Rosalind Guy's Blog, page 29

I Can’t Breathe

I can’t breathe.

Needing you is suffocating me.

You are necessary like water & oxygen.

I’m drowning in my need for you

& that’s why I can’t breathe.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

Echos of Good-bye

I’ve lost you. You’re gone.

This is a sacred truth

I finally hold dear

even though you’ve yet to

walk through the open door.

I hear Death in the spaces

between your words. I hear

echos of good-bye long before

you’ve spoken a word. The way

you walk through a door, leaving

nothing behind that I can hold

on to. Cloudy vistas & melancholy

songs are all that’s left in your wake.

And that’s not enough to convince

me you’ll stay. When I constantly

hear good-bye.

Did you think I was the one

who created the Sun? Did you think

I could release all my fears

like a rope dangling through

an open window of my soul &

forget to leave it open? I cannot

uncreate yesterday to have it take the place of today. Nor will I beg you to stay.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

Brown Skin – My Identity

I keep saying, “What are we teaching our young black males? What are we saying to them about the value of black lives, when we tell them it’s okay to scuffle with a policeman after committing a crime and still expect to go on living? What are we telling them when we don’t raise an eyebrow when they senselessly kill one another? Why is it okay to kill your brother? Why are we okay with remaining silent when we kill one another but want to raise hell when someone other than a black person kills one of us?” I admit, I’m sometimes confused. I sometimes find myself trying to determine who I am in the midst of everything that is unfolding in front of my eyes.

My Identity

Who am I?

Am I me or have I been forced

to be we, a generic identity

that labels all brown-skinned beings

the same. We’re allways under suspicion.

Labels were embedded beneath our skin

as we lay in our mother’s arms that first time,

a solemn beginning to the inevitable end:

Will act suspiciously even when standing still.

Will walk the mall under suspicion.

Driving a car will cause them to raise a

suspicious eye

‘cause I have two perfectly fine feet

to carry me where I need to be

at any given time.

But even when I’m walking

you raise an eyebrow at me.

There’s just no rhyme or reason to explain

how my brown skin causes me to allways be

suspect, criminal, thug, thief, dead.

All my shuffling & scraping to get by

will never be enough to free me.

I’ll always be held hostage to an identity,

one you use to label me:

suspect, criminal, thug, thief, dead.

I keep thinking about the day I took my son, Cameron, to football practice for the first time. He attends a private religious school and he’s part of the minority in the school. So it was no surprise to discover he’d be the only brown-skinned boy on the football team, out of nine boys. That didn’t deter us. We went happily. Because part of his imaginative play every day involves him playing football. He said he lives for the game. We’d never met any of the families before the day of the first practice. We arrived about eight minutes late, so practice had already begun. We rushed from the car to get him onto the field and we passed an SUV with a white woman inside. She reached over and locked her door when she looked and saw us approaching. No one saw it but me. My kids, all of them, were with me, but none of them saw that reflex reaction displayed: reaching over and locking the car door. That action instantly made me feel like an outsider, like I didn’t belong there. But I didn’t want to deny my son this opportunity. And eventually the mother exited the SUV and came over and introduced herself. No problem here, right? Wrong. I still feel like we don’t belong. I’ve never felt that way before. I always felt like I was one of the good ones, so no one would judge me like the people breaking laws. That is until they did. And that’s where this poem came from. Just another experience in the day of a brown-skinned woman.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

To Be an Artist or Entertainer…That is the Question

“You can’t help it. An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.” –Nina Simone

When people hear the words black playwright, I’m sure they instantly think of Tyler Perry. I could be wrong, though, because that’s not who I think of. I think of August Wilson.

Since discovering Wilson in college, I’ve always been discouraged by the fact that Wilson’s genius seems to be so glaringly overlooked. How can such a great artist be just another anonymous face in the literary tide, black writers swimming against the tide trying to share their words with the world?

Ask me who one of my favorite black writers is and I say August Wilson. Unless the person I’m speaking to is well-versed in black literature, they have absolutely no idea who I’m talking about. And that is a shame.

I’ve read all of Wilson’s plays, the Pittsburgh cycle of plays that document the African American experience in the 20th Century, each reflecting a decade in the century: Gem of the Ocean, Fences, The Piano Lesson, Radio Golf, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Seven Guitars, Two Trains Running, Jitney, and King Hedley II. And while I’ve read and re-read all of Wilson’s plays, I’d never willingly read a Tyler Perry script. Tyler Perry and August Wilson represent the difference between art and entertainment.

