Whirlwind Publishing

I was diggin’ on & into you
Deep enough where my truth
would show through
Using you as the box for
all my little secrets
Not worried in the least because I knew you
would keep them
Giving you my space & what you
asked of my time
In my life & in the crevices of
mind
Not falling in love but beginning
to care
You were becoming apart of my life
& I liked you there
I valued the moments & time we
spent together
Sharing thoughts, ideas & silly
laughter
A look, glance, touch or a
smile
Stimulating intellectually & attractive
all the while
But then something happened &
things began to shift
In the midst of important things in your life,
I became something you could forget
As I faded into the background,
reality set in
Something had changed & now we
were “just friends”…

YeYo (Melanie)

a blank page
a torture
a struggle
to get past the
awkward stage
past the how you’s
of introduction
and into the nuts
and bolts
of knowing
if the poem is
blood, family
or excrement.

Twelve years ago, before I was a Mother myself, I gave my Mom a copy of Mothers of the Revolution. Reading the subheading of the book: The War Experiences of Zimbabwean women, she thought it was going to be the war experiences of gun-toting nappy-haired women who don’t hesitate to shoot upon seeing the white of someone’s skin. But it wasn’t. It was about the quiet, non glamorous, non-romanticized work of revolution; the work that is so quiet we don’t normally see it unless it’s not there…or unless it’s a threat to the dehumanizing status quo.

The whole question of motherhood, revolution and writing has been on my mind lately due to a conversation I had with a sister-friend about the sacrifices inherent in good mothering/parenting. She says that she may not be cut out for motherhood because she wants to be able to spend time writing and having mornings in bed, etc. Oh, how I can relate! What wouldn’t I give for just a week of that!! Then I look at my chocolate bundle of goodness, stubbornness and just plain 6 yr old boyness and I think no. Mornings in bed alone or with a man or a book or music or just the sunshine streaming through the window can’t compare with his scream of laughter when I tickle him in his armpits or the tightness of his arms when he comes to me for a hug after being hurt or even the endless questions that have me telling him to hush.

What’s even more ironic about her position is the fact that she had previously informed me, during one of my venting sessions, that my Son is now my revolution. I had understood that since writing

Sankara Mantra (7 Months)

Lashes like mine
Eyes like mine
even in the way
they peruse a room
Skin like mine
but darker.

A bafflement inside me
every time I hear him
referred to as black.
(how’d you get such a black baby?)

It has happened twice.
Just like my response.
(black is beautiful.)

His mouth like his father’s.
He even smirks like him
causing an almost instantaneous
transfer of affection.

Sankara
whose birth filled the holes
that were consuming my heart

Sankara
who is entranced by his reflection
in the mirror
has begun to stand.

I am in awe of his determination
and the fact that
at barely seventeen pounds
his head is already past my knees.

Sankara
who I brought into an oppressive world
clutches his walker with his pudgy fingers
and walks completely around it.

I watch with a joy that is miraculous.

Sankara
Who I brought into an oppressive world
is owed happiness and well-being
and that is a debt I will pay
like Malcolm said
by any means necessary.

Still even though I love my revolution too deeply to ever to ever abstain, this quiet work sometimes gets to me.  I once wanted to be louder than oppression. Now I find myself writing poems about wanting quiet! The same sister-friend mentioned earlier says it’s due to maturity but I miss immature me!  I miss the woman who wrote oppression should be shot down like john f. kennedy. I don’t quite know the woman who wants it quiet like days at ocean beach. I don’t know much of anything except there’s a richness to my life that wasn’t there before…no matter how much I gave of myself to the people and causes I believe in.

I guess I just have to unite womb and mind. The pre-mother me heard Tupac say “I’m your son” and even though he wasn’t talking to me, I said yes. And now that I’m a mother, I’m still saying yes.

Links:

http://www.postcolonialweb.org/zimbabwe/miscauthors/mothers1.html

Louder than Oppression

My Spirit Talks

i.

something has to be amiss
earth ripping herself open in rage
spewing punishment
from istanbul to ayiti
from china to chile
something is amiss
amends have to be made

a sacrifice
a sacrifice

the cry, a non-gregorian
chant goes up
littering the air with
liturgical grief

but the trajectory of hurricanes
travels the middle passage
and pulling oil
out of the bowels of afghanistan
has  to have seismic consequences.

ii.
you squat down and shit upon
cultures that honor the feminine
that honor me
and don’t expect my insides
to churn?
you’ve turned common sense
into an autistic condition.
you truly are wretched.

