I LIKE...

Is it possible to just like or love something or someone without understanding why? Absolutely! I like country music. I love Mövenpick, Haagen Dazs & Blue Bell ice cream! I like loafers. I love dancing! Why do we make an already obscure journey, life, more complex by having to justify or explain our affinities and curiosities to others, when logic eludes our grasp? Don't... Just live! Follow the impulse, urge, nudge... Explore your inquisitions and see where it leads.  All leads led by love lead to a life well lived life, (al)literally speaking.

If you have a choice deity for your life's leading, "it" uses your seek, curiosity and willingness to explore and discover as a means of expanding this sacred union of body and spirit in harmony to its Universe, your perceived self and others. The moment you have concluded that your unique pathway through and to this unknowable, incomprehensible, unfathomable power is limited by the world as perceived by you, then death becomes your daily bread even as you live.  And death in literal translation or as a metaphor is intriguing, but someday we all will have first hand experience with it, so explorations into it can wait.

Feeling a bit lost in life?  That's what the nudges, the "leadings", the urges are for.  Follow those paths that honor life and respect others on their journey of discovery.  I become quite nauseous and dumbfounded by the provocation of bullying dogma in an effort to save the lost?  ...By people who are lost even to themselves.  People that mask their humanity behind relics, duty and appearances, but are callous to the origin of their service to others.  The very act of service is humility that should create authentic exchanges and bonds.  This very arrogant and intrusive way of being does not pattern the universe in a way of symbiotic harmony.  So don't buy into the delusion of inclusion.  Belonging and acceptance is an innate desire, but conforming that deforms your snowflake design will end up costing you; (your) life. An abundant, well thought out, explored expedition of travel, engaging moments filled with awe and wonder and courageous experience as a life.

Excuse me? If I don't live my life as you interpret it, (living) then my consolation prize is an infinite replay of the scourging hell I so courageously have fight my way out of. Ain't that a bitch! I hate this limited, warped and deluded ideology.

Oh! It's ok to not like something, too, even loathe. Yeah, put that in your memo for the next time you are asked to do community service for social mores that discriminate, alienate or violate others or our precious Mother Earth.

Look, you, beautiful unique you. You've got one shot in this skin, with your gifts, talents, genius on this plane & realm of consciousness so ask... Seek... Knock... Go! And don't stop... There is an end-- anyway, so don't abort the infinite ways to express love as you, by you and through you. Know this! Love is for you. And it doesn't just "like" you; Love is in LOVE with you!

The legend of the seeker is what stirs humanity to creation. We create as the creator because we believe that there is more to us than meets the eye; and it is. Don't be fooled by other's version of you, even your family or those that think they "know" you. Sentient souls that dared "like" what and whom they loved seem to always kindle a flame beneath those, walking dead, that preferred a much more scrupulous posture as "judge of all things likeable". It is the savage civilized way.  Don't fret, my loyal trailblazers, for your path is the one civilizations pattern for generations to come, whether they LIKE it or not.

Here's to your sacred inner child and the insatiable curiosity and discover of beauty without end...

LOVE... Because that's ALL there is.

Bisou!

LOVE 365

In honor of LOVE365: I celebrate and hold you close to my heart in these words. If you don't know or believe that you are loved just because you are, then let me affirm LOVE's boast at the very thought of your arrival. 

May these words blanket in you assurance that your being and breath matter...

HUGS & KISSES from my Heart to Yours

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day's

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for right.

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

My Dearest Black...

Message in a bottle: Love in letters to my Black

My dearest, Black,

I heard you cry -- again, last night and then again this morning although you shed no tears and you made no sound.  I heard.  I saw.  Me, too.  I cry with you, Black.  You got up like you normally do each day and prepared to face the world unafraid.  I know, Black, that it’s only a face… because you are afraid, not of people, but of yourself and all these damn feelings.  I have to wear that mask, too.  It looks like anger to those outside of Black looking in and it is, but it’s more than that.  They watch us in the shadows; judge us, mock us, persecute us, execute us (Texas hold’em style) and then after, when they’ve accumulated enough evidence to incriminate us to a life worthy of wakened dreamless sleeps, dashed hopes, squandered dreams with a consolation prize of maybe next time; they submit their stats and empty theories into headrests and pillows.  It’s hard to hold a conscience heavy head upright with a curved spine tendinous with lies.  For them it’s sport; for us it’s not a game because, Black, has had no time for play; at least not on concrete grass and broken glass.

