Thankful for Toni Morrison

 

“A literary artist of the first rank.”

“She delves into the language itself, a language she wants to liberate from the fetters of race. And she addresses us with the luster of poetry.”

Those words are from the Nobel Committee that awarded Ms. Morrison her Nobel Prize in Literature on this day in 1993.

Her acceptance speech spoke of ‘spreading like algae because this prize is being distributed to various regions and nations and races.’  Morrison shared this win with women, the mid west, the east coast and African Americans.  She is one of the reasons I am in love with pen to pad.  Why I love words to dreams.  Why I am courageous enough to speak my vernacular.

People do speak highly of my art.  And I have been used in some really nice analogies during introductions to stages.  And for that, I am thankful for Toni Morrison.

 

 

 

a nostalgia in youth

Hurston on survival…

passion

We need passion for life
We need passion like ancestral sweat on jungle spring African violets
We need passion like the quieting of an infant’s cries for his mother’s nipples
like the drying desire to drink
let us do what we do best
Create.
detach from the world and all it has to offer
like the fall of sky tall pine trees
like a Muslim nauseous at the smell of swine
let us get away from here!
Like we did the first time
let us hungrily read Genesis to Revelation
and discover one another
let me be imperfect
not what the music and magazine say
but who I am this very second
the extent of me and you in divine disguise
the scent of me in heat for some passion
Like a 4th of July dog scratching against the screen door
We need passion for life.
We need passion like surrendering in a rain shower,
like the uncontrollable moans of a multiple orgasm
let me get this out!
let me get this out!
like the vulgar urges of bulimia
let me get this out!
I yearn this
I yearn this like Thursday evening paychecks
want me
want me like the smell of your mother’s kitchen on Sunday
protect me
protect me like a father holding his child’s hand
let us discover God together
We need passion
Like the heaving chest of a woman giving birth
Like the finger sore of BB strumming the blues
Like a poem with a thousand metaphors
Let us make love over and over and again
We need passion like, like, like…right now.

stripped (a poem)

tired of waking up tired / after 8 hours of sleep
up all night fighting somebody / even though I live alone
in a white dress / she came to me and said my peace would
come with pain / my peace was letting go of everything that I
believed keeps me sane.
I was naked / but not stripped, like before / misunderstood &
confused with this spiraling in my spine / I gave it all away.
I snored that night / I was so tired.

no excuses

Keep writing! Because that’s what writers do.

Gathered Around Fire (a prose piece for roux makers)

 

I was cold.  I didn’t know too much about The Fire Next Time (James Baldwin) or that it could be easily identified as the return of the spirit of the movement.

The presence of our ancestors to re-connect the seven sciences that we all represented.

I just know that of the several bonfires that appeared    /I chose the one closest to my home.  A few others had come to get warm.

We dared to stare down the center of this chemical process to identify what was causing the combustion.  And nothing was there.  Not with the naked eye at least.                                                                         It was simply a fire and I was cold.

for sure

purposeful

just cause it’s Nikki Giovanni