onceuponapoet

sugar on the floor (sing, etta) ∞

edible sweetness
i will hit your tongue & disappear
before you are able to define raw
before the bud is ready
the grains slip past “hello” and “i love you”
while your lips are burning
and still i am not sure
your lips are burning
enough to make me over
into slow moving jaggery
that is able to steady the salt
in the palm of your hand
and stay there
but i fall
i fall easily through your fingers
not even a hand
deep and willing and already holding the world
can hold me
and before i can ask for more than the hand
for your wrist, arm, and shoulder
your chest, back, and feet
i am sugar on the floor

have you ever?
have you ever known?
have you ever felt?
the coldness of the floor?
it is in my memory and the darkness of my knees
have you ever?

i heard a woman sing like she knew
from way down deep in her belly
with a growl and a blue moon coming from
between her teeth
and the sun sleeping in her hair
i heard a woman sing like she knew
no one picks sugar up off the floor
they just sweep it to the side
like she knew the kind of person
who lets it fall
like she knew what wasted felt like
against the skin and in the mouth

“all i need is somebody to love me
all i need is somebody to care about me
so i won’t be wasted on the floor”

your lips are burning
and still i am unsure
i heard a woman sing like she knew
what that was
how to carry it and put it down
still sweet on the floor

sing, Etta
make the sound
of edible crystals slamming against pine
concrete wet with rain
and pale pink tile
sing and show them
stand there with heavy feet
on a stage and sing
what we feel on the floor
in the middle of brokenness

sing, Etta
let them see 
even sugar gets bruised
scream shout and holler 
right there in the song
lean into it like you do for me
early in the night
and let them hear 
how we go from black to brown to rust

sing, Etta
moan all through it
let them see
how we become rum
molasses
straight-chain right there on the floor
how we curl up and can’t let go
how we beg for the touch
with smoke on our breath
how we dissolve and become something else
still sweet
still sugar on the floor
sing, Etta

bring them to the altar
the street corner
the basement
and sing low in their ears
show them how to move like we do
how to feel whole against the floor
even while shattered and exposed

sing, Etta
let them hear your wings and leave enough just enough for me to keep



 

  You remember thinking while braiding your hair that you look a lot like your mother. Your mother who looked like your grandmother and her grandmother before her. Your mother had two rules for living. Always use your ten fingers, which in her parlance meant that you should be the best little cook and housekeeper who ever lived.

  Your mother’s second rule went along with the first. Never have sex before marriage, and even after you marry, you shouldn’t say you enjoy it, or your husband won’t respect you.
 

  And writing? Writing was as forbidden as dark rouge on the cheeks or a first date before eighteen. It was an act of indolence, something to be done in the corner when you could have been learning to cook.
 

  Are there women who both cook and write? Kitchen poets, they call them. They slip phrases into their stew and wrap meaning around their pork before frying it. They make narrative dumplings and stuff their daughter’s mouths so they say nothing more.

 ”What will she do? What will be her passion?” your aunts would ask when they came over to cook on great holidays, which called for cannon salutes back home but meant nothing at all here.
 ”Her passion is being quiet,” your mother would say. “But then she’s not being quiet. You hear this scraping from her. Krik? Krak! Pencil, paper. It sounds like someone crying.”

   Someone was crying. You and the writing demons in your head. You have nobody, nothing but this piece of paper, they told you. Only a notebook made out of discarded fish wrappers, panty-hose cardboard. They were the best confidantes for a lonely little girl.
 

  When you write, it’s like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring them unity. Your fingers have still not perfected the task. Some of the braids are long, others are short. Some are thick, others are thin. Some are heavy. Others are light. Like the diverse women in your family. Those whose fables and metaphors, whose similes, and soliloquies, whose diction and je ne sais quoi daily slip into your survival soup, by way of their fingers.

  You have always had your ten fingers. They curse you each time you force them around the contours of a pen. No, women like you don’t write. They carve onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark corners and braid their hair in new shapes and twists in order to control the stiffness, the unruliness, the rebelliousness.

-from Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat 

Anonymous asked: some time ago you said writing had become your escape and that you had things you needed to face. did you?

in a way, yes. but i realized writing isn’t enough. i’ve never been afraid to put every real & ugly thing in my work, but facing it is apparently a different process.

i usually don’t give explanations. ∞

I don’t believe I have to do anything I don’t want to do. Yes, I’m one of those people. I quit things I don’t like (which can be disruptive and foolish). I need to understand the purpose before I dive right in. I care about my feelings first (care is probably not the best word as I’ve always neglected my own healing due to discomfort) and I may seem selfish or insensitive, but I am neither. I am always thinking about you. I am always aware of the danger, the weapons so beautifully hidden in my answers to your questions. My facial expressions, body language, and inability to sugar coat shit is deceiving. Trust me. My disappearing acts and silence are for you. I do not have enough room to panic. I’ve forgotten how to kneel. I am the runaway. I’ve mixed all of my letters, and colors too, so very carefully that I’ll need to start from the beginning to understand just how I’ve hidden myself.

And honestly, I’m not sure I’m willing to do that.

I am not interested in pushing through everything. I am not interested in making myself over. Am I sure? No. Absolutely not. I am not as familiar with my scars as I should be. I know they are there. I know how to cover them, but I don’t know all of the stories. Yes, sometimes they become poems, but if I had to separate the two, I wouldn’t know which started where and how to sleep without them. This is problematic. Still, I am not interested in solving every problem. I don’t want to feel everything.

