Tag Archives: Culture

In Search of Leadership

06 Monday Apr 2020

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Imbalanced lives and circumstances
Adversarial communications based on fallacy laden rhetoric
To ridicule
To evade
To incense
To ostracize
A collectivized canon
Too familiar
Too historical
Too avoided
Are those words that current actions are challenging most to hear and discuss
Colin nor Jim nor Muhammad nor all of the others in sports should be viewed through a planter’s lens
As physical labor incapable of formulating coherent thoughts and meaningful actions
Yet, the lens that has framed how a nation sees one another remains avoided like the plague.
All of this frames the context for what is most needed and missing at present
In search of leadership
Cannot start from a position of myopia
Skewed by self-interest at the expense of common decency and compassion
In search of leadership
Cannot start with fragmented politics nor oligarchical capitalism
Unfortunately, our search for leadership ended with 44 and hopefully will be reinstated by 46…

She Calls

24 Tuesday Apr 2018

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Silently beckoning movement forward
In fragmented steps
Destined to affect change
Tears radiate from sorrow
Entrenched in years of becoming
Or the denial thereof
As “American” as the fallacy of 1776
The ideal institution of indoctrination and subjugation
Of multiple differences who either were forced or willingly relented their uniqueness
Heritage
Language
Selfhood
Be mindful of the intoxicating effect of professed freedom
As it often renders us more dependent on the system outside of ourselves
Pawns on an uneven chess board
Without the benefit of a queen or rooks…
She has called for generations
Yet remains truly unheard
Through an unjust social and economic structure
An educational system of oppression and ideology
She calls yet remains unheard
She remains blinded by a misconceived belief in equality and hope
She desires and deserves as those who fed her ideals and coffers
She calls
She embodies
Yet does not ensure what she is believed to personify most
Freedom…

Bipolar Nation

18 Sunday Jun 2017

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Civil unrest
Civil disobedience
Calls for subordination
Calls for enforcement of divisive ideologies of othering
Lives in turmoil as fear blankets them
ICE agents knocking on doors
Rounding up breathing, living, loving beings as if they were cattle being led to slaughter
Mothers and fathers separated from their children
Families in disarray as if they were being auctioned off for Southern plantations
For a simplified prescription for a complex circumstance
The hypocrisy of the time is one of major concern
Those who celebrate their ancestors’ arrival on such places as Ellis Island
Seem to not recognize that they too were from legacies of foreigners
Yet the romanticism ends quicker than it really began as this has been forgotten
We want them invisible to our lives unless they are speaking “our language”
Obeying our laws which we ourselves often abuse or ignore
Cooking our food
Washing our clothes
Making our beds when we travel
Manicuring our lawns
An underlying principle of the “American Way”
Exploitation of laborers in the form of free or significantly reduced labor
Voiceless
Faceless
Humanless
A nation is again putting those who are different on notice
Pray like us
Believe in our God
Believe in our Way
Concede your history and beliefs for a better way
A way made in “America”
Bipolar Nation
Should be our new anthem
For we have continually practiced a policy of forcing either or outcomes
Whether it was 1776
Or during the antebellum period
During the times of McCarthy and his hunt for Communists
We remain steadfast in being the obstacle in our own way
Bipolar nation
Either you have or you do not
That includes education, financial freedom, and health care
Yet we continue to look the other way until our hatred of others spills on our doorsteps
Our rhetoric of violence to not only those beyond our boundaries but those who reside within is disheartening
If you speak too sharply you may find yourself in the reach of the tentacles of the “Patriot Act”
More so like yelling “fire” in a crowded movie theatre
You are labeling yourself as if you wore a scarlet letter or Star of David
Bipolar nation
We are who we’ve always been yet most do not want to see
A nation whose fractured past prevents us from un-fracturing our present and future…

