Rosalind Guy's Blog, page 12

Don’t Look Back

My son says I find messages in the most trivial things. But I think even he would agree that what’s been taking place in my life lately has been pretty phenomenal.

I’m always the one to say, “Follow your passions. Embrace change.” I’m also the one who’s been unhappy for the past year. There have been a couple of reasons for that. One, I wasn’t sure I was doing enough to allow my passions to become my purpose. Or to be able to write fulltime, like I’ve always wanted. Although, truth be told, I already write fulltime. I guarantee you I spend as much time at Starbucks as the baristas. But when I got the email about possible library appearances, I panicked. Speak to people? In public? Strangers?

Every motivational speaker and Baptist church preacher will tell you that you work on your dreams every day so that when opportunity arrives, you’ll be ready to embrace it. Or walk into it. So, that’s why I write as much as I do. I refuse to let rejections, no matter how soft they are, stop me from following my passion. And I will not let my fear of speaking to strangers keep me from accepting the opportunities to show up for the author readings at the library this summer. The door opened. And I’m walking through it.

So, on to the “Don’t look back” part of this post. I said earlier that a few times this year I have had people talking about me behind my back. Only these people were saying good things and the good things they said, well, they opened doors of opportunity for me. One door was for my writing and the other was for my teaching. Out of the blue, people called me because of what these wonderful people had told them about me. Once these new doors opened for me, though, I found myself looking back to where I’ve been for the past few years. And I wasn’t so sure I wanted to leave. No, that’s not true. I realized I’d been uprooted from my place of comfort and this terrified me. A part of me is still scared to face these new opportunities, but I know there’s no way I can’t face them. Because to not face them means to choose to stay in a place that has made me so very unhappy, to the point of being exhausted. Mentally and physically exhausted.

One of the doors to open is a new school home. After being in one place for going on seven years, I’m moving. And it terrifies me. I know the people at my current school. I know the students. It took years, because I’m such an introvert, to reach the comfort level I have now, but I’ve been unhappy for the past year. And it was not within my power to change anything. It became a choice of stay here and suffer or move on. Sadly, I chose to stay here one more year just to see how things end up. Then an email arrived. “I have an available position. Would you like to interview?” I stopped breathing. I mean literally. I was looking back and finding comfort in where I was, even when where I was was a place of unhappiness. A part of me planned to purposely sabotage my own opportunity. That’s what fear will do for you. But then I got there and it felt like coming home. I wanted to be there. I wanted the new opportunity. And the principal was prepared to hire me based on what had been told to him about me. The door was opened. I spoke my desires into the universe and the opportunity presented itself. When that happens, peeps, it’s not the time to look back, but the time to look forward.

As Marianne Williamson says, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?”

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

P.S. Keep working on your passions so that when the door of opportunity comes for you, you’ll be ready. And when it does, don’t look back. Instead, look forward to all that lies ahead for you.

 

 

Like Falling Rain

His heartbeat sounds like

rain falling

against a tin roof.

I’m always torn between

surrendering

to an unbothered

sleep or wanting

to escape

to run barefoot

thru the falling rain.

That’s what it feels like

when I’m lying

next to him. Always

I pray the rain

will never stop

falling.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

R.I.P. Black Man

I’m currently reading a book of poems titled, Resisting Arrest edited by one of my favorite poets, Tony Medina. The poems in the book are profound. They are the truth. But they are not like mine. Sometimes I wonder why my own poems don’t seem like mainstream activism. Why am I not angry about the same things as every other black poet seems to be? I am. But why am I not as passionate about it in my words? Because I’m on the front lines. I hear the conversations in my class. I have the arguments with young black men who assure me that what I’m teaching has nothing to do with what they plan to do later on in life. I go home every evening frustrated by a system that isn’t worried about the number of black and brown children who aren’t educated, they are simply worried about the number of kids who aren’t passing. And believe me, in my world, those two things are very different. I am one of the biggest cheerleaders for my students. I believe they can do what they want to do, but sometimes I stand by helplessly and watch them choose things I wish they wouldn’t choose. I attend funerals. Plural. I attend candlelight vigils. Plural. I hear about and read about my students going to prison. My viewpoint will not be the same as others. And I accept that. I also understand that all voices and viewpoints are needed to heal what is killing our community.

 

Black man

have u grown

so weary

that you’ll choose

to die

on the corner

defending turf

that belongs to the city

or that you’ll

hang out car windows

communicating

through violent

sign language

the message:

WILL ACCEPT BULLET IN BRAIN.

