what happens to a question unasked?

it folds and closes into itself
forgetting its aim
shooting the inquisitor instead of the target

my mind swims far and is filled with every type of wondering about you
my lips seal shut keeping me trapped within without answer or reason

my poetry for you is thought processes about me
and how i want and plan to achieve my goals of
the ultimate me

i would submit
at will
to the sound of your voice,
the promise of your lips
might your eyes welcome me in...
...might my heart let you win...

. . . they became my muses
a group of three
who loved me
as much as i did they
and you disintegrated
like the beads of sweat
down the sides of a cold glass
on a warm day. . .

Is this all I have seen of you?
All I will know of you?
Is now the time of goodbyes and the type of change that humbles me low?
Can I put on my face cloak and cover up what was once my glee filled expression?

Eyes heave with the weight of what happened and doubt drenches the collar of my favorite shirt
Body aches
And with nowhere to go for a layin on of hands
I wonder when healing will come
And where

Do you mean to tell me I was supposed to have timed the sequence and forgot to press start?
Then you too had almost outlasted your stay and of course you are only doing your job to turn away
But why then do I feel so half?
So unfinished?
Half-written with so much more to say?

They say idle hands are the devil’s playground
That an ear in silence is just waiting to hear God’s voice

And I do so pray that He speaks (and quite loudly) in these ears
Because they are bare and alone
And cold

I stood out on a street corner
Turning around and around on myself
Squinting through the danger coursing my way through darkness
Hoping to find your swagger on its way back to me

I want to confirm my impatience with your return
Watch you come back into plain view
Feel your goatee getting longer and making its way down my neck

I can’t stand your being away
I can stand your absence but I cannot keep you close in mind
If you are here you must be here
A girl’s brain can only encompass so many versions of the truth

What was I thinking?
and how did you get this far without having even held my hand?

I am the laughing stock of my senses
And you are nowhere to see my pity crowd around
Have I exhausted the kitchen fan?
Am I utensils used and now used up?

I have missed out on sleep
For the last few days
I lay in my bed
With my head nestled in my pillow
Usually I keep my breast covered
Sheet
Then blanket
Then comforter
And my body
Hot with heat and missing something just lays there
I keep my eyes closed
And usually find sleep somewhere between track six and seven

I don’t believe you would have me wanting you missing you liking you like you know I do
And with no satisfaction of you reaching out to
Me

I can believe I have no assistance
Just didn’t think I’d have to bear it now
And with you

Let me remember a night when you came to me unafraid and we answered each others calls for touch

Fall does that to us I think/drags us back to our knees down to where we originally fell for a deep voice or a smooth sound that sang us to sleep nightly/is fall the steady we’ve always been looking for or do we set a rhythm for the changes//at a pace too fast and a tempo quickened by our heartbeats//how do we tame our wanting greedy hearts/know that what we have is what we need/

this is some serious deepdown touch little lady//little lady/are you ready for soft hands and good feelin?////yes daddy eyes/as long as you’re gentle and proceed with caution//you know i’m delicate jewels/and still virgin//glass vase in a dark room//don’t break me now

face to face is how we met
and we sway
and we sway
and we sway

today is freeday
I have released all questions
Dropped them in the bucket on my way in
Hung them with my coat and lost my ticket
Arms raise
Muscles release
Reflexes relax
Leaks become floods without the tragedy of lives lost

Closer and
Closer and
Closer

When sand slips we must let it go
Clay is moldable in the hands of the makers
I find your hands on me in creative ways
Pushing me through delicate spaces with ease and care
Gentle and urgent
No demand is ever too much

In this tone of voice I would for you lie face down on asphalt
On a night wet with acid rain
Just to humor you
Life befalls no threat in your company
Never its going but its coming

And you bring me your gifts
Bring me your gifts
And I will make you king of kings over all my majesty

Keep them coming
Keep me coming
Keep coming back for more off all that is yours
And here I will be
To deliver all your fantasies

Send me away at unheard of hours on silent streets in a neighborhood not mine but something like home

Chop me free of what I knew before and bring me into your time

I am draped over your shoulder in a dance choreographed before we even met
With one ear free I listen to a beat made by someone you know well
Fathered in the same way as you
Beaten down and still lifted up

There are lines on your face that say there is still and always will be something to smile for
Even in all seriousness there is a ringing coming soon
Alarming depth and bringing her closer to me

Last night I got stuck in your eyes
When I woke from my trance all around me was old and familiar
Dusty like shoeboxes filled with words read and re-read
You were there
Holding me with hands strong and flat
Plain against the brown of my back
I looked up and fell back into the space created when green turns brown
The swirl of our bodies creates a milky way
And we ride
Smooth and free-like
Galaxies soar and all that glitters is us

Note to the wise:

Sometimes I think that publications intended or targeted mainly at white audiences—both print and broadcast—think to themselves as they go through production and editing and the process of deciding on which stories to include:

Well even though this story could (and will) definitely fall into the category of “touch-and-go,” due to its caustic nature and scathing tone, since the author is black, we’ll let it slide. I mean, it’s not like we’ll get the slack from it. It’ll just be another chance for black people to come up in the world—to address their problems and get their issues with each other out on the table. As a matter of fact, it would be a certain disservice of us to not publish this controversial, and, if we might mention very well-written (and edited), article. Indeed, let’s go to print.*

And you know, sometimes I feel them. I mean we, as black people seldom know how to or where to direct our frustrations, and trust me, they are many. But dayum, it would be nice if every now and then, the media moguls of this here country would step back and perhaps deal the fairer race (I’m talking inner beauty here, guys) one or both of those wonderful gifts God grants us all every day: grace and mercy. It’s not like they (ofays…look it up) have much more than their own persons to worry about or concern themselves with, seeing as how seldom do they even care enough about their less fortunate brethren who are incarcerated, just flat-out crazy or poor, to write degrading articles about them or to deliver tirades on stages across the country (shoutout to the man with the master [show]?) or produce any reaction of the sort. For the more generally termed “fairer race” those less fortunate members are by skin only—hardly acknowledged by blood—and the name they use, quite freely might I add (and usually very uncomfortably for ME), is “white trash”…drop the “poor” for good measure.

