Often it is said with such desperation, there is a surge of danger- lurking, gasping in the dank air between two worlds of their’s and mine. In my world, I knew a warmth only the sun gives, where many of the saints are living elders sitting on their porches, spitting wisdom through their full cheeks.

I knew a path where the children’s’ wardrobe is “Dapper Dan” in bulletproof uniforms the lastest school dress code, so that no kids, not one are taken before their time. I knew the names of the saints’ closely watching over every child, Marry-Ann, Carla, Rosa-Marie, and June.

Ah, sweet June had come to give her peak – virtually rising with stillness in her wings, permeating summer’s fruit red with sweetness,

restoring the faintest soul, from “A raisin in the sun” to the “moonlight through trees”

winds to blow, a world so free, children so full, laughter ricocheted from belly to belly

kindness sis. Krissy

She is not a woman who has fallen into depression and dug -deeply to get out

She is not the kind of girl that was so green- life has compelled her to see God

She is not a lonely girl, sitting all alone, and not dealing with her loneliness

She is not the wannabe survivor, pretending everything is alright

She is not the little girl making mud-balls into planets without dreaming

She is not the kind of woman standing behind a man.

no, she is all of this,

conquering, conquest after conquest

visioning, chancing everything

falling and getting up

setting aside the old only to starting over

throwing out the negatives just to have

a tiny piece of her story

Kindness sis, Krissy

I could own all my ugliness

like I’d

never had to hide,

breaking through,

the dark

silhouette of the moment,

                            paying for it,

                                shoe after shoe,

                                                                                   coke bottle,

stitch waist,

nails, highlight

                               narrow butt,

     bubble butt,

             cosmetics, glow,

                    mattifying creams

I almost let the world convince me,

I needed to buy myself

right off the shelf.

after all, it                                                                                                                                         almost seemed right,

kindness sis, Krissy

Looking over my shoulder

I was 13 when poetry found me in the library

hovering over the latest beauty magazines

wondering why I couldn’t see myself

Moma’s job had just ended, we still needed money for the past due light-bill

going to church wasn’t bad, as I recall Moma gave over every last cent paying for a miracle.

In the morning the sun rose gently, helping us with another lightless day

then it was poetry and I, stride by stride,

pain and grief, blood in the middle.

  I was writing,

kindness sis. Krissy 

unsuspended, steady -unsteady

chaos steps out into the morning air, just the same as me

chaos beats at me like two fighters in the ring

pounding, adrenaline

all this time I thought the closest thing to God

was water.

I thought when God made man

God and creation- one big-fat human dance

and then I thought, one day to God is as one thousand to man

so that is to say, seven thousands years of grace

and seven thousand more, God would take to make man

seven thousand to my 39 years

of  14,244.458

sounds like unsuspended, unexpected steady, unsteady

ready even when I’m not,

one big-fat grace, kindness sis Krissy

Walking through the corridors of summer,

past the heated mist.

drifting winds – offering her sentimental feelings

feeling young,

feeling whimsical

feeling brave

feeling holy-sedated

I wished a tiny prayer upon a nation.

kindness sis Krissy

Innocence and ingenuity a double consciousness of the self” to be good and colored is to be provoked-powerful and powerless in the same passing breath. Like the air I’m breathing is so high, standing at the mercy of the auction block,

” bringing out your dead, you son of a preacher!”

that is the hunting growing in the Americas’ schoolyard

that is the devastation rotting in a message on Sunday Morning

that is the dead blackbird in a second-grade locker

that is a pipeline from school to prison

that is a massive, shooting dying to be dead

living to be dead

that is to pray…

God I know this is the next fire time

God I know, there is a rainbow to follow

God, I want to know good, not happily ever after

God I want to know the sweet bye and bye

God, may we live the- good life

and die happy

full of old age. kindness sis Krissy

Today the rain was falling fat like little birds fighting over the last crumb of bread, the tin roof clicks and clicks at me until I stop and pay attention. Watering the basil I’ve planted over the summer, refreshing the old yellow peppers still on the vine. Someone once said “water holds memory” maybe like a movie or a script waiting for the playback in the back of my head.

I was there two weeks ago sitting at a table. The conversation went something like this,

Mrs Potrho: you know, I’m thinking nonviolence didn’t do much.

me: how’s that?

Mrs. Portho: well my daughter said she had a bit of an incident, at the shopping mall where a woman ran into her or they ran into each other. Anyhow, my daughter said excuse me. To be polite and the other woman involved said “watch it you black B***ch”, now at this point my daughter said in haste, “do you want to take this outside”?

me: um, I hope she was able to walk away?

Mrs. Portho: you know – my daughter was right. It’s too late for turning the other cheek.

me: but, nonviolence is resistance in itself. It’s offering, peace, it’s offering something that the world is shouting for. That is to say, do I want justice?  Do I want the laws to change? Do I want all persons, no matter the color of skin to feel safe? Surely I do.

me: revenge only calls for more blood and more death.

After that, we changed the subject.

feel free to add your thoughts below- I’d love to hear what you’d done in this situation your Kindness sis. Krissy

When the spirits talk, they’ll call trusting the beginning of innocence, that is to say, all that is good in the world, all that the world has called good.  Beyond the prime abandonment of wanted desires, they’ll call you out of chasing your own shadows, out of stupidity,  out of wanting to be wanted.

out in the middle of sidewalk stands a two year down to his white diaper, he garbles words for spirits, he knows mama’s milk is not coming. he knows the sirens. he knows the beauty of the cold – hard cement between his feet. he plays with peekaboo in the wind, he goes inside the tiny door,

combusting watching. It takes everything in me not to pick him up, not to go next door and give him all the good I’ve ever known. kindness sis. Krissy 

Dear Love, I think I gave myself eczema, I knew I did it. my kneecaps are freezer burned,  forearms, every day a  painfully new textured,  risen tree- trunk, treasures talking, broken waters, jaws out of joint…

I think I scratched out a placed called home in the layers of my skin, gut out the first layer  never mine second, never mind the  hallucinations in the brain, in the pain, under the covers in the night, where Jesus kissed us gently on our foreheads, soft black woolly,

I think I scratched out sacred-blood, where home never had to leave, never had to say goodbye, praying to the rain, praying to round bloody drops that bleed.

dear four-year-old, small pigtail girl, don’t scratch your prayers down deep in the night

dig deeper, to reach heaven, dig deeper, you never left Eden, deeper the taste of fields berries and mint drip and drip, nakedly.

Dear love, I give you this healing….Kindness sis Krissy