Black, I wanted so bad to comfort you, kiss away the tears, but I know you won’t be held. Black is determined to never be held, by anyone ever again, even in love.  You won’t allow anyone close to your pain because pain is Black’s to bear.  Oh, with a grin of course.  Time offers no condolences to Blackness because there is still mo’work to be done.  Mo’ labor by force, of course, as endorsed by all the fiends that feign Black pride that can be bought and sold on Wall Street, the streets, no matter the name (of the street) it’s still the same for Blackness.  The streets, where Blackness wanders in search of a ‘Welcome Home’, beckons Blackness to come, “Black, Red needs you.” Black obeys, according to training, to shed Red, willingly.  Black just wants to rest, dead or alive… In peace.

Rest from all its labor, forced of course.  Blackness must heal as it goes, but more importantly than healing is that, Black, must keep moving.  Black must keep going.  Black is forced to give labor; and birth pain.  That is the choice.  And in this it is not a choice.

Love and pain are the same for Black.  Pain is easier because Black knows what to expect and love surprises, almost every time, with deferred hope and seems only to want to be wanted without actually giving…  Love.  It may not be true of love, just only what Black has seen of love.  It ain’t alotta love for, Black, until Black can love itself back.

That will take time.

Inside, Black knows what love should feel like without being taught, because love is what gives Red life, but it seems a most difficult task to get love to live through Red without blood shed.  Can’t trust love either, huh, Black?  I feel you.  Love has been shady for Blacks here and seems only to want the sacrifice of more; the picking up of cotton, cane or another cross, it’s all the same, as if slavery wasn’t the ultimate sacrifice of self-denial, though not of Black’s own volition; even when Blackness has nothing left to give of its darkness, but a moan -- or a groan.  Obscure sounds from the belly of hell translating pain, sorrow, anger in Morse codes, but not to be interpreted as defeat.

Black screams loudly as in an ancient ritual to revive the dead; virtues, power, wisdom, awareness once lost or forgotten.  We are a LOUD people!  Adamant about being heard.  Chain our feet, we will wave our hands.  Bind our hands, we will sway our heads.  Constrict our necks, we will sing.  Muzzle our mouths, we will weep and our tears will rain upon the Earth and all will drink of these bitter waters.  We will be heard!  And, oh how they love the sounds of Blackness, Black, it makes good music and better profit.  We wail, “Ohhhh!” They yell, “Mooooo!”  We smile, ‘cuz that’s how we’ve been trained fo’ over 300 years, even when our faces long to rest in the bittersweetness of owning our own faces and feelings as humans.  We smile back, Black, not because we are happy, it’s just the training.  Papa Willie Lynch taught us, not well, but he taught us…  To smile. 

Black, they think we agree, with their profane and inane jokes, the fondling of our hair in awe of this wild creature been tamed as domestic, as they molest our sun burnt skin in curiosity, but we just in training, Black.  Strength training, we won’t be held back much longer.  Well, Black, you know what I mean by ‘much longer’, we are a people of endurance; so much longer may most likely be a 100 years from now, but it will be better for Black & Blackness if we stay the course.  But, you don’t have to smile this time if you don’t feel like it.  Black needs time to grieve, weep, heal and experience finally what Black feels without being told what it is or how it should feel or be.

So heal, Black.

I will, too.

Me, as you.

Black!  I heard your lament like a sonic boom today, breaking the media’s sound barrier (you got their attention -- not for long) in rapid cessations of gunfire, followed by wails that pierced the heavens, if they exist.  ‘Cuz all Black needs is one heaven to hear.  And I saw your blood stained tears as they ran through the streets of Black like a river that would become the waters we would lap up in thirst for answers.  “Why?”  I guess Black is supposed to know why, but we have become anemic from all the bloodshed and can’t fathom why Black has to become Red to be seen and heard.  Red is the new Black, Black. It seems all colors bleed red, all peoples begin in black.  The womb is as dark as it gets for every man, until he learns to see through the Blackness.  Until he can see through his own darkness, all we will ever see is red.  We are all but Red people.  Vampires, in theory, needing proof by the breaking of skin that you are indeed, Red within.

How did Red become Black, Yellow, White, Green, Brown, Orange, Peach, Cream, Beige, Black?  How did Red lose its color?

It became exposed to human.

I think it’s the stages of rigor mortis.  The stages of a bruise called time that wrestles day in and day out with humanity.  The colored spectrums of the people of Earth are reflections of time passing and reminders that we are all just passing away, Black.  So, why does time seem to hasten Black’s journey through space with such grotesque acts of violence?   Creation seems to be painting the towns read, literally.  Though the brush is in our hands, we seem to prefer the color red most oft than any.