Deep breath….
**********************************************************

Eyes close as I take the deepest breath I’ve
ever taken in my life & jump into the winds of
the unknown
Where I try to forget the repetition of being broken
hearted but not forget the lesson
Believe in fairytales again where dreams & white
picket fences are some how real
And what I feel doesn’t have to be guarded &
protected
I can reveal myself for the strong but fragile, loving,
sensitive woman that I am
The woman who wants to be wanted, wants to be
loved, wants to be touched
Touched by the hands of a man who is strong
enough to hold a nation but gentle enough to
know the terrain of my body
Perhaps the gate guarding the road to my heart
can be unlocked & I can trust someone else
with the key?
Opening all parts of me simultaneously:
My mind, my body & my heart
Giving my body to express the fleshly part of my passion
Splitting open my mind in order to relate on life
And opening my heart because it is the base of me…
where my love seeds reside
They wait to be planted in worthy soil…a worthy
soul with fertile ground
My heart is beating fast…faster…fastest…
Bombarding my chest
My past demons scream in my ear as I stand on
the edge of the cliff
I turn around, dropping them, as my shoulders begin
to shake
And into your arms, smiling in my fear, I take this
leap of faith…

YeYo (Melanie)

Flash back to the time
when death row was a death sentence
and not a record label
featuring the hottest gangsta rappers.
Turn the clock back fourteen years
and revisit the streets of San Francisco.
A city split up into districts
and I found myself living in the one
called the tenderloin
although there was nothing tender
about the loins found there.
Laotians as dark as puerto ricans
pimps as murderously greedy as leopold
and refugees from pretty san francisco
were some of what I found there.

Join me on my sojourn down memory lane.
Avoid the cracks in the sidewalks
and the crack held in hands
closed tighter than fists
until the money is handed over.
Hear the soft refrain of coca, coca
whispered with south of the border accents
because this part of memory lane
has diverged to the mission district.
Oldest part of the city, first home of the spanish
who gave the area its "I’m a conquistador
but I still love Christ" name
and now home to members of
every spanish-speaking population
in the western hemisphere
crowded together on numbered streets:
undocumented scarfaces
peruvian flutists making music out of air
ecuadorians I mistake for asians
followers of che and pancho villa
girls living la vida loca
la migra, la policia
and cinco de mayo street festivals
where all the bars open early
and offer discounts on shots of tequila
and one year, I got drunker than drunk
and stumbled and fell
for coco and her flame.

Street hustlers of the lowest order
they bypassed the soft allure of coca, coca
and went straight for the hard sounding stuff.
Crack itself wasn’t enough however.
Crack had an addiction to itself in liquid form
a liquid form known as cisco.
Crack, cisco, coco
and her flame who had the same name
as a version of the bible
became my roommates
who never made their rent
because their addictions left them too dysfunctional
to do more than dig through garbage
and exchange their food stamps for crack
since that was the only thing they hungered for.

I blame eek-a-mouse
for transporting me back to the apartment
where his music was the soundtrack
to homemade sangria parties
and weed dazed days
laced every now and then
with the purest variety of acid
sold in golden gate park
where food not bombs
ladled out free bowls of soup
where girls didn’t wear flowers in their hair
but instead cursed me out for ruining the vibe
of santana’s annual free concert in the park
when my bottle of vodka fell and splashed all over
their wannabe hippie gear.

Striding the streets of aztlan
in the grip of a california dream
which I awoke from when I turned my back
on the go west young woman mentality
and accepted that california
wasn’t the la-la land portrayed by hollywood.
California was the land that gave birth to the panthers
and the panthers gave birth to a sense of purpose
which I inherited when I relocated to oakland
after two years in san francisco.
I stopped looking at my wrist
and started looking at the woman in the mirror
and what I saw
led me to the understanding
that refusing to die is a form of rebellion.

I stopped living in california
and started living in occupied aztlan.
I developed a mentality described as relentless
because I was on don’t stop, get it, get it kick
which had me flipping pages nonstop
while my feet stepped and my heart beat
to the drums of uhuru.
My soul united with the will of the revolution
and out of my barrel of my pen came slogans like
the contract with america was signed 500 years ago
with the blood of indigenous and african people.

And when I left occupied atzlan
and moved back to looted eastern shores
alongside assata’s knowledge:
that the revolution gave me more than I could ever give it
I carried with me the butterfly’s effect.

excerpted from still living on my feet
©2007 Tichaona Chinyelu All Rights Reserved

undeniably beautiful
to look at him is to know
ayiti and africa.
my tongue wants to start
at his place of birth, bayami
and explore until i reach
the ends of his earth
but he went into the bathroom
to put the condom on.

he is burdened by an itch
none of my extremities can reach.
witch hazel and aloe vera
- nothing works.
i keep nails short
and pillows hypoallergenic
- nothing works.

he doesn’t want to heal.
he wants me worked up
worried and worrisome
so i can be robbed of the self
that silently screams
a negation of him
and his dilemma.

i didn’t make it. thirty poems in thirty days seems to be beyond me. last year i lasted about a week. this year, i did about a total of two weeks worth but it was haphazard. some days, i wouldn’t write/post anything. two days later, i’d write/post two or three poems.  the week my son was on april vacation, i didn’t write/post anything. oh well. so it goes…or so i thought until i did a mental run through.

i already knew poems have gestational periods but i learned i can hold the amniotic sac of a poem in my mind until i can tend to it. I learned i can craft the lil pieces of life released from the sac into something worthy of sharing…as well as being the seed of something greeter. i’ve also learned not to neglect what’s left behind in the sac.  basically, i learned to be a tiny bit more disciplined with the craft i call my calling.

30 days will come
and 30 days will go
with the assignment incomplete
but still
i be smithing
words
into new iron
configurations