3-21-15

it’s hard to believe

and convince others to hold on

when everywhere I look there is corruption dishonesty and compromise

preachers stealing and sleeping with other men’s wives

miserable families

and hungry children sitting on the church pews

people living in bondage that no one can see

the elders turn a blind eye and don’t have time to care

what would Jesus say if he were to walk into your church today

what would be your excuse when he asks “Where were you?”

because every time you ignore the hurt and pain of another

you crucify him again

we cannot continue in this way

walking in hypocrisy

coming into the sanctuary to be entertained

with no real intentions

it’s time to look up and stop playing

in case you haven’t noticed the last days are not upon us they are already here

the faithful falling away

going the way of Illuminati Babylon

prophetic words turning into crooked motivational speech

money raising and Go Fund my jet

and let me fly up and away

so what if your rent is past due

don’t ask me to help you

it’s hard to believe

when all of these things go on daily

but God hasn’t changed

He knows who belongs to Him

just make sure that you are not found outside

when the rain starts to fall

the old people used to say there will be no place to hide

so make your calling and election sure

and don’t give up

no matter what you see.

bring back our girls

bring back our girls

lives that cannot be thrown away

tossed out like garbage

like unripe fruit

picked before its time

flowers that never had a chance to bloom

bring them back

so they can flourish

they need the chance to breathe

and not inhale the foulness of old men’s breath

or feel unclean hands

and hear words not meant for their ears

bring our girls back

they are not just our future

but our present

their presence matters

to somebody

even if not to you

find them

like precious jewels in Nigerian caves of

aquamarine

emerald

amethyst

garnet

tourmaline

topaz  

zircon

and sapphire

search for them

they are wondering

they are waiting

hoping

praying

crying

wailing

for someone to come to their rescue

please

elegy

to my unfinished poems

that take up empty pages of my life

with lines running through my head

conflicting like two ice cream trucks on the same street

playing the same tune on different corners

 passing one another without speaking

kids jaywalking to catch up with the one who passes first

like no justice for Trayvon

while a murderer walks

and tempers burn in the streets

on vacant stores

soon to be demolished

making the way for the blueprints to gentrify

like Brooklyn

Los Angeles

New Orleans

and

Harlem

and by that time

my unfinished poems

will finish themselves

and find greener pastures

where they can bloom

freely.

Domestic Violence PSA ... Get Out!

October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month...but violence at the hands of intimate partners goes on every day. Please watch this video and feel free to pass it on...and if you or anyone you know is in an abusive situation, please get to a safe place.

Intimate Partner Violence can take many different forms. It involves physical, emotional, mental, economical, and sexual abuse. At first, the control and manipulation your partner uses can be very subtle. The abuse can and will increase over time.
  
Answer “yes” or “no” to the following questions:

• Does your partner continually criticize what you wear, what you say, how you act and how you look?
• Does your partner humiliate or make fun of you in public places and social situations?
• Does your partner often call you insulting and degrading names?
• Do you feel like you need to ask permission to go out and see your friends and family?
  Do you turn down invitations to be with your friends and family because your partner will be angry at you for going with them?
• Do you feel you need to apologize to people or make up excuses for your partner’s behavior?
• Do you feel like no matter what you do, everything is always your fault?
• If you’re late getting home, does your partner harass you about where you were and who you were with?
• Has your partner threatened to hurt you or the children if you leave?
• Does your partner force you to have sex whether you want to or not?
• Are you afraid to say no to sex?
• Have you been repeatedly accused of flirting or having sex with others?
• Does your partner restrict you from getting a job or going to school?
• Has your partner hit you or threatened to hit you?
• Do you ever explain away bruises, cuts, or other injuries as results of how “clumsy” you are?
• Do you feel nervous or afraid for your safety when your partner becomes angry?
• Are you afraid to disagree with your partner?
• Are you frightened by your partner’s violence towards other people or animals?
• Do you change your behavior or “walk on egg shells,” depending on your partner’s mood?
• Do you ever think “If only I was prettier,” or “If only I cleaned the house better,” or “If only I had kept the children quieter,” etc., “then my partner wouldn’t have been angry?”
• Has your partner ever pushed, shoved, kicked or slapped you?

If you answered "yes" to even one of these questions, you may be in an abusive relationship.

