To: being seen and hesitating to be heard.

So if it's one thing I've learnt about being here is how to assert my femininity. Especially with regard to poetry circles and circuits and cynics. I looked at this video a friend had posted a few days ago, and it really made me think of how I had shied away from the idea of just trusting my own abilities and taking control of a situation.

For instance...whenever there had been a (non-smiths of course) cypher of sorts or just music and people just jumping on, back in T'dad, there would hardly be any women in there, neither on the music, nor the voice....with the exception of some background harmonies...myself included.

An instance happened a few weeks ago that sort of woke me to this habit and how it had affected me. We were in Best Buy after a show with Carvens Lissant and Joshua Bennett (these men are awesome btw, you should check their work out on the tube) and they had found this guy getting down on some keys in the piano section of the store.

When I went over they started vibesin on it, then two shelves away, another man comes in with a bass guitar, carvens starts singing, joshua spits and then goes, "...Jump in Arielle" and almost instantly, without even thinking about it, I declined. The idea of this has haunted me since then. What is it that I'm so afraid of? That night I conjured in my head, every possible justification for why I reacted that way. None of them really make sense.

We are afraid to sit at the table. We are afraid of being fearless. Back home it was because we were waiting to be asked, nicely, to feel like we were not imposing, to feel that sense of inclusion. fluff it. Time for that is gone too.

On to being the woman my foremothers were praying for.

wha it is he jus say..?

You don’t have what it takes to burst life seeds from cotton fibres in your stomach, your womb was not created to hold in the rivers of the tears of continental Africans, nor house the heartbeat of nations marching in your blood, your fluids were never meant to flood the passages of any element more than oxygen, you were never the instrument of creation that God planted life in, so spin this water-wheel to nourish the river, damaging everything from maiden to mother-giver, from laden tree to new-born delivered, where the only thing that would suckle you are leeches that consider your flesh a feast in their fix of an ego to leak their eagle-type pride from. Life does not derive from you and you should stay quietly in your place, assuming you remember where that is.

I promise I am not a man-hater...just that some things inspire me more than others...

none.

Directing the needle of my hopes towards a true north star,
The dart in my pinned flesh,
Supporting anticipated danger
In living as we do.
A dagger hinges on reality and displaces truth
And a sword shall pierce her heart..
I cyah recruit anymore salt-water to fall from meh sky
The storehouse empty and de whole dam dry,
The whole damn thing she lie about..
South is to sink and suppress and drown
My own fears of somebody to love
A non-requirement?
Anon requirement?
Unrequited?
A nun being quieted in the fading of a call she once expected to be the only voice…

In unsolid stare to heaven, my forehead rests alongside hers, temple to temple. and the ruffles on this bed-sheet might only resemble snow angels without their wings, but she might think that my fingers in her hair is the most relaxing thing for today, leaking some of her hurts away for a while, and her short wild hair never bands together, faulting the feeling of rain stabbing the ends of my fingers, goodness, she is so beautiful a human, and quietly she tries to listen to me breathe so she could mimic my patterns, perching ear against nostril, inhaling her essence, I swear she smells like the rain trying to brew the nectar of earth’s flowers, but the scorch of her sun only makes her blossom brighter, and true to form she was born a fighter, and this is one war where she relishes in a victory that I cannot understand yet.

My Black Sister

This is an oooollllldddd piece that I wrote back in 05' and I just came across it in some net folder.

My Black Sister

Raising a new generation, haunted by an environment of uncertainty, we don’t know what it was that we lost, but now we’re indebted and covering all costs, all the morals we lost to the wind, that got scattered and didn’t return again, forgotten in the currents of the Middle Passage, but it was the under deck, in retrospect, our little lives they tried to salvage, our great souls they nurtured and fed what was taken away from us, we never submitted, never did they have our trust, broken still, but trying to mend, but alike particles disintegrate in their ends, the light that beams and transcends forth to this terrestrial plane, ripped us apart, losing identity gave us, their names, made us part of their New World games, this might look like 1750, but today it’s still the same. I saw this sister left behind on the cold concrete ground, clothes torn, spirit lynched, too crippled to find breath to make a sound, and now I help her to mend what my crooked brothers stole, deprived her of peace, love, robbed her of her soul. She gave into it because the situation was hopeless, she put up no fight, no resistance, and now she sounds so soul-less. Too many sisters I know who suffered the same fate…and they fall, Too many times that my sisters get this far…and they fall. Diabolic possession, terms and conditions, liberal livity or ignorant captivity, too many sisters make it here…and they fall.

-Arielle John

copyright 2005

Woman

This poem has been a favourite of mine for a while now...

Woman

she wanted to be a blade

of grass amid the fields

but he wouldn't agree

to be the dandelion

she wanted to be a robin singing

through the leaves

but he refused to be

her tree

she spun herself into a web

and looking for a place to rest

turned to him

but he stood straight

declining to be her corner

she tried to be a book

but he wouldn't read

she turned herself into a bulb

but he wouldn't let her grow

she decided to become

a woman

and though he still refused

to be a man

she decided it was all

right.

-Nikki Giovanni