A poem for your troubles and yur time, good fxlks
So, fun facy about me, I’m in a bookclub where we learn about and study topics related to ATRs aka African Traditional Religions. It’s great, I learn a lot, it’s fun, 10/10. And we read the delcisiously fat textbook that is Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South by Albert J. Raboteau. That is a meaty son of a gun and it ain’t easy to pick up or finish, that’s for sure. But, I did it. Many of us did it.
And I got this poem for my troubles, praise the ancestors.
The iron drum makes a sound Like footsteps The iron kettle catches songs Sung to let freedom ring Across four walls. If I have four wall’s I hope the hum-drum of last nights hymns reach farther than my feet have ever gone I hope my dreams catch waves of missed sleep and ride currents to sea I hope they pour out my wildest dreams, leaving star studded wakes in their way And when I wake up, let me follow. Making my own way to sea. I want to believe what I can’t yet see.
I think I really, really like this poem. LIke really really really. And for that reason alone, I’m going to share this one as part of my free content for all,
I write a ton of stuff, day and night, when it’s hard but mostly when it’s easy. The writings are everywhere, and I cannot keep track of the many places, journals, apps, and random hiding nooks that I leave it in. I write. Then, I leave them (abandon? oh lord, I don’t like thinking of them as abandoned, I do love them, even when they go nowhere clear). Sometimes, years later I come back and edit. I don’t know why but I don’t like the idea of editing my work sometimes, makes it feel less pure or true to the moment.
Oftentimes, I feel that it is more important for pieces of my work to express the authenticity of the moment that inspired them. And that authenticity and honoring of the moment is much more important than the explicit elicitation of understanding or even a feeling.
An elicitation is often not a goal in my poetry. I think novel writing may be significantly different. My novel writing, in particular, feels like trying to stab myself over and over and make you feel the pain, too. Oh, don’t you mind, it’s quite QUITE fun (i’m not crying hysterically, you are).
But I really like this one. I do.