Creating something, whether it be a sculpted vase or a published novel, is done only by believing in yourself. The you who’s you through and through. Leave ego at the door, pack up a nice buckled suitcase full of clothing and send it on its way. Simply be you and don’t be afraid to express […]
via (How and Why) #writing #poetry #indieauthor #inspiration — blankpagesofmine
Many reading series have gone to ground during the COVID-19 crisis. A few have moved online. Many are hungry for poetry during this difficult time. I’m aware of the following ones. If you know of others, please fill out my contact form or comment below.
via May 2020 Online Poetry Readings Based in Massachusetts — Garden of Words
1st May 2020 News to catch up on from the first day of May. What’s been happening? Much of the same, sadly. But, we have now apparently passed the peak and deaths should now be on the decline. Let’s hope so. In the last few days Natasha and I have kept up with our keep […]
I need to turn off the news I need to turn off my phone I need to go breathe some green air I need to sit softly alone I need to get off social media (this has been true for some years) All it does is add oil to the fire and inflame the red […]
by Dene Dryden. Originally published in the Oct. 2019 edition of Live Ideas. Find it here. Rachel Howzell Hall’s Land of Shadows and its sequels make up a fairly new addition to the black detective fiction genre, published and set in 2014. Elouise “Lou” Norton is a black, female homicide detective in Los […]
via Article: Contextualizing “Land of Shadows” as a Postrace Black Detective Novel — Live Ideas
Story of minority , hidden from the “reality”
Stay in, stay apart, stay away,
As the news flashed,
Chills went though the heart.
Mind rushed, as
Panic mode activates.
Day and night, updates flow out.
No pay, no money no nothing, everything dries out!
No food, the shops ran out
No home, the lessee kicked us out
Mother calls day in and day out
Where are you, come home now,
Making ama cry her heart out!
We need to go back, figure this out, as
Our battle has ended in a rout!!
We grabbed food, some clothes for the way.
She slipped on her slippers,
Buckled herself,
Strapped our son close to her.
And we take off.
No vehicles in sight, flight?
Nevermind, it has been far from our reach!
Thanking god for these strong feet each,
We walked, stopped, breastfed,
Restarted, stopped, fed on noodles, biscuits
My hopes killed with every stop
Nights fall in, if lucky shelter a tree, or blacktop it will be
Rain falls in we shelter again below a tree
Choose the jungle’s path, primarily, As
Tigers, bears, wolves, concerned us least
Cold, hunger and despair were the real beast!
We passed through a village today
Stomach rumbled, our agony on display!
Like a rain to a farmer, echoes a voice,
” where do you come from?” the angle said
“kathmandu, hajur”
Asked us wait, calls his wife,
She comes out with plate full of rice.
And says “He has yet to bring out milk for your son”
Grateful as we were, our words went shy.
Offered our thankful namaste with tearful eye
Recommence the journey,
7 days in, pass the half way, nearly
All we had was 1 pack of noodle, and
A 100rs bill and that was that.
Today we were accompanied
With people with similar pain and stories.
We all were afraid to be stopped
Via the uniform
Now and then we hide or flee, it was the norm.
To avoid it, we walked through the jungle
Pass through creaking bridge, as river flows under.
Bloody feet, was paid no heed
One after another, passes day after night.
We don’t even have bones for us to eat.
We licked the salt, chewed the sugar.
And finally we entered another village.
To beg for food shamelessly.
One more jungle, one more town and this last turn,
Reaching my home, place I was born.
The words spread that we had made
Closer I am, restless I get
Jittery like a child anticipates his gift.
There stood my ama, like my dreams had potrayed.
Old lady, looked worried, thin and in pain
With eyes full of fears, replaced now with happy tears
Her magical touch, removed my anguish and horror.
At last, all of us together!!
We had no money, no nothing
But we have a house, bright with light that we can lit
Stomach warmed with food, and body has quilt
Heart overwhelmed with love that we have built.
Finally inside the home, back with our shield!
We washed away our body’s dirt, blood and sweat.
Realising we earn our daily wage with all this,
For most others have it a lot better!
Please be grateful
As you look and hear about people like us
People surviving below the line, We’re:
Thrown out of homes,
Neglected by nation,
Gone through hardship
And we learnt our lesson,
That a mere virus had no way of killing us, as
Hunger and poverty will take us first.
-Kaushika Acharya (K. A)
Story of Nepal, and people below the poverty line.
Life is but a journey
a journey is but a race.
A race does not determine
the color of your face.
In the Universal lot of life,
you will pick the mode that
Best suits your race.
The mode you choose
is the most perfect one in its place.
Some races will be far;
some races will be short.
Some cars will go fast;
some cars will go slow.
Some cars will be big and loud
like volcanos, vroom vroom.
Some cars will be long and low
like the sea, swish swish.
Some cars will have special needs;
some cars will do special deeds.
Some cars will be red, brown, white, black and blue
pink and yellow and purple too.
No matter what color you choose
Mother Earth will undoubtedly love you.
In The Race of Life, we will learn to sing our ABC’s
sing along with me: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
now we learned our ABC’s wont you sing them again with me?
Some learn them fast; some will learn them slow.
Some will sing them loud; some will sing them low.
In The Race of Life, we will learn to count
Car one, car two, car three…
No matter how many cars you can count
be sure to always count on me.
Some cars will be shaped like triangles.
Some cars will be shaped like rectangles.
Some cars will be shaped like hex a…GONE
try to catch him if you can!
In The Race of Life, you will choose the best way to win your race.
Be it very fast or very slow, or reach your goal line in a completely different mode.
“Hey looking fly Maxi”
What matters is that you keep your little engine on,
hands on your steering wheel, lots of fuel in your tank
and eyes on the road. Get ready, get set…go!
The Race of Life is not about how many cars you can beat,
but about overcoming Life’s unexpected defeats.
If you decide to drive very fast, slow down from time to time,
smell the flowers on road, cruise by the lakes, the valleys and the shores.
Don’t forget to laugh and love out loud as you chill on cruise control.
The Stars, the Sun the Moon and the Sky want you to know,
that no matter the road block, you continue to gO Go GO.
Buckle up and enjoy the ride.
My family doesn’t make photo albums anymore. Just dirty carpets, prayers and missing posters in every unsaved number. Just recipes of triumph in scar tissue, diabetes medicine splayed out next to a tower of peppermint candies. Like god is praying on the weakest of us with an alzheimered memory/ forgotten remorse/ what does not kill us makes us stronger, so thinning blood and darwin’s theory must be distant cousins.
Speaking of distance. I have not seen some people since the news coverage turned kardashian. Hurricane Katrina and my family are the same in that some government condoned a violence, and no one’s heard from them since. Tangent: believe all of this to be true. Last I heard, the boy that taught me to pop fireworks in the fragile of my palms, was living in a football stadium. Maybe? Maybe someone told me otherwise once .Maybe i’m choosing what to question mark. Maybe i’ll ask what happened to him when my grandmother wakes up.
I am a water baby. Salt water and some ligaments in the shape of bloat fish for stomach, minnow for rare organs, octopus tendrils for appendages i might scab and grow back. I know
What it means to swim in packs and try not to die. Survivor of two oceans trying to kill me. One atlantic /One I call a body . The killing joke
My kin is my kin, is your kin, heard that’s her kin too.
Fictiv in blood, but we can see it everywhere.
So when I found out Janis Joplin once said, “being black for a while, will make [you] a better white.”
I thought.
It’s just so easy to be Black these days ya know’
Rachel and Danielle paved the way for them. Like it’s in their DNA now:
Fake Bantu notted Oakland tongue double helixes. weaves into over priced top ramen diet.
If you are what you eat, then to consume a body means you too are NWA, section 80, hurricane katrinas red line, the subject of Old Kanye’s “George Bush doesn’t give a fuck about black ppl speech”
In front of me,
Some silhouette watches the slave trade happen
And somewhere, a white girl says she can’t be racist, says she’s only 17 , but 1/8th Ida. B.
Says – she loves the NFL and streetball and if she could she would let pornhub’s entire BBC category start a daycare in her stomach
I laugh
Tell her I think she has my great grandmother’s mouth in her teeth
I say,
My country loved me blue
My country took my dust soaked skeleton and put me in a thrift shop my probable children can’t afford.
My country loved me once and never texted me back.
My frontal lobe crafts a path to find an apposite residence
for the fields of lavender provoked my limbic system kindling fine motor skills to
zoom into high gear swerving over Mount Everest’s most southern hemisphere,
Plummeting at warp speeds to crash perhaps into the rapid waterfalls,
But there is a tributary in Egypt’s river that’s swelling to the overflow,
Triggering the cortex to hover in excitement, like frantic butterflies fluttering in
unison,
Distressing the frontal lobe, how it throbs faster than the heart’s rhythm,
An impulse one too much! Darkness creeps quickly, dwarfing the thinking quotient
shutting down the speed of light,
Reverse!
River, mountain, lavender, butterflies, field,
The stroke of beauty vanishes, taken away, compromised, gone!
But the shell still exists, the light is on, that means someone is home! Knock Knock!
Any one home?
Do you understand the words coming out of my mouth?
Can you follow my fingers from left to right, from right to left?
Smile for me, I see the droop on your face,
Let me show you an unframed picture, my daughter once wanted to visit this place.
I see by the sparkle in your eyes you recognize the lavender fields! Yes?
Take it easy now, be encouraged I will stay with you as you get back to where you
need to be,
We will need two special luggage, one for our clothes, the other for miscellaneous
tools and we are off!
Bring a blanket to keep you warm from the cold Himalayan nights
A waterproof suit for to keep dry when we near the waterfalls.
A measuring tape to record the length of Egypt’s river,
A net, to harvest the frenzied butterflies
Music to calm the palpitating heart and remember a dagger to cut loose this wild
imagination of yours.
Rise every day,
day after day,
once and for all.
Rise like the sun
from the dusk to dawn.
Rise like the ocean waves
moving up and down.
Rise like the trees,
which from seeds they arise.
Rise and shine.
And still,
like the air,
to the sky,
rise.
Rise from the ashes,
Rise from the horizon,
‘Cuz
Invariably you gotta rise.
Rise to the top
until there’s no other way
unless
to rise.
Rise and fall
all the time.
‘Cuz
at the end of the day,
we are all
risers,
early or late.
So rise up!
—
Larissa Xavier
http://www.larissaxlima.com
POETRY FESTIVAL. Submit to site for FREE. Submit for actor performance. Submit poem to be made into film. 