In Hopes of Tomorrow

04 Sunday Jun 2017

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Testimonials provide snapshots into the hearts and minds of the deliverer
Yet listeners translate those messages through tempered receptors
Constructing organic truths
Privileging their distinct sensibilities
Progressivism, liberalism, moderatism, or conservativism
Frame the lenses
socially accepted or recognized
Furthering the national pastime of divisiveness
Found morally
Religiously
Intellectually
Sexually
Economically
Racially
Throughout the landscape
Forefathers are perpetually propagated without further interrogation of their imperfections as founders of a more perfect union
A union of enslavement
Classism
Patriarchy
Reservational warfare
A more perfect union that applauds systematic hate and oppression
The birth of a nation of, for, and by the people
is idealistically my hope and wish for the future inhabitants
Yet, a harsh reality exists of
Wall building
Segregation
Exclusion
Gerrymandering
Victim-blaming
Selfishness
1% has become synonymous with what it has always been
A form of tyranny that ironically is fit for a king
Yet, this is a nation without monarchies
Without caste systems
Without true democracy
Incompleteness is an unfortunate present reality where
Love is not equally recognized
Cultures are not equally recognized
Languages are not equally recognized
Opportunities are not fully possible
In hopes of tomorrow
We must truly address the dispair of today…

To Capture a Heartbeat

04 Sunday Jun 2017

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Transfixed with fleeting thoughts and question marks
Regulated to internalized skeletons, buried deep
Our pride can become our greatest asset while simultaneously being an equivalent liability
Each guided step leads us to a conclusion that we often deny
To be encapsulated
Enchanted
Captivated
At the mercy of another
Flesh and bone
Mind and spirit
Forbodes many complexities for which we place our wounded, vulnerable selves
With each rhythmic melody or sorrow song
We forge ourselves ahead in the imaginations of our captor
The one who garners all that we seek to embody
We yield in inopportune times forfeiting what fuels our agency
Self worth is not defined by the whims of others but by our willingness to become what our hearts and minds imagine
In spite of all obstacles, we pursue a destiny beyond the horizon
With each step we take based on our belief in our dreams
We persevere
We fight
We challenge
We remember
And we forget
Yet through all of these things we never forsake what beats within our breasts
For if we do,
We have allowed what’s most dear to us to be captured by those deemed unworthy
Our heartbeat…

Assail

18 Saturday Feb 2017

Posted by in Poetry, Uncategorized

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A festive congregation of diverse forms
Gathered in joy and celebration
Unknowingly targeted for reasons
Subjectively debated and/or ignored
The setting places those who truly
Seek to be advocates and allies
In perilous conundrums
Scared hearts and bodies
Others cold and riddled
Propaganda is the last thing needed
Or wanted to be heard
By a family, lover, and/or friend of anyone
Who was assailed
Violated
Traumatized
Or even scapegoated
Identities fractured by incomplete
Or politicized objectives
The absolute truth may never truly be known
Yet we can concretely deduce
There are no true winners if all of us
Truly embrace our humanity
Advocacy means we share our voices with those
Who oppression continues to work to mute
Advocacy means not playing the victim-blaming game
That often becomes the means of historical erasure
With each last breath or aching wound
Whether physical or emotional
We have all lost and are under assail
Race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and culture among other aspects of our humanity
Have been further eroded
Orlando is just one of many examples of the
Detrimental effects of hate no matter the rationale
Love is not the solution when it is cloaked in complacency and inaction that shuns levels of sacrifice
Until each breath inhales this unalterable truth
There is no true we, yet the current national, societal, and political stances
Empower an assailant that has historically mutated
Each second, minute, hour, day, year, decade, and century
Known as the “American” F
Fear…

Timorous Island

29 Sunday Jan 2017

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Fixed in an outdated past
Where sheeted figures assailed the night
Burning lumber at the entries of those deemed inferior
A time fallacy was accepted truth to preserve a stunted status quo
One that could find a charred figure extended from a tree
We are supposedly beyond those moments within our history
Yet, as much as most continue to deny, as a nation, we have not healed
A legacy of contempt and hatred for those who are systematically “othered”
Made to disavow their identity and personhood to stay or enter
By the embodiment of a misguided arrogance
of a figurehead whose political stances should upset most’s sensibilities.
We are hoarders of a figmented freedom and truth as espoused.
We are fragmented factions of individuals who are forever works-in-progress towards ideals that were more exclusionary than collectivizing.
Internment camps, reservations, plantations, and forced institutionalization mark a history that is often absconded by revisionists.
As the rights of women continue to be decided by those who seek to objectify and posses them while not listening
oil continues to be placed at a premium in respect to the lives and traditions of Native Peoples.
Black lives are forever contemplated whether or not they matter.
Theoretical boarders are being replaced by executive orders and cowardly Congressional puppets.
Reclamation of antebellum doctrines and ideologies reignite divisions reminiscent of the North vs. South.
Those who love the same sex are denied all or many aspects of their civility because of debatable rules and rationales.
Allies are being made into enemies.
Neighbors are disrespected while simultaneously depended upon for their labor.
The continued poaching of a fragile morality is what remains.
Silence and pre-war isolationism didn’t work then and won’t work now.
While an audacity of hope was an idealistic battlecry
we are left with an undeniable truth on this metaphorical timorous island…

From Beyond the Prism

16 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by in Identity Politics, Poetry, Racialization Impacts, Uncategorized

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Captivating in ways that are detrimental
Far fetched and historically incomplete
Figments of others’ imaginations
Yet fundamentally an ascribed reality
Fear has reintroduced itself as fictive kin
Predating hands being raised
Votes being denied
Necks being roped
Bodies being burned
Left to be
To rot
To never become because many viewed us as never complete in the first place
Or maybe the 3/5 place
As compromise often happens to us but not for us
From beyond the prism
We are in a land that still finds ways to question our humanity
Personhood
Sense of self-actualization
Young boys and grown men recognize that Predator’s sights are historically locked on them
Young girls and grown women are both recipients and protectors of generations of young people who are precious gems even when a society seeks to denigrate them
As history tells us…
when not found in the history books of revisionist dehumanizers
whose fear of those who have been “othered” continues to permeate
The pores of a nation as many revisit its birth within theaters
The sweat off one’s brow from determination and a false belief of Meritocracy
Leaves much to be desired for those who were constitutional add-ons of the 13th, 14th, and/or 15th varieties
If we’re honest about Abe then would we really see the
Emancipation of physical bonds only to preserve psychological and economic ones can not be erased nor flipped as done by the party he’s so adamantly revered by
No donkey nor elephant seems to reach deep enough
Effectively address
Morally renounce
The effects resulting
From beyond the prism

Standing Alone

30 Saturday May 2015

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Often the challenge faced requires one to go against the grain
The question of being a leader or follower is one that faces us time and time again
Society suggests a contradictory message in which we are both isolated but viewed as a collective
We are grouped and segregated by a host of descriptors that are now the norm
Normal for whom?
Normal for what?
Normal for the maintenance of a status quo that shames, demeans, and oppresses
Any who does not meet the “eye test”
The “actions test”
The “American Patriot test”
These are very challenging times where fear has a strong grasp on the lives and realities of so many
News features and calls for fear, resonating with a collection of persons who have been taught not to question or ask
but instead to accept
How did this happen you ask?
It actually has always been,
for this country
It just depended on who you were and how you were classified.
If you were female, patriarchy ruled your world
If you were African, Asian, Irish, Indigenous, and many other identities you were relegated to inferior status or worse
This is the context in which our realities have been shaped
Our worldviews are fortified with institutionalized oppression in the forms of racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ageism, and the list continues to grow.
We are undoing our existence through the enabling and pacifying of our rights
Not the rights to oppress those who do not
Look like us
Love like us
Think like us
Speak like us
Pray like us
We are standing alone
because we are and have been taught
to be afraid to stand together…