How Can I Tell If My Partner Is A Batterer?

Does your partner have any of these traits? If he does there is a good chance that he is a batterer. This list is to give you a guideline to the signs of a potential batterer. Batterers’ personality traits are not limited to these.

Does your partner:

• Have low self-esteem?
• Lack knowledge of assertiveness skills?
• Have few close friends?
• Become obsessively jealous?
• Have a history of failed relationships?
• Have a problem with authority figures?
• Come from an abusive family?
• Become very possessive?
• Use violence to get rid of tension?
• Control finances?
• State that he must know where you are at all times?
• Leave messages on your answering machine, voice mail, or text obsessively if you are not home when he calls?
• Check up on you to see if you’ve gone where you said you were going? (Follows you)
• Have a bad temper or get angry easily?

 How Dangerous Is My Abusive Partner?
Some batterers are life-endangering. It is possible to evaluate whether a batterer is likely to kill his partner or other family members. The following are indicators to be used in making an assessment of the batterer’s potential to kill. Please pay close attention to the characteristics listed here:

• Threats of homicide or suicide: The batterer who has threatened to kill himself, his partner, the children or a relative must be considered extremely dangerous.
• Fantasies of homicide or suicide: The more the batterer has developed a fantasy about who, how, when and/or where to kill, the more dangerous he may be. The batterer who has previously acted out part of a homicide or suicide fantasy may be invested in killing as a viable solution to his problem.

Please don't take any of these things lightly. If any of these things even seem to be going on, it's time to get away. It could save your life.

If you are in danger, call 9-1-1. If you can get to a safe place, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at: 1(800) 799-7223...or 1 (800) 799-7223 (TTY) For more information, please go to: www.thehotline.org/get-help if you can use a computer that cannot be tracked by the person who is harming you.

          
*Source: Women's Shelter Program of San Luis Obispo County
http://www.womensshelterslo.org/get-informed/am-i-in-an-abusive-relationship

Strange Fruit...

strange fruit

is rottening in the trees

and it’s starting to smell

the stench is killing

 we

can’t breathe

our children are being suffocated on the streets

by passers by

who hunt them down like wild animals

against official orders

not to follow

lawlessness is stifling the cries

of mothers

fathers

and the unborn

with no names

sleeping in unmarked graves

wrapped in tiny hoodies

skittle covered caskets

and hip-hop elegies

prisons built for the illiterate to live in

for those who reach eighteen

if they don’t become the new crop

of strange fruit

rottening

in the trees

their stench filling the air

and

i

can’t

breathe

Twerk Show

Little girls too grown
shakin’ and rollin’ and dropping like it’s hot
doing all kinds of tricks
waiting for a real woman
to teach them the way 
to be…
never knowing that
respect is learned by observation
and not by verbs
so these girls 
don’t have a chance
in this world
without a guiding light
to show them
class…
because
due to lack of demand
and an unsustainable supply
self-love
esteem
respect
& dignity
the four most important parts
of a woman
are slowly
but surely
being eliminated from the general population
and skank
is becoming the 
new black

woman

 

there’s a woman who sits on the sidewalk

surrounded by her belongings

eating last night’s pizza from a greasy box

she doesn’t seem to care how close she is to the curb

rolling her eyes at the exhaust the buses leave behind

as they hurriedly turn the corner and come to a stop barely grazing her left hip

another woman passes by and gives her $2 that she quickly hides in one of her pockets

for safe keeping from desperate eyes

what has numbed her to danger

on a Thursday morning at rush hour when she could be anywhere else

having breakfast with her man

or taking her kids to school

but she’s here

with last night’s pizza that somebody left in the trash

and there’s nothing better

except to remember life

before living became so damn complicated

the sidewalk is an escape

from what was just too much to deal with in a day

out here it’s safer

than being indoors

and although most would disagree

i feel her

News...