Because I am always feeling you. Feeling of, feeling through, feeling around you. I am always wondering what you are made of, how you move, breathe, speak so differently than me. I am always wondering how to love you without changing. You, my love, are the one who drives me into silence. You are the one who gives me the clay to build the wall. To be without you and to be wanted is all I think of. I want to always be wanted. I want to always be left alone. Even to me this sounds impossible and I am not interested in believing in shit that is impossible.

I am interested in drinking enough water everyday. And moving this body. Dancing. Stretching these limbs in every direction. And touching. I want to know more about the power of touching and what will come through my hands if I study what is all beneath the skin. And dirt. I am interested in burial and planting and eating what comes from the ground. And sitting still while doing everything. And minimalism. And composing. Believe it or not, I am interested in loving. The action, not the emotion. What pleasure looks like, tastes like. What loving does in the middle of the night and in the chill of the morning. How it travels, how many faces it has, and how many stories I can write from it. No titles. No list of rules. No falling.

I am always thinking about you and I suppose this explanation could also be a warning.

dear universe, maybe the list of wants is too long and too tough to work through. maybe a list of what i don’t want will be easier to manage?

p.s. this is incomplete. i think.

sincerely,

I don’t want to deal with money.
I don’t want to live in any place I don’t have room to plant something, a windowsill, a back porch, a field. something.
I don’t want a car without a chauffeur.
I don’t want love without color. dark. deep. bright. indigo. red as fire.
I don’t want a day without music. or reading.
I don’t want to have to ask every single time.
I don’t want sweet wine.
I don’t want to ever work retail again without someone to come home to, ready for body-rubs.
I don’t want to believe in the impossible.
I don’t want to wear anything that fits less than perfect.
I don’t want to forgive just to forget.
I don’t want pills before bed before nightmares before godless mornings.
I don’t want to go to bed hungry. 
I don’t want to get old unless I feel young.
I don’t want to be an actress. 
I don’t want a shitload of log-ins, dot coms, or profiles to feel connected.
I don’t want to hear about heaven or hell.
I don’t want poetry unless it works, unless it’s possible. I don’t want to be blubbering in the car on a rainy night because I’ve put in the work, but can’t accept the reward.
I don’t want to have to turn anything down that my heart asked for because some “shit fell thru”.
I don’t want long distance.
I don’t want aches that are empty.

randomness: before the new year shows up ∞

In a perfect world…

• I’d live in a brownstone (big enough to throw fabulous dinner parties) summer and fall and in a farmhouse (with a wrap-around porch and a horse named Otis) for winter and spring.
• No little children would go missing.
• Poems would edit themselves.
• I’d always let the love overpower the fear.
• There’d be no shitty music.
• I’d have a place for all the artists. A place they can come to dream, work, challenge each other, & rest. There’d be plenty of good food and wine. We’d paint the walls funky colors, plant fruit trees in the yard, and pass books between each other like communion. And we’d walk or fly across the world just to see what everything looks like up close.
• Grandmothers would live forever.
• I wouldn’t need money because we’d barter for everything.
• Perfectly shaped eyebrows would stay perfect. Forever.

Reading….

I’m coming out of my body. This is really odd. Parts of me, my feelings are streaming out of my hands and my thighs. I sense when I am walking that my thoughts are dripping down my calves from behind my knees. I am leaving puddles of myself underneath me and I can’t pick myself back up, put myself back together.

-Ntozake Shange (Liliane)

best you can get in this life is happy-sad. but you always gotta remember your own mama that birthed you. even though you only got a crumb of her story, you still got to say her name out loud. you always honor your dead, else you get trouble from them.

Anita Diamant (The Last Days of Dogtown)

I have questions…

1. Diddy’s son got a full scholarship, right? As in…he doesn’t have to pay? As in…Diddy, whose net worth is like $50mil doesn’t have to foot the bill? Isn’t there a rule against this? Yay football!
2. Why is Tyler Perry dead set on starring in his films? Has anyone told him he can’t act? You have his cell, so I can tell him? Is this a practice makes perfect type thing?
3. Will I really be in Miami in three weeks working with Willie Perdomo? How can I love this poetry work even more? How can I pour more of myself and more of you and more of this concrete sky dirt and shouting into it? Can you show me what’s next?
4. Where is the place? Where is my full and warm circle of family?
5. Do you forgive me? Do you love me?
6. If you can ride that bass, kiss that horn, or sing them love lines in my ear, you can get it and keep it cuz this poet needs that good deep down soul music to get through the night. Cool?

i wrote you a letter
i sat on my hands
and wrote you a letter
with the only words i knew
i sat on a balcony too small
for drunken fits
and began to sweat
cuz i’m so used to pen and paper
and not the echo of my voice
off your chest
when you play with questions
in the softness of my hair
my hands began to sweat
but the letter was long
and longer when i pulled my feet
beneath me
and rested on the possibility
that this letter may not reach you
cuz our love makes the air too thick
shit doesn’t move when we love

Breakthrough by Carolyn M. Rodgers ∞

I’ve had tangled feelings lately
About ev’rything
Bout writing poetry, and otha forms
Bout talkin and dreamin with a
Special man (who says he needs me)
Uh huh
And my mouth has been open
Most of the time but
I ain’t been saying nothin but
Thinking about ev’rything
And the partial pain has been
How do I put my self on paper
The way I want to be or am and be
Not like any one else in this
Black world but me