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brahmamamalove
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Location: Washington D.C.
Birthday: 5/7/1986
Gender: Female
Interests: Sherbet, Lamb Chops, Men, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Art Galleries & Musuems, Chinchillas (not the skinned kind), hedonism, charity, Learning
Expertise: Facetiousness
Occupation: Student
Industry: Hospitality
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  brahmamamalove
Member Since:
7/4/2005
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| 1. I shall be a better Mom.
2. I shall do much better on my schoolwork than I did last semester.
3. I shall improve my chapter.
4. I shall redo my lit review and research proposal, administer my survey to area youth, and start my undergraduate thesis.
5. I shall write more, and read more to improve my writing.
6. I shall get our graphic novel online and start marketing it.
7. I shall find a job that I do not hate or start making money doing things that I love..
8. I shall leave town and be by myself or with some hottie for at least three days, preferably on a beach or a mountain.
9. I shall save money so that I can go to Boule.
10. I shall make a trip back to Howard.
* Shall I get in shape? TBD
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| I sat by a window to collect
the only warmth in the house.
I pressed my fingertips
briefly against the windowpane.
For a brief moment I felt.
But then I retreated
and folded my hands in my lap.
Still I continued
to look out of the window.
And then I caught a glimpse
of the apparition.
My soul had suddenly appeared
floating through the breeze.
I had let it out of the house
sometime ago.
I had felt that it did nothing
to deserve
the pain
that I
inflicted on myself.
His sadism my masochism our love
all the same.
But my soul never left completely
it danced around the dogwood near the kitchen.
Sometimes it played with the cherries
in the tree by the front room.
I released it because
I wanted it to be free.
But my soul did not fly away.
Was it afraid,
like me?
Did it love too much,
like me?
I never knew because
I never asked it.
I watched it sometimes
when I wanted to collect some sun.
Something I could never find
in the house.
i kissed a wisp of fog this morning for some reason i thought it looked like her sleeping i thought if i could wake her we could be together again be whole again but the fog swirled and disappeared in a manner that i envied the sun continued to rise as it did everyday and i smiled and said good morning as i did everyday the sun needs compliments i think i cannot be sure how often the sun is told I LOVE YOU or I AM PROUD OF YOU or I AM THANKFUL TO HAVE YOU IN MY LIFE i know how it feels to never hear those things and i would never want the sun to feel that way i watch her wander through the house and i know that she feels that way she looks nothing like the sun to me but she is still beautiful i will be sure to tell the sun YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL because she doesnt hear me i tell the sun everything that i want her to know i think she listens to the sun she turns her face when the sun speaks does the sun whisper the same sweet prayers and praises to her that i say i wish i knew
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| Because I love you my little imaginary friends . Trust me you're in the dream I have drawn. I would say don't read the depressing bits of the long blog below. It's just my life. Or at least what I call my life when I am in a bad mood. What I need is a shrink to talk to about my problems. Because I obviously prefer not to talk to real people about them. Anyway only read the bits at the bottom the slightly more sunshiny bits that are the poems. Today I bought myself a strand of 500 very small pearls. Its pretty I think a shall count the pearls when I want a thoughtless distraction, it's much better than smoking and it won't eventually kill me like some people I know. Anyway what am I doing up at 1 in th morning. Absolutely nothing of importance. Now I am watching Scrubs because I find it funny. I feel like my life in North Carolina is less interesting and blogworthy than it was while I lived in DC.
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| So I'm poor but I am also (I would like to think) a poet. For a class
I had to do a writing assignment which included writing five poems.
And now there are copies of my humble poems floating around campus
because I had to print out copies a give them to the class so that they
could digest them I guess while I read. Anyway I was in a hurry when I
printed them out and I forgot to put my name and stuff on each page
that I distributed. I don't really think that anyone would care enough
to claim my little poems but just in case I figure if I post them on my
xanga page that enough to establish that I wrote the poems on a
particular date. Plus the fact that I got the grade from the teacher
or whatever, but anyway xanga community which I haven't seen in a bout
a year and a half a lot has changed since what April 2006. Reading
over my old blogs has made me acutely aware of that so before I get to
the poems here's a synopsis of the last year and a half. Plus a little of some stuff that happened before then that I didn't include in my last blog.