High winds and storms blow through the northeast again with no end in sight…while hundreds of people run for cover out of the path of the howling torrents, huddled in fear…the ozone layer experiences record loss and the sun will scorch the earth’s atmosphere after Japan’s ocean radiation hits 7.5, the legal limit... as the crafty photographers show off nature’s secrets… somebody please run and tell them to  hurry and take all of the pictures they can because those secrets are quickly becoming copywritten history…and somewhere else a woman can no longer swim in her pool since the city condemned it but she still has to pay the taxes … Marvin sang a song for all times, way before time ran out for him…and the music continues to play on from vinyl to 8-track to cassette to CD to Mp3…Mercy Mercy Me, The Ecology…

 

 

 

Growing Pains..palindrome

 

Angry feeling

spiraling downwards towards

moments of cycling viciously

spent wasting time remembering

past pains held inside …

her rejected neglected teenager still unloved

misunderstood sometimes motherless child crying running fast

forgetting and growing into drama and

womanhood without

Father

without womanhood

and drama into growing and forgetting

fast running crying child motherless sometimes misunderstood

unloved still teenager neglected rejected her

inside held pains past…

remembering time wasting spent

viciously cycling of moments

towards downwards spiraling

feeling Angry

Priests

Priests...
 Who come to purify our souls
    but leave us with their filth
  purging iniquity from our lives
     and  replacing it with their own
hiding behind the screen of sickness
    lying in wait for innocent ones seeking solace from this cruel world
             into the new world
               to escape the violence within
                  only to meet with anarchy in the sanctuary
                       ruining lives and leaving devastation in the wake of rape and violation by wolves
in sheep’s clothing
laying on hands confusingly placed
leaving marks on our spirits that don’t wash off
 words silenced through big payoffs and excuses
       keeping secrets
          and hundreds of sealed confessions
             with no earthly consequences
Father in heaven help us
    forgive us for our sins
protect us from all who would do us harm in Your Name
       Hail Mary full of grace
          look not on our anger
             help us to forget
       and look for our reward
         in the life to come
             forever and ever
AMEN.

speechless

i’m speechless

at a loss for words

my extensive vocabulary fails me right now

i ran out of things to say

prayers to pray

confessions and affirmations to make known

so I stayed up past midnight silent

eating forbidden Oreo cookies and drinking tea

alone with just my thoughts

reading a book I bought

funny how the tv  my friend gave me stopped working today

for no apparent reason

the light stays red like something is wrong inside

as if it knew

like a short

or a fuse is out

and it will cost $200 to fix but how

can anyone put a price tag on something that is priceless

a life

a heart

a soul

a body

that is broken

i wonder why i suddenly feel like hitting somebody

when those who claim to know so much could be so wrong

and be so powerless to save

how would any of them feel to be told that everything will be alright

and wake up the next day to find out that they were all wrong

i hate the world right now

and all of its lies

God please help me to understand

why

after all of these years and millions of dollars

they still can’t get it right

how many have died waiting for a cure

to this disease called cancer

the crab that crawls into lives uninvited

paying no rent yet claims squatter’s rights

determined to take eminent domain over every avenue and street

while we wait

and hope

have faith that God will intervene with His hand

if he should choose to trouble the waters

and save

my friend

RED ZONE REVOLUTION

in honor of those who paint, write and sing
in RED, BLACK and GREEN
standing for the uprising
... insurrection and rebellion
against the atrocities of injustice committed by those who will escape unseen
putting pen to paper
and living dangerously in Real Evolutionary Determination
with weapons of ink
spilling literary bloodshed
spitting truth to the masses
the freedom fighters
willing to ride or die for what they believe
The Red Zone Revolution
is here to stay
showing the colors of life
and the order of the day

listen...

listen…

originality breeds contempt

and the honest reality of my words doesn’t always sit well with those who hear

it makes them feel uncomfortable

but that is the whole purpose of poetry

so listen

and free

your minds…

give these lines the chance to penetrate beneath the hard surface of your opinions

and hear what’s in my heart.

you might find out that it’s not too different to what’s in yours

and we will find a common ground

beyond that cup of coffee

and anonymous snaps

originality could become a new way of life

and maybe end some wars

feed some children

and save some souls...

you never know

so listen...

no justice

we grieve...
the demise of justice in a world where no one matters
where reasonable doubt means nothing
and truth is hidden from eyes blind to reasoning
we grieve...

a thousand times more than a thousand
for the thousands who have lost their lives at the hands of justice
perverted for the few
with liberty for all who can afford to pay
death to those who can’t
and we grieve today
for the many more who will die
without justice