Have you grown

so weary

black man

that the only thing

worth fighting for

anymore

is a false image

of respectability

not family, not love, not community

Black man

have you grown

so weary

that

you’ve decided that

killing off

men who look like you

is the easiest way

to perform an

ethnic cleansing?

Who bribed you

convinced you

to work for

the enemy?

Terrorism in the

black community

written off as

temporary insanity.

Somebody should

have seen the signs

and strapped your ass

to a desk

in high school

and stuck that

needle in your vein

fed you

true knowledge.

I should have

bribed the men

who abandoned

you

paid them to

police my classroom

and stand behind you

with hand

over mouth

so you couldn’t

plot criminality

when

it was time

to learn

reading and writing.

In a world where

we’re branded

outcasts &

unwanted

don’t accept so

easily

the role of

hunter/hunted/haunted

black men.

These RIP T-shirts

are getting too

heavy

to carry

and we’re getting

weary too

so black man

can we

forge

a

different

legacy?

 Peace & Love,

Rosalind

 

Learning to Fly

Because sometimes you just have to close your eyes and leap:

Learning to fly

without wings was difficult.

But what could I do?

God didn’t see fit to give me wings

though I was born with the desire

to fly. In my dreams flying was easy.

But who wants to sleep

all the time? I don’t

even sleep every day.

Some days

I stand on my tiptoes

stretching, trying to reach

the summit of my dreams. Defeated

I sometimes collapse

on the ground. I

want to fly. I do.

One night while sitting

on the porch

swatting away night creatures

my son looked away from the moon

and into my eyes and told me that he

wanted to fly too. “Will I have to die,”

he asked, “before I’ll be able to fly?”

There was no answer to give

his question other than to tell him to

close his eyes. With our eyes closed

we pressed our toes to the ground

used our weight

to lift up off the ground.

Flying hasn’t been difficult since.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

When Love Feels Like Coming Home

Some people don’t know how to handle love. They get clumsy and drop love

because it’s unlike anything they’ve ever held before. Especially if it’s the soft

don’t want nothing but to be loved kind of love. They get so used to having their

own love dropped & sometimes even trampled over. They learn that love is tender,

currency to be traded for something more important. They are taught that love is

a bully, that it will back you in a corner and hold you captive until you surrender.

Don’t let that stop you from falling so completely, so inexhaustibly in love.

Because there are people like me. Who know that love is tender, craving only the

gentlest of touches. That love is two people sitting up late, their eyelids heavy with

sleep, but they battle it because for them, this love is being able to fall in love

over and over and over again, infinitely drowning in each other. Never alone.

That love is soft so when you fall into it, you won’t feel any pain. Yeah. That’s love.

And I’m here just waiting, me and my love, so that when you find me we’ll be

able to love one another as if though it’s what we both prayed for all our lives.

And it won’t hurt. No. It’ll be just like coming home. Yeah. Just like coming home.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

Nobody Ever Taught Me to Love

Been thinking about love a lot more than usual since yesterday when I watched a young lady and young man fighting outside the house where the young lady lives. I thought of her mom and dad when I saw her fighting for love and knew that’s where she learned that love should be like that. Her parents are always fighting. They’re those type of fighters who let the whole street hear them fight and then a few days later everything goes back to normal.

We learn about love by watching our parents. I read a quote once that said black mothers don’t teach their daughters what love should be like because they spend their adulthood years trying to learn that lesson themselves. We learn what love is through trial and error. Slowly, we learn that love is not supposed to hurt. That love is not something we should have to fight for. And, on this Mother’s Day, I want to declare that loving is easy. Love is easy.  It’s as easy as looking down into their eyes and just knowing, knowing that it’s love. Isn’t that how we fell in love with our kids?

Mother never told me that love

should come easily. It was something

I was forced to learn thru

trial and error.

She never told me that love

shouldn’t hurt. It’s something

I learned after so many black eyes.

After the police got tired of coming to

my house. After fighting for love

left me feeling tired & stupid.

Nobody ever told me that love

shouldn’t leave me feeling empty

& worthless. Not valued. That’s a lesson

I learned after examining the skid marks

left across the surface of my heart.

No one ever told me that no matter how

loving I can be, it might never be enough

to make him love me. And that I shouldn’t

want to force love where it doesn’t come

easily. That sometimes the best thing I can

do is wait. Wait for the love that will love me.

