When I wake up, I think about you

In the middle of my day, I wonder about you
And when I go to sleep… I dream about you
I just can’t seem to get no fucking rest!
Real shit

And, boy, am I tired of this

For someone like you to roam around in my mind
Like a kid at a theme park
If I think about you in my day, can’t I at least dream in peace?
Well, it’s 5:30 a.m.
I guess that’s my answer
Fuck

Tarriona “Tank” Ball

I never thought I expected anything from you
Until the day you hugged me like amnesia
I guess I expected for you to hold me like I was the
Type of thing you could not forget

Maybe I expected too much
Maybe I should have never let your arms
Drive up and down my body
As if they were lost
Looking for a fucking rest stop

Whether it be my body or my heart
Maybe I had too many lights on
Made you feel safe, like I was shelter
The kind of place that you
Hide your boredom in

Don’t touch me if you don’t mean it

Don’t make me feel like some weekend hotel in New Orleans
You’re not yourself here
Maybe I was wrong for expecting more from you
And maybe you were wrong
For giving me something to expect

It’s not my fault you left your intentions in New Orleans
And picked up Misleading, you carried it in your book sack
People will say that you cannot control your feelings
But your hands…

Your hands are your own
And you didn’t just touch me
You held me
You held me like if you let me go, morning would come too soon
As if we only came alive at night

Because soon as the day would hit your back
I would be a stranger to your heart
I would be a foreigner to your eyes

I had no need to wonder how it felt to have a Sun who was
embarrassed by its sky
How dare you make me feel like an eclipse to your shine?
A dark hiding place for your wet dreams
A busy spot for your fingers when they were not busy holding sticks

When morning comes
You will jump, Adam

You will treat me like a friend

And you will visit me while everyone is asleep

I will bend my back to suit your body and you will hold me
Like you should have this evening…
When I asked you for a hug
And your arms felt like quiet
Like quick
And I could hear my confidence walk away with an awkward limp
The type of walk ya get
When a motherfucka like you
Likes to trip someone
That’s walking towards you with the same body
You held them with
So I’m confused…
Was I a punching bag or a pillow?

Tarriona “Tank” Ball

Early Saturday morning, I was googling for an English translation of a Vietnamese song. I couldn’t find what I was looking for, but I came across Vương Thanh’s translation of Nguyễn Du’s Truyện Kiều. Except for attending an afternoon with Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai in DC, I spent most of my day adding the English translation to my Truyện Kiều page. I also redesigned the webpage and added some illustrations. The most consuming part of the project was trying to match 3,254 lines. Since we are celebrating National Poetry Month, I encourage you to read The Tale of Kiều in Vietnamese or English or both. I must confess that the English version is easier for me to understand. Here are a few opening lines:

Within a hundred-year lifespan in this earthly world,
Genius and Destiny have a tendency to oppose each other.
A turbulent mulberry-field-covered-by-sea period had passed.
The things that we saw still deeply pain our hearts.
It’s not strange that beauty may beget misery.
The jealous gods tend to heap spites on rosy-cheeked beauties.
Turning scented pages of an old volume under an oil lamp,
I started reading a long-ago tale of love and romance.

Translated by Vương Thanh

poetry, that which had never failed
failed
all i invented were new ways to arrange things as time On my nerves
every word they say another source of fucking chagrin
in poetry as life, forms appear meaningless before my anger. i cannot find “a logic” aside
from straight dope capable to pierce the exactitude of pure rage. losing the original
thread or intention of the poem emotionally or its having spent itself in encounter with
its Master emotion

Simone White (an excerpt from or, on being the other woman)

So far this year, I have read mostly poetry. I am wondering why I even read poems when I don’t understand most of them. Unlike novels and nonfiction, poems are short; therefore, I can read them whenever I have a few minutes here and there. I can pick up a poem whenever and I don’t have to try to remember what I have read already.

Reading poetry has replaced my endless scrolling on social media networks. I don’t spend time on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn anymore and I have no desire to check out TikTok, Instagram, or any new social media networks. I am becoming anti-social online and poetry keeps me company.

