Bl ck L v s M tt r
can you read this out loud?
a i e a e
can you read this out loud?
can you reckon it into society?
painted on boulevards art-ivism
in action every letter singing
none erased
whole & absolute
like Black bodies before they are broken
into shards & howls
before the need to assert
we m tt r
like Prince who changed
his name to an unpronounceable
symbol
us mattering feels as
elusive as the need for
linear language when it simply
insists on being
w th h ld
The city grows still, save the snowfall.
Did it really grow still? People staying
inside, burrowing in with their
coffee and the paper? Or does
the snow absorb the hum of the city
into its cells? Making certain this
moment is honored with silence?
Birds flit and fly.
Snowflakes alight on my
eyebrows. And the stillness is a balm
from which I hope to never
emerge. But I will.
Tomorrow’s forecast — slushy rain,
the swoosh of tires on wet
streets, the bustle resumed.
So I take this moment.
Except I can’t really take it,
as it isn’t mine to take,
but is its own magnificent
sovereignty I am merely
allowed the privilege of tasting,
however fleeting.
The swarm of Painted Ladies
showered me unexpectedly.
Startlingly.
A baptism.
A cleansing.
Carrying with them, in their spiritual lightness and artful wings,
the flutter of renewal, restoration and redemption.
Some have said their early migration is global-warming-induced.
It’s a thought that lends a sadness to this unexpected christening
I received upon their arrival.
Though, for me,
a girl with campaigns launched left and right these days toward
wellness and soul tending,
a girl awfully in love with finding angels and symbols
in every nook and under every rock,
too early couldn’t’ve been more
right on time.
Dearest friend,
May I call you this? We’ll soon both be
members of a cherished club,
and as such I feel, already, a kinship.
As I write this, the mouths of the
purple morning-glories beyond my window
are achingly gaped,
singing your praises I like to think,
knowing you are coming,
and the sun is brilliant, almost white,
on this late-winter morning
after a week of sunless rain.
You are coming. This I know.
And I feel hope, which scares me some.
I am grateful and sad. I think we both know why,
and there is enough disappointment in myself
without continuing to reinvigorate it
with words. I ask only this:
Walk deliberately toward it.
Trip and fall, if it comes to it, but take no prisoners, least of all him.
Expose panties. Jump back up. Make a joke out of the spill,
scrappy like I know you must be.
Then keep on stepping high.
Keep him in gentle accord.
Keep yourself there too.
Above all, breathe. The dark nights for both of you
will soften their edges, and the morning-glory
will yawn again each dawn to remind you that you are as glorious.
Send me a postcard from beyond the moon.
I hung out there myself once.
We’ll regale together this love supreme that
keeps us all rallying for one another.
PLEASE visit http://kidneyforhans.com/ and do a girl a solid.
The dark obscuring the light
Then passing through
Not staying
Not lingering
Not indulgent nor milking its poetry
But offering a moment’s space for reflection
An opportunity to shift
An opportunity that waits for no one who pauses
Pause and it’s gone
The kind but firm nudge to leap
A reassurance that we are in control of nothing
The power of a thing is in its vanishing
Behold
It is the beautiful slap
in the face of the Great Lie we’ve been sold
That we can have the world for the asking
That we can buy our security for a few
cosmic shekels
As I gaze through my 7-Eleven-purchased eclipse glasses
I am reminded that
the world is insecure and unpredictable
Presently in the midst of both a great enlightenment
and a mad fall simultaneously
A breathtaking flux
Which force will ultimately tip the scales?
As the moon passes across her sun
and darkness falls for an instant
so does any semblance of security
Don’t be disappointed
This is the good news
As the earthquakes become more and more
prevalent around the world
so does the quaking of all our ideologies
What’s in store for us?
And are we ready?
Angela Carole Brown is a published author, a recipient of the Heritage Magazine Award in poetry, and has produced several albums as a singer/songwriter, and a yoga/mindfulness CD. Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog. Follow her on INSTAGRAM & YOUTUBE.
#bindigirlchronicles #justathought #alwayswriting
There is so much to say. And I have been largely silent on the subject, in this social media playground. Because others are more articulate. The world is full of articulate polemics on the subject. An entire movement – Black Lives Matter – has been necessitated. This strange epidemic. It is. An epidemic. And for much of the world, it is somewhat of an abstract. But think of someone’s son. Someone’s father. Someone’s brother. Think of them as children growing up. Think of where (and why) we have turned a very wrong corner, after ALL of the vital work of the civil rights movement, of history! and the enlightenment of men that has continually tried to be fostered and fought for.
I added the following stanza to a song I wrote 15 years ago, because there is a new dynamic now:
In matters global to familial, my solemn heart doth daily pray;
Let not endangered be the old black man someday.
Endangered. Think of that word. That threat. That awesome haunt of prophecy.
In the wake of this epidemic that seems to be our nation’s startling reality, my 15-year-old song rings now with a sobering irony. It was originally written about my brother Mike, spun from, and into, a pastoral, nostalgic, childhood idyllic.
Today it chills.
I feel so strange about this offering, because as artists we always want to reflect the times, but what this reflects hurts me to my core. I have three brothers in total, all young men still. I just want them to live to be old men someday. That they happen to be black . . .
Angela Carole Brown is a published author, a recipient of the Heritage Magazine Award in poetry, and has produced several albums as a singer/songwriter, and a yoga/mindfulness CD. Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog. Follow her on INSTAGRAM & YOUTUBE.
Those who read books travel the world and time itself.
Are explorers, adventurers, discoverers.
Take on beggars and kings with no thought in the ranking.
Have their minds forced open and their spirits ever expanding
in insatiable hunger for more.
Those who read books fill themselves with wonder.
Know that a book is a friend,
a teacher, a priest,
an agitator.
Are not afraid to be made uncomfortable.
Grow the wings that continue, muscle by muscle,
to sprout upon reaching “The End” time and time anew.
Fly. Fall. Fly again.
Those who read books are changed.
And glad of it.
Angela Carole Brown is a published author, a recipient of the Heritage Magazine Award in poetry, and has produced several albums as a singer/songwriter, and a yoga/mindfulness CD. Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog. Follow her on INSTAGRAM & YOUTUBE.
Take into account
neither physics,
nor logic,
nor science.
Nor common sense,
Nor empiricism.
Nor dull matter.
But give ALL to the
imagination, the intuition,
the realm beyond the senses,
and the boundlessness
of a child.
And fly.
Angela Carole Brown is the author of three published books, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and Trading Fours, is a recipient of the Heritage/Soulword Magazine Award in poetry, and has produced several albums of music and a yoga/mindfulness CD. Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog.
Angela Carole Brown is the author of three published books, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and Trading Fours, and has produced several albums of music and a yoga/mindfulness CD. Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & YouTube.
Angela Carole Brown is the author of three published books, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and Trading Fours, is a recipient of the Heritage/Soulword Magazine Award in poetry, and has produced several albums of music and a yoga/mindfulness CD. Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & YouTube.