I cut off all
of my hair it's natural now and very short. Eugene and I did make it Miami it was wonderful. I lost my scholarship to Howard. But I joined the COR program which I was supposed to get paid for and should have taken care of my education, but good ole GDUb decided to send my scholarship money to Iraq I guess because the program got severe cuts in its' funding. Nobody cares about enhancing the education of underprivileged smart black kids anymore. Christopher was finally totally toilet trained just shy of his 3rd birthday. Eugene and I moved in together at a place in Silver Spring, but then after a couple of months went by he told me that he couldn't afford to pay for the apartment, because his business wasn't really making him any money it was only the stuff that he did on the side that made him any personal money and that since he was with me he wanted to spend time with me and not work all the time. So he was broke he wasn't when we met but he was now. So sadly since the COR money didn't come through like it was supposed to we had to move out. I moved into a really small horrible basement in NW DC. Eugene went back to sleeping in the shop or his parents house. We kinda broke up because we felt that we right right for each other at the particular time in our lives. Obviously I was having a negative effect on Eugene's pockets. And he was making me physically ill. I mean violently ill that was the only period in my life where I have ever suffered from migraines and I was painfully nauseous most of the time. I hadn't realized what was wrong with me until I had taken the day off from the office (I worked for Eugene first as a receptionist then as graphic designer) and just spent time with my sister who was visiting at the time. We had a nice day together and I was surprised at how good I felt, but then Eugene came home and started talking about his day and suddenly I felt violently nauseous again the pain returned I and realized that it was Eugene physically the stress of our relationship was effecting. Which is bizarre to say the least. Anyway because of our issues I more than we decided we should part ways.
At first Eugene said that he didn't want to be friends but we couldn't stay away from each other for long. Even after I had called almost every guy that I dated prior to Eugene and spent time being adored by other men I still wanted to be with him. After like a month of that I stopped seeing other guys anyway and Eugene kept coming over. I was too busy to date anyway. I had finally decided it was time for me to become a member of my sorority, Alpha Chapter. Which I did in Spring 2007 (shout out to all my SandZ). During this time my bi-polar transsexual cousin moved in with me to help out with Christopher during that particularly busy time in my life. Eugene and I were still seeing each other and then something monumental happened in our relationship. And then something monumentally bad happened in our relationship. We finally stopped seeing each other for real I didn't speak to him for over a month, but then he came by the house with some Chipotle a burrito bol prepared exactly the way I liked.
 And with this painting which is actually 24 by 36 inches which a did not at all make up for all that occurred if you knew you would agree with me. But he loved me and he missed me so much he felt that he had to paint me because he couldn't stand my absence. Alas, he presented me with this the a few days before my birthday which on its own is fine however, he was also apparently about to leave for Nigeria in a couple of days which is why I got my birthday present early. He was to stay in Nigeria about a month. We laughed about our brief separation from each other because his father was making him go back to Nigeria to find a wife. Clearly ridiculous Eugene is the youngest of his family and so he was raised more in the US than he was in Nigeria. He is really an African American more so than just Nigerian and for his father to expect him to marry some woman he had never met because he family needed or wanted him to was clearly ludicrous. Ha-f**king-Ha. Jokes on me because when Eugene returned he told me unceremoniously that he is now engaged to a lovely young nursing student named Joy. There are all sorts of reasons that he had for "making the decision" he had all sorts of rationalizations for why this was the best thing for his family and his village (did I mention that Eugene is technically some sort of minor royalty). Anyway his older brother is such a screw up that Eugene is going to have to take on much of his responsibility. He should have been mine but fate I guess decided otherwise. I HATED HIM. I was destroyed. What was only a year and a half of my life, Eugene and I lived for decades we went through so much hardship, by far too much to blog, my body, my finances, my life, a lot of things I sacrificed because I loved him. I LOST A CHILD FOR HIM. And the best he could give me is that I should not have given him so much, he told me that I should have done for myself not for us. Our family was built and destroyed for what. For some girl Joy who happened to be born in some family of note in a tiny village outside of Lagos, Nigeria to become his wife. By accident, when I loved him so fiercely by design. That along with other tumultuous events in my life caused an internal break down which I am still trying to get over. I am still trying to shatter that encasement of apathy that I have concealed myself in. I am trying to feel, sometimes. I want to love. If it weren't for Christopher I would be dead honestly. My world is submerged and I don't have the strength to pull it from the bathos of existence. I give to others my family, my sisters, my friends. But I still feel so broken that I can't look at myself some days.
My mother is forty-two and pretty much dying, she told me this summer shortly after the last time I spoke to Eugene. There a number of things effecting her health that need to be operated on that need to be physically removed involve different therapies. After one major surgery had to be canceled because they discovered something else wrong with her she decided that she just did not want to deal with the hospitals or doctors anymore. She has pretty much said f it I want to live my life enjoy my grandkids. Incidentally, my 17 year old sister has had a baby. You would think she would have seen all the garbage I had gone through and thought about how hard it is. Apparently, my life looks easy to people. Everyone thinks I am so strong and capable and together. I have no idea how they think that. Oh and I don't go to Howard anymore. My mom had been helping me paying my rent and giving me an allowance when I lost my scholarship. But between her medical bills and the new baby. I decided that it was selfish for me to keep going to Howard and have her giving me all that money. And there was no way for me to work enough to afford an apartment in DC keep my grades up and raise Christopher. So I now attend North Carolina Central University and I live at home in a three bedroom townhouse with my mother, myself and my son, and my sister and her son. I shall graduate in Dec 2008. It's been a hard semester for me mentally I would say emotionally but it's more the lack there of that is the problem. Anyway I hope that 2008 will be much much better. I have to drag myself out of this quagmire. Or if not I have to be more like Mother Theresa. Did you read those letters where she is questioning the existence of God. I think that for a long time she was in a very dark place in her life. But, she kept working and doing great things. Giving selflessly perhaps because she like myself had lost a hold of herself, grew less concerned with her own life and therefore put more into others. But I lost control because I felt that anything I had held sway over in my life had gone terribly wrong. There was a point when whenever I had to make a major decision. I thought about what I wanted to do, and then decidedly did the opposite. Because I had felt that whenever I had done something before because I wanted to do it. Things went some kind of bad. Anyway, come hell or high water, 2008 is going to be better for me. Somehow, I'll make it work. But anyway the reason for this blog. Here are my poems.
So this is a series of poems that I had to do for a class. Everyone in
the class seemed to like them well enough, but since everyone else went
over in their presentations I did not get the chance to explain them
fully. There were so many things that I wanted to say in the class that
I thought would tie them into what we learned over them semester, but
it didn't quite work out that way. Anyway here are five poems about a
journey through self-identity. Childhood, Adulthood, Companionship,
Rebirth, Death. Those are the one word descriptions of the stages that
the poems represent but they are not very apt I will explain them more
fully after the poems. If you care to read.
I am from
I am from Jamaica
I'm not Jamaican it's just that
That was where my mother was seasoned for slavery
I am from a little place of soybeans and corn
Tobacco and tiny toddlers tottering through tall tapers
That they plucked until sundown from sun up
I am from the stevedore strain
Bred for my strong reaching hands
And my wide reaching hips
I was designed to be a boy maker
Conduit for Christ fulfilling the obligations of Noah's sons
I am from the Just For Me box
No Lye Conditioner
Cept that someone was conditioned to lie
Because I never looked like the pretty little girl on the box.
I am from a mother that couldn't manage my hair
So she got me a carefree curl
I cried Mommy they laugh at me they say I have an afro.
I am from a place where I never knew how important an afro could be
I am from a cold house that revolved around a stove
The stove that heated up the house
The stove that I heated my wash water with
The stove that I learned to cook spaghettis and hot dogs and Ramen.
That stove that my momma taught me “This is how we live”
I am from place where the moon turns copper red some nights
And I ask my gramma why
But, then I ask my momma again later
Because I can't understand why there would be blood on the moon
There Comes a Time
There comes a time when a child is afraid,
And a child will wrap themselves up
In blankets of complacency,
And pray the boogey man will stay away.
A child will shut her eyes tight,
Because if “I can't see it, it can't see me.”
A child will hide and hope and wait.
There comes a time when a woman will breakthrough,
When she no longer fits in her cocoon of complacency,
And she refuses to remained sheltered
In the house that fear built.
She will fight to conquer her fears,
She will attempt to murder the weakness in herself,
A woman will battle and destroy and change.
But there comes a time to reconcile,
To embrace the woman and the child,
To soothe the needs of her entire self.
There comes a time to face the fear,
And love the nature that gives us knowledge
To dread the thing that we think can harm us.
But the truth, in learning that we are all things
In learning that all things are we,
There comes a time when that truth will set us free,
We will not fight or kill will not hide or waver,
We will simply Be.
My Love Is Not Like A Red, Red Rose
O, my love is like a strong, strong tree,
that's rooted deep in Earth
O, my love is like a djebme drum,
rich in timbre tone and worth.
As beautiful as you are my burning Sun,
Is the span of the height depth breadth
of my love for you.
But do I love you for your particular
shade of ebony, mahogany, indigo, olive, coffee, cocoa skin?
Do I love you for that strong back
bred to weather centuries long storms.
Or is your steady legs or your solid arms
that intertwine so exquisitely with mine.
None of these things compare to your eyes,
They are the windows to my soul.
In your limpid eyes I can see myself clearly.
You are my reflection, my mold, my other, my completion,
My love this is why I need you so dearly.