Art is revolutionary, meant to incite change and self-reflection. When I read August Wilson I see a reflection of my life. I see my struggles depicted on the page. I cannot walk away from one of his plays without spending some time in reflection. (I’ve only seen two of his plays performed on the stage, but one of the items on my bucket list is to see all of Wilson’s plays on the stage.) Tyler Perry’s plays, which I long ago stopped watching because they’ve become redundant, is for pure entertainment. There’s nothing to be gained by watching Madea cut up on the stage like she does. When I look at Madea, I don’t see the whole of my experience staring back at me from the stage. Not to say that what she represents isn’t somebody’s experience, it’s just not my experience. I’m not trying to take anything away from Tyler Perry’s success. I, like so many others, am heartened by his story. How he believed in his work and didn’t give up. How he lived in his car and eventually became a multi-millionaire. Of course, I’m glad to see a black man doing so well. The question, for me, is what type of artist do I want to be? Do I want to be an artist or do I want to be an entertainer?

At the end of the play I was reading this morning, Radio Golf, Harmond the protagonist finds that his wife and business partner have turned their backs on him. When he was faced with doing what was morally right versus what was legally right, he chose the morally right thing to do. But that’s not part of the plan. That’s not how you make it in “their” world. While Harmond chooses to do what’s best for himself as a successful black man and the little man. They don’t understand him, can’t see that he’s finally starting to listen to himself and going after what he wants and needs.

Roosevelt is more interested in setting himself apart from the little man, the one that he has this to say about: “It’s not my fault if your daddy’s in jail, your mama’s on drugs, your little sister’s pregnant and the kids don’t have any food ‘cause the welfare cut off the money. Roosevelt Hicks ain’t holding nobody back. Roosevelt Hicks got money…You niggers kill me blaming somebody else for your troubles.” Like crabs in a barrel. Roosevelt is only concerned with getting out. He’s not concerned with right or wrong or anybody else. His only concern is himself. And he will push you down in order to pull himself up. And Roosevelt also is willing to allow himself to be used so that white millionaire Bernie Smith can have a “black face” to receive minority-based incentives. The deals benefit Smith much more than Roosevelt, but he doesn’t care. He only cares that he’s getting an opportunity to get in the door. When before, black people were only able to open the door for white people as they walked in.

Art is meant to be revolutionary and there’s nothing revolutionary about depicting a black male dressed up in women’s clothes, fake breast flopping all around drawing innocuous laughter. There’s nothing to reflect about after watching a Tyler Perry production. Instead, we go back repeating lines from the play, things that made us laugh. But, to be honest, there’s a market for what Perry offers. He makes people laugh, he has the entire world looking at Madea and laughing at her. She’s harmless even though she carries a gun. And maybe that is the genius that is Tyler Perry.

August Wilson, on the other hand, presents characters who are seen as a threat. Harmond, the one who exposes the back room deals that real estate developers have been involved in, is losing everything at the end of the play. But the one who plays by the rules and “follows the plan” seems to be benefitting. As long as he can look at himself in the mirror, as long as he never longs for anything other than money, the reader knows he will be okay. But what about Harmond? This is a question that will remain with me for a very long time.

And that’s the difference between art and entertainment. So, now, I ask myself which one do I want to be? As I struggle to find an audience for my work, do I stray away from what I’m passionate about so I can may achieve monetary success like those who sell romance and urban fiction stories like penny candy or do I follow my own heart and mind, knowing that I’m not selling a sweet treat to be gobbled up and easily forgotten?

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

Walls Are Not Built By Accident

In my earlier post, I added a note to the poem “At Arm’s Length.” The poem had started to come together for me as I was driving, but then I hit a wall. Not with my car, but with my words. I knew it wasn’t “finished,” but I posted it anyway. Here is a revised version of the poem. It’ll still go through several more revisions, but this one says better what I wanted to say earlier.

Walls are not built by accident.

The Great Wall of Keeping You

at Arm’s Length is carefully constructed

by the ones who seek to keep your love

from penetrating the layers of their bruised

or just untouchable heart. At the very start

of the falling, a person already knows

just how far she’s willing to fall. And he’s

not always willing to fall all the way

in love with you. And that’s why she starts

building walls around her heart to keep you

out. He doesn’t count on you shielding your eyes,

trying hard to unsee what you’ve already seen.

