Fresh ink

Welcome (back)! I should probably be telling myself that, since I log on less frequently than my reader(s). But as it were, life is a non-stop train ride. I sure am glad I beat that hell of a cold bug. Three weeks of mucus and feeling like my head was stuck inside a balloon was not my idea of a good time.

I really have nothing (prepared) to post. I think I'm only writing at this moment because it's a diversion from what I am *supposed* to be doing, which is my work. Procrastination shows no favoritism, however, and when I feel the urge to avoid doing something, I step on my will power and let procrastination run the show.

Don't let me fool you. I actually have two poems I've been stirring in my head for at least a month. It would be delightful for them to squeeze out of my clogged head and onto a piece of paper. I hate being verbally constipated, especially when I see the words I want to join together on the lines at the tips of my eyelashes. But soon as I look down to uncap my pen, the words drop into my utterly useless short term memory bank (it's full of holes from years of wear).



Anyway, I'm newly inked and loving it (this is #3). What amazes me about myself--and should we all not be amazed at ourselves once in a while?--is the paradoxical reasoning I live by. Yours truly is terrrrrified of needles. I hate them and I've been known to become completely pallid at the sight of a needle. And hey, I'll cop to it: I cried like a brat this summer when I got my wisdom teeth pulled. Not just because the grinding sounds as Dentist Man dislodged my precious toofs from my skull nauseated me, but also because he'd stuck me with at least 10 needles during the procedure. Yet I've gotten three tattoos and a nose piercing (twice--it closed the first time...long story) without a second thought. But when do I ever make sense?

The part of me that shirks at a flu shot but will watch someone thread a needle and stud through my nose is the same part that will look at the simplest of questions with sheer befuddlement but absentmindedly (and correctly) answer the hardest question given.

But alas (did I just say 'alas'?), it is my destiny to tackle the most difficult feats while lacking the simplest of life's pleasures, and I reluctantly accept that. For example, men 20 years my senior and boys 15 years my junior fall in love with me everyday, but things don't work out so well with the ones in my age group. I can write a 25 page short story (I can?), but writing lesson plans gives me heart palpitations. I am fairly clairvoyant about certain situations, which I sometimes see happen before they do, but does it stop me from doing what I know (at the moment I'm doing it) I shouldn't do? I hear more and more often, "You're making things harder than they have to be." Well, how can it all be so simple?

This was all complete and utter drivel, brought to you by too much coffee and four helpings of procrastination. Now, back to work.

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What a midday nap can do

I don't know how many people I've told this, but I do know this is the first time I have said it here: I love--I am in love with words. Words stay with me like emotions. Without them I don't know how I would function. I don't talk a lot (most of the time, no really, I don't like to hear myself talk) but I think a lot. Sometimes too much. Sometimes too much about the wrong things.

It baffles me when people say they don't like to read. It's like saying you don't like music. Good writing is music. Good writing is the elevator into a genius' imagination. It inspires and encourages ideas like nothing else, including life itself, can. Right now I am reading Toni Morrison's Sula, and while her work is sometimes challenging, to be frank, there is beauty in her writing I just indulge in like dark chocolate (so yummy!). Reading this book gave me two ideas, one I'll get to in a minute, and one I hope to develop more with this blog of mine. Actually the second idea is one I've had for a while, but this book is calling me to get busy.



But without further ado, I have a new work in progress, which is as yet untitled...Look now, the ink is still fresh. I fell asleep after reading and woke up with this etched in my brain:

Untitled
I yearned for you to the marrow of my bones
learned the lines of your skin
and imagined your hair in my fingertips.
I craved the taste of your teeth in my mouth
swam in the black of your irises
and understood the curve in your lips was
not a smirk but pure pain.

Your voice was a raspy lullaby
no other man could ever sing

In pen, I traced you beside
the paper doll that was me
hoping forever would outlast the hell of
being without you.
It was not my song I wrote on your skin--
it was yours--
Don't
stop
singing
to
me.

I have sung all the songs there are
even with different notes
There aren't any new songs
but yours.

No one ever sung lyrics
so plain
so dark
so chilling
so sweet
no song ever pierced my marrow
like yours.

Though we don't speak anymore
your song still haunts me
the chill in my bones
tells me when you are near
because I am your song--
no one else sings it better.

And no matter that you tore me up
shredded my woman doll
I always return to the beginning
where there aren't any new songs--
just you, because
I have sung all the songs
all the songs
I have sung all the songs there are.

JGH 2007

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Mic check

I often post my poetry on this site. What I post is by no means the definitive works of Janae from PA. But my work is representative of who I am and I am proud to share it here. I am especially proud that I have begun what will hopefully be a monthly performance of my work at a local open mic, which has already ended my annual spoken word run. I read a few poems last Friday, and among them were two I'd posted here. However, as I often make it known, my work is never finished but always in progress. Before my performance I did some heavy editing of this poem, originally posted last November:

Cover to Cover

i was
wrapped in rainbows
for one hundred years of solitude
listening to krapp's last tape
and waiting
for a streetcar named desire
to take me to
the blackboard jungle
where things fall apart
and i learned that
a tree grows in brooklyn
where
the souls of black folk
are walking with the wind

i was
wounded in the house of a friend
tumbling
in a catch-22
with an invisible man
who had the bluest eye
and white teeth
carrying a bag of bones
he took me to
the learning tree
where we sat
and spoke of mice and men

i was
getting mother’s body
when i met a black boy whose
breath, eyes, memory
stole the heart of a woman
and then let her
drop
into a ring of endless light
before leaving Atlanta
with the prisoner's wife
whose only song in ordinary time
was your blues ain’t like mine

i was
eating the grapes of wrath
in Eden with
the woman warrior
we treasured
the moments, the minutes, the hours
before breakfast
with the dutchman and the slave
and while their eyes were watching god
she told them
“we are the ones we have been waiting for
i know this much is true.”

JGH 2007

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They must not know

There are places where you can sit down for two hours:

The coffee shop.

The bookstore.

Your couch.

Dinner.

The movies.

A play.

The park.

An open mic.

However…. the one place you should NEVER EVER, EVER be seated for two hours is a concert. Especially not a BEYONCE concert!!!

My girlfriend and I bought—ahem, splurged—on tickets to see Sasha perform at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City last night. We practiced twerkin it, droppin down low and sweepin the flo’ wit’ it and all the bootylicious moves we could do so we could tear it up at the show. We were READY.

Now, if my memory serves me well, I’ve been to at least eight concerts, from Janet Jackson to Fiona Apple, and not once did I sit down for the entire show. But when Bee came out on the stage, the crowd in floor seats went crazy, while the dorks in the elevated seats, well, stayed seated. It was like being at a funny movie where you’re the only one laughing. There were four people in my whole section who were making noise, clapping and singing along. Not a soul was moving, save a few here and there who never sat down. But there were three of us in my row who could no longer stand it, and by the time Bee did “Baby Boy” with these fooooiiinnne brothas sans shirts, we were out of our seats. (That dutty wine does it every time, nahmsayin?) We were gyrating and singing and hooting and hollering, when I heard a faint whine underneath the drum. “Sit down!!” Ignoring it, I continued dancing and singing. Then Bee broke into a rendition of “Murder She Wrote,” and I forgot where I was. But my jam was again interrupted with an even louder, “Sit DOWN!!” This time, my friend heard it, and she turned around. “This is a concert, so why don’t YOU stand up??”

Pause.

At least, I thought I was at a concert. .. I don’t even sit down when I’m at home watching music videos, so why would I sit down at a live show? WHY???? Is that not the whole point of going to a concert, the reason musicians go on tour--so fans can go crazy, sing all the lyrics, do all the dance moves, wear t-shirts and carry posters?? The concert is the venue where you let it all out, scream til’ you’re too hoarse to talk and dance til’ your feet are too sore to walk the next day.

But I’m not hoarse, and my feet don’t hurt at all. I really behaved more than I should have yesterday. It all started with my uncharacteristic decision to follow the rules and leave my camera behind, which I regretted immediately. And for the record, had I been in Philly, I wouldn’t have sat down. But, as a guest in the shanty town that is Atlantic City, I behaved myself. However, what made me even angrier—and I hate to take it there, but it’s what happened—was that when the white girl in the row in front of us stood up and danced for several songs after we were asked to sit down, they said nothing to her (the party poopers were also white). So I made up my mind that when Bee did “Check on It” and “Get me Bodied,” I WOULD NOT SIT DOWN. And I didn’t. Thankfully, the lifeless people behind us left by then, and I was able to wind it back without being yelled at.

