You Probably Think This Poem Is About You

You probably think this poem is about you

In fact this poem could never be about you

I've written this poem before

I've felt this disappointment before

I have even, in earnest, vowed never to be here again--before

Never have any of my poems been about you, or anyone

I've realized just now that they are always about me

The exhausting Ground Hog Day of my life

Producing the same outcome

Me, alone

Me, moving on

Me, repeating the same choices

Me, writing another rambling poem

Trying to quantify my emotions

You probably think this poem is about regret

In fact this poem could never be resentful

I've written that poem before

I've wallowed in my angst before

Turns out this poem is really about life

As I've never lived this particular life before

Every experience is welcome

Soon Come

Poem for South African Women 

Our own shadows disappear as the feet of thousands
by the tens of thousands pound the fallow land
into new dust that
rising like a marvelous pollen will be
fertile
even as the first woman whispering
imagination to the trees around her made
for righteous fruit
from such deliberate defense of life
as no other still
will claim inferior to any other safety
in the world

The whispers too they
intimate to the inmost ear of every spirit
now aroused they
carousing in ferocious affirmation
of all peaceable and loving amplitude
sound a certainly unbounded heat
from a baptismal smoke where yes
there will be fire

And the babies cease alarm as mothers
raising arms
and heart high as the stars so far unseen
nevertheless hurl into the universe
a moving force
irreversible as light years
traveling to the open eye

And who will join this standing up
and the ones who stood without sweet company
will sing and sing
back into the mountains and
if necessary
even under the sea:

we are the ones we have been waiting for.

Written by June Jordan (1936 - 2002)

I have been in a pause.  I just started reading Alice Walker's "We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For" and she speaks of "the pause, the universal place of stopping...the universal moment of reflection."  I have stopped writing and I reflect on my life's journey to this moment often.  I sit in silence in my 3rd floor room and drift off into afternoon naps.  I ponder deep and shallow issues at stop lights.  I pause often.  I feel a shift in my spirit and suddenly the thoughts and feelings I kept bottled inside are once again ready to be recorded and shared.  So perhaps soon I will write again.  Maybe not!  But deep inside I feel that tugging and when the desire is strong enough I will submit.  Life is taking interesting turns, I am rolling with it.  School is going awesomely!  I am pulling down As left and right and am planning on finishing my first semester strong!  I am having a consuming textual relationship with someone, it fills my days with laughter and inappropriateness and I love it.  Mom is still floating back and forth between here and Canada, but Gran is coming from Haiti soon so she'll be back more permanently.  I am happier than sad, calmer and less frustrated.  I am much closer to 30 than I once was and can look back and accept the life I've lived thus far, what a gift. 

Textual Relations

10/13/10 - The last two weeks I've established a textual relationship with an old crush...the chemistry is amazing.  Like a volcano the vibe is casual but bubbling underneath is an emotional lava river, both of us wondering when to erupt and let it flow.  Perpetual singleness can leave you in an attention-needing - slightly desperate head-space.  I need to evaluate my motivations, my honest feelings.  Then again aren't emotions always honest in the moment, no matter what the catalyst?  I have been imagining marriage, children, my possible future with the men I've dealt with my entire life, much more seriously the past few years.  Some fantasies seem more attainable than others.  What am I willing to compromise in order to achieve my ideal family?  How honest can we both be?  And for how long?  Questions like this surface when I realize I feel a way about someone.

10/15/10 - Feelings are cool.  I've learned over the years not to let them get away from me.  It was an interesting day.  Saw my very first crush, someone I met when I was 9 years old in 4th grade and asked out on the phone (dying of embarrassment) in 5th grade, and it was like coming full circle from that shy middle-schooler to the outgoing lady I am today.  We basically caught up over lunch and it was nice to know that time puts everyone on an even playing field.  As far as my textual relations, he has definitely helped me stay focused on school by being my main male interest while being out of reach.  He remains just that, out of reach, and the realities of that distance are realer than anything.   

