Reciprocity

I know that you can't fight bitterness with bitterness. But what else can I possibly feel other than my gut holding back the words my tongue wants to say when you wont give me the time of day but my heart knows its wrong. Because an eye for an eye will leave us both blind to the love that will always lie in between us at night whether we are in the same bed or miles apart. Since you got the last word I'm left in the dark and forced to wait until you come get me out of this place because I won't leave without you because we both got ourselves here... we have to leave the same way. I can't reciprocate the feeling that you gave me because two negatives don't make a positive they only make a greater negative which is really further away from the positive that is there but covered up by its reciprocal on the other side of zero.

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Tuesday, January 31, 2012 Posted in | , , | 1 Comments »

Ocean

I let my mind sink into itself with the thought of you. I felt the water slide over my body and how I love to drown in your arms just as the sun comes up... but before I even got there I had to approach the shoreline.. the first meeting of you and I. My toes in the sand as I got my feet wet for the first time in something that was worth my time... I waded up to my knees in the love that you had to offer me, felt my feet fall deeper in the sand and fall deeper into love with what's just inside the outside... the shallow of your eyes, the inside of your hand.. I lifted my foot out of the sand and took another step forward.. the water reached my fingertips. I could almost feel your lips as I traced lines on your face that I can still draw into the back of my hand like a memory. As time passed lines that made your eyes lingered and and then drew our fingers intertwined as I took your hand in mine. I'm not afraid of the ocean, only afraid that I won't be everything that you are... vast, deep, and everything more. . My time came to leave the shore and dive in.. sink or swim. I took one last breath and never looked back. I don't regret that. I spend my days swimming beneath the surface... knowing you're worth it. I spend my nights safe in your embrace until the sun comes up again. I no longer long for the shore, only that every one knows what its like to drown in the best way... to lose yourself in love

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Monday, January 30, 2012 Posted in | , , , , | 0 Comments »

Circles


Words and actions, actions and words
What came first the egg or the bird?
We’re confined to believing that change only comes from a dollar bill
 For a bill of 6.75 but what is the price of freedom?
Freedom ain’t free and I may not agree with what you say
But I will defend with my life your right to say it
But before I can save you, I need to save myself from self destruction
So its up to me to break the chains but
I feel like I’m trapped by a straight jacket with my arms around my waist
Shackles on my ankles and a muzzle on my face.
I’m bound to the ground by belts fastened tight
And I have a blindfold on so I have no sight
I try to yell to scream, but my voice has been silenced
We’re all a victim of organized crime it’s called: the government
The heat waves gave way to my ribcage because
I’m starving but it might as well be my temples carving spaces
of malnourishment of the mind, body and soul
when the body hurts as a whole,
there’s a space void in the mind
and I’m being confined as my spirit is ripped limb from limb.
I’m bound by the standards of society
What they tell me is what I need to be, but
Who is they, anyway? I’m trapped by a system that has me running in circles.
My intellect is tested by standardized tests the determine my fate like a crystal ball
They are not a caricature of my character by any means
Education is the key to achieving your dreams but
Not before you  pay the state government that tells us we can’t get a job
To pay for our schooling so we can’t do the school thing that supposedly is a birthright.
Can we start to get it right?

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Wednesday, January 25, 2012 Posted in | , , | 0 Comments »

Prep Time

Spending my day preparing my apartment to be lived in again and not simply serve as a space to stop for food, water and sleep. Preparing my students to learn and grow, not simply be force fed information only to regurgitate it onto a classroom assessment or a state exam because who is the state to tell my students what they should or shouldn't know.. yes, they need to know their times tables but they also need to learn how to ride a bike and that part of that process is to fall and get bumps and bruises along the way. Yes, I will teach them the state mandate, but I will also teach them what it means to be passionate and compassionate when they see someone hurting, to not feel pity but to feel empowered to change what made them sad in the first place, and then they see joy, to share in that joy because there's so much of it and it's not when they look harder that they will find that joy, but when they open their eyes to a wider horizon because we are so focused on what we can see and touch to make us happy, but those things that are almost invisible to the too-trained eye, like the leaf that falls from a tree but never hits the ground because it is picked up by the wind. Let their spirits fall, and teach them to never hit the ground because they are picked up by the visible and invisible. Yes, I will be their magician and show them the invisible. And through all of this, I will prepare myself to be a stronger person every day, not just for myself, but for everyone around me.

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Sunday, December 18, 2011 Posted in | , , | 0 Comments »

No Unnecessary Testing

No Unnecessary Testing

For investing our time
Into minds that are already on overload
Instead let’s decode
Let’s start teaching to learn
Instead of teaching to test
Where the rest of the information
Is lost in translation
Somewhere between science and math
We forgot about poetry and dance
That is actually a stimulant
To prevent and circumvent
A student who is discontent
With their own performance
Because a test told them so
That they have no achievement effort or growth
Let’s try using assessment that’s authentic
Move past the standard
Of the standard deviation
Of the bell curve that prevails
Whether a student passes or fails
Let’s push them all to the left side
Of the curve and their brain
Drop the acronyms
That tear us limb for limb
These exams have been tried and acquitted
While the rest of us have been committed
To the asylum for grades admitted and resubmitted
Let’s break the chains that bind us
And for a minute try to find us
Within this process that is called testing
The entire person to begin assessing…

… Cause the brain gets tired sometimes.

