In Memory of...

M. I.
Who have your tones touched deeply?
What melody from your breath evoked tears
Of joy and pain?
What tune brought forth sweet memories when
The world of music was innocent, brand new and
Still growing?
What requests made you smile.
What solo brought people to their feet with accolades
Tone rich and mysterious abysses deep?
What vision in the minds of those who ears were stroked by
Your instrument still lives on?
Then so will you.
Then so will you.

Rest in Peace, always in memory, Mr. Ivery.

QP
10/30/07

We all go through things…

But sometimes as a friend, you just wanna call another friend and say a short “what’s up?”, “How’s it going?” and “Great, well, I’ll chat with ya later.”

Sometimes, maybe you are calling a friend because you are going through something and just want to talk BUT instead end up listening to them whine about their life for 20 minutes and all you get to say is “uh-huh”, “yeah” and “sure.”

And then when they finish whining they have to go and you are left still with something pressing on your mind, not letting it out and feeling totally and completely alone.
Oh well, at least they got to share their feelings, even if it was at the expense of yours, you are still a good friend…you will just probably call that person as a last and final resort from here on out…

“lean on me when you’re not strong…
cause I’m gonna need somebody to lean on..”

I wish my heart

was like the recycle icon

on my computer.

With one click,

it would be empty

of all the useless crap

that floats around

taking up unnecessary space.

I don't Know Karate...But I know CARAZY!

Walking through the parking lot of Wally World, I heard a male voice shouting:
“GET OUT! GET OUT!”
In between the shouts were words of a language that I could not understand; but I didn’t need to understand it because what I heard was anger. As I got closer I saw two beautiful little Asian girls getting out of a tan mini-van. One looked to be about 9 and the other was no more than 6. The youngest was crying. I stopped and asked the older sister if her little sister was ok and she just shook her head no and looked down at her little sister. The little girl was in tears. Then I looked in the van and saw their father. A spineless Jackass who yelled, rejected and ejected his daughters from the car, probably for being a little bratty which is what little kids do best. I walked away from the two children and stood where the father sat in the nice air conditioned van while his two daughters stood outside in the humid Texas heat. I mouthed the words “ASSHOLE” to him and took out my cell phone. I stopped a Wally World associate to see if there was security on duty and suddenly the father let his daughters back in the van. I stood there a little while longer staring this jackass down. Honestly I wanted to go over to that van and drag him out and beat the crap out of him.
However, he is supposed to be his daughters protector, he is supposed to be the first man they love and respect and receive love and respect from. I could not have the little girls see their father get jacked up by an angry black woman who feels it is her duty to protect every child on the earth as if they were her own.
Hmmm…maybe in a few years when the youngest daughter is swinging from a metal pole in a dark smoky club for two buck tips, the father will have a reflective moment, wondering how his beautiful little girl could have ended up like that. Little kids need their fathers; they can do without selfish, mindless rejection.
After a while of standing and staring the father down, I continued into the store, trying hard to suppress the tears burning my eyes.

The Lucky Teacher

Lucky are the teachers who have all the resources they need at their finger tips:
For they do not have to rely on co-workers or pure creativity to create lesson for young needy minds.

Lucky are the teachers who don’t have to worry about where their students will sleep at night, if they will eat, if they will survive until the next morning.

Lucky are the teachers who are not confidants to students who are mentally, physically or sexually abused.

Lucky are the teachers who will never have to look down into a pink lined casket at one of their most beautiful students.

Lucky are the teachers who will never have to speak over the phone to a student with a traumatic head wound, burns over 33% of their bodies or whose baby had just died at birth.

Lucky are the teachers who don’t receive letters from students recently incarcerated for most of their youthful adult lives.

Lucky are the teachers who don’t have to shed tears with the sexually confused students, the failing student or the student who just lost their parent to a drug overdose or worse, murder.

Lucky are the teachers who aren’t accidentally called “Mom”, or offered a couple of hundred dollars for their birthday by the student who only sells drugs to help out his family.

Lucky are the teachers who don’t have to wake up the 15 year old pregnant student in class, who is dead tired from being up with her ill 2 year old all night.

Blessed, however, are the teachers who laugh, cry and worry, with and for their students, who teach, parent, counsel, fuss, fight and defend their students.

Blessed are the teachers who reach beyond teaching and into caring and sharing and inspiring, for they shall inherit the most precious memories of a lifetime.

---- qp
(c) 6/2007

I love you, in a hundred words...or less...

I love your passion and ambition for life.

The way you hug and cherish children

and the way you smile at me and

the sweet way your eyes light up

when you talk about someone or something you like.

I love how you dream up stories and great machines

that will change mankind.

How you love doing things for people

for no real reason other than to be a good person.

I love the way you hug me

when we haven’t seen each other for quite a while

and how you linger when you say good bye.
I love the way you laugh, smile, walk and talk.

It makes me want give you everything I have,

every last drop.

People I am thankful for...*

1. My son, who made it into this world healthy and alive despite everything
   


2. My grandparents for raising me
   


3. My family next door who helped to raise me
   


4. My bio Mom for having me and supporting me
   


5. My step mom for believing in me
   


6. My step Dad for being so strong and bouncing back


7. My Bio Dad who will never say he loves me but will show it
   


8. My sister for not being afraid of love
   


9. My little brother on lockdown but still bringing hope
   


10. My baby brother for wanting more from life
    


11. My first nephew for facing reality with sword in hand
    


12. My cousin who proved she wasn’t a welfare queen with four kids
    


13. My best friend who cried with me when my life was in an uproar
    


14. My friend who lost her little girl tragically but never shows it


15. My friend who loves his kids, loves me and my son and sees me for the dynamic "sustah" that I am.
    


16. My friend who is facing the reality of raising her son alone and doing great
    


17. My life long friend who is so wise she could be president
    


18. My friend in California that will never give up his artist dream
    


19. My friend the actress in Dallas who is the mother of all
    


20. My former mother-in-law who has great encouragement and a story to tell


21. My teacher friend offering up the positive when I am tempted to give in to the negative
    


22. My students who believe that they will learn something from me everyday
    


23. My Savior…
    

*this list will continue to grow

This is joy...

His early morning smile,

the joy he embraces at seeing a full orange moon in the sky.

How much he loves

trucks

motorcycles

music

and spinning in circles.

This is my babyboy.

This is my joy.

Smitten: Being Vague

As for the words and thoughts and sighs and aspirations that fly from him, they are so many tremulations in the ether, and not alive at all. DH Lawrence

At some moment in our lives, we have all wanted to declare something and we could not. In the midst of those times, I like to write poetry because it is so illusive and vague. No one really knows what in the hell I am rambling on and on about. Only the one that the poem is written for really "gets it" but usually that person, my muse, never reads it to "get it".
So anyway, I am presently, at one of those stages where I really, really want to say something, but I can't so I type out these mere "tremulation in the ether". My simple ode to someone who will never read this:

Smitten

Fickle
Tickled
Flirting
And I don’t know why.

Chatting
Back
And
Forth
Sharing
But I don’t know what it will lead to.

Daydreaming
Scheming
Am I just dreaming?

Up and down in
Some fantasy
That is all
In
My mind?

Never hurts to try
Right?

See I told ya....

Dedication to the “DEAD”

…You never call me when you're sober.
You only want it cause it's over,
It's over.
How could I have burned paradise?
How could I - you were never mine.
So don't cry to me.
If you loved me,
You would be here with me.
Don't lie to me,
Just get your things.
I've made up your mind.
Don't cry to me.
If you loved me,
You would be here with me.
You want me,
Come find me.
Make up your mind…Evanescent...I could not have said this better myself

The Queens Blues

“I wondered about love and wondered if I would find in myself the strength to give love, and to take it: to accept my nakedness as sacred, and to hold sacred the nakedness of another. For without love, pleasure’s inventions are soon exhausted.”

--- James Baldwin (Just Above My Head)

For the past three years, since I lost whom I thought was the absolute love of my life, I had been unable to listen to love songs. Songs of found love, lost love, new love, old love, it didn’t matter, I couldn’t bare the sound.
Then suddenly today, I found myself listening to Musiq Soulchild’s “Love”, a song I had banished and refused to hear, a song that could bring me to tears, make me pull over to the side of the road, if I was driving, and drown in my tears. But today, I listened, I sang and it felt good.
What the..? I thought and then it hit me.
Recently, very recently, I spent an evening with a wonderful friend. We laughed, we talked, we debated. He made me smile, he made me feel sexy and smart and coy and bold and all of those things I used to feel before…
Whoa, whoa, pop your eyes back in your head, this is not about love, not by a long shot…Well maybe it is about self-love or confidence or attitude or autonomy.
Well, what ever it is I am grateful for its return. My old friend helped me to find a part of me I thought I would never have the desire to recover. And now, once again, I have … desire.

Everybody Can't Be Zane! : Over Sexualized Neo Black Fiction…

" I like Zane, she makes no apologies for her works of erotic art."

---writer, Queen Paula

"A legend among her fellow authors as far as erotic literary fiction goes."
-- Today's Black Woman

*********************************************************************************

I received my mini-catalogue in the mail to order books by Black authors. And I must say I found some great buys: Hill Harper’s Letters to a Young Brother, Sharon Ewell Foster’s Abraham’s Well, and the sequel to Cane River, Talita Tademy’s Red River.
However, something else caught my eye, the titles and covers of some of our new up and coming authors: Thug-A-Licious, Is the B**** Dead or what?, Satisfy me, Sex in the Hood 2 and Riding Dirty on I-95. Ok those are just the titles, the covers are even more suggestive with sisters and brothers in sexy couple posses, half dressed sisters looking very ready to be…but I digress.

I AM NOT HATIN’
I am proud to see such a wide variety of reading, but what besides sex and messiness are these books offering? Are they feeding any other appetite but those hungry for profanity, sex and drama? What are the true lesson’s learned? Is there content to the character of these book?
I have decided to put myself on an Omar Tyree regimen.

I am going to start with his first novel and read through his current to see what I am or am not missing. I pick him as my lead in writer to this nuevo type of novel because he seems to have set the pace, right along with E. Lynn Harris (but I have read his work and have found content).

I am curious to se if these new authors are following
their leads and mimicking what they think
“we” avid readers want.
I’ll get back with ya…