“Just Like Music”
My friend doesn’t understand Poetry. . .
“It needs come music” he says . . .
Oh, there is more, in my up coming book; Ashay’s Speak
Blog
Birthday Haiku
I recently celebrated my birthday.
I wrote a poem because a friend of mine gave me a pretty journal with flowers on it. Her request that I write my pretty poetry in that journal. So, I obliged her and wrote these verses.
“My Garden of Friends”
Birthday’s are special
My garden of friends grow strong
April showers, Fall
Expectations
Source: Expectations
Expectations would make a great subject for a poem.
I going to have to think about writing one. One expectation that I find consistent in the literary world is that a writer is always writing. Perhaps a writing is more like a philosopher. Always thinking. . .Humm!
Slaves No More
I am excited about my opportunity to share my poetry @ that launch of Rise, an Anthology of poets from the Los Angeles area. Here I have put excepts from my poem, Slaves No More printed in the Anthology edited by Mark Lipman.
Our humanity is in our DNA
Our dignity tossed overboard by the meat ships that sailed the Atlantic
“No more weeping and a wailing. . .” freedom physically for us has arrived.
Our suffering now is of an intellectual and spiritual kind.
What would Nat Turner, who led rebellion in 1839, say to our black young folks today?
“Your freedom came at a very high cost, but some yawl still choosing to be lost!
We still live like we’re not oppressed in a land; marginalized by bad water and police brutality.
The shackles on our mind is slavery; the overseer, mass communications
Steals the soul and exploits our Nubian minds, sells our souls up the rivers of destructive imaging.
Dresses up and pants down is an indication that our self-esteem ground level thinking.
Black men stop generically stop labeling black women hoes, the commodity of capitalism that is not the true meaning of Hip Hop.
You guest it the rest is in Ashay Speaks!
Beyond Baroque
681 N. Venice Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90804
Expectations
This is an update about my coming book. I am so excited.
Today is also a day that I write a poem.
Expectations
The thing that is most dangerous are unmet expectations.
Let them go with each breath that you take .
Expecting something that will make everything alright eats at the soul.
Let them dissolve into the ether of forgiveness.
Let serenity nature the anticipation of the unknown.
Expect nothing of anyone with the anticipation of waiting for yours to come.
Life will bring balance in the corridors of willingness.
My Beloved
In September 2014, my life came crashing down. I lost my beloved daughter, Marian Monique “Mimi” English. She was born January 22, 1977. So, I am thinking about her today as her natal birthday approaches. This is what emerges out of the ashes of my grief.
I could cry for a thousand years
Tears could not covey deep sorrow’s painful howls.
I felt them when I lost you.
My heart possessed the joy of comprehending the gate of separation.
The sting of death will never immobilize my love for you.
Captured in memories are the essence of family;
United in ancestry that lives on forever in history.
Time stand on the cliff of Infinite wisdom.
I cling to the hope that someday we’ll meet again.
Far beyond physical dimensions of time. . . .
Waiting To Exhale (blurb)
Just one taste brings mahogany raptures to its senses.
Try not to miss, me
abated breath waiting to exhale. . .
The Price of Friendship
The other day. I got into it a bad way with a friend
Someone I knew I would know until the end.
The end came much to soon.
An argument ended it all.
The laughter, the talks, the philosophical differences.
I really didn’t know that you felt the way you did.
I heeded the warning in your eyes and knew our
friendship would be over.
I don’t do loud angry outburst.
That shit that makes you think “This bitch is crazy.”
The truth be told, I knew that this day would come.
The temperament of bullshit, has become apparent.
Good riddens is how I really feel, Have a nice life
My only responsibility is to forgive.
I am sorry that it had to end this way, but I think
your better off without my input.
Why I am writing a book.
The Wind of my Ancestors (excerpts) The cool evening breeze blows Tickles my ears as wisdom’s whispers Triumph tales unfold, my ancestral knowledge grows. Southern roots swayed by adversity …
Source: Why I am writing a book.
Why I am writing a book.
There are stories yet to be told about our African American journey. There are pearls in the ocean of our existance that will inspired and catapult us into the 21st century, as some of the bravest and most resourceful people, whose contributions make the other have of American culture. Without us There would be no American culture in the arts or sciences, However that is a debt that can be settled on the platform of my poetry. My audience, my people.
My poetry is the antithesis of racism and the growing denial of the African American plight of marginalization in slavery and Jim Crow. It is my people who are represented negative in the media and the grand narratives of history. I am answering the call to “Lift Every Voice. . .” and through the visual, and performing arts; I have found my voice. Poetry gives me the opportunity to use language that personifies black intelligence and intellectual prowess, collectively culturally resounding the alarm of institutionalize racism and the presence of injustice.
Can I get my freedom as a women, gay people be relieved of bigotry, religious people get relief from persecution and yet I still suffer social injustice because to the color of my skin or who is my kin? I think not. When all is said and done and all the ballot winners go home. I still have a struggle ahead of me as a black women in America, the same one with any black man.
I am still obligated by racial orientation to combat the negative and often dangerous stereotypes being hurled at me today. I use my pen to gain power over the enemy, ignorance and denial. I love the skin that I am in and I am determine to contribute something meaningful and impressionable to the humanities. That documents liberation and reflects back to the oppressors their marginalizing, hegemonic, deceitful rhetoric and highlights their supremacist and separatist allegiance to bigotry and oppression. The American agenda for making “America Great Again,” must be observed with a vigilant, keen, watchful, and discerning eye for decisive, divisive, hegemonic discourse that is intended to set people of color hundreds of years. Encouraging white America to return to hate and bigotry against my people, starts with an agenda of racist and xenophobic propaganda. Liberty is spelled “Black lives are not expendable in the make of America great again.”
I must speak out against injustice and raise awareness about how we, deserve to live in peace on the street of urban America. We (as black people in America) have liberated ourselves and fought for civil rights to long to be taking back to the days of mass incarceration, alienation, segregation and racial domination. This country has to change, by moving forward and collective acknowledging this world is for everybody. America will never be great until it acknowledges the atrocities that it has administered to my ancestors. I will tell their story about a people that I know intimately.
Through my poetry my fore parent’s contribution to the national creation of America. Their striped humanity diminished to suffering, servitude and shame, has lead to me to telling the story to people about a people who survived on Holocaust only to be displaced by a war that was not theirs to fight On one front during WWII black men and women were fighting an enemy here in America and abroad, both the eyes inside the walls of the interment camp, liberators of those inside the concertraton and Hitler’s victims. The stories are truth untold about many unsung heroes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Black people enduring, bleeding and dying for my freedom, for that I am grateful.
I write to heal, I write to reveal and I write because it is what I do.
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