Who's Fault Is it?

.....I'm not mad anymore, but earlier I was pissed. Got to thinking bout what she said and found it funny how people just love to place blame. This got to be the blamenest society ever. No one seems to wanna accept responsibility for their actions, cause our famous words are, it's not my fault. WHO'S FAULT IS IT THEN? Mama for fucking at the wrong time giving you the wrong birthday, Daddy's for leaving too soon, or staying doing something crazy to you or another sibling. Teachers for not understanding. Friends for not really listening. Boyfriend who's only concerned with his needs. Girlfriend too intent on getting you to the altar. The media's for blowing shit completely out of proportion. Who's fault is it that your life is the way it is?

.....she says to me....'um you are so good at what you do' it be a shame to see you leave yet we have to work on your developmental status...
.....i say to her,.....Im working on me, but are you working on you or just monitoring me. I'm sure I've blown that whopping 1.5% pay increase but what the hell, I've discovered it's God who supplies my needs, not the fucked up agency that I work for.

Emotional Rollercoaster.....

...listening to one of my favorite artists(Vivian Green) the words of this songdig deep inside my soul. Aint no sleep gonna grace me tonight, my mind is wide awake, going back and forth to the place where the ride began. Was I an innocent bystander just waiting in line to go on the ride of a lifetime? Or did I somehow know I was in for one hell of a journey? Part of me knew, but it was not enough for me to get outta the line. No I stay in the line and wait my turn like all the other paying customers in the 'amusement park' known as a black man's space. Is it really that important for me to ride this ride? Why do I have to stand in the heat, knowing I could go elsewhere and not go through all the drama. Watching others come off the ride feeling disoriented and about to throw up. Should have been enough to make me turn the other way, but inside each of us is this desire to exprerience something fantastic, exciting, & thrilling. It was a thrill alright, and as I sit here trying to regain my strength from this 'ride' it occurs to me that my clothes are a little disheveled and I may need to relax my mind before moving on to the next attraction.....

...he says, 'you don't know me like I thought you did.' I could cuss you out, but I don't wanna do that....I say, 'it doesn't matter anymore' inside thinking, yeah actually it does but pride won't let my pain show through.
...he thinks...'she's such a gullable bitch.....'
...she thinks....he has no idea

Now I can sleep!
Icy

Broken

Here I am, trudging this road of broken chains and blood stains, listening to the winds gently humming Harriets name. I strain my ears to listen as I vaguely hear. The sounds of police surrounding my neighborhood because someone forsook their freedom card for the right to say..."I GOTTA MAN' Was it worth it? Bruised flesh and broken bones illuminate like clouds on a stormy day. Here I am, attempting to understand, yet pushing the brush out of the way allowing the thorns to only stick pierce the air, not my soul. I have awakened out of my mental slumber, yet I still sacrifice, giving of myself so those who are the wounded might be healed. She is broken. I see her face in the faces of so many women and my heart hurts for her, my hands tremble in anger at what we do all in the name of love. Is it love? When does love become pain, and why do we desire that which can destroy our very lives and the lives of our children? I look at her, I cringe at her bruises. Tears attempt to fill my eyes, but strength allows me to hold them back as I say to her. 'Can I help you?' Knowing her pain is too deep to allow her words, I sit with her and my mind goes back to when I was her. Not all that long ago, I sat in her world just to be able to say that same anthem that she sings to us all. I will not judge. I will be a friend and try show her she can live life like it's golden, but like me, she has to want it.....

....surveying the damage, the doctor stares at me solomely. 18 stiches, a broken arm, several broken ribs, and a dead baby inside me. I remember saying, I'll never allow him to do this to me again. I am not her, I'm stronger than this pitiful woman I have become. As the surgical staff prepares to remove the dead fetus from my body, my heart decides to stop for several moments so that God can speak to my soul. 'Don't go back' he says. You are to live and sometimes death must come for life to be in its proper perspective.' I awoke in tears, belly now empty, heart broken, but I never went back. Even if in my mind I go back each day to remind myself, I have come from somewhere dark. I am not ashamed. I was broken. I now live.

In a New Place....

Today I woke up realizing I was in a new place. I had been moving from the old mentality, old ideas for sometime now, and finally I have been shifted into a complete awareness that I have control over me. I'm no longer bound to the old way, even if it was working. Truth is, it wasn't really working because it kept me from moving, keep me from living. I will not create new struggle, but I will be a part of the solution for that which has been created. I will revolutionize the mindset of the black woman and destroy a stereotype that says we cannot, willnot, and have not. I look around and see all these pitfalls that are designed to entrap us, yet my third eye is in operation and I know the Creator has given me something very powerful. The ability to choose. I choose to live, to grow, to glean and to be more than a conquerer. I write because I am free, and because I am free, I can write with determination and definition. I'm in a new place now.

Heartstrings

How difficult is it to really move on? Even when your actions reflect that you have, sometimes your heart stays in that place. In every area of my life, I've always tried to be a woman who lived as I spoke and allowed my actions to be reflective of my words. My heart or at least a part of it, is in the place where it can't move. I can feel the grains of sand slipping through that space that needs to catch up with the rest of me. Part of me feels open, yearning to be closed again. Is that what's best? I know who I am. I know who's I am, and I know that God loves me, so why the major gap in the heartstrings. I can't even fully give my heart to one because in a sense its' stuck. Not so much in the past, but just in a place where I it can't be touched. Im not lost, just need to be pulled together so I can move a lil quicker. This process isn't always easy as I'm discovering, and somehow, I've got to make it through. Got to!!!!

Committed to the process

To be in a position to want to commit to something, especially in this day and age is really awesome, especially when so many are committed to never committing. I am so grateful for the opportunity that has suddenly been presented before me. One that allows me freedom of expression and the ability to love and be loved. In a perfect world, I would have had this a long time ago, but of course prolly would have managed to do something to destroy it. Not to mention, we don't live in a perfect world. The process of getting to know someone often comes with realizations of just how twisted you are in terms of how you once viewed relationships. If he rubs my feet, I find myself thinking about other situations where my feet were hurting and some other he refused to rub them. Or when he holds me in the middle of the night, I would hear myself crying thinking about all the abuse I once had to suffer. Now since my thinking is going into a whole nother other I'm gonna close out here and pick up a little later with a more cloudier rendition of Icy's mindset for Wednesday. I will say this though, it feels so good to be committed to the process, even if you never actually been through the process in such a way as this before.

No more excuses

Hearing that voice sends me into overdrive. Used to be the coos and softness of it made me smile, now it just seems to irritate the hell out of me. Today wasn't the greatest of days in terms of folks allowing me my peace, but fortunately folks don't determine my level of sanity or the tranquility in my day. I refuse to allow anyone to destroy my peace. No more excuses, no more sad stories. I'm not even gonna place blame anymore. I'm gonna do what I have to do and be what I need to be once and for all. Sometimes words seem to have no meaning, and this seems to have become one of those days. Tomorrow will be a brighter day, it just has to be.

When it Doesn't Matter Anymore

Over the weekend it occurred to me, that everyone will not understand or be able to embrace who I am as a woman. It's ok. I'm human, and in my humaness I have the right to make mistakes and not be condemned to hell for them. I am now at the point where I refuse to allow anyone, and I mean anyone to put me in a place that is not mine. I'm a good woman, and if certain folks are too stupid to see past my shortcomings then that's on them. I won't feed into it anymore. There's too much growth to be accomplished. Someone saw my true beauty and informed me that I was selling my soul when I sit and allow others to label me unfairly. It was as though my eyes opened and I saw the world for the first time. I can smile because I have released all that yesterday tried to impose on me. I can't help it I love hard. It's just my way, but I refuse to give that love to one who only desires to punish and condemn me. I do know who I am, and I will walk in that knowledge and allow that to define me, not old shit that just doesn't matter anymore.

Knowing

Knowing is half the battle, I've heard so many times. So what's the other half? Figuring out how to break down that which you know, and make it fit with that which you wish you didn't know. Last night she walks in, says Mama, I love you, here's a few dollars for ya. Threw a couple of 20's on the table and proceeded to get clothing from her room. So quickly, she came, she smiled and then she was gone again. Damn I miss that girl. The things I don't know often make me wonder if I have in some way failed, cause I have an unsteady feeling in my spirit that comes up at the most unusual times. I know she knows I love her, and yes she feels safe, but she can't seem nor does she want to be close to me, at least not physically close. I've asked myself why, and have tried to put it in perspective that she's almost an adult now, already living her own life and doing her own thing. Whatever that is. Much like someone said to me all those years ago, it wasn't supposed to be like this, but I would never tell her anything other than I'm proud of her and know she's gonna make a success out of her life. Still sometimes just knowing that she's not a baby anymore is real tough to handle.

Conditions & Circumstances

So many sought to drive me from my reality;
this system of melodramatic innuendos that
speak to the animalistic slave mentalities that
take from the purity of a nation of people and
create deprivation. I can'tbreathe cause politicians
suck up all the air. I can't see cause white women with

over inflated breast implants walk around blocking my view.

I can't reach out and touch it cause the priest and Uncle Dode' spent
too much time lingering with fingers that were unholy so now the spot is bruised and barren. I can't hear cause one genre of music decides to impregnate itself with another while artists entangle themselves
in a confused society, while the camera continues to roll. My mama rolls over in her grave watching me watch this world while not making my mark. To
speak such poetic words but never help a hungry soul is a travesty. To sing to the glory of God, but to never tell one you love them is beyond heartless. Yet
it's a condition to a circumstance. I can't be me cause 'me' is somewhere trying to extract myself from yesterday. Holding on to my bellbottom jeans, tube tops, and a pack of now-laters that only cost a nickel. Even when all I had was
4 cent, cause the store man knew my mama and she had good credit, even though today, mine is shaky cause I spent too many years living above my means, jamming with Jimmie and nodding my head to some unknown sound that reverbrates in my ear.....Can anyone hear me? No, its another condition
to a circumstance. I can't hear myself cause my ears are full of my own crap, that I have spent years speaking to my own self-serving nature. You see me as good, but I can't even see myself. I'm trapped in a tunnel with NewYork rats that seek to eat my flesh and play hop skotch with my bones. Tossing me
aside as the number 3 trains rolls up and everybody gets on board. Where they going? Who knows? Its just another condition when men and woman are in such a hurry to go nowhere, while the street people sit with liquor induced lips traveling to far away lands all in the space of a train ride to Manhattan. Too many conditions create the saddest circumstances as babies are born with birth defects that could have been prevented, but daddy liked crack and mama liked being filled with x-tacy and men in black, who make her black and blue.
The church is a condtion within itself that operates soley on the circumstances
of confused souls seeking peace. People confused on their sexuality using the name of the Father as the getaway from a pin-stripped, belly-flopping
wishy-washy, lust born lifestyle. Pretenders that come in all shapes and sizes
constantly saying....Ima keep it real, while realness has left them in limbo
and gone on to glory. The condition is one we all must face, but the circumstances we create.

One of them days

Sometimes in a woman's life she just has one of those days. The kind where everything that can happen does. To write it all would cause me too much internalizing so I'll keep it real simple and say. Thank God its over. My mind needs rest and my body needs a fix. Maybe I need to comb the city streets like a crackhead searching for the piece of crumble-crumble, only I needs mine delivered a certain way. Hard core and raw. Oh well, time for a bath, some candles and some luxurious words to take me away. Almost like calgon but not quite. Enough said.

Waching Candle wax

Drip drip, starts out wet,
ends up dry
stops suddenly after making its way down
a set path, making me wonder why I lit the
candle in the first place.....no light, no disappointment
when it stops moving!

Icy

Simple Flowosophy

I'm defined not by who's by my side, nor by any man's impression of what I used to be. but I'm defined by how my 'know' links up with my 'do. Whenever I lose sight of this I simply remind myself that I can't get past anything when my own feet are blocking the way. Feets don't fail me now.

No Moet, no Alize, but I'm high as hell

Eva been so open you couldn't see straight? I have, and damn its one hell of a feeling, especially when you can get their without artificial liquified inducers. I like being high off life, like the time my shawty came to me and said she loved me more than her barbies'. Damn, what's a mother to say to that? She love me more than the plastic white chic with blonde hair. I was honored. I aint got much to say today other than this 'life high' got me feeling mighty fine, and since I am fine, they just sorta go hand in hand...haha

Flowers

Today, all that happened in the past ceased to matter, all those things and concerns that once took up major residence, really now have been put in a place that can't hurt me anymore. My sould opened up and love entered in, and here I am in the midst of tulips that bud in the midst of my broken heart. No more brokedness, I must live, and love, and be, never allowing myself to stop smelling the flowers. My soul just opened up and said yes.

Icy

Side of ya neck talking

The way in which people often choose to express themselves is utta the box to me. I love it when somebody's mad at somebody else and instead of directing their comment to the person, they throw some off base shit in a group email. HAHA....I can actually laugh about that now, cause well I'm now going into my grown ass woman' stage of life and I realize how cool it is to be direct and up front about whatever. I know some folks who are scared to love, would rather walk around in unforgiving and hatred. What really gets me bout that is them the same folks gonna be blowing up they casket in day ground when not even the rats and other vile vermin refuse to eat they flesh cause even in death they so full of shit. EVEN AFTER BRO UNDERTAKER DONE DONE HIS THING. Imagine having a rep for being so full of shit that you die with shit residue still on your bones. Damn, now I'm freaking myself out. I was thinking earlier today while at work, what would it really be like if people didn't posses the ability to lie or be deceptive or evasive. Shuddering at the thought of every man I've ever been in a relationship with saying.....Yes Rhonda, I cheated on you, but it was simply because I'm an insecure asshole and one good ass pussy is just not enough for me. Or the one who like to beat the fuck outta me back in the day saying...yeah baby, I like to beat your ass, but the truth is I was abused as a child and this is really all I know, plus my daddy told me you was a wild one and I needed to keep you in check. Imagine all the people...naw Im just playing...LOL (john lenon, dude I love ya...sorta) Ok, here's the heart of what Im tryna express here. Say what you need to say, and to the person you need to say it too. I had to send out three difficulty emails within the past few weeks, and although I've never gotten a response, I see the teeterings of their anger in their posts to some fucking yahoo group. Ok, do your thang, I aint madd, well yeah I am, but fuck it, Im moving on to something else. I'm a writer and we always got real shyt to do...

Cowpuncha Out!

Vile Coercion

(music selection.....'When it hurts so bad.' Lauryn Hill)

That night of my coercion began as simple as any other, we were talking on the phone and he ask me what was I gonna do. I replied that I was gonna wash my hair and watch some t.v. He ask me to meet him at the barber shop around 9 p.m. I said ok, but of course I knew he had something up his sleeve, just didn't know what at that point. I walked across the street just before 9 and saw his car in the parking lot in front of the shop. Tupac blasting from the speakers in the wall as I walked in, his sits in his favorite chair and beckons me with his eyes. He gets up and I take his place in the chair. He takes out his clippers and begins to shape up the back of my hair. We still speak no words as his fingers begin to slowly caress my neck and shoulders. He turns the chair around and allows me to see my shape up in the mirror, and I nod my head in approval. He walks to the back room. I follow. Inside are two of his partners smoking reifa, they smile at one another. I look at him as I take the blunt from one of them as it was offered. We sit and smoke and as the high begins to take me over, two sets of hands are upon my flesh as he leaves the room looking at me with a smile. I try and express my displeasure at what is about to happen but the high has me in a place where I just don't give a damn. One dude speaks in code to the other and leaves the room and soon he and I are alone. He stands and pulls me toward him, attempting to kiss me, but I quickly move my face. I promised 'Him' that I'd never allow another to kiss my lips and I meant that.' He found this funny, and began to laugh all the while pulling my shorts from my hips. I felt nothing and everything as I heard the other two in the shop laughing and clowning about what was happening. Soon I am standing before him naked and he begins to sroke himself while watching my body in the semi-dark room. He lays me down, and without any compassion or tenderness, rams himself into like I was an animal. The high still has me on a path of not feeling what was happening, yet in my mind, way in the back corridors, I knew, pain was bubbling over but the high keep it from surfacing. Withing minutes he's done, quickly pulls up his pants, and smiles at me, then turns and leaves the room. I lie there, for about 3 minutes until the next dude comes in. He attempts to show me something and begins fondling my breasts somehow thinking this is going to heighten my arousal, yet I can't seem to do anything but stare at him and ask him to please get on with it. He turns me over and opens my ass and plunges inside making me forget about the high as pain rips through my flesh, tairing at my skin and making me bite my bottom lip. In my stubborness I refuse to scream, and this seems to anger him, making him fuck me harder. I think to myself what have I become as I submit to this inhuman treatment done all in the name of love. Within seconds, he graons and releases, and falls onto the couch, while I sink to the floor. I see the blood as it runs down my thighs and I attempt to pull myself up and crawl to the bathroom. He offers no help, just looks at me as if he suddenly realizes that I am in the room, and wonders where the other chic was that he'd just brutally fucked. After cleaning myself up and walking back out into the shop, all the fellas are standing around laughing and the one I loved walks over and hugs me, caressing me telling me how much he loves me. We sit and chill, pretending as if what just happened never happened firing up blunt after blunt and shooting the shit. At one point during the night, he even cracks a joke telling his partners that his girl, is such a hellafied fuck. They smile and act as if I'm not sitting there, high a s a kite, and that both of them did not just experience sex with me. I push it to the back of my mind even though the pain tries to bubble within me.

Later that night, I attempted to say a prayer and bile begins to rise in my throat, I push it back, and take something to help me sleep. Even in sleep I am tormented as I know that there will be other memories of what I had to do....all in the name of Love.

Icy

Dubbed as a failure

I remember almost as if it were yesterday. Hearing her voice on the phone questioning me about this third pregnancy. 'How can you do this to the family?' Not to mention you're the only girl and you shame us not once, not twice, but now a third time." Her words stung like a poison that made it's way through my arteries and rested just beneath my aorta, and as the tears formed in the back of my head, I just held the phone away from my ears as she belittled me for this latest indescretion. Two children out of wedlock, two different fathers, one who almost killed me, one who walked out after our son was born, and here I am once again pregnant, this time with no idea who the father is, yet she doesn't know that. She only knows what she sees, and what she sees is her only granddaughter has turned into a whore, a babymaking machine, a statistic who will never amount to anything. I can hear her exhasperated sighs of disgust as she tells me how things were supposed to be in my life, and how she had such hopes that I would be a doctor, a lawyer or a engineer. Tells me I could have been anything at all, but I chose a path that was destined for nothingness, all because I wanted to be loved. As she continues to speak, my mind is carried back to the beginnings of each of those relationships and how each one was supposed to be...'the one.' I wasn't supposed to have to do it over again, with another man, cause well....they each told me they loved me and that I was their whole world. I guess I was for a minute, but after reality set in, it was as though I somehow became less of a treasure and more of a pain, an annoyance, a woman still carrying much of her little girl inside and all the baggage that came with it, so each man left me with something unforgettable. A child. A life to carry on his legacy, but never the love and dedication that should come with that gift. She asks me a question and I gulp back my pain to tell her, that I don't need anything, That I can take care of this baby, just as I have been taking care of the other two. I was blessed to have a good job, a nice home, a new car, but in her eyes and the eyes of so many, I was still dubbed as a failure. The baby began fluttering inside me, letting me know that it was time to stop her from hurting me with her words because she was upsetting my little one. I opened my mouth to speak and my heart seemed to break as I told her, 'Im sorry Ma, I can't listen to this anymore, no disrepect, but I have to hang up now.' As I slowly put the phone in the cradle I could still hear her shouts bellowing through the phone line....'see you aint nothing, got all them damn kids and now you done lost respect for your elders, no wonder none of them niggas wanna be with you. Breathing deeply I hang up the phone and sat motionless in the chair for what seemed like hours, unable to think, unable to breathe, unable to speak. Just sat, accepting the fact that I'd been dubbed, labeled by my closest relative as nothing, simply because I wanted love.
I surpassed my stages of failures with successes, and I embrace those who continue to label me simply because I had such a determination to have a specific kind of life, I never found that life, but what I did obtain, was three beautiful children who love me more than life itself. They are now my life, and everytime I look at them, I realize that that word failure shouldn't even be a part of my vocabulary....yet I remain dubbed.

Icy

Revelations

Today he drops a bomb. I thought I would be shocked but actually I wasn't. Thought I was gonna be all giddy and started rambling on as women do sometimes when they get incredible information, but I was cool as a cucumber, and it was so easy cause well, I realize that knowing is really half the battle. The other half is acceptance, patience and the ability to not allow society to determine who or what is good or not good. I've passed that stage with flying colors so now I can embrace the beauty of all life holds and envelop all that's about to come my way. Gotta go back and check out those images again, just to make sure I wasn't tripping....lol (inside joke)

Figuring out the unfigurable

Had a revelation today. What if I'm really brilliant and all the grossly intellectual and intelligent people of this world are really actually stupid? What if my theory's on life and love are true and the bovine I read in magazines and other publications are really lies. Like the other day, I read somewhere that relationships that have 'openess' are more likely to succeed that Monogomous ones. Who in the hell did the case studies and came up with that lil tad bit of bullshit had me scanning my mind for an appropriate comment. I've discovered that people are much like machines, they work until the warranty runs out, then they break down. Especially, no I'm not gonna say one of those overtly sexists comments cause well, it's Sunday and I'm being nice. Not to mention that would give credance to the fact that women run off at the mouth, and I refuse to be anything other than the exception to the rule. I realize now that sometimes being me is a task within itself, but I'm so attune to the nature and likeness of others that it's just cool watching stuff unfold. One of these days, I'll be able to writie it in a way that makes sense to all, but until then, I'll just be content to know that I've figured it out.