Love will never ask me to settle, to walk in the

ghost memory of the love he’s dreamed of all

his life; he wasn’t dreaming about me. Love will

never require me to learn shapeshifting in order

to fit his ideals. Love will never place me

in the corner of my own life and my heart.

Love will never put me last while asking me

to put him first. Love is so much better than

settling but no one ever taught us that.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

Only Love

Lovers come & go but love

is not so diffident. It

never looks for escape routes

or wants to be held against its

will. No balled fist will keep

ephemeral feelings of love

from falling through fingers.

Love keeps its hand open wide.

Love is the only word that never

needs to be heard in order to be

present. Anyone who ever has to

close his fist to hold onto a feeling,

is not holding love. Someone once asked

Eartha Kitt if she’d be willing to

compromise for love & her laugh

became the shot heard round the

world because she knew that love

never makes you less of yourself.

Only more. Always. More. Only love.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

Black Girls Are From the Future

They say black girls are from the future

and I guess that must be true. It explains

how you are able to look me in my eyes

while denying me. Like you expect me to

kick and scream and display angry black woman

tendencies to get you to acknowledge me.

If black women being from the future is true,

that would explain why no one can see us.

We’re invisible. Like our pain.

It runs deep into a state of deniability

which drops off into a tunnel of transparency.

See how that sufficiently explains our invisibility?

I knew there was a river of DENIAL, but now

you’re telling me there’s a river that swallows

black girls whole and keeps you from being able to

see them? The way you treat me confirms the

truth of its existence. You have such a well-packaged

explanation, it has to be true. So even when I see

you, I accept that you cannot see me.

Even when you/they/them have to stand on our

shoulders so we can hold you up, you shield your eyes

to keep from seeing us. And isn’t that convenient for you?

How you can take my vulnerability and stretch it

like a second skin for you to step into, and still somehow

fail to see me? How did seeing me become an act of

masochism? And here you are, you’re such a prude

that seeing me, much less loving me, is too grievous

for you. Does it hurt you even to acknowledge me?

To actually see me and my humanity? To treat me

with some level of dignity. The only thing worst

than being a black man is being a black woman.

Ah. Now I understand why you refuse to see me.

You think I’m bucking for your spot on the chain

of humanity. I see in your eyes how you accepted

their lies. And I guess it’s time I give in.

Would it be better for you if I would just

accept your lies and deceit, your culpability

in coloring me invisible? If black girls are from

the future, it makes sense, right? For you not to

see me now. And I have no right to demand to

be seen. Because I’m a black girl who hasn’t

been born yet. So, I’ll just see you in the future.

Until then, I’ll just accept your refusal to see me

as your way of loving yourself when loving me

felt impossible. No matter how easy I tried to make it.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

Desperation is not Love

A drowning man

will grab hold to anything

to keep himself above the

water, to keep from going

under. That’s how some people

fall in love. Desperately grasping

for anything that flows along

their path. Love becomes labor.

Desperation is not love.

That type of love you will outgrow

like the pants your older sibling

once wore. You cannot wear them

forever. One day you’ll have to let go.

Desperation is not love.

A drowning man

will do all he can to save himself.

But you are not drowning.

You are just learning to swim.

And learning to swim involves

trust, a willingness to let go.

Desperation is not love.

And you are not drowning.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

When Love Draws Blood

Monday and Thursday nights

we spend in front of the television.

It is only the two of us together.

This is how we kiss, how we hug.

This is how we show love. We

accept that loving is cold, closed off.

The gentleness, the easiness of love

is a lie that does not belong here with us.

Buried in the vibration of our screams

is the realization that this is what love is.

It is always fighting like two crabs in a

barrel, trying to draw blood, trying to end

the misery we caused. Our screams become

arrows pulled back before they are launched;

The target, always moving, is never hit.

We always miss. This is a world

to which we don’t belong, interlopers.

That is what we have become.

We continue to beat on the door

which stands closed before us.

We become the fighters, our anger

misconstrued. We are combatants too.

I have fooled him, made him believe

that I enjoy this time together.

He doesn’t know that this

is how I always feel, inside.

I want to scream out. The pain

always too much, unbearable.

And this is the only time when

it’s okay for me to cuss and scream.

The indirect cuts will never reach him.

He chose oblivious when I chose him.

The blood that pools in the ring

is my blood. The defeat mine too.

And after all the fighting, I am always

too tired. Exhausted.

And sometimes I wonder if I will be able

to continue to carry on. In the meantime,

I will always have our Monday and Thursday

nights.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind