I am trying very hard to listen to my discomfort and the messages it's sending me. 

Here's what I think I've learned so far. 

Here's a poem that's a metaphor. 

Image credit: Pixabay

Here's a summertime  poem that I wrote in the same format as the poem "In Just" by E. E. Cummings about spring. You can read it here from the Poetry Foundation.  

Image credit: Alexas Fotos on Pixabay

I think I mentioned that my husband and I cancelled our planned cruise to the Mediterranean due to a pandemic. As a consolation, we booked a shorter, closer, remoter vacation up north so I took a week off. from everything. Originally, I was going to keep posting my poems daily and then I felt a twinge of indignation and resentment. Resenting poetry? Me? Ok. It's been a tough year. So. I decided to take a week off from every expectation, including ones I put on myself, my poetry. Tomorrow, I'll be back at it and thank so much, if you're following along and wondering what happened. It was me. On a consolation vacation. 

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Am I talking to a wall? 

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Elevating luv_exposition on Instagram whose Juneteenth poem holds the same flavor of frustration those enslaved Texans must have felt hundreds of years ago. 

It takes effort to be informed. 

Another double for today. Thinking about statue removal and why it seems such a big deal to folks. Here's an article by Camille Squires if you want to know where it's happening. Here's an article by Anne C. Bailey if you want to know why it happened in 2018 (and it's happening again). Here's an article from Betty Lyons for why statues that commemorate people who have done atrocious actions against fellow humans should come down. 

Fuller and Harsch. I wish they were a fun crime solving duo. They aren't. I'm going to be tuning in and I'm grateful for those who made the time to call for justice. 

Just processing through poetry:

Let's do the work.

This is mostly a message to myself. 

Sometimes we do. Renew to rejoin. 

I wrote Challenged yesterday and Red Cheeks today. None of us are going to grow if we don't challenge the way we currently think and operate. 

Tonight I amplify M. G. Hughes who happens to have a book coming out soon.  Her poetry is poignant and evocative. I love  her Ode to Natural Things. 

Tonight I'm amplifying Liselle Yorke. Her poem You Should Know Why, which I could read a dozen times and learn something new every time, is a great place to start. 

Tonight, I'm amplifying Rochelle David. Their poetry is uplifting, evocative, deep, inspiring, and more. 

I'm also amplifying the many voices that are calling for justice for Breonna Taylor. Last night, I had a nightmare where a horrible, brutal, people-eating monster that looked like an angler fish was actively hunting all of us. The worst part of the nightmare was the "lure" of the monster was a cat - a cat that looked real, felt real, purred, cuddled, and was generally adorable - and it wasn't until you snatched it up for loves and cuddles that the monster would close its gnarled jaws around your body and it would be too late. 

I felt there was a message for me in the nightmare. The angler fish is racism. The cat is all the fluffy, happy things in my life that attempt to draw my attention away from the fight for equity that Black, Indigenous, People of Color, never get to look away from. The message is, if I look away from the monster, if I snatch up the cat to cuddle with all the comfortable and wonderful things in my life, I'll become the monster too- swallowed whole. 

Once I woke up, shook off the vestiges of sleep, I stepped into the shower and thoughts of Breonna entered my mind and those thoughts spun into this poem: 

Let me introduce you to Nick Courmon. He has a fantastic Instagram and a collection of his work on here. 

Tonight I want to amplify Woulna Pierre's poetry on instagram. She writes short, poignant scripts like this one here. 

Check out fantastic poetry from Kondwani Fidel. You can buy his book, Hummingbirds in the Trenches, here. 

For the next seven days, I will be silencing my voice to amplify the voices of Black poets. Today, consider learning about and reading the poetry of Alexandra Elle. You can buy her book here.