Photo: Kaya Nati

Lalah

a siren song

a soliloquy

holding the wait

between breaths

a reverb that tickles the throat

gently pushes a river run

down some Mississippi humpback memory:

places and people touched

and not even knowing

why they feel like that

when she sings

not understandin’ how

she found their song

wrote their words in her mouth

a hum hymn

on the way up

singin' their pain out

in sync with cycles of earth and sky

a calm after storm

I too have known her songs

some of them

stuck in my throat

years and tears beyond the feeling

imprisoned to pens I have lost

pens that have been bleeding

on the insides

I awaken, still, to her mourning call

Lalah

a siren song

reminiscent of the redemptive possibility

of freedom

the edge of happiness holding the fall

Lalah is god manifestin’ as the air felt

in the draw after a good kiss

and I somehow feel

the very guardian angel she is looking for

would have to sing her a song

she has not been able to sing for herself

a song as angelic

as those she offers

a moment, and a moment, and a moment

and again

tonight

close to this new gift

and the smile that was signature enough

to hold me for a bit

I will hold soft pillows

Try my best to outrun the sky

A native sun

Recognizing my own shine

My own red dirt revival

Inspired through the wonder that is

Lalah

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	New Writings by and/or about Tim'm T. West. For Tim'm West, by Ayanna Muhammad (Chicago) portrait, Tim'm West by Malik Ameer For My Father (A Letter to Cool papa) How I'm s'posed to:  performed at National Rally for Marriage Equality The Real dis/ease (new) What is the Front Porch?  by ananda kiamsha madelyn leeke (new) New Year Thoughts 2006   These links will lead you to a few of the folks who inspire me.
	--- Friday, July 6, 2007 8pm FREE!!! Front Porch on First Fridays at Mocha Hut! Tim'm presents "The Front Porch" Tim'm turns 35! 1301 U St NW, (between 13th and 14th) 202/667-0616 Washington, DC (U Street Metro) The Front Porch at Myspace
	One mo again: The links that will lead you to a few of the folks who inspire me.

Lalah

www.lalahhathaway.com

inspired by her song and smile

Picturesque portrayals of life
Abound amid running time and
Masonry’s mark of sublimity.
Peering past the temporal guise,
Arrantly aloof to the vale of
Modern masking,
Prim pensive eyes, set on the
Ancient art of man,
Magically muse the distant past.

Out my window (Bergamo)

portrait Tim'm West

by malik ameer

mind mines
setting foot on lava sojourns
one of many long line ancient travelers
code unraveller
blood mud, onyx dust beading on sweat drenched azure face
mouth sounds Canaan's cannon
laughing tourqouise thunder, blinking lavender lightning
in pupils aghora applauds

there are heavily treated statues in his form
aging in reverse
living life like, "death is but decisions door"
cutter of the diamond cutters
cut air spare no word no stare
hair of heavens wool
burgundy soul quilted cloak-irradecent pendulm afloat
man of man with men amongst men
this sower, seeds farmers
planter of planets
star herder
sun leader.

Dad,

I'm finally finding the courage to send you my book.   It's an ironic thing.   You appear in so many of its pages-your presence showing up in the places between pain and redemption.   My earliest memories of you are of your absence.   Interestingly you were (more often than not) there, and didn't hesitate to remind us of this.   So many of our peers were fatherless.   Still, you were absent.   I don't know if I've ever really known you beyond the sincerity of your spirit.   So I have wondered how you would describe yourself to yourself, if no one else was around to hear and judge.

I do remember how very handsome and charismatic you were.   It was no surprise that you and mother were drawn to each other.   I hold a picture, still, of your wedding day, imagining that your smiles were trapped there and that each time you made love, it was as sunny as the shine off your teeth.   But you and mom seldom looked as beautiful as on that day.   Rather, always tired and unfulfilled, so creating your children (perhaps) as something to hold you beyond the ways your hopes to hold one another had failed. Sometimes while dancing silly in front of the kids, you seemed happy together, but that was so rare; more frustration and fighting than anything.   And yes, dad, I know about the challenges of being black and male in our society.   I understand this perhaps now, more than I did then.   Still, as a child, home was not often a place I felt very safe.   I have tried to create a safe place for myself in the world.   I am searching still for cues on how to do that.