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Wednesday, October 19, 2011 Posted in | , , | 1 Comments »

Senses


I cannot hear you
I cannot see you
This darkness is deafening and sentencing me to a life of silent obscurity
Where my only security is in my fingertips
That is the point in which the world enters.
My sensory is etched into my memory
Because for me, only my hands define space and time.
My lifeline is only as far as my arm can reach.
My entire world is night, there are no stars, no moon
Not even a city light.
I don’t take joy in listening to city life
Since I don’t know what a car sounds like.
As I lay in bed I don’t know if I’m asleep or awake
And I don’t know when the pigeons wake.
Though my sight and hearing are hit or miss,
I’ve always been more of an optimist.
When my ears that can’t hear any my eyes that have no sight
Those senses have been slighted
But my other three have been heightened and I’ve been enlightened.
I may not know this from a dresser or a desk,
But I could never mistake the beat in my chest
As every 8-count pierces my ear and makes my heart rip pound, opening my ribcage.
My hands have been more places than most people see in a lifetime.
Have you ever traced a face and felt the lines that make a smile?
You can feel every bit of joy that they let you steal some of it.
The heart has no eyes, it cannot hear,
It only knows the tenderness of another’s touch.
I may not know much,
But I know that my soul has felt that much
And so much more.  

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Tuesday, October 18, 2011 Posted in | , , | 0 Comments »

You and I

you said loving me is like inhaling oxygen, its essential to the bones in your body... well watch out baby because I'm about to leave you breathless... Even if you never see me when you're sleeping i'm always watching over you like the moon in the sky when it collides with the sun on the rise on the horizon. I am always by your side as the summer wind blows and carries a heavy weight of summer rain. I will carry your weight on my shoulders whenever you need me to hold you... I promise to be the fire that fuels the desires of your innermost self, and hear you whenever you call for help, even across the mountains and valleys that span your chest and back I will risk my heart so that we can bridge our bodies and connect the societies of our ancestors.

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Wednesday, October 12, 2011 Posted in | , , , , , | 0 Comments »

Ghost

I don't know when you exist.
Maybe it was just to show me you were okay.
But why make it harder to let you go?...
You were almost real.
I heard your voice.
I watched your shoulders twist in the wind.
If I close my eyes, I can see you.
Did I touch you?
Did I gauge the temperature of your body with my hand?
In fact I never did.
Stood as a bystander and watched.
I was powerless to transmit this feeling that I had,
That was so deep my subconscious carried it.
I thought you were just a fleeting memory.
Believed you existed in a time and place
That was from over a years past.
Why do you still sit in the corner of my  mind?
I can still feel the breeze coming through my window,
And I wonder if it's touched your skin.
If you're not coming back,
Please don't stay here.

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Wednesday, August 17, 2011 Posted in | , , , , , | 0 Comments »

A Letter to Beyonce



Dear Beyonce, I love you, but I loved your thighs more. They gave me a reason to believe my thighs were just fine. I believed that they were worth the time it took to get my jeans on or trouble when I found a dress that fit the rest of me perfectly, but finding another because my thighs were making it too short. I was under the impression that the pressure on his lap from my thighs was just fine and that if he couldn't handle them, he couldn't handle me. 
My thighs were supported by calves that were the pillars that support me that is almost too much for the eyes to handle.  It was okay that my thighs jiggled 'cause my muscles were chiseled from my lumbar to my heels when I walked in a pair of heels, revealing marble stone that Greek statues envied. 
Where did they go?
Now I'm told that I have to cover them from the summer sun and they can't wade in waves that crash on them when I stand in water that's just below my waist. They can't be mimicked by a pair of jeans or contoured verbatim by a pair of leggings. They have to be lonely and never be reminded of one another's presence because they can get lost with increased degrees of separation. 
But I will not eat the lies that media, airbrush, needles, and people feed me. My legs have walked a thousand miles and have carried others along the way. I will not doubt them because they have never failed me.
I think I've made my decision, Miss Bey,Thank you.


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Tuesday, August 9, 2011 Posted in | , , , , , , , | 1 Comments »

(For Everything) There is a Season

I could stare at you with the video on mute all night,

Just to watch the smile come across your face
Like an autumn breeze on a Sunday afternoon in October. 
I stare from the window and watch 
As the leaves change colors and get carried away by wind. 
The sun reaches past the glass and sets the amber and brown in my eyes aflame. 

I want to be there with you through the book of your life. 
Help you write pages that turn into chapters,
Falls that turn into winters. 
Light my fire, and shelter me enough without putting it out. 
When everything melts into a lovely spring, 
Pale rose will settle on my cheeks when you come around. 

Help me to understand you the best way I know how. 
Not expecting flowers to bloom in spring when every year that wait for summer. 
Rain will always come and go,
But that just means that the lilies will grow later
And set the hillside on fire
In the middle of the summer. 

And as the sun sets on an August day
That we spent together under golden skies,
Hold me close by,
I don't want this summer to end. 
Just promise that you'll be there when the time has come
To show me another Autumn. 

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Wednesday, August 3, 2011 Posted in | , , , , , | 0 Comments »