Doesn’t see how your view is obscured by

bricks being added one day at a time even as you

skin your knuckles trying to carve a door through

the protective wall. You break your nails,

tear skin from your hands, add new scars to

cover the old as you try to break through

the unspoken words, lapses in speech,

the I love yous that hang in the air, longing

gazes thrown out like fishing hooks,

sacrificial destruction of self to make room

for a love that exists only in delusions you

pocketed long ago. Desperate cement meant to

hold together what has already fallen apart

or else existed only within you. Because

walls are not built by accident.

You shield your eyes, cover illusions with

the gift wrap of lies, tell yourself it’ll get better with

time. All the while the brick wall increases in size;

it will soon tower above you preventing you from

being able to see beyond what it is you want,

deep down in your heart. All you want is to

be loved like you love her. But walls are not built

by accident. You thought if you ignored the wall

it would simply liquefy from your clumsy efforts to

grasp what is already gone. If a life preserver

grazes your fingers but slips away, consider yourself

dead. Walls do not simply dissolve. The foundation

is too strong. Words they’re afraid to say build walls,

burn bridges, become an optical depiction of what you’d

rather not see. The illusion lies within you.

Wishing something to disappear does not make it so.

Were it that easy, I never would have let him go.

People don’t suddenly unknow you, but they can start

to unravel the love they once felt for you. So when you see

the walls start to grow, don’t unwish it so

and don’t waste time trying to climb a wall that

was put in place to keep you in yours.

And climbing a wall is not like climbing a tree.

The view will always be obscured, and you’ll see

only what you want to see. And even when you know

walls are not built by accident, somehow you’ll

still never be able to see the walls built for you,

built to keep you from giving the love you want

to give, the love that doesn’t want to be received.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

At Arm’s Length

“Keep things at arm’s length…If you let anything come too near, you want to hold on to it. And there is nothing a man can hold on to.” –Erich Maria Remarque

Walls are not built by accident.

The Great Wall of Keeping You

at Arm’s Length is carefully constructed

by the ones who seek to keep your love

from penetrating the thin covering of

their heart. Don’t shield your eyes,

trying to unsee what you’ve already seen.

When your gaze is obscured by the

bricks being added one at a time,

the unspoken words, lapses in speech,

don’t bother trying to fill the gaps with

the desperate cement of longing gazes

and tumbling words meant to hold

together what has already fallen apart.

There’s always a reason the wall begins

to tower before your eyes, increasing in size

until you can no longer see beyond.

Don’t ignore the presence of a wall,

hoping it will one day liquefy from your

clumsy efforts to grasp what is gone. Walls

do not simply dissolve. The foundation

is too strong. Words they’re afraid to say

build walls, burn bridges, become an optical

depiction of what you’d rather not see.

The illusion lies within you.

Wishing something to disappear does not

make it so. Were it that easy, I never would

have let him go. People don’t suddenly unknow

you, but they can start to unravel love

they once felt for you. So when you see

the walls start to grow, don’t unwish it so

and don’t waste time trying to climb

a wall that was put in place to keep you in yours.

And climbing a wall is not like climbing a tree.

The view will always be obscured, and you’ll see

only what you want to see.

*I started working on this poem today while I was driving. I thought the words would continue to come to me as I cut the grass. But my muse took a break and sat that round out, allowing me to concentrate fully on the grass and that’s all. This still needs work, but I think the message comes across clearly. It’s in the first lines: people don’t build walls by accident. Walls are built to keep someone from getting the wrong idea about their feelings, to keep someone from seeing the truth, or to just keep things from going further than they want them to. Sometimes we ignore signs when entering relationships. This is one that should not be ignored. If a person is building a wall, believe me, there’s a reason.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

Fear of Drowning

Happy Monday peeps! Today begins the start of another school year for me, but as I transition back into my role of high school English teacher, I still plan to make time to write at least a page a day. That was my pledge to myself.

So far, I’ve written this poem:

My love is an island.

Your fear of water shipwrecked us.

I cannot drown again.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

Ghosts Are Real

Today’s poem is a revision of one I posted a while ago. I kept a few lines from that poem, Sleeping With Ghosts, to create this:

Ghosts aren’t real, she told me while settling

her naked body into the crook of arms belonging to

the corpses of loves that never should have been.