I remember your love as passionate; so much that we were always overjoyed if it remained that way for more than a day.   Often you lashed out when you were afraid or frustrated-and so often without just cause.   But I've never forgotten the best parts of you.   The way your afro glistened with space when you black-power-fist-picked it out.   I remember how yellow your skin would turn at winter, how it browned with the coming of summer, how your hair curled sleepily out of bushiness when wet.   And I suppose that my book could have remembered you only in this way.   I suppose my book could have remembered only these romantically sentimental aspects of myself.   But it's not that kind of book, dad.   It's a book about truth, even when it's not pretty truth.

I have always longed to impress you, make you proud of me for being who I am.   I've longed to make you aware of the pain you've caused without hurting you in the process.   I've needed to let you know, so that I could forgive.   I hope that what you will see is that my book doesn't harbor hate, but a commitment to forgiveness and redemptive possibility.  

Sometimes I am uncertain that I know you.   What I know are pictorial moments; ways we imagine black fathers and sons:   steering the bike, boxing gloves, football and cleats, post-victory braggadocio.   But even when pictures flash not so good times, when the pictures, like the memories are blurry and full of cloud, I strive to love the better you.   You, who I have remembered as the handsome, afro-shined, orator with hard hands, are my father.   So, I've struggled to love this man who I've seen hit my mother.   I've struggled to love this man who denied her in order to take pleasure from other women.   It has hurt to try to love this man who has expected pitiful apology to erase it from memory.   What immense affect this has on a young boy looking for manhood models.   I've needed to believe in a father who didn't make excuses for the kind of father he was because his own father was worse: unknown or some trace of an absence that overshadowed even your own territorial, parental presence.  

So I finally wrote it down-impressed my self into the page.   For a long time I was afraid of hurting you in the process by expressing how I've truly felt.   I have felt that you will overlook what so many who read my work see:   that I am a boy who has always longed to impress you, have you be proud of me:   as different as I am from the son you may have imagined I'd become.  

I have found myself loving men like you-men with potential to face the truth about themselves.even the ugly truths. and who require someone patient and cocky enough to try and love them through it.   But I've grown really tired of nurturing.   I've overlooked myself in the process.   I'm a lot like my mother.   I've ignored my own pain in trying to spare you my truth.   So I offer this book to you, finally, as a token of who I've become.   It's not pretty but neither am I.   But I still have the courage to love you; even if you can't believe it after reading "Red Dirt Revival".   Maybe, like others, you'll remember most, a mama's boy wanting to be a daddy's boy too, wanting an afro shaped like yourn, space and curls and all.   Maybe you'll sense that I'm still that kid practicing your charismatic baritone and wanting the thick mustache I still cannot grow, wanting yellow-winter skin, and wanting people in my life who will forgive whatever I fail to see in myself that hurts others.

You are the perfect father for me and I love you,

Tim'm T. West

How I'm s'posed to
9.22.04

It'd be easier to get lost in his eyes
Or lines in his hands I have not touched
Than read this poem aloud
MTV might not be there
to provide a National Guard
against Beenie Man enthusiasts
thinkin we Babylon personified
When we just starry-eyed
About cosmic possibilities:
a space,
A new frontier
Where brothas are judged
Not by sex orientation
But for love enough for our black nation
To be true to who we be
Black boys who dare to enact
Taboo acts so many attack
With more than legislation,
hip hop hatin',
pulpit bashing god ain't sanctioned

I'm doin what I'm s'posed to
And with pen, my kin, or a keyboard
I can dredge up courage enough to love him
Better than those who hate him, hate him
More than this...
If I have found courage to read this
In front of my people, our people
Gangsta and Soul-Neo
Ghetto and Boho
Afro-American, Colored and Negro
This stage transformed into
My pulpit
Believers open where
Haterz and nay Sayers usually sit
awaiting the interruption of
Poetry as usual
I'd spit 'bout our indulgence
Of this bliss
one on one games of 21s
Ciphers deciphered
in the breaths between kisses
between cold harsh stairs we conquer
And faggot disses

