Rosalind Guy's Blog, page 9

A Love Poem, I Think

A poem in the works:

Why do we not trust

the judgment of those

who show us they

don’t love us?

The unraveling

of love

evident in their posture

in their words

in their indifference

in their distance

but the urge to bend

save, change

fight for love

like the fight for freedom

leads to the delusional

grandeur

of molesting

an emotion that

is at once innocent.

We love

from the

beginning.

Love

is not a

distant continent.

It doesn’t require

half a day

by plane, hours

by bus and

a short walk

through

a village

where people stare

at you

because

they don’t

recognize

you.

Yet when people

show

they have fallen

out of love

or have never been

in love

with us, we

set to work manipulating

feelings until we

have built a hollow

statue, an empty tribute

to the love we

wish existed.

Did Michelangelo

not

think to add

realism

with the presence

of a heart?

David

prepared for the

battle of

loving.

But, no dear,

you have to

love me

we tell them

then

go about the

business

of helping to

sculpt, deconstruct

then sculpt again

their feelings

like a

grandmother

who assures us

we are cold

even though

we are not.

We sit in the corner

uncomfortably

wrapped in extra

layers

of clothing

that grandma makes us

wear. And we learn

that love is

forcing others

to exist in spaces

we create

for them.

The easiest thing

for them

was not loving

but through some will-bending

maneuvering & counseling

we create a love,

this willful bending

of another person’s feelings

instead of complicit coercion.

This empty tribute

to a love that

never existed

will one day begin to

show cracks and as we

mumble about how or why

this could happen —

after all this time, I

loved him or her, didn’t

they see that – and we

stare at the monstrous

destruction and crumbling

mass of nothing

as if though

it wasn’t our creation.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

Spoken Word vs. Traditional Written Poetry

As a developmental writing instructor at a community college, I’m accustomed to having to explain the differences between the various genres of writing. I understand that a student needs to comprehend the differences in purposes for writing a persuasive or argumentative essay as opposed to, say, an analytical essay.

As an author, writer, and poet, I never really anticipated that I would be called on to explain the differences between spoken word and traditional written poetry. But that’s exactly what happened. At my last Memphis Public Library-sponsored author reading event, I was called out (though it felt more like being taken to task) to explain the differences between the two. His argument: There is no difference because it’s all an expression of how the speaker feels. My response: Well, yes and no. It is true that both genres are an expression of how the artist feels, but so are music, paintings, essays, and other creative mediums for that matter.

Almost immediately as I began to formulate my response, I thought of the most significant difference between the two: purpose.

“The most important difference,” I began to explain, “is purpose. Spoken word is performance poetry and written poetry may require several readings before the reader feels he/she has fully interpreted the poet’s message.” Even then, the reader may feel a bit unsure that his or her interpretation has fully unraveled the meaning. But that’s okay. The most important thing to understand about reading a poem is that it can and will mean various things to different people.

So, back to purpose. Purpose determines what goes in a poem and what gets thrown out just like when writing an essay. Think: the difference between a book and its movie.

My son and I just finished watching The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. As a follow-up to reading the book, we decided to watch the movie. It was a way to reward my seven-year-old son for his dedication to completing the 375-page book. But as we watched the movie the other night, I instantly began to note differences between the two, to the chagrin of my son. Yes, I’m that person.

In the book Medusa lures Percy Jackson and his two sidekicks Annabeth and Grover into her place and offers the teens something to eat. And while they were eating, they slowly began to realize that something was not quite right with the woman, they later realized was Medusa. While Riordan was able to give the reader a more leisurely, laid-back experience in the book, there is no such opportunity in the movie. The scriptwriter can’t afford to lose the attention of the audience watching the movie, so the movie becomes a loosely-based, action-filled translation of the book. In the movie, Medusa delivers the line (which I love): “I used to date your daddy.” And that’s one of the moments that stood out in the film version because of the delivery and emotion it inspired. In the book, Percy Jackson seeks the advice of the oracles before beginning his journey. Not so in the book. Some of the scenes that were masterfully written in the book just didn’t show up in the film, to my chagrin. But, again, it’s all about purpose.

Spoken word poems are written with the audience in mind. Audience reaction and engagement are a cornerstone of spoken word performances much like live theater. In rehearsing for a play, the director may advise the actor or actress to pause at a particular point before or after the delivery of his or her lines because of an audience’s expected reaction.

One of my favorite spoken word artists, has a poem entitled, “F*ck I Look Like!” On her YouTube video of the performance, she pauses for audience reaction when she first says the title of her poem and several times throughout delivery of the poem. The high-energy performance highlights the speaker’s frustration as an educated black woman. The poem also highlights the differences of perceptions when reading a black and white writer in what bell hooks has called an “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” Davis points to the perceived differences between Maya Angelou’s and Mark Twain’s work to get her point across, but it is her lyrical word play along with the profound messages embedded in the poem that capture the attention of and excite her audience.

On the other hand, take “Nikki Rosa” by poet Nikki Giovanni. One of the poem’s messages is that a black person’s childhood can be tainted with negativity by other outsiders when they are trying to write about it: “and I really hope no white person ever has cause/ to write about me/ because they never understand/ Black love is Black wealth and they’ll/ probably talk about my  hard childhood.” Again, the audience reader receives a powerful and profound message. But because Giovanni’s message is embedded in the lines of a traditional poem, she depends on the visual depictions of the words to help get her message across. For instance, the fact that Black begins with a capital letter as opposed to lower-case. The word black has always held a negative connotation, here the poet ensures that the reader understands that in this poem Black people are revered and the color black doesn’t mean anything negative. Word placement also had to be an important consideration for the poet. The words “Black love is Black wealth” appears on the same line. To break them up on different lines would leave room for misinterpretation and clearly she wants to leave no room for misunderstanding. In a poem about the depiction of black family life, she wants the reader to comprehend that the love that existed in her family was more valuable than anything that money could buy.

Some poets also use layering of meanings in their poems, which any lover of words could spend hours discussing.

“We Real Cool” is one poem I’ve used with my tenth graders to demonstrate the necessity to dig deep to understand a poem. Students read the poem and think right away, after one reader, they understand everything the poet was trying to say. Then we annotate it together, as a class, and once we’ve given meaning to each declaration, the poem is given new meaning. “Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes is another such poem. During class discussions, the students search for meaning behind lines like “fester like a sore –/ And then run?” to determine what the image means. What we end up determining is that it can and does mean many things.

There is typically no such room for open-ended interpretation with spoken word. To make the listener have to work for understanding is to lose the audience. One of the cornerstone elements of spoken word, again, is audience engagement.

When Rudy Francisco says “staple me to a cross, pierce my side with a broken promise and I will bleed all the crippled reasons why you deserve one more chance,” in his piece  entitled, “Scars/To the New Boyfriend,” we are immediately with him. This vivid description and allusion to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ leaves no room for misunderstanding. This is an allusion that his audience is easily and readily understood by his audience. While viewing his YouTube performance of this piece, it is immediately clear that his description is not only something the audience understands, but there’s evidence of a visceral agreement between him and his audience. A sense of “Yeah, dude, we feel ya.”

On the other hand, if Francisco had chosen to allude to the Roman emperor Nero, as William Shakespeare does in his play Hamlet, he might have left the audience members scratching their heads. The allusion to Nero might work better in traditional written poetry because the poet could include a footnote explaining the relevance or the reader might go research Nero on their own, deepening not only their understanding of his presence in the poem, but of the man himself.

Simply put, when Paul Laurence Dunbar said “With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, / and mouth with myriad subtleties” in his poem “We Wear the Mask” he didn’t insert room for a pause to allow for finger snaps and applause. What he left room for was understanding. He wasn’t performing for an audience; he was making White Americans aware that black people’s geniality shouldn’t be confused with complacency or an effusive acceptance of their oppression in America. “Nay, let them only see us, while/ We wear the mas.”

