November 2010
27 posts
Sonnet XVII
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance, risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body. I love you...
“And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with...”
– James Baldwin from My Dungeon Shook. Swoon.
“Calling sex by its name thereafter [the 17th c.] became more difficult and more...”
– Michel Foucault on the language of sex, from The History of Sexuality. Discussing language + sex is so much win.
“One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most...”
– Sigmund Freud
“I’ve not learned the acceptable way of saying you fascinate me…I’ve not...”
– The always awesomely full of truth Nikki Giovanni. Kindred.
“I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom...”
– Anais Nin. #runtellthat
“The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within -...”
– Ruby Dee Yes Ma’am
“But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul,...”
– From Zora’s How It Feels to Be Colored Me
“The absence of models, in literature as in life,…is an occupational hazard for...”
– Alice Walker discusses the need for models…
Harvey and Nicey- Black Love, 1869
December 29, 1869
Dear Nicey,
I don’t know why I cannot cease to think of you, and to love you, you say I have stolen your heart and I can say this much you stole mine first and a fair exchange is no robbery…So I will present you my heart and hand to accompany it provided you will accept of them in return for the one that was stolen from you…
Goodbye as ever,
Harvey
From...
The Warrior's Reminder
One of my favorite affirmations is Erykah Badu’s “The Warrior’s Reminder” which can be found in the actual liner notes of the epic Mama’s Gun album. Made me wonder how the digital age has affected our connection with recording artists. I mean, yes, Badu tweets, but reading these words in this booklet > reading those sporadic tweets. Then again, I’m an old...
“As if you were on fire from within. The moon lives in the lining of your skin.”
– Pablo Neruda *exasperated sigh*
“Time’s passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque...”
– The awesome Gloria Naylor
“one thing I don’t need
is any more apologies
i got sorry greetin me at my...”
– Ntozake Shange
Sunday Morning
i still miss him
sometimes my love for him feels like a stain
the tenderness we shared
a wound that refuses to scab
i ponder amnesia
a fresh life where there is no memory
of his touch
his words
those places of refuge
we forged among one another
there was a certain semblance of God
within him
that cannot be washed away
not even with the healing waters
of the Nile
What the Mirror Said...
There are not many who are able to capture black womanhood, the beautiful struggle of it, the way that Lucille Clifton has. God bless her life. My favorite poem from her is What the Mirror Said. Please enjoy and recite and live and love:
listen, you a wonder, you a city of a woman. you got a geography of your own. listen, somebody need a map to understand you. somebody need...