When your daddy was rich and your momma looked good for real—not just in a really great song—you really do get to enjoy Summertime in places like the Hamptons and the Catskills, where only the lucky little size 2 friends who happen to be a bit browner, are brought for some extra fun and to show that “see, I have black friends too!”

But truly this is not a rant against my sisters and brothers from very different mothers. This is just a reaction to the beginning of an article, written by a black man for a white magazine (and please don’t say it’s not a white magazine when we have to beg our way onto the pages…or better, when the only articles truly directed at us are against us—think about it), that, perhaps quite accurate in its depiction of some of the race’s problems, may turn several readers away, just because of the not-so-sweet beginnings it speaks and the consciousness previously held by those very readers. Even a highly educated person (yes, just like me) might be offended by the brass nature. But still I rise…and read on. I’m sure there is something great and profound to be extracted from these words. Stay posted.

…and yes I did go on to read the rest, but I’m a reactionary every now and then. Aren’t we all?

p.s. the article, by the way, is unfortunately as closed-minded as the opening paragraph which prompted this piece. Sad…it had such a potential to actually say something. I found only a glimpse of sense in the pages and PAGES of chaff at its very end:

"We came up from slavery to freedom without regard for the Constitution, which gave us nothing, and the plantation masters, who gave us the whip. We came up from oppression to civil rights without regard for hurled bricks and sicced police dogs. Water hoses. The word nigger.
This, then, is my directive: Let us achieve with equal disregard for the limitations of racism…"

This is not a new suggestion, but it’s something remotely useful that the reader, slightly disgusted and very disappointed at having just spent so much time and potential brain power if not eye muscles, may appreciate in the midst of it all.

*Prompted by the first paragraph of “The Manifesto of Ascendancy for the Modern American Nigger,” Esquire, December 2006, Volume 146, Issue 6. http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2006/061105_mfe_December_06_Essay_1.html

sometimes silence is the best answer of all...

It all started with a good day and a red skirt.

My friend and I had gone to Miami at the beginning of august for a weekend away. We were “grown women” now, reveling in the pseudo-freedom of New York’s single life and what little grace our jobs and her slavery to law school were allowing us.
Friday night, August 4th, we set ourselves free into the video-like arms of Miami, warmth, beaches, and a very talkative cab driver from Iran. His voice and stories taught us laughter and love in moments where that’s all we thought we’d ever need.

But this story is not about Miami. Though perhaps the next will be. This story is about the thing I battle with most in this here life-o-mine. Love. And how sometimes I’m a bit more casual with the people I give it to and how. And how I get myself in these lofty storybook/television-like situations to begin with.

And the most recent ending started with a red skirt.
I had woken up colorful that morning. My room, in all of its languor and disarray still contains/holds a window that lets in every bit if Godliness it can muster between two 6-floor pre-war buildings in Manhattan’s beloved (and very Dominican) Washington Heights. By the time my alarm goes off, the sun is stretching her arms. By the time I have pressed my last (of 5) snooze release, she smiles wide and bright, sometimes even giving me a welcome laugh. Who needs artificial light with such a beautiful reality?

This morning—it was a Tuesday—even though the air outside didn’t appear to match the sun’s glorious mood, I felt like laughing too…and looking good. I popped out of bed with the perfect atmosphere-picker-upper: the red skirt I had gotten on bargain in Miami. It was marked for $40, the storeowner who easily identified my friend and I as New Yorkers because of our “style” wanted $30, and I told him I wanted it for $25—and got it. If anybody ever wonders how to make me happy, it’s simple: give me what I want.

(to be continued...)

The death of me came at your hand
Choking off my words and keeping my hands back from their prize

transitions

And the thing is I want to let go
I have a problem remembering to forget all of what happened to get me to where I am these days

I am strong minded and able to interpret feelings into emotions
Actions into meaning

What I can’t seem to do is let go
I need concrete to smack me not too hard in my face
Like the fall I survived at 4 the day before the party
And I still smiled in all the pictures
Enjoyed my friends scars and pizza all the same

So maybe if we can arrange some happy easy time

Some easygoing atmosphere
Maybe rolling around in a canopy filled with red and green and blue and yellow plastic balls

Maybe if we stay away from you saying things like one day and tease me
Maybe if you define us for me
And say what we will be right now
Then I can hear you
And interpret you
And box you in
Until it’s playtime and reassessment needs to be made

And then maybe after a few years of laying still in the net filled with plastic color we’ll wake up and say we like it this way
Together in the fun times and the quiet times and amidst loud noises
Or maybe we’ll say we like it but would like it even more if we substituted the round sometimes unpredictability of plastic beneath with a softer more even surface
With pillows nonetheless

These are my elementary ideas to save our fate from my fingers and screens I have to squint to see
You are free (and encouraged) to provide input or even take control of what will be our destiny

I’ve never been too good at transitions

Heavy air and easy talk could be an option if I had never lied
Never cried
And one day had let you go

But I never released it all
Wouldn’t give up the ghost that had lain to rest in my arms
You stood by, waiting for me to rise and walk away with you

After waiting for the next call to come in, you clicked over
Leaving me holding this former bag of gold
A treasure no longer worth its weight

So you want to see me bagless with arms free
Light and windy like our wonderful city
Well…it depends…
Can I put you on hold?