The basic difference, then, is this: spoken word, though a burgeoning art form focuses on the oral delivery as opposed to great detail and attention to the written text. Whereas, the opposite is true with traditional written poetry.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

The Jackfruit

Like a piece of jackfruit

she settled where she fell.

Her skin frightened those who were

tempted to taste her. No one touched her

and she started to rot.

In the spring as passions grew

children from neighboring communities

came to pick the choicest fruit.

One tree produces more than 100 pieces

of fruit, yielding what appears to be

an endless supply of the delicious fruit.

A small boy chose the forgotten piece of fruit

And on that day, she considered herself

the luckiest piece of fruit, if it’s possible for

piece of fruit to be lucky then surely it was she.

Until she felt him opening her wide so

he could pluck out her seed

which he absconded with and carried away

to plant in the freshly-tilled soil.

Jackfruit has a reputation for being able to

take care of itself. That’s why it is oftentimes

forgotten.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

 

Back to Love

When your heart gets accustomed to being broken

you learn not to love.

When your soul gets accustomed to being crushed

you learn to be cold.

When your soul finds a place to call home

you learn what it feels to be loved.

When your eyes get accustomed to flooding with tears

you learn to look away.

When your voice is accustomed to going unheard

it learns to get quieter until you just stop talking.

When your voice is not just heard but celebrated

you learn what it’s like to feel loved.

When your love isn’t valued, you learn to exist

in places that are too small for you.

When your love is valued

you learn to let your walls fall and your guards melt

until all doubt washes away; you feel whole.

When you learn that your life doesn’t matter

you learn to exist on the boundary of invisibility

being equally overlooked and loathed.

When your dreams become accustomed to meeting dead air

and you’re made to feel like a foolish dreamer,

you learn to stop dreaming.

When your dreams are given the wings of encouragement

you learn to take risks, to never settle for anything

you learn that the sky was never the limit. You learn

to chase your dreams wherever they take you. And

you learn that it all leads you right back to love.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

The Quiet of Silence

Has the silence really been broken?

Is the quiet the surrounds us the sound

of the silence breaking or the sound of

my heart breaking? Some claim

it’s nothing but the silence being broken.

If that really were true, would it be so

terribly loud in here? And would my heart

continue to feel like it’s breaking every day?

What if one day I’m not able to fix all the rips

in my broken heart? Will my cries be

loud enough to part the curtain of silence?

Or will they persist in claiming that the sound

that pounds loudly in my ears

is nothing but the quiet of silence

that I’m not used to.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

Fatherless Sons

He used to boast about his membership

as one of the fatherless sons. As a fatherless

daughter, I used to wonder why he wore this

as a badge of honor.

His father left their family.

He told them he never wanted a family, felt trapped.

It must’ve not been a difficult decision for him

to make. His son was still wearing diapers

when he walked out of his life. There are some

pictures with the father and slowly disappearing father.

I was a fatherless daughter from the moment of conception.

My father never even knew I existed. And I never

saw any proof of his existence. Only my mother knew

or at least she suspected who my father is.

We have a friend, another of us fatherless sons & daughters

who bore the unpleasant task of watching his father pack.

At first it was his feelings that he began to pack. Over time

he began to pack his clothes and other belongings. Then

just like the rest of us, he was officially a fatherless child.

We used to try and deny our fatherlessness. Standing on

the corner, we’d created stories about our fathers

pretending they’d done something to piss us off.

But we all knew it was just a game. Our fathers

had left us and never would return.

But the one fatherless son who used to wear his

fatherlessness as a badge of honor, he one day

took off running. He ran and ran and ran, we knew

he was trying to outrun his fatherlessness. He ran

so far he decided to learn how to fly – without wings.

He thought he was untouchable because he learned

how to fly. He broke in one of our neighbors’ house

and was running away, when he took off flying.

A car came around the corner, the driver was going

at least a hundred miles per hour. Behind him

a police cruiser was flashing his lights and trying

hard to get the car to stop. Our fatherless friend

stepped off the curb and ran into the path of the car.

The car slammed into his body

and he took off flying. Finally, he’d outrun his fatherlessness.

He was unable to run anymore after that. The killer part

is that the driver of the car never stopped. And never

looked back. Whenever I stop and think about it

I sometimes wonder who he was trying to outrun.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

Metaphor

I’ve been mowing my lawn for years.

How could I have not noticed that it was

nothing but weeds? White and green clover

and dandelions had taken over the yard.

I’ve passively witnessed the gentle slaying

by the weeds as they killed off every

blade of grass. It wasn’t an easy decision,

the decision to kill, but those weeds

would have to be killed. And I would

have to be the one to do it. I sprayed

poison all over the yard, watched

as those murderers died a slow death.

Capital punishment is a form of murder

too. The killer who kills the killer is still

just a killer. And I killed those weeds.

And one day I went outside and saw places

where the weeds had started to die.

No blood on my hands. Bald places

where weeds once lived, there was nothing.

I thought about stopping. It wasn’t too late.

I just wouldn’t spray again. But I wanted

lush grass. I wanted green grass.

I hefted the jug of poison and sprayed again.

Why such a drastic action after all these

years? I mean, for years, I’ve been content

to just go out there and mow down the weeds.

But I wanted better. Is that so terrible?

Am I wrong to want something pure?

I’ve been cutting weeds for three years;

that’s a long time. So why change now?

What’s the difference? The difference?

I know better now. I never wanted a yard

full of weeds, it just happened. That any

grass had grown in the bed of weeds, well,

it’s a miracle. I have to forge ahead.

I must kill these weeds. Sure, there will be

some sleepless nights and I might even

shed a few tears, but in the end, it’ll be

worth it because I’ll finally have my green

grass. I never wanted clover. I wanted grass.

And one day soon, I’ll have my grass.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

 

The Longing

It’s so easy to lose sight

of who you really are,

the person down underneath,

when you’re constantly drifting away

like a small boat being carried out

on a restless sea. It’s just too easy

to close your eyes and try to be

what others need you to be

never realizing that along the way

you lost yourself in

everyone else’s needs. The longing

awakens in you like an erection

in the middle of the day – inconvenient.

Not now, you think. It’s so easy.

Then one day you find yourself all alone,

sitting in the car in a half-empty parking

lot, ruminating on all the times when

you came close, but not close enough,

and now wondering if it’s too late.

Jarring you away from the calling in

your soul, your phone will ring.

Another convenient inconvenience.

We need bread, the voice on the other

end will say. I know, your whisper

barely carries over the line. They hear

only because they know. Have always known.

Eventually, you will wipe away your tears,

drive to the convenience store where you

will purchase bread that you are certain

is past its expiration date. As you walk to

the front of the store, you will leave the longing

that was awakened in you on one of the

barren shelves. Maybe it’ll be of use

to someone else. You know it’ll find it way

back to you, eventually, that feeling, but you’ll

just tell it, not now. Not today.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

Mother Earth

Mother Earth swallows our dead whole.

It closes its jaws tight on our

grandmothers and mothers like love

and they are lost to us. We mourn

their deaths, refuse to let go

as if though Death doesn’t have a

hoarding personality. Bodies pile up,

one upon the other, in our memories.

Only our memories continue to live

when our mothers are gone. We cannot

bring them back once they are stolen

from us. We can choose to re-claim

their histories only. Death is not reversible

yet I cannot stop knocking at the door;

Death left the gate open but closed off

the path back to our loved ones. The

perfume of their love drifts back to us.

I can smell Mother Earth. But no matter

how many roses we present to Mother Earth,

she will continue to close her ears to our

cries. Our ancestors will continue to sleep

in Earth’s inescapable embrace, but

she cannot severe their presence from our

bloodlines. The scalpel of forgetfulness

dulls in our presence. Our hearts beat

a rhythm that echoes the names of our mothers

and their blood continues to flow through

our veins.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

The Lie

Just when I thought I

had love figured out, it wilted.

Then died. Love – the lie.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind