begin to measure. But mostly, way too much potential to go another way. Now this. He was "drinking" with some friends and passed out on the floor. They didn't know he was dead until the next morning.

I am posting this blog because I want it to mean something. I want my prayers, our prayers to mean something. Our prayers for Lola. Our prayers for Donna and her family and friends. Our prayers for the young men drinking with D.W.

D.W.'s parents were not speaking much, Donna told me. "And this is what happens when parents won't put down their own stuff and connect with each other for their children." I want this to mean something. Even if it means that we mothers, you fathers put down our stuff and connect with each other for our children.

Dear poets

Maybe writers block is a red flag that there is some truth we should be writing about ourselves. A layer, a truth we are hiding from the world. From ourselves. A story a poem a river ready to flow.

Red Stories #17 - Call the brothas? Call the police?

For those of you who have been following this blog you may remember my Red Stories. They are a series of poems, conversations, thoughts about domestic violence. I began posting them because it seemed like for a period in my life it seemed like everywhere I turned the topic came up. My Godmother told me that things happen to artists because we tell it. So the thing that kept happening, and I mean KEPT happening was that it seemed I couldn't go ANYWHERE without being in the middle of a domestic violence conversation. So, I started Red Stories.

I was in a conversation with a group of brothas who were talking about why we don't need the police in our homes. The "our" in the conversation is in reference to black people. They weren't referring to all black people, but to those of us in "the community." Yeah, the community, where we barter incense for soap, poets are the preachers, jazz is alive, I think you get it. Anyway, the topic came up about domestic violence (of course) and whether the sistas should let the brothas handle the brotha or should she call the police.

Dear sistas, if you are ever in this situation, please call the police. I know you wanna be down for your people but if a brotha is beating you up you may need more than the brothas from the community dealing with him.

I say this especially because if this is a situation happening repeatedly you will need legal documentation such as your police filing to help you. If you are standing in court pleading your case about how long the situation has been going on, police records are what the judge is going to be looking for, not statements from the brothas.

Yes, there is value in service of the brothas. I am tired though, tired of hearing stories about women being beaten, killed, kicked, burned...tired of it. What the brothas can do though is start a dialogue about stopping the abuse. Is is just that easy? Probably not. But it's a start.

My two cents.

Red Tea

I performed at George's house a few weeks ago. Shared poetry, stories, life. George is very creative with food, drinks, settings. He had a beautiful and large beverage container filled with water, ice, sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, mint leaves and veggies. Besides being very very good it was soooooooo lovely!

Uraeus had some of the tea and said "because I grew up with a poet I'm used to stuff like this." Then he hugged me and said "Mom, all of your friends who are poets remind me of this red tea." How poetic.

A couple of days later we saw another friend of mine. Sandra Lorraine Coleman. Uraeus whispered to me, "Mom, is she one?"

"One what?"

"A poet?"

"Yeah."

"Figured that, 'cause I can sense the red tea on her."

Keep following the red tea.