Saffron Stain

Saffron stain.
Golden yellow saffron stain.
Bursting like a shimmering sun
Sitting like a shadow
On your sleeve.

Mark wasn’t there this morning
But now no amount of blotting
Can take it away
Make it stay
And it will sit in your thoughts too.

Saffron stain.
Orangey-yellow palm oil stain
Coloring your palate with flavors of faraway
Its residue’s locked away
On your fingertips
Lick your lips
And it will spread on your tongue too.

It’s waking a faint memory on your brain
It’s leaving a dull ache on your senses
Taking down your fences
With sensations
That you thought you’d kept away

Away goes caution
And in one motion
Stigmas spill
Yellow colored saffron water
D
r
i
p
s

And you've got a stain
Yellow colored, golden orange
Saffron stain
On your...
Sleeve.

Beautiful To Me

Your Black is not charcoal like they say,
Your Black is not darkness like they say,
Your Black is not backward.

Your Black is African, Caribbean; Guinean-Guyanese if you please.
Chiefdoms and kings, warriors and queens:
Your Black is royalty.

Your Black is breathtaking, amazing, awe-striking.
Your Black is revolutionary
Like the Underground Railroad

Your Black is Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth and if anyone asks,
Tell them that’s the truth.

Your Black is Frederick Douglass and Marcus Garvey
Uproarious like Bernie Mac and Steve Harvey.
Your Black is courageous and strong
Your Black is visionary
Like Rosa Parks and MLK

Incendiary like Malcolm X.
Your Black is not ghetto like they say.
Your Black is brilliant and talented
Musical and creative.
Deep like the Blues,
Bold like Jazz,
Your Black’s got character and pizzazz!
It’s Langston Hughes in Harlem
And Josephine in Paris
Your Black is Essence and Ebony,
GQ like Tyler Perry
Your Black is rich and velvety and sweet like a melody,
Textured and curvaceous,

Vivacious, soulful and fabulous:
Your Black is Beautiful to me.

Pink-Palmed Black Hands

So...here goes take 2 of Pink-Palmed Black Hands!! I like this much better though it couldn't have come about without the original version:


Pink-palmed Black Hands. The confusion they used to raise in the eyes of my white friends was unsettling. “How come?” they would say, “How come your palms are so pink?” And for those who didn’t dare ask I knew where the rest of the question would lead. So I took a breath and waited. In a minute I knew it would come tumbling out of their mouths in an awkward mix of wonder and embarrassment. And it never failed: “How come your palms are pink, but your skin is so BLACK?” Slightly irritated, I would turn my palms upward and stare, as if somewhere between the lines etched there I would find an answer good enough to satisfy their curiosity. As if! Their curiosity, I realized, was like the deep end of a river. You just never knew when your feet would touch the sandy bottom. And so I would stare while an eternity passed between us and wonder whether I should be ashamed of such hands. Pink-palmed Black hands. I couldn’t possibly tell my friends that I actually liked my hands, liked my long, slender fingers. I couldn’t tell them that where I came from, Pink-palmed Black hands weren’t an oddity at all. They would never understand. For them everything about my Blackness was peculiar. My hair, which they loved to run their fingers through, was like a ball of yarn; my skin, a lovely caramel tone, they compared to black chocolate or the black bar of soap we used at the morning bath. It was amazing to them that I shouldn’t feel at odds in my own skin. Unthinkable. So I gave their confusion back to them in the bewildered look of my eyes. I told them that I didn’t know. They should go ask God if they wanted the perfect answer. That’s what I thought. But I never dared say. I didn’t want them to be ashamed of their innocent confusion, of their bottomless curiosity. In a fleeting moment before the silence broke, I would think perhaps it was true. Was I not different? Was I not odd? As I grew into my skin, the question gradually leaving my friends’ mouths to settle into their eyes where it could be kept discreetly, I began to realize that my Blackness left people in awe of me. My ‘tan’ skin had the ability to simultaneously amaze and anger them. To produce both jealousy and envy. That was the contradiction contained within my Blackness. I would carry this contradiction around like a weight until I realized it was actually a prize. The beautiful alliteration of these hands would always belong to me. Pink-palmed, Pink-palmed; Pink-palmed Black hands.

Peace

I did not realize the potential this piece had when I first wrote it. But I am never one to say my words are worthless, so I wrote it laden with all the stereotypes of world peace and every clichéd depiction of failure and triumph, topped off with all the images of finding oneness after so much inner turmoil, and determined to revisit the piece later.

Peace is such an important message for a world that makes the news everyday with reports of conflicts that produce a staggering number of casualties. Iraq, Iran, Darfur. There are so many parts of the world outside the Western Hemisphere that have never known tranquility, places on the map that have been in the business of struggling for change for centuries too long to count. I hate to think of the children who will inherit that, who were born in the arms of struggle and will never know the alternative.

After attending the World Peace Forum in 2006, I came back inspired to do something that would change the world. It’s the part that I love the most about taking up the causes that matter to me: that feeling that you are part of a movement that is contributing to the betterment of society. It energizes me so much that I feel I could take on anything. Like standing atop a mountain knowing all you’ve done to get there, screaming at the top of your lungs and hearing your own voice resonate. Such serenity, such peace.

I wanted to keep this poem simple and understated. Peace is about small things, basic things we take for granted that make all the difference in someone’s quality of life. Everyone has a right to experience peace; it’s the only thing that makes the struggle worth fighting.

Peace: in response to the World Urban Forum, June 2006

Peace is
Knowing that your struggle will end
Tomorrow there will be a place for you
In this world.

Peace is spontaneous laughter
Carefree joy
And never
any
tear
drops on the pillow.

Giving free reign to your dreams
And never
Offering childhood up
In sacrifice.

Peace is
Safety
Freedom
Childlike abandon
And never
Feeling like the world
Is closing its shutters
On you.

Reward after you’re sore
From moving mountains
And never the frantic search
For the light
At the end of the tunnel

Peace is
Emerging from the dark and letting the sun
Flood your soul
Like
Rebirth.

Peace is coming in from the cold
After so long away
From home.

Peace is
Finally breathing
Release
Relief
Rejoice:
There’s a place for you in this world at last.

Good Morning, it's me

Good morning it's me.
The sun seeping through the curtains' crack seduced me out of a soundless sleep.
So I guess I'll say good morning it's me:
Good morning it's me.

The fear of perpetual laziness has made me leave the warm embrace of bed while I elbow my way to a sitting state. And I can't even attempt to tip a toe to the door before my lazy legs trip me with a shock of pain to the floor.
Well morning has slapped me awake now, so I guess I'm wide awake now:
Good morning, it's me.

I'll strut my best style to suit this beautiful gold-pierced- indigo streaked-sky and when I speak I'll say:
Good morning world: it's me.
No heels today, cause I'll run today to keep up with you. And I'll catch up to you and tell myself that you are mine for the taking.
Good morning it's me.
And when I speak there will be no doubt about it, no fear about it, no trace of last day's tears about it. Just good morning, it's me. Hello world I'm ready to take you by storm, or meet the thunder that brews, waiting for me.

Well morning has caressed me to wake now, so I guess I'm wide awake now. And the indigo streak had subsided now and let the sunshine flood the sky now. And though I might get it tangled, twisted now, send me a package signed "life" now.
Cause I can tell it in the sky now, it's going to be a beautiful, bright,
Good morning, now:
It’s me.

"Woke Up After Death"

Woke up today on the right foot, all soul-song-singing and softly humming under my breath, despite the fact that my own breathing felt restricted by a cold that was making my head swell with throbbing pain. Woke up today happy,relatively. I had not forgotten the vision that struck me last night just as I was pulling the covers over my socked feet, the image of his mischievously smiling face. Nor had I forgotten the silent promise I had made to keep up with old friends. So today I woke up happy. Joyful, joyful, happy day-oh. And then everything changed. In the space of that oh, nothing was the same.

Nothing
is
the same
after...

the same after
Death.

Woke up this morning with this feeeling
in the pit of my stomach.

The memory of his full-toothed grin played in my mind as I hurried through my morning routine

Humdrum
Soothing like a down comforter
But nothing is the same after death.

Woke up today moaning and drowsy
Feeling lousy:
Shitty, really
but happy still...

until
I remembered his face

until
I read the caption:

"With great sadness"

And knew with an eerie conviction:

With great sadness
Jamie was gone.

Guilt told me off
Gave me a lashing
across
the
face

Where had my promise gone?

Such a slow case of epiphany
Dawning on me
that nothing:
Nothing
is the same after Death.

Today, Alive

Today you want to be alive
Today you want to feel
Pinpricks raining like hail from root to tip
You want to trip on chance
In a slow cadence
Altering action
Life-changing
F Ire igniting electricity flowing through your
Veins
Chains
Lifting from your mind
Emerging,finally,

Alive.

Today you want to be alive
You want to feel your heart pumping out, beating in
Like a hammer breathing life into a house.

Don’t want a rerun of yesterday
Tears born of fears
Sliding down your face,
Dripping through your nose
Making even your toes
Hot.

Today alive you want to be
Something
Stop feeling
Nothing
Stop thinking
Prescribed opinion
You want to get gumption
Today, alive.
Today you want to be.

Like the clouds are waiting,
Like the sky’s waking,
Like the dawn is breaking
Just for you.

Today you want to feel
Like a shooting star
Like a mountain peak

You want to take a peek
From the other side
Of the peeping hole
You want to see the world in its whole

Emerging, finally,
Alive.

Don’t want a rerun of yesterday
The same song skipping on the CD player
Everyday motions giving you motion
Sickness
Bitterness building like an abscess waiting to burst
Butterflies burning your chest
Now all you want is a chest full of treasures

Today you want to be alive
Bursting with joy and wonder
Won’t have to worry and wonder
Why.

Want to be
Today want to be
Alive.