You know what, Black?  I like Blue; and all of its shades.  When the Universe paints, it often paints in shades of Blue, but Earth peoples paint with Red, Black.  An addiction to being in the red, as if by forensic examination we are searching for a sample of god’s DNA, hoping to recreate a more improved version of our perceived selves.  Never realizing that those that have resurrected themselves from gravity submitted ashen skin in glorious triumph over death’s merciless blow to their dreams and self-worth is about as god as it gets.  They reign as lords over their fate. Our heroes, not because they have conquered death, but because they have conquered how death could make them feel about life.

That’s you, Black!  You are defiant, rebellious, angry; a beautifully feeling human being.  After centuries of depression (an imposed mental illness), suppression and oppression, you can own your feelings, Black.  Take’em back!  The burning rage that thug plantation owners & their criminal terrorists mobs tried to sedate with religion and displace your spiritual cognition with superstition and fear.  It won’t go away, Black, that undisciplined fury, until you acknowledge it as a part of you and your (hi)story in America.  This bone marrow rage is what Black’s ancestors felt, but we have more freedom to release.  Freedom: That we must learn to express without denying ourselves and others in their Blackness, the right to life and to live in the Black; without the deficit.

Now, it’s time to be gentle, kind, patient and loving to your Blackness, your Black self and since the justice system will not be just toward you, Black, then our final verdict must be love.  Love for our beautiful, infinitely talented, profoundly wise, extraordinarily resilient, powerfully pertinent, wonderfully created, perfectly proportioned, keenly intuitive, masterfully vocal restored selves.  Love takes time to heal, Black.

So maybe love is on our side…  It’s time that we join forces, Black, with love. As I reflect, maybe it’s the only one that’s been in our corner, Black. 

I love you, Black, because I’m learning to love me, perpetually.  I’ll keep writing and checking in with you because this is where I find healing and can channel my rage at different stages of healing my Blackness.  Right now it’s a tempest and maybe over time it will be a quiet storm.  But, I will never be silent.  Either way, I will be showering down in hopes to clear the air of the fumes and pollution on the carbon print of Blackness; so you can look into the horizon and not fear the sun rising over your skin, hopes, future and dreams.  The only things to be burned under the sun this time is regret.

Your Blackness,

Black Pearl

Shadows of doubt...

Ever wonder who you would be if you weren't already told who you were?

I saw Steven Spielberg's, "LINCOLN", today. A dear friend of mine asked if I liked it and I took pause not knowing how to answer.  Movies made, whether historically accurate or not, about the barbarisms of slavery, the enslaved Africans, the injustices, incivilities and oppression of Blacks in America connect with me beyond the sensationalism of film critics and ROI (Return Of Investment). For most descendants of Africans in America whether enslaved or born free the depth of the viewing experience may be similar. Strictly, as a movie goer, the film was exceptional and Daniel Day Lewis is Oscar bound worthy. However, as in the words of renowned humorist, Fran Lebowitz, in an interview with The Paris Review, "... Unlucky people have a subject thrust upon them. I can’t think of a worse thing to be than a black writer, because to be a black writer means to be forced constantly to write about being black. Nothing could be more confining. I’ve always been grateful to be a second- rather than a first-generation American Jew, so I didn’t have to be obsessed with my Jewish identity. Blacks in this country may never have that luxury."

In this, from my experience, Ms. Lebowitz is correct. Try as I might to juxtapose my vantage point of my life experiences, they seem always to be narrowed first through the eyes of my Blackness. Black not as a skin color, for many across the globe share in this shaded melanin, but Black as an experience through the Transatlantic to America, now the United States of America. A unity weaved with blood and grave injustices still not yet wholly accounted for in our history books as should be taught to our children. Because of the exceptional cowardice to truthfully address the cruelties of the unlawful, legalized criminal institution of slavery whose recessive genes still perpetuate its infected consciousness to a parasitic audience desirous of purpose and significance, even if vile.

I am in constant evolution in my humanity, though stubbornly pliable; I am earnest in my desire to grow and be as true as I can be to whom I believe reflects, Pearl, authentically. It is most difficult at times because I was already prefixed and defined as to who I was and what I could become had been decided before I knew I had a choice. A choice. There's the paradox... Living as a Black African American is an alternate universe that would take fractal geometry to breakdown, lol.  Even with the assistance of all of Hollywood, the best sci-fi writers that can be bought (often the best, in any field of mastery, can't be {bought}, but that's another story), and an Oscar winning team they can never quite capture the essence of that experience.  It is however, important to endeavor to try, to engage, to explore our history, together...  You need me in order to tell my story, otherwise your truth is still a lie.

