To live passionately or die inside like most mankind

When I was a child I loved not knowing people had skin.  They shined and bobbed like radiant sun flower people without stems.  Some were small suns like me and others taller, slimmer, fatter, having gruff voices.  The room was full of this light when my family was there.  We would huddle around our black & white TV. to marvel at the people inside there.  Then I ascertained that something was wrong.  The people in the TV were doing bad things to the people outside the TV, people like us.  I was baffled; why would one set of suns be mean to another set of suns.  I asked, and asked, and asked and asked, and asked myself - god - me, inside and out. And soon an answer came.

 As I stood and watched my grandmother - sunny - warm - cooking - woman, in the kitchen of nurture - brightness—all of a sudden, from what had been her sunny beam head, a face with features appeared and the strange covering dropped down on her like a curtain, mist, and mud sheath.  When it reached her toes, shoes, toe nails; I looked around and all the sun faces were gone.  We and the people on TV. all had skins, and clothes, and differences and worries.  The people on TV were white and we were called colored and from then on I was sad the suns went away.

When I was in my teens I tried never to think of race.  But no one around me would let me forget. Not the people like me or the people unlike me.  Here I am a middle-age, African, American, Black, Negro, colored, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, and woman.  Now my carefully constructed defenses drop without warning.  I feel like I’m exposed and naked in front of strangers; and then they are me, me, me; sad, alone, with dreams deferred, forgotten. Long.  But can we wake up and smell our forgotten selves?  Run naked in the prickly desert of desire and taboo?  Who will chastise us now?  “Mama, mama!  Don’t look at me.  I want to live now mama.”  Tall and slender beauty was my heritage and my valuation in life.  Tall, slender intelligence peeks through my dread locked hair, wondering about being born in Africa 700 years ago, 1,000 years ago.   Born in a hut as a commoner or as a queen; bearing an ancient wisdom before it was slaughtered with righteous, right, religious, non-mercies and prayers and high going boasts of glory.  And the weapon of man dominates and kills the earth.  It feels cold against my chest, my chest heaves and it takes my breath away, in Africa. 

 We all come from Africa.  Love and heal yourself and come home and love your mother again; deep with crying smiles and moaning laughter.

 Sweep away non-forgiveness.   Deep valleys of sorrow will remain with me as a middle-aged woman in Africa, America; in west, Africa, America.

 Bloom people, bloom again in an ageless glory.  Shout your beauty and love of nature, creatures, features; all different make them the same.

 Oya, the African spirit of the wind, blows on my trailer, now; on my mountain top in Tombstone, Arizona.  And I’m here, and I’m naked and I’m surrounded by love and god has the color of air and the understanding of hope.

 Hope and nature goddesses and blooming are in me and all your children.  The tears of your sadness will cry all over my mountain.  Will cool it.  Will cool it with new African sounds.  Cool, cool, cool, wind, rain and golden grasses rejoice that monsoon is come and desire is alive, not dead.  Near the surface it rides, rides, rides, cool, cool, cool.  Tutu, in the Yoruba language, cool, tutu, tutu, tutu.

 Speechless dreams will speak here in southern Arizona and arms spread and legs spread their hellos unashamed and blessed with the purity of innocence.

 Innocent child is reborn amidst the poor and poverty stricken.  The woman of the river, Osun, will be absorbed into our veins and our grey hair will turn black with the sap of youth, come back.

 Come back, sorry storytellers.  We are at home with our tall slender beauty, short, fat beauty, lovely, ugly beauty.

 Ah, rays shine of goddess today.

 Another thing:

 Sitting on my throne.  My royal hinny.  My poop stool on top of my mountain.  I see the glories of god all around in the dark clouds of shower over Bisbee, to the east, a renaissance sky to the north, Dragoon blue and white painted breath of deity, resigned to say goodnight.  All around cool and soft, birds, cow birds trill and hang onto the ocotillo branches.  Hold on you'all, hold on.  Fly buzz on my bottom.  Go away.  Hmmm, bowel movements are not so glorious inside a house.  I’ll have to remember all we’ve forgotten in our civilized lives.

 I wait, watch, listen, feel, breeze on my bare tattooed back.  Ah, breath of goddess, goodness, smile all over me with your kisses, wind.

 Renaissance sky begins to be surrounded by gray billowings, swallowing the whiteness of glory.  Still gray over Bisbee, maybe, they’re getting rain.  Now while white glories billow from the east, north-east it would be, they push the gray toward Bisbee.  Whoa, whoa, the blue and white make pastels of each other painting clichéd beauty.  Oops, when I wasn’t looking the west began a new drama, something about the gods on their chariots riding hell bent.  Then it’s that billowy face blowing rays of light over Hereford, Arizona.  Probably raining in Mexico.  Time to wipe.  Who needs TV?

Bullying dawn the sun sets quickly as diamond rain drops pepper the dusk sky.  The golden dry, grasses beg to greenness.  Ocotillo ocean lies between me and the sky.  Now the breeze blows wet against my chest my leg and promises arousal.

 Do I see women’s thighs, forming in the ocotillo ocean, blows and never mind, pretending to be rain the drops blow by?

Whoa, ump, ump, what a tasty nectarine slurps into my mouth.  Thank you husband. Nude in the rainy wind.. better put something on.  Breathing in a blessing I say, thank you.  Then I kill a fly, call him a fag, he ruined my paradise, nothing personal.

The rain tired of pretending, falls but the air sucks it dry before it can hit the ground.  Ok, ok, I’ll go in, I guess it’s trying to be serious rain.  Husband says ‘if it is, it’s a failure.”  As he sits and reads from Krishamurti, ‘freedom from the known’ what a blessed ideal, to be free from thought, from fear based on the past, based on the known.

Husband and I discuss the lizard who likes to hang out on our trailer, kitchen window screen.  I think I should charge him rent cause at night that’s where the best bugs are, drawn by the light.  Husband says, “I should pay lizard because he is a great decorator item, turquoise belly and lime green throat.  We view inside, and his back side is lizard color.

Sweet potato started in our living room window.  I should have cooked it but it sprouted and reminded me of being a kid on Lafayette street in Denver, and our many sweet potatoes we rooted and grew in my sister and my bedroom window.

Finished listening to Their Eyes Were Watching God today, books on tape by Zora Neale Hurston and was re re reminded of all the negative racial personal and womenal images I grew up with as a child in the segregated south of niggers and all such associated degradations.

 So I went in and the rain stopped so I came out and the breeze blew the sunset orange, pink glow ray.  Grey clouds with fire sun golden underbelly and the greek white cloud gods blow in from the right another glory with the full symphony.  The music moves the ocotillo forest in harmony sound smooth roar like a whisper then hurl up my locks against my face.  As the sun begins its final hurrah it throws the fierce gold orangeness against the underbelly of the clouds.  Talking about thinking about my reality.  At last it’s come home to roost.  Can I stay? Is it comfortable? the orange globe says, “I do this every day,” I don’t call it a day, I do this, this is who I am.  I nourish you, nourish me.  Please remember me.  It is because of me that you live; the drama you see is your life inside me.  The storms come when it is time; you hear when you take time.  I love all the time.  Take the time to receive me.  Please, please, please.  Good night.

 Another sun given time outside.  Ok, so here I am, ah that vista just took my breath away. A cowbird trills, a sound like flowing water, high, high, rolling, sitting in a green plastic chair, me, in front of my afro centric painted trailer, there is the sun, the wind the moving ocotillo’.

 Collard greens bubble on the stove. As it lightly moves the lid, the rice the yams add to the smell of the setting sun.  the skunk visited our recycle can, 2 nights in a row, 2 nights a go a scrawny fox came by, 3 nights a go our jack rabbit came by and the funny white tailed rabbits dart left and right early in the day, hasenpfeffer, hasenpfeffer look at them scurry.

Husband is tired, once again.  It’s been 2 years building this dream world here we’re not young in body anymore and these dreams require hard adult labor.  But the studio is almost done and the roof is going up on the little guest house.  The dreams to happen here are the rebirth of African concepts, freed from the past as much as humanly possible.  Also the germans seem to have a foothold here, husband is german, fortunately for me he fits certain stereotypes, disciplined and exacting to build and build and build.

Ah gold sun shines away all thought and promises, is ness. Wind whisper and window squeak.  Oya again roars up Yoruba basin, our basin, god’s basin. To dream our new dream

Blasphemy, we humans have created blasphemy.  “No, Dorothy, beggars do not wander alone in regal splendor here, they should though.”  Yes, that’s what I thought.  But the buds beg without asking.  The humming bird feeder feeds the ant’s and wasps, the hummers deign to visit it.  I guess neither would I want to drink from a feeder with dead ants in it.

 Yoni Jefferson - a real novel 

 Brawny Vs Bounty

 Butterfly McQueen ,“I don’t know nothing about birthing no babies” and Dorothy, “we aren’t in Kansas anymore” are her friends.  Yoni Jefferson's friends.

No beginning, no middle and no end. Represent reality as it is, no time but now the story of the ups and downs, high blood pressure, zolof, sex, real and fantasy lovers, Ifa.

 Seeing ah that’s feeling mostly awake with a crick in my neck.  NPR’s snooty paternalism wafts through the air.  But outside my bedroom window ocotillos have put on their leaves, green and soft against the sky.

 So NPR talks about finding water on mars.  Take a lot of bombs there when we go, to kill the Martians when we find them.  Middle age, everything is too hard or it’s not hard enough.

 Sun begins to set once again you think it’d get tired of the monotony.  But when I breathe silent and notice the setting sun it is never the same, only my thought strives for monotony.  Nothing remembered is ever repeated the same. I only wish it so in thought.  But, know if it really happened it would mean I was dead or brain dead.  I inhale the aroma of cheese and orange sunsets and Rhine wine and hours of Ifa study.  And wonder why and wonder my, my, my.

 Skunk in the garbage 2 nights in a row all the creatures are getting used to having us humans in their house, so they arrive at all hours to look at us.  Last night a fox came and peed on one of my bushes.  I guess it was one of his bushes.  2 momma and poppa birds built a beautiful nest in the top of our art studio.  We can’t get them to leave.

Sun - just touching the mesa sends rays through the mesquite bush. The rays spin out and dazzle me with their artistry.  When the studio is done I can paint.  But why try.  I can’t even come near the wonder of what I see.  At least the sun can’t write.  Perhaps I can best her at something.

As, she’s gone and now the glow remains and the mesa is a shadow, reminding me of bad Howard Johnson decorator art. But now I know what the artist saw.  Too bad he abbreviated his vision. But we obviously have the same problem, we what to recreate a perfection that can never be this way again, package it, hang it on the wall  good night light.  Stay my passion.

Yeye Siju Osunyemi