napowrimo

April is napowrimo! national poetry month and i have taken on the challenge with other writers from around the world to write a poem a day for the month of April.i give thanks and praise for the Grenada Writers Association for sharing and encouraging! To those who have been bugging me for a peek over the first two weeks here are a few!

one love
maureen


What If?
What if he was poetic
with his thoughts,
his feelings?
What if he wrote long emails softening to her inner self?
What if he put down his blackberry and chose love over text?
What if he looked deep into her eyes and actually said something?
What if he sent her gifts
like journals inscribed with poems
or books that spoke to her
like an Allende
or a Temple of my Familiar
or a Sufi love poem?
What if he was experiencing
the same spell she was under
and found himself weeping in small spaces
like corners of hotel rooms,
elevators on hold,
cars parked with windows rolled?
What if he too was longing for more?
or
What if he understood too clearly
that what she longed for
is what he longed to escape?



Pants Below Your Waist
Just because you wear your pants below your waist
are you a gangsta,
a weed smoka,
a on the block lova,
a lazy idla,
a bad minded youth,
a rude boy?
Or perhaps you just like that style,
to give your waist some space,
to give you attitude
your mama never let you taste,
or perhaps it’s the
respect from the boys on the block,
the kind you never seen
until you lost the belt
Now you can wear pants that never fit you before
so you stop hating your meagre body
the one everyone used to joke about
like ‘how he so thin?’ ‘Or little so?’
And now you don’t care
what anyone saying
because you wearing your pants
the way you wearing your pants
and nobody going to tell you shit
because this style feels good to you
And you don’t even like
weed
or Bravado
or Vibz Kartel
You don’t even like gaza talk
or girls who curse
or movies that are violent and senseless
you like soft slow music
the kind your Mama used to sing while hanging clothes
And you don’t even like liming
or drinking rum
or cursing bad words
or talking stupidness about others
You like poetry and movies that speak of love
soft love, love that makes sense,
love that don’t care how you wear your pants
And you like ladies
who smile real soft and say good morning, evening, and afternoon
no matter what kind of mood they in
And you is gentle and kind and respectful
but nobody noticing
because all they can see is the pants.




Police Came to our Community Today


Police came to our community today
They beat Frankie till he fall down
Hands housing blows
They beat him for carrying a crack pipe
They beat him because they could
They beat him because he’s a little person
from a little community




Patriarchal World Systems

Patriarchal world systems
favouring
masculine over feminine
reason over emotion
right over left
profit over people
concrete over mud
denying
our sisters
our mothers
our grandmothers
our daughters
our wives
our lovers
the right
to their natural selves
their natural ways of simply
being here
in their soft billowy bodies
in their mystic ceremonies
in their lavish love for one another

Patriarchal world system
damaging
our brothers
our fathers
our uncles
our sons
our husbands
and lovers
Denied
their natural abilities to feel
to share
to honour and discover
the tender vulnerable side of courage
to walk hand in hand with men and women
weeping





i dreamt of you last night

I dreamt of you last night
Me with you
At your home in San Fran
I walked into a gymnasium
Full of community
Practicing for a concert
Singing their souls
Split open free
Finding their rhythm like a school of fish
Floating In between the sun burnt choral
Your eyes lit on fire
Like a soft breeze candle
Holding its own
I could tell you inspired many
With your wisdom self,
Your vulnerable aching wholeness

I awoke deep in memories of you
Like the first time we met on an empty shoreline
You clutching my favourite book
I recognized you immediately
A mother friend I never knew before

Through your love
I met myself at the door
Of possibilities
Like a sunlit field of autumn corn
I found me for the first time
In the eyes of you
A wisdom womyn
A vulnerable soft shelled womyn
A womyn mother friend
Who i dreamt about last night
And awoke this morning
Larger than before





Why Should I?

Why should I
walk a straight line
and into a box
when my heart tells me to
run,
skip,
leap,
sprint
fly
to the beat of
my own natural
earth quenching rhythms

Why should I
bother
what others say, think, feel
when my heart tells me
to live like its’ my final hour
like it’s the last month of
my full moon beauty
my season to bloom
and sprout hummingbird
wings

Why should i
forget about those around me
the young child a day-plane away
who sits in fear of
ancestral grounds burnt
mothers and fathers murdered
brothers kidnapped into the bush
when my heart says to
embrace the sorrow
as if its’ my own
extended sadness


Why should I
get tangled in my own
thoughts
fears
concerns
when my heart tells me to
speak the words of alliance
tame this privileged mind
be more then what history predicts
undo the colonial teachings


Why should I
ask for more and more
when what I have is enough
and my heart is begging me
to be still
and breath
gently
tenderly
softly
so the beating of my heart
hurts no one