Twists and Turns

25 Monday May 2015

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Each step that we take
amounts to a collection of the decisions that we’ve made
Each step that we take informs us and others
of the person who we are and seek to become
Yet, as we forge our destines
we are inextricably linked
To the understandings and misinterpretations of those
who serve as the world’s voyeurs
We are on display for the world to see
Our mistakes
Our successes
Our weaknesses
Our strengths
Each step that we take creates more material for others to sort through
Creating a mosaic out of our calculated footprints
Each step that we make
when thought of this manner
Can create a paralysis within us that hinders our progress
Or cause our respective gates to become hindered
There is nothing like walking through your journey with additional weights upon your shoulders
Hampered by the burdens of imperfection and idolization of false images and expectations
Each step that we make is one that has a rippling effect
One that gives others the inspiration to take their very own steps
Or on the contrary
Serves as their models for ineptness and failure
Each step that we make matters for so many unseen reasons
Each step that we make is one less that our life will have the opportunity for
So what will you do with your precious path?
How you will provide a way for those who seek to emulate your movements?
How will you decide what helps to govern yours?
With each step that we make
We reaffirm or redefine who we are meant to be in this world
Each step is precious
Each step is both singular and plural
Each step puts us on our paths full of twists and turns

Sirens Blazing

24 Sunday May 2015

Posted by in Poetry, Racialization Impacts

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Sirens blazing
Shots fired
Lives lost
Tears flowing

Sirens blazing
Shots fired
Lives lost
Tears flowing

A vicious cycle plaguing a nation full of rage
Rage that was neither emancipated in the age of Lincoln
Nor transcended with the election of Obama
In the spirit of bell hooks,
Black Looks and Killing Rage
Are still points of contingency for The Souls of Black Folk

Where are our Ida B. Wells or Sojourner Truths as the noose is replaced by the shield?
As the white sheets that supposedly aided The Birth of a Nation appear to be replaced by the “women and men in blue”
Is this a visceral reaction to a troubling time in this nation’s history?
For some, the answer will ultimately be “yes” but for others it will be more of the status quo.

A status quo response to the historic oppression and denigration of a collection of people who seem to have never received the promise of humanity
A collection of people whose bodies are riddled with emotional, physical, psychological, and visual assaults

Perceptions that continue for Africana women in the manner in which their bodies are assailed in a land of Patriarchy
Perceptions that continue as men of African descent no matter how well groomed or dressed still receive the “clench your purse” and/or “lock your door” treatment

Sirens blazing
Shots fired
Lives lost
Tears flowing

Sirens blazing
Shots fired
Lives lost
Tears flowing

Bloody streets along dilapidated buildings
Underfunded communities make for easy targets
Not solely for the spectacle of media coverage but for the many corporate and venture capitalists who will undoubtedly swoop in for bargain prices to fulfill their duties of gentrification

Bye-bye Fourth Ward AKA Freedmen’s Town in Houston, TX
Bye-bye to as many indicators of the past that cannot be revised by our Educational Agencies and elected/appointed officials who wish to promote a particular narrative

Sirens blazing
Shots fired
Lives lost
Tears flowing

Sirens blazing
Shots fired
Lives lost
Tears flowing

Are chickens coming home to roost?
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz once raised such a point
And we are still waiting for an explicit answer

Sirens
Shots
Lives
Tears…

Life’s Transitions

29 Monday Dec 2014

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No matter who we are or what we ultimately do
We face certain unifying experiences
Those that transform us in immeasurable ways
We offer different names for what these experiences mean to us
With good reason
Yet, if we are lucky
We are able to muster enough within ourselves to embrace
these moments as frequently as they happen within our lives
Life’s transitions are often extremely difficult to understand
Let alone endure
Yet, we must do so
These transitions may require letting go
Or holding on tighter
That’s the most interesting thing about it
We don’t always know what we should do when we are faced with these instances
Or dreams
That are hopefully what drive us
They provide us with the gifts that preoccupy our existences
If we are truly lucky
We even recognize when these monumental moments arise
If we are less fortunate
we learn of them after our opportunity has expired
As if it were set on the side of a milk carton
Life’s transitions are vital to our growth and development
Life’s transitions are concretely etched in the timeline that defines our imprint on Mother Earth
What a wonderful life we can have if we embrace the good and bad found within our life’s transitions
I, for one, am trying my best do this now in spite of every reason that I can devise not to
Life’s transitions are living, breathing, feeling oxymorons
They are my Rubik’s Cube that I have yet to solve…

Trails of Frustration

18 Thursday Dec 2014

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The more I have tried the harder it has seemed
To get closer to you while being me
Authenticity appears to be a staple frame of reference yet not a stapled reality
Managing perspectives to deliver catered messages is not the communiqué in which I wish to be the conveyor
Nor
Author
Trust and vulnerability are not easy to come by
Or manifest for the sake of another
Yet I continue to occupy these like Wall Street
or
Ferguson
I’m the protester
Authenticity is so much more yet so hard to achieve and/or recognize
In a world of emotional landmines that two hearts have endure constant bombardment
Yet, I still stand
as
Maya still rose
Frustration is a real emotion that seems to follow me each and every step of my journey
Whether it is from not being understood or viewed as some exotic threat
Frustration is found within a desired belief that what I deserve is out there
And waiting
And wanting the same from me
A connection
A commitment
Trust
Honesty
Frustration is in the extrapolation of complexity for the desire of simplicity
Frustration is in the unachieved yet anticipated
Frustration is found within
As I seek to gain a meaningful connection with you…

Dark & Stormy

21 Friday Nov 2014

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Dwelling within an eternal space that amasses such memories
Memories that solicit inner emotions that require
1 to harness
much from within
1 to grapple with those things that are often held true
It is essential for what we hold inside
that we yield
our willingness to acquiesce to others’ understandings and accepted values
That we challenge our own conventions
An internal status quo
We are mere subjects in others’ scripts of our realities
How does that even happen?
How did we become pawns in our own game of checkers?
As insane as that may sound
we tend to allow our realities to be
improperly depicted by others
at ever turn or opportunity
As linear as we wish our lives to be
We are not that simplistic
We are as complex as we allow ourselves to discover
Yet, most of us are hindered
Hindered by our fears of what we may discover
Or what others have reconfigured our figured worlds to be
How did we enter into this darkness
the storm that presents itself?
For us to embark upon
Where is our beacon?
Where is our North Star?
Where is our means to an end?
Amid the darkness
we are challenged to find our light
Not from the presence of others
but from that which we find within
The storm is not over as many evangelically love to espouse
It has only just begun
For we are called to put ourselves on trail
Unlike the likes of Ferguson…

You

19 Wednesday Nov 2014

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The beauty of discovery is one that places us in varied states
Some of us deny ourselves the opportunity that is presented to us
Others embrace it for all that the experience offers
Why do we find ourselves limiting our opportunities between two contrasting views
that ultimately limit all of our possibilities?
We “either or” ourselves into complacency
Instead of “both anding” ourselves into our greatness
The likelihood of us ever achieving this feat is not found in
meritocratic principles that perpetuate us failing to achieve our best selves
Instead, we stunt our growth based on the perceptions of others who often are unaware of our hidden gems
Why have we become accustomed to settling for less than what we deserve?
Or even more so, why do we stunt our own promise by following the trumpeting of someone else’s tune?
We are fragile in this way?
Or better yet
malleable to the whims of those whose thoughts we’ve come to privilege
over our very own?
Don’t take the words on this page as absolute
for if you did
then you are perpetuating the process in which this was written to question
You have to reconnect with your intellect
Your inner curiosity
Your inner self
You have to be the driver of the knowledge that you have taken in within a critical framework
No longer accepting the quo that is so often the status
found within
The conversations that we have
The communities in which we live
The dreams that we allow to be so easily squandered
You can no longer just be the best you that you currently know
You have be best you
that you have YET to fully comprehend…