Rosalind Guy's Blog, page 37
April 13, 2015
Strange Fruit
Here’s the poem for day 13 of National Poetry Month:
Ugli fruit seems such a peculiar name
to bestow on fruit that has an ancestral
lineage that no average fruit can compete
with. The name plants seeds of
stereotypical thinking so deeply ingrained
& associated with name, one has to wonder
was it done on purpose?
Did some non-native take a bite
of ugli fruit so many years ago,
expecting it to taste one way &
when he discovered it tasted
better than expected,
he started calling it ugli fruit
& the name, it just stuck,
though people continued to taste
the fruit and knew the fruit was
anything but ugly.
Only
no one dared
broach the subject of
changing the name cuz change
is strange & something no one
hardly welcomes. So let���s just
let things remain the same.
Even if they are wrong.
And
that���s why it���s easier for you
to judge my identity based on
the content of a 10-second
sound bite of information
than
to actually get to know me.
The ugly truth is that
strange fruit does exist���
they perpetuate violence in
the stead of humanity & reject
genuine love towards one another���
& some of them just may
resemble me. But that strange fruit
is not me. I���ve been trying to get you
to see. But now I���ll offer you just my
silence.
Peace & Love,
Rosalind
April 12, 2015
Good-bye (Day 12)
I have a peculiar relationship with the blank page. Sometimes I can sit down before a fresh sheet of paper and sit paralyzed for minutes that stretch into hours. Other times I sit down and as soon as the tip of my pen comes into contact with the paper, the words just flow. Then there are days where I mulled over a line, phrase, word, or idea and I can���t get to a sheet of paper fast enough because I can feel the avalanche of creativity about to burst from me. Despite our peculiar relationship, I know I will never stop writing.
Writing brings me so much pleasure. F. Scott Fitzgerald said, ���All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.��� When you envision the writing process in that manner, it is no wonder that writing or the blank page can cause paralysis of ideas or writer���s block for some. But, ah, think of the chance you are taking when you face that blank page.
When I was a teenager, I used to spend a lot of time with my cousins especially when they travelled out of state. One particular time, we stayed in a hotel and went down to the pool. I���d never had a swimming lesson in my life, had never been within ten feet of a pool. And, now, here I was wearing my little white swim suit and climbing down into the pool. I didn���t know how to swim and there was a moment when I went down underwater and couldn���t get back up. I panicked, thought I was going to drown. No one knew I was underwater panicking. And then somehow I was breaking the surface of water and climbing out of the pool. I looked around and felt incredulous that no one had known how close I���d been to dying. This used to be my ���why I���ll never go swimming again��� story. But a few summers ago, while my daughter was away at college, we drove up to spend a couple of days with her. We checked into a hotel near the campus and went swimming. All of my children, except the youngest, know how to swim because they learned when I used to work at a daycare. The daycare owner took the kids out to her house and taught them how to swim in her pool. Some of my co-workers tried to teach me how to swim but the memory of my moment of almost-drowning kept me paralyzed. But at the hotel with my kids, I tried again. I asked them to teach me how to swim. The important thing, for me, is that I got over my fear and got back in the water. And that���s how I approach my writing. I get back in every day. I face the blank page every day, knowing that I may face rejection. I may release my work and it take years and years and years for my work to be read. For people to fall in love with my work the way I fall in love over and over again when I begin writing. But I will face the blank page every day.
Here���s today���s poem:
We were always saying good-bye
though he never knew or, if he did,
he never acknowledged it. Every time
we saw each other, it was the beginning
of our good-bye. The space between us
grew ��� became filled up with bloated lies,
false expectations, & dawning realizations ���
how could I have hoarded the expectations
that you would love me like I love you?
Yet
you don���t. Instead of carrying the love
I placed in your heart, you ripped it out
like an imitation voice box, one that
obviously could not give expression to
all your selfish deeds & petty schemes.
Good-bye began to move in when
I began to realize her presence in the space
made much more sense than Love.
Good-bye was anxious to move in,
wanted to make her presence known,
wanted to be seen as soon as she showed me
Love tiptoeing out the back door, but
I begged her to be patient, to give us time
to adjust to the beginning of good-bye.
Just because it takes time
doesn���t mean I���m not going to say good-bye,
it just means I���m holding her hand now,
standing in the shadows waiting
for the right time to release her hand
and welcome Good-bye in the house.
Peace & Love,
Rosalind
Today, just go. Whatever your passion is, go toward it. Don’t shrink back with the paralysis of fear. Ask yourself what’s the worst that could happen and then go despite whatever your answer is.
Also, here’s the link to my books: http://www.amazon.com/Blues-Love-Junkie-Rosalind-Guy/dp/0692416382/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1428820313&sr=8-1&keywords=Blues+of+a+Love+Junkie. Go check them out.
Let nothing prevent you from following your passion today, least of all fear. :-)
April 11, 2015
The Rabbit Hole
Well, I���m a bit late with today���s post because today was my birthday and I’ve been a bit distracted with celebrating turning 42 years young, but I haven���t gone to sleep for the night so I���m going to still post it as my day eleven poem.
I finally finished reading The Bell Jar tonight and it left me���wondering. It���s one of those books where you want to talk to the author, to just see for yourself. I have so many questions I want to ask. So, I guess I will be re-reading the book at a future date, to see if some of my nagging questions are resolved. Mostly I want to know more about her relationship with her mother and her relationship with her psychiatrist, Dr. Nolan. I had the sense, as I was reading, that a symptom or rather a feature of her mental illness was her inability to form meaningful relationships with people. She seemed so cold and detached from every person in the book except Dr. Nolan. That���s intriguing.
Also, my latest book is now available. Blues of a Love Junkie is available in paperback and Kindle. It���s a collection of poems that have been weaved together to tell the love story of a love junkie. Read a description of the book here: http://www.amazon.com/Blues-Love-Junkie-Rosalind-Guy/dp/0692416382/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1428820313&sr=8-1&keywords=Blues+of+a+Love+Junkie
I also have two other books, Skinny Dipping in the Pool of Womanhood and Tattered Butterfly Wings. I���d love to get some reviewers or book groups to read TBW. If you know someone who might be interested, have them give me a shout.
Okay, so, here���s today���s poem. It is dedicated to the memory of Sylvia Plath.
The Rabbit Hole
Sometimes
I
wish the
rabbit hole
was
real. I���d
fall down
&
never
come back.
Peace & Love,
Rosalind
April 10, 2015
Abortion Poem
An Abortion Poem
What made you think
I���d be okay, when you knew
I was stewing in a murky
pool of indecision & insignificant
pleas of a body that was straining
to accommodate ideas about what
it means to be a lady or
even a woman. Did you or
anybody ever think of me?
I can���t imagine a life
without me, but she could,
& that made all the difference
for me. I knew there was
no way I���d live to see
anything beyond her unformed
insides that matched her unformed
ideas. Yet, she still was somehow
able to decide to create, then uncreate,
me.
And now I must surrender
my will to live or even to breathe
the fresh air outside her body.
My mommy has become nothing
but a stranger to me, all with just
one word, a decision to kill me.
If I could say just one word
to my mommy, it would be
love. I would say love to the one
who chose, not birth, but giving
in to homicidal tendencies.
I choose love, because
even I know that the way to show
love is to always deny me &
give her the leverage to be happy.
Even when that means killing me.
Peace & Love,
Rosalind
April 9, 2015
Two Things: Poem for Day Nine and Blues of a Love Junkie
The poem for today is short, but still a poem :-).
Freedom
I���m already free
so all you can do
is love me.
Blues of a Love Junkie is now available on all online outlets. Take a look and get yourself a copy :-)
Peace & Love,
Rosalind
April 8, 2015
Black Like Me
It’s day eight of National Poetry Month and today’s poem was inspired by the division that exists in the black community, where you have to think or be like everyone else. You have to jump on every bandwagon and are not allowed to have your own way of thinking or processing things.
My stance has always and will always be that Black Lives Matter, but no one and, I mean, no one can tell me what that looks like. No one is going to force me to jump on any bandwagon of ideas. I am saddened by the attack on black lives. Period. That includes the loss of life at the hands of Lil Pookie over some trifling ass gang shit (excuse my French) and the loss of life at the hands of Officer White.
We all have one life to live and life should be valued as a precious commodity. It’s not though. And that makes me terribly sad.
Black Like Me
You people are choking me
with your righteous & enlightened
indignation
& I can���t breathe. Your
I���m so much blacker than you ���tude
is suffocating me. Release me.
I am struggling to stay free.
I know the proclamation was a lie,
a fa��ade of eradication, to try to
eliminate attitudes & beliefs that kept
my ancestors from being free. But
here���s what I want to get you to see:
After being a slave for hundreds of years,
it���s gonna be more than a notion to
re-enslave me.
Your enlightened & conscious ideas
don���t fit me. Got me struggling
to be free to think for myself.
You don���t own my struggle &
you don���t own my feet. You don���t
know how far I walked, just to be me.
I can be black like me
without being
black like you. I can do
what works for me. Because
as the world turns, it gives
me one life to live & I don���t
have to give it over to you,
for you to dice & chop apart with your
malnourished ideas about what it means
to be black & free
thinking or black
& free me.
Peace & Love,
Rosalind
April 7, 2015
Day Seven – National Poetry Month
Untitled
Two empty souls cannot fill
each other up, like dry kindling
they
rub each other, try to ignite a flame.
Some flames are
dangerous & should never be lit.
Fire is not a toy.
Peace & Love,
Rosalind
April 6, 2015
Not Afraid of the Darkness
Day 6 of National Poetry Month Lovelies and I’m still at it. :-)
Not Afraid of the Darkness
Her mind draped itself
with madness
to keep the cold fingers of
reality
from being able to touch
her. Reality, with its
jagged edges, that she was
constantly cutting herself on,
so she cast her eyes downward
& walked into the hollowed out
darkness & that���s where she
was able to finally sit down
& rest.
Peace & Love,
Rosalind
April 5, 2015
Realization
I’m reading The Bell Jar for the first time and am finding myself really getting into it. I feel somewhat like a forensic scientist, trying to navigate through the experiences Sylvia Plath describes in the book, trying to find the path that led to her mental illness. I find myself doing two things: believing she swam to the depths of her own sadness (she said she’d not been truly happy since the age of nine, before her father died) and dissecting things she thought and did because they seem like something I could do. I’m halfway through the book and still feel like I don’t quite understand why she ended up committing suicide. I guess some things aren’t meant to be understood, just felt.
So, I took a break from reading to compose the poem for day five of National Poetry Month. Enjoy!
Realization
She asked
why
the caged
bird
sang,
thinking
the answer
would be
so
profound
no words
could
give voice
to
the truth.
I said
the cage
was
never
closed.
He sat
perched
beside
hope
and
let it die.
He���d
always
been
free,
just never
wanted
to be.
Peace & Love,
Rosalind
P.S. What have you done today to move you closer to realizing your dream? Nothing? Don’t fret. There’s still time (nearly ten hours left to this day). Do something that moves you closer to where you want to be. Because if you wait until the perfect moment comes along, you may be waiting forever.
April 4, 2015
Fear
Here’s the poem for Day Four of National Poetry Month:
Fear
Fear will bare its teeth,
threatening to bite you,
but it will never even
reach out to you. It
doesn���t have to. Fear
knows the power it
has over you. And that
is enough. He���s sure you
won���t fight back, bite back
���cuz you never do.
Remember that time you
wanted more than anything
to kiss that little girl who
you liked so much. You
watched her for years
until you became
paralyzed
from fear. If you had
just walked over, she
would have kissed you
first. And remember
that time you wanted
to see the world, but
instead you chose to
stay home and watch
TV.
Now you know
that fear knows you
are no competitor for
him. And man won���t
it kill you to know
you don���t need an
arsenal of weapons
to defeat fear, all you
need is a desire to win.
Fear can only defeat you
if you let him.
Peace & Love lovelies,
Rosalind
