You’re as empty as my words, as I ease your thighs open with my mouth.

But you’re warm because every word was sweet.

You’re warm because they caught fire down inside of you.

Warm and empty.

You don’t know it yet.

But you’re as broken as my thoughts as I crash through yours.

And maybe you’re catching on.

And maybe now you’re cooling down.

And if you’ve changed your mind, I can fix that.

I’ll break down your doors.

You’re only a vacant house.

Just let me in.

I’m no one, and we’re nothing.

Just let me in.

We’re both empty.

Just let me in.

You’re as empty as my words.

And I dare you to ever find the heat again.

And maybe if you had just let me in.

But I dare you to ever find that heat again.

Because you’re empty and you’re broken.

And I doubt you’ll ever find any heat again.

#EndTheSilence

Let go of the balloon

Let it pop

Or else you'll never

Let it stop

It will fly to space

It will fly so high

Past your reach

Past the sky

And what will you do then

Just wait it out

Until all you can do is

Silently shout

No, you have to let me go

No, you have to let us pop

We aren't gonna work

This needs to stop

Pop the balloon

A bear climbing a tree sits upon my kitchen counter in the form of a cracked brown cookie jar, but I'd say it's been decades since cookies saw the inside of that jar. My favorite was the lemon drop; crescent moons laced with powdered clouds that would melt in my mouth like freshly drawn honey.

Nana always said, "There are no problems, just situations that need tending." When I was old enough to handle the rolling pin, I wasn't tall enough to reach the stone counter. "We'll take care of that," said Nana, as she walked to the pantry and came back smiling, presenting a step stool hand crafted by my grandfather. "Here we go my love." She had so many loves. Even Mrs. McDonough's dog across the street was a "my love". When she said it to me, I knew by the softness of in her voice that I was the nonpareil "my love", but that was after Papa died.

When I began to roll the dough, flour heavy in the air, she held her hands over mine and I couldn't help but notice we shared identical thumbs. When my first batch of cookies were done, some of the moons looked like suns and others looked like broken stars, but that didn't matter to Nana. "They are perfect," she said, wiping the tear from the corner of my familial eye with the thumb that could be my own. When she touched me, I liked the way the lemon on her finger caught my nose, and stung my skin.

When Nana passed away, my mother asked me, "Is there anything in particular you'd like to have to remember Nana by?" And of course I said, "The cookie jar," without hesitation. We made copies of her handwritten recipes. Some had tears and tape, others stains, perhaps vanilla abstract, chocolate sauce and molasses to name a few.

Since my glucose and my weight were no longer companionable with cookies, and because Nana's cookie jar just had to stay within sight, the beloved jar became a coin bank. From time to time, when I empty my spare change from my Coach bag into the jar, I can't help but imagine the moon the stars and the sun. At those moments the room begins to fill with the scent of lemon zest and I can almost hear her whisper, "How bout a batch of lemon drops, my love."

#fiction

1. Plastic wrap

2. Butchers knife

3. Bleach

4. Gloves

5. Hair dye

6. Fake ID

7. Wooden stake

8. Holy water

9. Alibi

10. REVENGE...

#EvaT

Ive noticed on FB and in other media that people are saying that Racial tensions are getting worse in this country, that Obama is blame for this, that we were getting better before 2008. As a Black man in this country I have to call BS on that.  The tension has always been there, just hidden under the surface. In many ways things are no better for people of color in this country since 2000.  I want us all to take an honest look at what we can do to make things better. White, black, brown, yellow, it doesn’t matter. I am going to address some of the issues here and I want honest feedback.

If you ask any black man that lives in an “Urban” community he will tell you that the police brutality, shootings and harassment is nothing new. It has always been there.  The difference now is it is being reported on the media. In many ways the media have no choice but to cover it because it is being caught on camera now.  What do you think would have happened to Rodney King if they had not caught him being mercilessly beat at the hands of those officers? It would not even had made the news. Many of the laws we have seem to be targeting black and brown skinned individuals, criminal or not. They (the government) says it’s to protect us (the law abiding citizens) but these laws actually cause us to feel even more unsafe in our neighborhoods.  Laws such as stop and frisk, would never fly in such areas as Wall street, Upper East Side, Chestnut hill, or Rittenhouse square. There would be an uproar about how a law that allows police to randomly stop you and search you is a violation of civil rights. How it would be unfathomable to stop a high powered Wall Street broker and perform a pat down in the middle of the street for everyone to see. Could you see Brian Roberts (CEO of Comcast) being searched while out for his morning run in Chestnut Hill. These are the things they did in Nazi Germany. These are the tactics used in overly oppressive governments. Things like this are not supposed to happen here in the United States of America. I’ve heard the reason why, these are high crime areas, we are cutting down on illegal guns and drugs. Statistics show…………..  None of these reasons should ever allow the systematic dismantling of our constitutional rights.  This has led to black and brown people nationwide becoming fed-up and angry with the police.  Innocent people are being made to feel like criminals. This is all after in our recent history of blacks being killed at the hands of police indiscriminately or police locking up black men for crimes they didn’t commit. So there was already an inherent distrust of law enforcement.  Some argue that its what needed to be done, unfortunately the majority of those people seem to be white. Which means you were not the ones made to feel less then human on a daily basis, therefore while you may empathize you truly have no idea what it feels like.  I bring up stop and frisk because it has been in place for years (started in 2002 for NYC) and just goes to underline what I said earlier. There was already a distrust of law enforcement.

For those that have said that Obama has made race relations worse. I implore you to look at the data. Race relations were already bad, just hidden. Obama di very little if anything to make them worse. For that you can blame Apple, Google and FaceBook. And even they didn’t make it worse as much as they helped bring it to the surface. These issues have been left festering unattended for well over a century. One way or another it will come out.  I want you to think back to a little before Obama became president.  Actually he really wasn’t even a household name yet. Let’s go back to June 29 2007. This was actually a ground breaking day, a day that forever changed our country and even our world as we knew it.  This was the day the iPhone debuted.  On the first weekend they sold 1,000,000 phones. This means 1 million people with a access to a 2Mp camcorder in their pocket. The same with iPhone 3G the next year and Android debuted that year. Now we have millions of people with handheld cameras that don’t suck. Now we need a platform that allows you to show what your recorded to the world. Yes we had MySpace but FaceBook was the real game changer here. Now we had a way to show the rest of the country what was happening to us. If the news wouldn’t listen, then we would start our own. We got connected and made our voice louder to the point that we could not be ignored any longer. We now had video proof of the crimes that were committed against us.  Those 3 things allowed the country to see how post racial America really was.  Yes, this all happened under Obama but it did not happen because of Obama.

In conclusion, I want to add that this is not an attack on white people, I have met some really cool white people that I know are not racist. I also know that there are many issues plaguing the black community. We as a people need to come together and do better with policing our own communities. This in one reason things have gotten worse when it comes to police in our neighborhoods. We expect them to clean up the streets, put themselves in danger, all without a bit of help from us. That’s not going to happen. The more we expect it to happen the more things will get worse. We need to work together with the police to clean up our streets. That will go a long way to helping us both.  As far as race relations go we need to have a honest discussion about it. We need to openly discuss the horrors that were committed against the black race. Yes white people I know you didn’t personally didn’t enslave anyone and you personally may not be racist, but this goes way beyond you, this is a cultural legacy. One that many blacks feel your trying to white wash and pretend it did not happen. We still have people alive today that lived through the Jim Crow era and remember what it was all about. The more we can be open and honest the more we can heal this festering wound that is stopping America from being the country that I know it can be.

One final note, for the love of everything holy and right with the world. Please Please Please not not marginalize anyones experience with racism or the police. Just because you don’t see or have not grown up around it does not mean it doesn’t exist. 

I stand in vanilla breeze

in tide of satin cobalt splendor

tranquility molds to my essence

turquoise ripples kiss my toes.

Pock marks in cinnamon sand

traces left by sheltering rain

I dance on the drippings

embellished by the sun.

Soul steps out of my body

and becomes one with the sea

My mind cage opens,

robe of peace, mirror of life

reflecting echoes as

sleeping ghosts awaken,

swallow me whole.

I hide between the wisps

of a lost cloud,

offering solace.

Inky sea carries me

back to my darkness

footprints diverge

fog engulfs, vision wavers.

I taste the salt

on my tongue

cascading from rivers

of tears down my face

I can’t cry any more or

there will be no space

in the sea of my life.

Time undulates,

water pools in silence.

My eyes seek rest

from the tomb of peace

Sadness defeats

as I’m faced with my grief,

crawling toward

the engulfing aquamarine

I have once known

and the sun rays

of lingering hope.

Sometimes a heart can defy reason beyond any boundary. No distance too long to be pulled by such gravity. 

Though improbable the stakes are that stack against you, 

be it walk, climb, or crawl 

it finds my way to you. 

Loves chime hear the song, 

my heart beats the pace, 

I'll step in the rhythm

and to you i race. 

Thanks be to love, 

for it's by such grace 

that i know such riches 

like the joy on my face.

Spots of yellow gold dripping and splotching down,

red bullet dots in a patchy grid, correcting,

alter angle lines in parallel, darting, across the page.

Blue in ripple to a darker tone,

spiraling overlap through gold holes and beyond pigment stars.

blotched distinct brush strokes in anger beaten pools,

around and around, in on itself and disappearing.

Golden rectangles of green cadi-cornered and to the left,

One larger on top than to it's proportionate minor.

White virginal places scattered throughout and extending past edges

Where the pulling color lines lead down the eye to the corner,

and on to begin again.

~This was written by me many years ago when I wanted to paint this painting and did not have any paint at the time, so I wrote it down instead. So nice to have a reason to share it!~