When I think of how life used to be,
how I always hid in the shadows,
letting it obscure my existence.
I look at everything you have given me:
love and hope, not just for us,
but for the future as well.
I feel like I’m dancing in the clouds
I must confess, each day I wake
I fear that this has all been but a dream;
then I realize you’re still with me.
I know I have been truly blessed
for everything you have given me,
for the love and tenderness you show,
that I have not been left behind.
Every night I pray
that you will never leave me.
I do my best with every breath
that is left within my body and soul
to be worthy of your love.
For My Love….

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.

My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper — bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives — to teach geometry, or ring up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.

All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.

One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.

The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind — our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.

Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across cafe tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,
buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me — in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.

One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.

One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.

We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always — home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country — all of us –
facing the stars
hope — a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it — together

]]> http://literatimag.com/?feed=rss2&p=164 0 http://literatimag.com/?p=156 http://literatimag.com/?p=156#comments Wed, 03 Apr 2013 09:00:00 +0000 literatimag http://literatimag.com/?p=156  

Nikki-Rosa     By Nikki Giovanni

childhood remembrances are always a drag

if you’re Black

you always remember things like living in Woodlawn

with no inside toilet

and if you become famous or something

they never talk about how happy you were to have

your mother

all to yourself and

how good the water felt when you got your bath

from one of those

big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in

and somehow when you talk about home

it never gets across how much you

understood their feelings

as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale

and even though you remember

your biographers never understand

your father’s pain as he sells his stock

and another dream goes

And though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that

concerns you

and though they fought a lot

it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference

but only that everybody is together and you

and your sister have happy birthdays and very good

Christmases

and I really hope no white person ever has cause

to write about me

because they never understand

Black love is Black wealth and they’ll

probably talk about my hard childhood

and never understand that

all the while I was quite happy

Stolen Moments

So far apart

But not in the mind

It never mattered there was a time between us

Somehow it was like

A message

And that’s how I knew it was right

The stars of the night

Told me

Twinkling so brightly.

Had to hide

So discretely

But couldn’t stop

The shinning

In the eyes

When I think if you

In the mouth

When I speak of you

In the hands when I touch you

Remembering the days

When our love began

Thinking of a million ways

To escape and be with you

But reality wasn’t just you and I

It was long, draw-out days and lonely nights

Dreaming about you

I keep dreaming about you

And I’m dreaming about when you would say

Let me take you to another place

Where nothing ever seems to matter

It’s just you and me

We can take flight like a thief in the night

Stolen moments with you

Destiny

Didn’t have such a simple plan

I was just a girl

And you were a man

How could age define?

Something so divine?

Can this even be real or just exist in the mind?

Dreaming about you

I keep dreaming about you

And I’m dreaming about when you would say

Let me take you to another place

Where nothing ever seems to matter

It’s just you and me

We can take flight like a thief in the night

The poem featured above was taken from the book Tears from water:songbook pf poems & lyrics.. If you don’t have it you can get it  below. Also after the jump check out a live rendition of this poem.

Enter the mind of Joe Budden. That’s the title of his lyric book and No Love Lost is a trip through the conflicted and complicated mind of Joesph Budden. The tour through his No Love Lost land is co-narrated by a few other artists including Kirko Bangz, Lil Wayne, Tank, Wiz Khalifa, French Montana, Emanny and his Slaughterhouse brethren.

The interesting thing about this tour is where it starts with “Top of the World” featuring KirkoBangz. Kirko is someone I‘ve heard of, but never listened to, he carried himself well on this track. The hard hitting beats allowed Joey to flex his lyrical muscles with lines like “Ya’ll wanted me to exercise my demons; I bought them to the gym with me.” Lil Wayne & Tank join in on “She Don’t Put It Down Like You” which is the official first single and is an instant strip club song from the booty bumping beat, to the lyrics “baby girl work it like a pro move it faster/with the lights off and the lights on like I’m sleeping with the clapper” and even the title. The beauty and most endearing quality of Joey and his music is that he’s clearly conflicted, complicated, introspective, deep, and thoughtful an example is on “You and I” he raps “we both took a chance on one another and it was worth the risk” speaking about taking a chance on new love and realizing it was with it.

He saves his most in-depth songs for the middle of the tour with “Castles”, “All In My Head”, and “Skeletons”, which are all songs with haunting beats, revealing back stories contained in the deep lyrics, taking us through the depraved mind of a recovering addict who has depressive and self-destructive tendencies.” Castles” is a story of self as he takes a moment to look into the mirror and speak about himself boasting lines such as “If you know me like you claim, how could disregard my logic. You know I cut my arm short and put my heart in my pocket.”  “All In My Head” is another reflective narrative song with lines like “Got to recognize my maturity, got to see that I’m grown. Letting my skeletons out the closet so I won’t be alone.”  This tour has been complicated in the walk but full of surprises.

As the tour enters the last leg we get to see Joe’s private rooms where threesomes, role playing, and helping a woman to cheat seem to be all norm. Turning the corner, we have Joey showing us he wants to “Runaway” and have “My Time”. Listening to this album is like being on a tour, reading a story, or drifting off on an imaginative memory. Try being open, and take anything you knew before about Joe Budden and toss it out, and I guarantee you’ll enjoy the tour into his mind, I know I did. The only mild displeasure I had was with some of the narrators who couldn’t claim their space in the room they were occupying with Joey. In the end though, Joe sums this album up in his own words “I’ve crossed a lot of paths, done a lot of wrong, for anyone I may have encountered whether you feel good, bad, or indifferent, how ever you feel as long as you feel something. Just know on my end there is No Love Lost in the relationship.” Giving this a solid 4.5

Rating:

Don’t even bother.
You might want to add a couple of songs to your playlists, but not the whole album.
You might want to go on itunes and buy this.
Buy this! Now go tell your friends to buy it too!
So what the hell are you waiting for? Get this!

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I wish I could be the girl that gets to meet you next.”

“What? Why.”

She didn’t answer. She looked into the sun as if into the fire that would ultimately consume us.

“Babe. What’s going on?”

“…Oh, God.”
Read “Summer’s Sighting Red and Orange and So Am I”

Bio:

Jon Cor is a twenty-something year old living himself to death in Toronto, ON. He intends to publish a short story collection called A Murder of Prose, as well as his first novel, In Heat. When not attending to his priorities as a writer he moonlights as an actor (www.IMDb.com), martial artist/acrobat, occasional musician and – with great relief – no longer as a Ford model.
His work has been published in Black Heart Magazine, Citizen Brooklyn (CBK), Mad Swirl and Haggard & Halloo to name a few plus one.
Feel free to contact him via Twitter (@Jon_Cor) or his new website (www.joncorofficial.com) where even his blog, Here Be Lions, likes to hangout.