She Woke Up Screaming,
And she couldn't shake the feeling that something was terribly, terribly wrong,
That the dream was not over, that she was living the dream, that sickly American Dream,
She had a premonition, of a lovely suburban home with a white picket fence,
And safe white neighbors that smiled and politely invited her to dinner parties,
While they schemed with the Home Owners Association to make her life hell,
And her children gaily played with white children in games of horror
Games in which her son always had to play the robber
because “You look more like the bad guy, you don't look like the cops here.”
When her daughter would left to be the single mom when the children played house
because there were no little black boys left to play.
Where her playmates would share a little white baby doll with her
because “Your little black doll is too ugly to play with”
She woke up screaming,
No!
The Return
We walk, we stumble, we stride, we crawl, through this Earth,
We forget the beauty of God from whence we we came,
We are blind to the part of us that is God
To the part of God that is us.
Arm,
Leg,
Leg,
Arm,
Head,
We but crude renderings of the of beautiful perfection that is.
We are blemished, are dirty, are primitive, are unrefined,
But every lowly one of us carries the mark Divine.
When we smile, when we love, when we laugh, when we cry,
We are and we are closer to attaining.
The never ending cycle, God gives and God takes away,
God gives us to the Earth and God will take us away.
Rejoice in rejoining your True self.
The first poem is about origin, as a child we only have an egocentric
grasp of the present. Sometimes we are told things as children that we
do not understand things about our history things about our family.
When I was younger my mother and my maternal grandfather decided to
burrow through endless court files and take the time to conduct family
interviews to construct a genealogy. My mother from six generations
back is Laura Reid she was born in January 1838 Jamaica and she and she
died in Hampton, Virginia were she and her 9 children were slaves only
one of whom, Maggie Peggie Jacob, we have record of. I am LM23251 the
first child of the fifth child of the second child of the third child
of the second child of Maggie Peggie Jacob, child of Laura Reid and
this poem is for her.
The second poem is about the attempt to leave childhood behind. But I
feel that we should never leave any part of ourselves behind. Any of
our pain and sorrow any of our joy and happiness all of our hopes and
fears, we need to take them with us embrace it all because it makes us
the person that we are meant to be. Others adopt a never look back
policy and I agree because you should wrap yourself up in who you are,
but carry it like a mantle of gold not like a heavy stone. Be in love
with yourself, totally.
The third poem is a little taste of how I feel love should be. You
should be able to see yourself in your love. Not meaning that you and
your love are one or that you cannot see yourself without your love
being a human mirror, but that your love is a reflection of you. Not a
perfect doppelganger, but like when you look in someone's eyes and you
can see yourself looking back at you, if the light is right.
The fourth poem is about the legacy that you leave behind maybe with
the children that you have. Not everyone has children but the part of
you that you leave behind on the Earth. Whatever it is you should
provide for it in a manner that it is not corrupted. So that your
precious gem of life no matter who or what it is will be whole, do not
allow your legacy to be degraded.
The fifth poem is about what I feel happens when you leave this Earth
and I shall not write that online that can only be explained in a
real time conversation because certain things, ideals, visions, are
ever evolving and they will not remain static. I feel that I can say it
in a poem because poems are not static they change with every reader
and every reading. The interpretation is a fluid as my personal views
on religion.
And there you have a it a little piece of my naked self I hope that you enjoyed it. Thanks for your time.
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| Also, regarding the poor: I fight the good fight through mainly
education, but here's something that I did the other day that kinda
makes me feel sad. As I was walking to the bank one day I passed this
guy eating out of one of the city trash cans on georgia ave. I walked
back home and he was still there. I went in the house and fixed him two
sandwiches, threw that, some applesauce, and some bottled water in a
grocery bag. I walked back outside and he wasn't at the trachcan
anymore. I asked people on the street if they had seen where he had
gone. They were basically like what guy. I'm like the guy that was
right across the street eating out of a garbage can. So anyway I walk
around looking for him. I happen upon him walking around aimlessly in a
parking lot. I had planned on giving him the food and telling him about
this huge homeless shelter downtown the CCNV. But when I got closer to
him where I could smell his body and see the food caked in his beard,
and really look into those vacant, confused eyes, I freaked. I handed
him the bag said "here" and walked away. You wanna know the really
frustrating part about the whole thing? When I went home, and thought
about it, I realized that he already had a plastic bag full of food in
his hand. And thinking back even more I realized that that same bag was
on the ground next to him, while he was eating out of the garbage.
So
yeah "helping" people can really be hard. And I kinda want to say that
I really don't know what the best way to help people is, clearly just
giving them stuff doesn't necessarily work. But I feel the need to
really figure the right options until I find something that does work. | | |
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