This task is for the courageous, those that seek truth over convenience and understand implicitly their impact in history and how it shapes intelligence for future generations.

Truthfully, I don't believe that Blacks need for others to understand what is incomprehensible, but respect of one's journey, even if misunderstood, is a great place to intiate real conversations about our experience in American history. And it is advisable for those outside of the Black community (each community cultivated in diverse expressions of Blackness according to the residents actually living there) to cease from void and futile input into a harshly stigmatized community with vitriolic propaganda depicting us as if helpless and savage; none of which is true.
We, Black people, are not one type of people and are still discovering exactly who we are post-antebellum, not as Americans, but as human beings. We have technically only had 45 years (from signing of the Civil Rights Bill, which is puzzling that humans needed a bill to tell them to be civil and that is was right -- head scratcher) to begin to explore our humanity without a looming death threat or penalty from not relinquishing our dignity or a seat to a White rider just because they were White. I imagine, if I was mentally ill, that that type of power would be intoxicating.

Which brings me to this new smoke screen in America called mental illness to bring reason or logic to the mass murders due to gun violence in White communities, where as I have heard since Columbine, "...We just didn't expect it to happen here".  But, you do EXPECT it to happen (just not to in your White communities). And why wouldn't the descendants of slave owners, Black Codes, the heralded heroes of the South, Ku Klux Klansmen, Jim Crow and our unlawful law abiding law enforcement agencies expect that the seeds planted in hatred, cruelty, terrorism, exploitation, VIOLENCE and division should bring eternal peace to their little gated havens compliments of the slave trade? I can't help but wonder why this diagnosis has never been brought to Congress when reports of the deaths of young Black children due to gun violence were documented.

Mental illness isn't a new phenomenom and our nation's history of violence will not be cured with a prescription pill.

I seethe, but refuse to become sick from anger, so I will sing and write my songs.

I become enraged, outraged and feel caged by how exactly to convey my inner boil & turmoil when I see blatant discrimination to others, Black communities across America (the world) and myself. Often because the discrimination and injustice is so common to Blacks that it appears we're numb; but, we are not.

WE ARE ANGRY!!!

The genocide through gun violence is the tumor from the metatastic cancer of self-hatred. Not because we hate ourselves willingly; but we have had a lot of help to inundate the world and the Black community via the media of how wrong and unfortunate it is to be born Black. This is a truth and fact that Black Americans can attest to without a study or poll. We carry the anger of slavery and White America the guilt and shame that in turn gives many what they feel is justifiable anger towards Black anger, I guess they want to meet us at the pass before Karma does. Ironically, Blacks, are really the only ones still paying for their grievances while viable institutions still profit from the disgrace of slavery.

Yeah, we are angry. But even in anger, we only want the freedom to explore our individual humanity in our America, just as the Native Americans with respect and dignity. It is exhausting to have to always fight for decency and equality, but we will, until ALL can experience freedom only at the cost of their willingness to dare to excel.

I don't believe that I will ever have the freedom to live outside of Black, but I hope to heal and console this inherited grief and powerful insight by allowing myself to FEEL and exercise my 1st Ammendment right and EXPRESS myself through my life's art and work.

Just a thought... Imagine having a feeling, because those enslaved did feel, but were violently stripped of their natural responses to react, act upon them or even own them. For almost 300 years.

300 years!!!

That type of prolonged abuse drastically changes the physiological, biological and psychological constructs of any living organism, how much more the resilient fragility of the homosapien.  Blacks are in recovery and it will take at least a hundred years after which a generation is truly free to be human FIRST, until we will ever really know who we are in the framework of humanity. 

I am lost as to how to process the horrors of my ancestors and the carnage of the young lives lost in senseless bloodshed in America everyday, but perhaps through these creative mediums I will self medicate and offer up a dose of truth for others lost in translation in purging the poisonous lies that infiltrate their self worth and ability to aspire without the fear of death in body, spirit or their dreams by law.

30 Truths each day helps keep a lie away.

Working on me... In love, in hopes to just BE LOVE... Someday.

Loving, without legal supervision.

Dear Hadiya Pendleton,

Dear Hadiya,

I'm devastated that the city I call home, the Windy City, took your last breath away. I'm so broken to know that your light and life was shut off in a brief moment by fools trapped by their own black hole of consciousness. Fools in which remorse is vacant and unnecessary for it has no power of resuscitation. You know little baby, your death resurrected dormant memories of my Chicago as a child, and sadly I must say that things haven't changed; at least not in the Black of my community. I remember the gang wars now of Stone City and lives slain beneath the tracks of 63rd street. I recall almost as if it were yesterday the gang initiations in my high school and the ruthless beatings by rival gangs to those who wanted no part of that cowardice life. I shutter to recall how young teenage girls like you, would host in their mouths razor blades underneath their tongues to slice and dice those they felt threatened by. And oh, how I hated them. I despise gangs, mobs of cowards that gather in groups as terrorists, yeah, like our law enforcement, to perpetuate fear. I don't remember feeling safer knowing the police were around. I felt then that somehow they were only there to keep us 'Black folks in line'. It was something I knew without being told.

I REMEMBER, Hadiya...

And I am you, lil' sis. I remember the fear of walking the streets of 79th & 67th and the awareness that at any moment, your life's existence was merely a gamble for those who decided to throw the dice that day. SNAKE EYES...

5-O (the police), Gangsta Disciples, Vice Lords, El Rukn or Black P. Stone Nation and the like. It's no different... At all, Hadiya. Somehow, Black parents resolved that the death of their child was inevitable due to the "life". It was due process if you were involved in gangs or were a drug dealer, though that ideology ministers nothing to the heart of a mother, father, sister, brother or relative of the deceased. Our media culture dismisses the value and impact of a Black child if they were involved in gangs or drugs as if somehow that is all that existed of their humanity. While we painstakingly invest millions of dollars into documentaries, interviews, psychologists/psychiatrists and rehabilitation to understand our nation's serial killers because somehow there has to be a reason why White could be so Wrong.

As I reminisce about Southside & Westside city life, the only difference today is the internet exposure. I wonder how I can travel and basically go through a strip search at our nation's airports that detect if I am carrying on board any liquids in containers of 100 mililitres or less; or travel through a red light under the threat of camera surveillance by which a ticket will be mailed to me with a picture of the driver... Yet, our law enforcement and political officials are in utter disarray as how to track and gain control on assault and automatic weapons trafficking in the Black community. Guns created for war to kill multiple people at one time are nestled safely in the arms of our Black little boys as rage therapy. How is it that google can live stream your whereabouts anywhere in the world, but we can't track weapons of mass destruction under street lights, camera surveillance, TSA, CIA, FBI, wire tapping and the innumerable measures we use to keep America safe from outsiders?

You know what, Hadiya? I don't think they want to. And I don't want to feel better about what happened to you or our other babies slain in cold blood as project genocide by writing a poem or restraining my voice in quiet solitude for this tragedy. Death is not an option, however, your murder was and the trail of blood runs deep and high.  I have been reacquainted with the grief I long to suppress from the murders of my young friends on 87th Street and throughout Chicago. Rico, Fonz, Robert, my brother and on and on...

And on!

Our fight for Civil Rights is the roadmap for the oppressed all over the world, however, the exhaustion of centuries' long fighting gave us superficial rest. We are still angry, Hadiya, but we've been forced to smile while the backdraft of being violated and violently denied the right to feel our own justified pain, causes us to implode with a backdraft of self hatred. A darkness that is skin deep.

See, we were emancipated, but we have NEVER been free to be happy to be Black in America. Seems the only way America is comfortable with my Black skin is when it's not moving. I only hope that someday there will be a generation that will "REST IN PEACE" while they live.

It wasn't your time and that God knows full well.

 

(To be continued, my little baby...)

Martin Luther King Jr., "The Drum Major Instinct" Sermon

We need to hear it (again and again); until we become it. LOVE... (Thank you, Dr. King, Mrs. Coretta Scott King & Family and all those that dare(d) to dream.

NAMASTE

Inauguration 2013: Richard Blanco's Poetry Pays Homage to American Exper...

I will be remiss to let this day and moment pass without recognition of the historical gravity it has on me personally, as a Black woman, and the world (America and beyond). A moment awakening a long awaited humanity and consciousness that perhaps may be ready to be the best of what is possible through us, by us and for us. A day written as a fairy tale, only, by those hoping to stir human beings to desire to see one another as themselves and to consider how their actions are the history being made and told.

This day was once only a myth, even a prophecy, passed along through the griots of civilization to give us HOPE. (HOPE) The only wealth asset available to the oppressed, distraught and forsaken. It is this hope that continues to weave us closer together for a new story with an ending that won't violate or enslave ANYONE in order for dreams to manifest and lives to flourish.

I bow in deep gratitude to every life given & taken to stir us from our coma of apathy into LOVE that acts in accordance with creation. LOVE creates...

LOVE speaks through the labor of those who bring out the best in others and the world. We can't afford to close our eyes again to injustice with the sleep of convenience.

NAMASTE