Without a doubt, I am still a novice poetry reader. I don’t have the technical skills to break down poems; therefore, I rely primarily on my own understanding of what I can pick up. My poetry book reviews are based on my own level of comprehension. I can’t tell if a poem is good or bad. I can only tell if a poem speaks to me or not.

When I first started to write about music, I wanted to communicate what I heard. Even though I had no formal music training, I could pick up music elements such as melodies, harmonies, rhythms, vocals, lyrics, arrangements, orchestrations, and improvisations. With poetry, I don’t have a clue. I can’t figure out the format such as the breaks, the spaces, and the flows. Sometimes poems with unique structures I couldn’t tell if I were supposed to read from left to right or top to bottom. I might audit a few classes to learn to appreciate poetry.

Then again, I am always excited when I come across a poem that I could understand. Even if I could find one poem from a collection I read, I am happy with that. Reading poetry books has become finding poems I could post on my blog. To celebrate the National Poetry Month, I will post a poem a day for the entire month of April. Subscribe to my RSS feed for poetry or bookmark my poetry category and enjoy.

I am an ignorant fucker. difficult to be close to in that i am unsentimental and intimate with everyone. This is connected to the problems I am working through regarding metaphor. As a form of patriarchal control over language and a currency of poetic power. My ex-husband calls me an “ignorant fucker” when I complain that his hugely pregnant white girlfriend, who I do not know who I tolerate since for the last month and indefinite future my son must live in her house two days in a week, cannot show up unannounced in my child’s classroom where I pay all the bills and I watch and half do nothing and half help in the acquisition of literacy and reason. I say this is no place for this white woman; she is a free rider on my labor and love for my son. I will not support any white people with my work. I tell him all of this pretty loudly. He calls me an ignorant fucker. Now you are street? What, are you going to punch her in her face? I have fought exactly three people with physical violence in my forty-six years of life. Two men. And my sister.

Simone White (an excerpt from or, on being the other woman)

after Jasmine Mans

“400 years of slavery sounds like a choice”
Kanye Omari West

Celebrity is a ghost town. I can’t deny that you are free or ill—white marble floors, calabasas, paris, glasgow, lonely heartsore son of Black academia-chasing spirits like a moth chases flame.

I love you like boys who grew up Black as me in the burbs, my day 1’s and play cousins. We never dreamed of growing up and being you. A star is not a sun without planets in orbit, and we orbited you like moons. You, diamond-cased name-brand deity of Otis Redding and Chaka Khan samples, rap fanboy turned it boy, multimillionaire by marriage and major record sales, collector of awards along mansion walls.

We can’t tell you nothin, nah, but we can tell that right; money got you believin there was an option other than the yo money ain’t ship, or the jaws of a shark, got you thinkin whip, fist, rope, and poplar tree were not the only destinations besides house or field, got you forgettin enslaved Africans were born and raised on plantations, sold, rented, or freed by death off plantations, got you blankin on written passes enslaved folk needed just to leave plantations, got you slow to state the police state is an evolution of 19th century slave catchers-why get yo money right just to get yo history wrong?

Who are we without our ancestry, Ye? Who are you without the musicians you resurrect through samples? How can you say race doesn’t matter anymore when the media won’t acknowledge your mental wellness, but will empathize with white nationalist shooters? You were right about one thing: no one man should have all that power. You are mortal after all, not a G/god, or the son of one. You are your Momma’s Blackboy, from chicagoland, who rapped and made soul beats until the world took notice.

Who would’ve guessed what idol-worship and riches could draw out of you. Your world is so distant from mine, I fear hear me even if you heard this, but Kanye, I hope you live to remember the immeasurable strength our grandest parents had, you can’t and the sacrifices they made to survive. What more can we ask of those who risked it all for our chance to be? We hold them in flesh and spirit; we are their wildest dreams.

Sean Avery Medlin

All my time has been focused on my freedom now
Why would I join ’em when I know that I can beat ’em now?
They put their words on me, and they can eat ’em now
That’s probably why they keep on tellin’ me I’m needed now
They tried to box me out while takin’ what they want from me
I spent too many years livin’ too uncomfortably
Making room for people who didn’t like the labor
But wanted the spoils, greedy, selfish behavior
Now let me give it to you balanced and with clarity
I don’t need to turn myself into a parody
I don’t, I don’t do the shit you do for popularity
They clearly didn’t understand when I said “I Get Out” apparently
My awareness like Keanu in The Matrix
I’m savin’ souls and y’all complainin’ ’bout my lateness
Now it’s illegal for someone to walk in greatness
They want the same shh, but they don’t take risks
Now the world will get to see its own reflection
And the anointed can pursue their own direction
And if you’re wrong and you’re too proud to hear correction
Walk into the hole you dug yourself, fuck a projection
See me in my freedom takin’ all my land back
They said a lot against me thinkin’ I’d just stand back
I got my legs beneath me, I got my hands back
A lot of people sabotaged, they couldn’t stand that
I turned the other cheek, I took blow after blow
There’s so much crisis in the world ’cause you reap what you sow
When you keep what you know is meant for someone else
The ditch you dig for them, you might just end up in yourself
I’m in the secret place, I keep a sacred space
They keep showin’ their hands, but keep hidin’ their face
If I’m a messenger, you block me then you block the message
So aggressive, the world you made is what you’re left with
Pride and ego over love and truth is fuckin’ reckless
Y’all niggas got a death wish, the stupid leaves me breathless

Lauryn Hill (a verse from Nas’s “Nobody”)

When he does his taxes,
He finds charges for things
He didn’t sign up for.
No chance to read about penalties and
Interest rates.
He didn’t sign up for life’s contract.

Would he initial
“I agree” after reading life’s
Terms?
Promising him a chance to

Stroll, sprint, and trot on a star. Flowers, honey, an unlimited chance to walk in a meadow of peace like the one at Yosemite, a crack-house pile of money each day and
Straight A’s.

The penalties are spelled out in a font so tiny as
To be unreadable.
Would the fines be: “Hurt Heartache Tragedy Grief”?

He’s had his share yet lives like a prince
Or at least as a court member.
He remembers
The beauty now dust
Who could not
Bring children to full term.
He and she were educated.
Read books and turned
Them over to Science,
Where they floated in jars.
She became The Cat Lady
And gave each cat those
Stillborn children’s names.

Were his genes to blame?
Do miscarriages run in families?
Is that what his mother meant when
She said, “A lot of your brothers and sisters didn’t make it”?
He woke one night to find her lying on the living-room floor.
He thought that she was dead.
When his stepfather called 911, he could not say “miscarriage.”
He said “misfortune.”

One day, he felt excruciating
Pressure on his back; the Doctor said,
“The Baron has been riding you. You hurt
Every time he grins. He’s always thirsty,
Which explains your dehydration.
He likes the Bayou and hates deserts.”

For a while, he found desert life agreeable.
The burden on his back ceased.
He dreamed of a nude woman with a Benin face.
An orange-headed condor with black wings
Was lifting
Her to one of those California skies, the color
Of robins’ eggs.
This scene occurred above Big Sur.

Desert life was cheap.
He raised prize cacti and explored cliff dwellings, but he ached for the city. On his heart is a street directory. That’s where their survivor found him, her voices in tow. She taught him why some people subject to foul whispers get mad when you praise their gifts.
The chatter that berates them spends more time with them than you.

Out here, smiling climbers
Take selfies when they
Reach the summits of mountains.

But Guilt Mountain?
It has no top.

Ishmael Reed

What language did the angel speak

My most private language

Was the angel fluent

Nuances were lost

Where did the angel come from

The ground

Did you consider yourself a woman or a child before this

Yes

And after

Yes

What was the tenor of your joy then

Choiceless

Did it hurt

Forever

Did you feel rewarded

I hallelujah I assented

How did it feel

Cold blood on the cock of God

Whose blood

My blood

Gabrielle Bates