My friend and I were not the only ones upset at the crowd’s lameness that night. Beyonce was not happy. In fact, I think her feelings were hurt. She performed her heart out for a sleeping audience. She stopped the show at least three times to say that she wasn’t used to such a quiet crowd. “I’ve never done a show where people were so quiet. I’m not used to this, y’all,” she said in her H-town drawl. I was embarrassed to be in that crowd. By her final song (“Irreplaceable”) she commanded everyone to get out their seats. There shouldn’t have been a warm seat in that audience, and she shouldn’t have had to go there, but clearly, some people don’t get out enough to know any better. So Bee, you probably won't ever read this, but if you do, know that you had four fans in the back who were showing you all the love we could.

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She's bleeding again

Quagmire (The Thought of You)

When I said I enjoy being alone I didn't mean without you
maybe it is the thought of you I long for
because after a time you wore on me
and I've already worn (out) a few
your frame calls to me in the moon's shadow
I part your lips with my mind but you say nothing
I thought I knew who you are but I was wrong
as it was wrong of you to mislead me toward vulnerability
and I was like a dog on its side--belly facing you
I gave you space but was always true
on my side
at your side
I would lie and you told my heart a lie I couldn't resist
so much that I questioned whether being alone
was as romantic as I'd opined and resolved to be
questioned if it really was the thought of you I loved
but my irrational unrationed ire
tells me it is after all not the thought but
you
and while I love being alone
since I know I'll always be there
I can't stand how the thought of you makes me feel
so alone


JGH 2007

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(Don't) Honk if you're angry

I really need to start writing things down so that ideas stop hiding from me... This one was somewhere under the rug for a week, and thankfully did not evade me entirely.

Back in my days when I carried a voice recorder, I would come around one of the last of seemingly endless bends and twists on Lincoln Drive, passing protesters from the Unitarian Universalist church. "Honk if you are against the war!" their signs would blare. Here I was, bleary eyed and sick of working (it being hump day and all) and not really feeling the barrage of horns from my fellow travelers. At first I thought it was my refusal of all things political, with the cop-out that I was an "objective reporter" that prevented me from participating in this weekly demonstration. I did and still do oppose the war, but never felt compelled, not even once, to sound my horn.

Then last Wednesday, as I was leaving my grown-folks class (that's grad school for y'all who don't know), I noticed more protesters, this time about two miles away, outside a presbyterian church, toting similar signs, as passersby would either stare or "beep beep beep" on their way past the intersection. I can no longer hide behind the guise of neutral reporter. It's not really the political stench reeking from their dedicated demonstrations that turns me off. I learned last Wednesday, and reaffirmed it yesterday, that the exercise in futility is what abates any morsel of desire to honk my horn if I'm against Bush.

After all, it is the tree in the forest theory we're talking about here. If 1,000 people honk their horns every week in protest against the war, but no one on Capitol Hill hears them, do they make a noise? Indeed, they do; a nuisance to be exact. But do they make a difference? Are they changing anything? Not a damn thing. Not once have I seen a headline touting anti-war horn honkers provoking any pull out of US troops from Iraq. It just ain't gonna happen. Why? Because backyard protests are a waste of time. Inciting drivers to honk their horns on some corner in Philadelphia is just plain silly. It disturbs the peace and nothing more.

While democracy includes the people having a voice, the misapprehension lies in identifying the appropriate audience. The medium is just as important, if not more so, as the message. Case in point: Would the March on Washington have made a ding in the civil rights movement had it taken place in say, Newark, NJ? No. The March was a strategically planned event to get the most people with a unified voice to speak out in a place where it would have the most visibility, and thus, the most impact. Angry with your mayor's decision to veto an important bill? Don't protest outside your church; protest outside CITY HALL. The message is simply lost in the medium when poorly planned and ineptly executed demonstrations take place. All the more true when they occur weekly. Sounding an alarm in your community to take a stand does little else other than make your neighbors, of whom many may concur with your arguments but are now too disgusted to care, view you as a problem rather than an active participant in our government.

Excuse me now, I must go apply calamine lotion; my hives are spreading.

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Well, excuse me!

Knock knock. *Slowly opening door, peeking in* Ahem. Remember me? Good.

I've stood up all day on less than 3 hours of sleep, and I really feel I need to express my thoughts on a few observations I've had lately. Bear with me, please.

Where's your hall pass?
It turns out I really dig my new gig. Like, who knew I would love pedagogy? Who knew I'd be so happy being in front of a room of hormonal, moody, impulsive, irrational, contrary, outspoken, cuss-you-out-till-your-momma-cries, self-absorbed, comedic young people? It turns out I really do. Even when they're obstinate and ignore me, I still like em a whole lot. But...

What I don't like is, after I've spent the better half of the semester telling a student to put her smutty book away, stop talking, do her classwork, turn in her homework, turn in something, and she obviously doesn't care enough to listen, she suddenly wants to turn me inside out when she gets her grade. How do you put in F-effort and expect an A????? And why are you mad at me for the choice you made, which was to fail? I told my students, "I don't give As; you have to earn them."

Doctor's (Sorta) In

"Our next available appointment is six months from now." Now seriously, I've had it to my eyebrows with the medical profession. WHY do I have to tell the office staff my arm's about to fall off, my child's going to get kicked out of school at the end of the month and my eyes are bleeding in order to be seen in a reasonable time? It seems the doctor can only see you at his or her convenience anymore! No, if my skin is falling off, I cannot wait until June to see you; I need an appointment this month! This week even! Then they try to act like they're doing you a favor and the doctor can "squeeze you in" during regular office hours. Like the customer service call center message that drones on that "We appreciate your business, and your call is important to us," while you sit on hold for 15 minutes. Right.

Friends don't let friends go

I understand that friendships are like relationships, and sometimes people just grow apart. In fact, the recent breakup of a longtime friendship of mine can be summed up in those words: we grew apart. We weren't on the same page anymore. It had to happen, our separation, or we were going to kill each other. Not that we saw oneanother that much to begin, but that's another rant for another blog.

Look, I know I am flaky. One generalization is that writers are flaky people, which I see no need to dispute. It's not something I'm always proud of, and I do think I could be a better friend, but I accept my fickle ways. All of my friends are flaky, and I embrace them for it. However there is a limit; there is a threshold where flaky becomes negligent.

I have a friend, in the loosest sense of the word, who has crossed that threshold. There comes a point where, after phone calls and text messages, emails and MySpace messages asking what the dickens is going on with no response, you just say eff it. I don't know what I did to this friend, even though she missed both my birthday and my daughter's (so yeah, I'm not too keen on that), and she's not talking to me to tell me. So, at some point you just stop caring. Right now I'm still circling around the block, trying to decide if this friendship and if she is even worth all this rigamarole. I can see the future, but I can't read minds.

Jalopy for Rent

No, really. There are times I wish I carried my camera with me, and this weekend was one of them. I actually passed a car on my way to the store that had a "For Rent" sign in its window. It was as if the owner were mocking himself, trying to rent his 1991 (I'm being really generous) hoopty...for cash. That owner (they can't be leasing a car worth $350) must have a great sense of humor.

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Misty Blue

I'm not in the happiest of moods lately. You know, "dreaming with a broken heart" and all. It is said that pain passes like the storm, no matter the length of the rain. I guess it's the pieces we have to pick up afterward that are the real work, the real pain, to get over. The cleanup only happens with work. So I guess I've got a part-time job.

Regardless, I won't let life keep me from feeding the fire I've just rekindled. Here's a WIP (work in progress, as always) I just finished. Like two minutes ago.

The Last Kiss

How he could look
and see through
me like we
never touched
hands

how he could
so easily
let me be forgotten,
dismiss my essence
when it enthralled
him just
yesterday

how he, a master
of verbs,
could not know
the pain
of words unspoken--
a mystery--

how he could
say she's an
invisible dot
when i can connect
her to every
half-truth he's
kept secret

is that the way
it is?
or, just how
it should have been
from the beginning
before the first
kiss goodnight
became
the last kiss
goodbye--

how could he?

JGH 2007

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Another One

Hot Damn! I'm on a roll like a pig on a platter... Lately the creative bug has bitten me, and I'm not complaining about the rash. In fact, I've been hoping this block would finally disintegrate, and it's certainly on its way. Maybe it's the New Year (a belated Happy 2007, btw), the new gig, the new shoes, but whatever it is, I'm baaaack...

I wrote this one on Saturday morning. Funny, it's called:

Saturday Circus

hard candy and bubble gum
hours in the toy aisle
French fries in ketchup soup
and staying up all night

the princess has free reign
at the weekend circus
she has tamed the center ring
whip in hand
feather in her ponytail
her wish
his command

whatever the queen forbids
the monkey slips in her pocket
shhh…she’ll never know
(but she always does)

each Monday is a reminder
that her life is finer
for 72 hours each week
where she has all the pleasures
of chocolate and sticky sweets
at the Saturday carnival
the longest-running circus
where she makes and breaks
the rules
and all wishes
come true

JGH 2007

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