Fair to Middling

My older cousin always replies to my "how are you" question with "fair to middling."  I've been better than that since this summer and am carrying my contentment into the fall and new year.  I know I have a lot of untapped potential; career potential, physical potential, life potential.  I have to address all of these facets in order to claim authority over my happiness.  Being in school has really helped renew my self-esteem and has given me motivation that I want to extend into an ailing arena, my health.  I have always struggled with my horrendous eating habits and lack of discipline and self-control. When I was at my heaviest, it was less over-eating than the effects of medication, but still the lowest point in my exterior journey.  So now that I am my average weight, I really want to push past this fair to middling body and expose my true potential!  I believe I can do it, I just have to find way to reconfigure my lifestyle so that I can eat better and stay active without feeling like I'm missing out on indulgences.  It's never been easy to rationalize feeling deprived or miserable chasing someone else's standard of beauty.  What I'm realizing is that I want to be the leading lady in my own life, a concept I embraced from the movie "The Holiday."  So I've jumped the gun and decided to recommit myself to my fitness and emotional development, (weight loss and blogging) and these are my two pre-year resolutions!  2011 get ready!

Growing Older Not Wiser

My mother.  My mother is both free-thinking and liberal and the most childish, emotionally stunted person.  She asks me for $60, I give her $20 right away.  Later she says let's make it $100.  WTF.  I'm on unemployment.  I get less than $300 a week and have a $400 per month car note.  Are you serious?  Today I give her $30 more because that's all I can afford to part with.  I have a life, it takes money to socialize.  She comes in my room inquiring about the balance, irritated that I can't pony up the rest.  She sees I'm doing homework, reading at that.  She asks me if a book she brought with her is mine and I say no.  She continues to say, you must read this book, if you don't you won't be a good English teacher.  What?  I've had to deal with her manipulative, overwhelming personality my entire life.  This is why I can be so stubborn when I decide on something, because I'm hyper-defensive.  As I've matured, I've tried to be more communicative and less angry with my mother but she makes that virtually impossible.  I tell her to put the book in my closet on my bookshelf.  She does so begrudgingly.  I try to express my frustrations with her manipulative tones.  She avoids my confrontation, takes the book back and closes the door.  How am I supposed to be emotionally well-balanced with her as my model?  I feel like her love is a blessing and at once the most detrimental force in my development.  How am I to contend with her?  Is the answer as easy as separating our lives, our living situation?  I doubt it, she's my mother no matter the geography.  I doubt therapy is something she would participate in.  I can't even focus on my schoolwork right now.  I have to address this. 

All Matter

Bilal Oliver's new album Air Tight's Revenge is incredible.  I've been living off of First Born Second and his unreleased Love for Sale all of these years and finally his new music has arrived and breathed new life into me!  My favorite song "All Matter" asks, with yearning, "what is love?," answers descriptively "cool on the outside hot in the middle...you ain't even gotta try, all you gotta do is realize."  It's all matter.  That's what life boils down to.  Things composed of matter, colliding, interacting, reacting, loving.  On to that oh so elusive subject - love.  I feel like LL Cool J these days, needing love, hearing my conscience call.  Have I ever known love?  Have I ever held it in my heart and loved someone unconditionally?  I doubt it.  I doubt that romantic love is some latent ability that activates when you encounter your soul's mate.  Highly doubt it.  Instead I believe it is an accumulation of lessons you learn from significant others.  This is how you should love me.  This is not.  And so on.  My lack of relationships has me in a lurch.  Not enough lessons learned, which impedes my desire to learn with anyone new!  What a mess.  A lonesome mess.  My heart keeps telling me that I will know when someone is worth the agony, the trials of being taught to love.  So I will date with trepidation, and one day fall with my eyes wide open, into the most informative experience of my life.  Here's hoping. 

P.S.  Katie and I are going to see Bilal perform at BB King's tonight!  It's going to be an amazing day I hope I have the wherewithal to blog about it!

Goodbye Summer, Come Again!

          Haiti

My feet and South Beach

KMack and I in BK

Tomorrow is the 3rd day of my freshman year of college.  No it's not déjà vu, I'm 27 and a freshman once again :)  This summer was incredible.  There was hardly time for lazy days and lounging around, I was in the streets!  A lot of lovely evenings were spent in BK with my homies Katie and Steph, strutting through midtown, chillen in Prospect Park, drinking at the Beer Garden or Habana Outpost.  Met a nice guy out there too.  June the big deal was my Hawaii trip, July was all about Brooklyn, but August - August was international!  First my Uncle Glenn took me and my cousins to this awesome amusement park, Knoebels in PA for the 1st weekend of the month to celebrate me going back to school.  Great times!  One of the few situations where I could assume the role of a kid again!  Then the Monday I returned me and mom hit the road for...Miami!  We road-tripped and made it there Wednesday evening, with a kitten in the car!  Mom is still crazy, nothing changing there.  3 days straight I drove to South Beach and lay comatose underneath the summer sun, bronzing and basking in the fabulosity of it all, even had an impromptu lunch with a friend from Jersey.  Bought way too many beach towels but that's another story.  That Saturday, the 13th, we hopped a plane to...wait for it...haven't been there in 6 years...my mom was born there...that's right...HAITI!  It wasn't the wreckage and misery CNN would lead you to believe.  I believe that every time I visit Haiti I'm seeing it with different eyes.  I went often as a child, then at 10, 18, 21, and now at 27.  So many life experiences and so much maturity divide those landmarks.  So each-time is a first time.  Mom and I went to visit my grandma Monday and stayed till Wednesday.  The heat and mosquitoes made it a long, long, visit.  We were in Haiti 6 days total but I really want to go back next year, it's a part of me and I always feel a renewed sense of self and purpose when I come back to the states.  Best.  Summer.  Ever...so far ;)

On Schedule

I am officially back in school!  Yesterday I paid my first tuition installment and today I completed my course selection.  Last night I cleaned out my binders of notes from classes I took over 7 years ago.  It felt good, a clean slate.  My money is funny right now but I couldn't be happier.  Excited to do back to school shopping, the first day of school, learning again!  Essex County College is the best choice for my situation and I have full faith I'll have my Associates in Education within the next 2 years.  Hopefully I'll get an extension on my unemployment so I can focus on classes and transitioning back into student life.  If I have to work part-time, I've set up my schedule to be off Fri, Sat, and Sun so it can be done.  The future is getting brighter, I feel encouraged and so much love and support from family and friends, and today is the first day of the rest of my life!

Check-In

(June 14th) School is not going as smoothly as I thought.  I feel like I'm doing it all alone.  When I told my mother she didn't exude all the enthusiasm I'd anticipated.  I applied for FAFSA but I'm not eligible for a Pell Grant and I don't know how to proceed from there and tuition is due Monday for Summer Session II.  Maybe I'll have to wait till Fall just so that my money will be right.  On that same subject, I had to rob Peter to pay Paul just to make it to Hawaii to see my boy Brad get married, but I made it and it was all worth it.  Since returning from Hawaii on Tuesday I've stayed in the house.  It's cheaper, and money is gonna be tight for a while :/  It is what it is.  Unemployment is freeing and limiting all at once.  I don't know how my mood is right now.  I feel highs and lows all within the same day. 

(Today)  I'm already losing motivation for school :/  But beyond my indifference I may have to put it on the back-burner again because I just applied for a para (teacher's aide) position in NYC.  I have my fingers crossed.  I wasn't looking to return to work so soon but this would give me work experience in my field so I am taking a chance.  I've spent the last 2 weeks in the city A LOT and I'm really starting to love it, so it would be awesome to work there and have an entirely new relationship with NY.  Mom and I are finally on good terms again.  As well as I can hold animosity and resentment for her, it is emotionally exhausting and it hurts me to feel that way for long periods of time.  Our main issue is something we will have to continually work on, communication.  I berate her for excluding me from some aspects of her life but when I have certain feelings I hold them in and let them fester instead of constructively expressing myself.  One thing I have always realized is that my mother loves me unconditionally and maybe it will take me one day becoming a mom to understand how that love works.

Schooling the Youth

Like that Monster.com add, today was the day.  I applied for FAFSA and Essex County College.  Not difficult, but until today, not ready either.  Something went wrong with my application fee payment so I'll check on that in the morning, but if all goes well I'll be in classes in July.  What a long journey.  I haven't been in school since...errr um...2003.  So I'm humbled and excited because I will be on track to complete my higher education and becoming, an educator.  As much as people have tried to encourage me, my brother Brad is one of the few people that knows just how to talk to me, so that I get things done.  He's getting married next month, June 13th to be exact, in Hilo, Hawaii.  It's going to be a miracle paying for this trip and staying on top of my car note, bills, etc., but I promised and I wouldn't miss this for anything.  If he ends up getting remarried later on in life, I will NOT be in attendance, he knows this!
As far as being unemployed since March, it's a blessing.  I can remain on Unemployment, go to school full-time, and get my Associates ASAP.  I'm going to be majoring in Education, then English when I transfer to a 4-year, probably Rutgers (most of my family including my dad went to RU so why not!).  I'm highly optimistic.  And finally motivated.  Today is the day :)