If my tongue can remember
The sound of his name out loud
without fear or refrain
Then I'm doing what I'm s'posed to
If I can speak here about
The love that dare not speak its name
Then I can remember the heat
Between Houston and Little Rock
I can remember the twang I lost
In college
Or the distance between
Impossibility and reality
That we bridge when we dream

Cuz we are all we are
Which is all our people are
Folk struggling to see ourselves
Without the residue of delusion
Shame, lies
Deutorotemy disses
Stereotypical sissy swishes
My people will be no more than we can be
If unwilling to see
That we, too, were in antiquity
Gods and goddesses and gatekeepers
See saws between this world
And the one most are trying to get to
Hating on me

And still we be
holding the balance
Of the world's pain and uncertainty
Our laughter the choir boy's wail
The witchdoctor's incantation
The banjee boy's beat box
Summoning celebration of life

No my sistah…
He is not a waste
He is the possibility of a life
I've yet to experience
And through these words
And the courage to sound them
I push myself closer to the edge
Closer to the first fall that has ever caught me
falling into wind
And away from so called sin
by falling into him with him

We are not unlike you, my people
We are you
Mirrored back black and beautiful
The very chocolate covered skin
Of fingers we intertwine
deep breaths we prepare for
Holding fast against
the bash of bats and gats
When Red Rover, Red Rover
Send hatred right over

We too come from a lineage
Of people who are bolder
And I am now older
And less afraid
To speak of our courage
Out loud on this stage
To write of this possibility
Ink bleeding on page
To admit a longing
More permanent than a phase.

Because
It'd be easier to get lost in his eyes
Or lines in his hands I have not touched
Than read this poem aloud
So I'll stop here
Let your ears grapple with your fear
And walk out the door
Held well by the air, ground and gravity
And peace of mind that I'm being
Loving
How I'm s'posed to.

the real dis/ease

we make distinctions

between the types of penetration

that lead to this phantom

ravishing bodies the earth over

needle

hetro or homosex

none of which this disease respects

but we hold to categories

as if they are what will save us

sort out good victims

from bad ones

we give up

before we even try

fail to have faith

that hope awaits

is just around the corner

and so we manage this disease

like we cannot live without it

like a ghost we invite in our homes

because we feel more human

being afraid

and I am one

calling for an exorcism

and end to this uninvited guest

living in my body

living in our homes

spreading its terror across the planet

we are not angry enough

do not insist on emergency response

to this natural disaster

we have lived with for decades

and so the earth will continue to quake

roll high tide into land

flood tears of the dying into our streets

until we become unafraid

to tell the truth:

this is, perhaps, the greatest travesty

our world

has ever ignored.

but we can begin movements

starting with our prayers and our policies

to forgive our silence

welcome the winds of change

into our breaths

until we ex-hell this shame

this ball of indifference

stronger than our fear of unknowns

and breathe easier

knowing that the weight of change

is something we can sense

in the air

the real dis/ease

is not the disease itself

but its most insidious conspirator

everything

that keeps our mouths shut

while people die

while infections rise

like stats themselves

because we fear

what this dis/ease confirms:

our delusions of difference

are stronger

than the togetherness

we need in order to survive

when children everywhere

are born to live

when they are no longer

waiting

for hospice hands to take them

for beds on which to die

then the maybe

we will have found

a vaccine, a prayer, a dream

strong enough to cure

the real dis/ease

what is the front porch?

by ananda kiamsha madelyn leeke

what is the front porch?
one word
LOVE

it is the world... a snapshot experience of authentic living -- all shapes, sizes, and colors

man
woman
boy
girl

take your pick
everyone is represented
straight
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bi
transgender

american
caribbean
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asian
european
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poets
writers
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artists
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and folks who love to just listen

everyone is welcome to partake and enjoy the
LOVE....