She made pillows out of the faces of men

who’d crushed her dreams like the sweet, hard candies

she used to hold in her cheeks, savoring when she was a girl.

At night while she sleeps she remembers

how easily she had been discarded, her love

wrapped in the recycled news found in a trash bin &

used to wrap dead fish, with unseeing eyes, fish that’s

no longer fit for consumption. And her tears fail to wash

away remnants of the ghosts of yesterday so they continue

to keep her awake. Still she keeps them near, their familiarity

seemingly enough to keep her from beginning to dream

things could ever be different. That’s how she convinced herself

that ghosts aren’t real & that love is nothing more than

grasping hold to what doesn’t want to be held.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

He Said, She Said

He said:

Pain ignites our hope.

Hope denies Death through blind faith.

Faith promotes our success.

She said:

Pain tried to birth us.

We existed already.

An enigma. Faith.

His poem is about overcoming the past to make way for a future that has been the substance of his dreams for so long. Blind faith assures him that all will fall into place for him. Sometimes we believe that the desires of our heart will never manifest and so we settle for what is there before us. That’s life. It’s why things and people are always changing. Life is about trying to discover what fulfills us and if you’re in a place where you’re being drained and used up, instead of filled, step out on faith and believe that there is something better waiting for you.

Her poem is about the battle to shed the skins of one’s past in order to embrace one’s true self. One of my favorite quotes is “If you don’t like how things are, change it. You’re not a tree.”  As long as there is breath in one’s body, there is always the opportunity for change, especially when the change is embracing your true self and not the labels others try to brand you with, your past mistakes, or anything that goes against your most basic and true self. Don’t silence your voice so that others are more comfortable and don’t become a chameleon to make other’s more comfortable in your presence.

So often, we hear that we are not our past. Meaning even though we are a product of our past, we don’t have to continue to wear the brand of our past. We cannot go back and change the past, but we do have the power to change the future. But, change is hard even when the change is positive. So some knowingly hold on to and fight for things, jobs, people who are not in alignment with the desires of their heart. That’s not an indictment or judgment, just an observation. I have knowingly held on to situations that I knew were not good for me because I was fearful of what would be on the other side. I’m trying to learn to let go of that need to control and accept that some things happen and there’s nothing I can do about it. In the end, all I can control is my reaction to a situation. I cannot always control the situation.

Today’s post isn’t really about my writing because I’ve been distracted today and I haven’t really gotten any writing done. But, now I’m going to attempt to work on a creative nonfiction piece for an upcoming contest. I’m usually pretty good at silencing the critical self when I’m engaged in the initial writing of a piece, but that’s not what I’m worried about today. Today, I’m worried about the noisy distractions that I’ve had a hard time ignoring today.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

Street Level Drug Dealer

Just a little something I’ve been toying with today:

Words bleed from my pores,

staining my skin and my clothes.

No amount of sass to scrub clean

the words you dirtied my soul with.

You told me I was a failure,

so I strived to be much less.

You told me I was unloveable,

so I always settled for less than I deserved.

You showed me I was worthless

so I learned to seek the best, holding on to

nothing.

You pumped me with words as poisonous

as any street drug. Like any street level dealer

you knew how to control me: tempt with a taste

and you’d soon have control over me.

Like a drug-addicted scarecrow seeking to be filled,

I kept coming back trying to get my fix.

You never let me down either.

You chained my soul, filled my arms with

hypodermic needles too strong for me to remove.

Alone.

Love finally freed me. Love found me &

I found healing in the rehabilitative waters

of self. I pulled the needle of your words

from my arms so I could be free.

Now you hate me because I stopped allowing

you to teach me how to hate me. But that’s OK

we both know there’s always someone else,

somebody who’ll accept your drugs

cuz the war on drugs is not one we can win.

There’ll always be someone disgusting enough

to supply the poison and someone desperate enough

to need the fix to try and fulfill something within.

I’ve been working on my WIP, Micah’s Falls, but this poem is something that came to me while I was writing. I stopped to get down what came to me initially; I’ll come back to this poem later because I need to get back to work on my WIP. Hope you are doing something today to fulfill your wildest dreams because maybe they’re not so wild and maybe it’s possible for it to be more than a dream. Maybe one day all your dreams can be reality. Right? Right.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind