check her ouuuut..

[I post a lot of Jasmine Mans' poetry & spoken word on my blog. Finally, she's coming out with a book of poetry. Everyone should check it out. I'd imagine it would be amazing!]

amiri baraka

listen. understand. internalize.

Absence by Pablo Neruda

I have scarcely left you
When you go in me, crystalline,
Or trembling,
Or uneasy, wounded by me
Or overwhelmed with love, as
when your eyes
Close upon the gift of life
That without cease I give you.

My love,
We have found each other
Thirsty and we have
Drunk up all the water and the
Blood,
We found each other
Hungry
And we bit each other
As fire bites,
Leaving wounds in us.

But wait for me,
Keep for me your sweetness.
I will give you too
A rose. 

mm mm mmm;

spoken word .

"lament over love" by langston hughes

I hope my child'll
Never love a man.
I say I hope my child'll
Nevr love a man.
Love can hurt you
Mo'n anything else can.



I'm goin' down to the river
An' I ain't goin there to swim.
My true love's left me
And I'm goin' there to think about him.


Love is like whiskey,
Love is like red, red wine.
Love is like whiskey,
Like sweet red wine.
If you want to be happy
You got to love all the time.

I'm goin' up in a tower
Tall as a tree is tall,
Up in a tower
Tall as a tree is tall.
Gonna think about my man-
And let my fool-self fall.

hairs standing still .

WORD.

OH MY GOD.

LISTEN, do not press play until you have 6 minutes and 42 seconds of free time. it's worth it.

repost: 4/2010

WHAT THE MIRROR SAID

listen,
you a wonder,
you a city
of a woman.
you got a geography
of your own.
listen,
somebody need a map
to understand you.
somebody need directions
to move around you.
listen,
woman,
you not a noplace

anonymous
girl;
mister with his hands on you
he got his hands on
some
damn
body!

HOMAGE TO MY HIPS

these hips are big hips.

they need space to

move around in.

they don't fit into little

petty places. these hips

are free hips.

they don't like to be held back.

these hips have never been enslaved.

they go where they want to go

they do what they want to do.

these hips are mighty hips.

these hips are magic hips.

i have known them

to put a spell on a man and

spin him like a top!

for all the 'good guys' who think they'll finish last ...

thank you jihad .

"Gate C22" by Ellen Bass


At gate C22 in the Portland airport
a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed
a woman arriving from Orange County.
They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after
the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons
and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,
the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other
like he'd just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,
like she'd been released at last from ICU, snapped
out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down
from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.



Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.
She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine
her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish
kisses like the ocean in the early morning,
the way it gathers and swells, sucking
each rock under, swallowing it
again and again. We were all watching--
passengers waiting for the delayed flight
to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,
the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling
sunglasses. We couldn't look away. We could
taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.



But the best part was his face. When he drew back
and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost
as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,
as your mother must have looked at you, no matter
what happened after--if she beat you or left you or
you're lonely now--you once lay there, the vernix
not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you
as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth.
The whole wing of the airport hushed,
all of us trying to slip into that woman's middle-aged body,
her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses,
little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

standing nude in midnight.

i remember when life blushed from simplicity's smile.
but midnight did not exist back then.

midnight is the breeding ground for festering fears of who we are , at the cold core.

'round the bare hands of the clock - when it grips the 12th hour- actualization caresses my neck and squeezes brutally all the same.

midnight has tickled the soul since infancy-

luring us into the temptation of night-

the depths of possibility, unwarranted truth.

Her lips are painted black and blue, leaving the mind with depression kisses.

She has sultry, cascading locks - heavy with dread.

nights missing paramours or those who are dead;

midnight seduces insecurity out of the corners of our soul with a nude, josephine dance.
midnight's mouth births tunes of heartbreak memories singing sweet songs-

like a siren, those same symphonies will crawl into your eyes & crack the walls of water dams. 

inhibition washes the feet of midnight.

suppression is exiled during midnight.

sanity is a stranger 'round midnight.
lack of light scrapes off our calm, bearing blood and flesh - leaving the soul susceptible to the mind.

there.

in the calm quiet darkness of night, we are left believing that we are the worst versions of ourselves.

midnight, with her legs spread and pushing - births the things that scurry in the light like roaches ...

Oh, Langston .

"Island"

Wave of sorrow,
Do not drown me now:

I see the island
Still ahead somehow.

I see the island
And its sands are fair:

Wave of sorrow,
take me there.


"Advice"

Folks, I'm telling you,
birthing is hard
and dying is mean,
so get yourself
a litte loving
in between .


- youre welcome :)

death to bubblegum poems .

"They Went Home" by Maya Angelou

They went home and told their wives,
that never once in all their lives,
had they known a girl like me,
But... They went home.

They said my house was licking clean,
no word I spoke was ever mean,
I had an air of mystery,
But... They went home.

My praises were on all men's lips,
they liked my smile, my wit, my hips,
they'd spend one night, or two or three.
But...

signed, may 2008 .

do heathens and heaven ever meet at juxtaposed crossroads ?
should his horns cut me like this ? passionately, like a feign .
causing my heart to race & pace - as they run across my wrists .
oppressed by his lies, they suppress my revolutionary fists .

ripped from the girl i used to be, introduced to the new me .
but the latter classic still puts in work;
slaving over this barren land we call 'us' . pulling heavy bricks & sinking sand .
mixing the cement like a savage that's hidden within me .
trying to guard myself before you set it FREE.

my wings are pierced and now i bleed you .
i cant fly alone now;
i hate how we're here, but love how you need me -
two handicapped doves that want to fly free ...
you became the air that pushes my arms up & away,
but the same gust that weakened me & led me astray .

- written my senior year of high school . my first sign that writing was made for me .

famous for a reason . ♥

"HABITS" by Nikki Giovanni

i haven't written a poem in so long
i may have forgotten how
unless writing a poem
is like riding a bike
or swimming upstream
or loving you
it may be a habit that once aquired
is never lost

but you say i'm foolish
of course you love me
but being loved of course
is not the same as being loved because
or being loved despite
or being loved

if you love me why
do i feel so lonely
and why do i always wake up alone
and why am i practicing
not having you to love
i never loved you that way

'yellow mango tears' by stevi renee

"yellow mango tears"

the sun kissed the nape of my neck
as it cracked the horizon .
i gazed at my service-void cell:
i wish i had verizon .

'cause you probably called in the crevice of night
& i subconsciously ignored the ring
i'd rather ignore the melody of fated plight
"la dee dah dee dah ... not quite right," it sings .

i tighten my legs & twist my waist -
it's routine to stretch my ligaments .
& then you clog my cerebral space;
such a religious sentiment .

i try to shake the mural of misgiving off like glitter .
but they say glitter's the herpes of arts & crafts ...
in the meantime, i'm my own babysitter;
i'll tip toe in your smile, squints & laughs .

=)

"Smart" by Shel Silverstein

My dad gave me one dollar bill
'Cause I'm his smartest son,
And I swapped it for two shiny quarters
'Cause two is more than one!

And then i took the quarters
And traded them to Lou
For three dimes-i guess he don't know
that three is more than two!

Just then, along came old blind Bates
And just 'cause he can't see
He gave me four nickels for my three dimes,
And four is more than three!

And i took the nickels to Hiram Coombs
Down at the seed-feed store,
and the fool gave me five pennies for them,
And five is more than four!

And then i went and showed my dad,
and he got red in the cheeks
And closed his eyes and shook his head-
Too proud of me to speak!