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I Grow Young by Gaye Boston

7/9/2014

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With Ms Gaye Boston you get no opportunity for your driving lane to “stop here” Instead she sends you hurtling along as she careens through her journey. Her offering is at once witty and refreshing, but full of guile.

Even as this author breaks through the speed limits at deceptively dizzying speeds, through dark spaces and triumphant hairpin turns, her precision of thought is astounding. You the reader will not be permitted to go lazily along for a 10 mile ride, instead, you’ll be forced to examine the seat of your own discomfiture, relinquish your death grip on your life and grow into your greatness…all the while being young and beautiful and openly Gaye…

No straightforward tales of woe here. Ms Boston, assumes your fluency in humanistics. And if your illiteracy in such matters defeats you on your first try, O gentle reader, then… No Guff, use your rereading strategies! Then again, alas you may be… yet young...but not to worry you’re, coming …you’ll see it in your eye skin, hear it in your heartbeat and feel it in your spirit when it’s time for Growing Young.

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Madiba Mandela

12/6/2013

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Madiba Mandela
Fearless and Brave
A man for all seasons
Left us so many reasons
To cry, To laugh
Celebrate
Agitate

Madiba Mandela
You’ve come and
Given us a compass
Planted within us
a perspicacious prose
written in a tongue the heart only knows

Madiba Mandela
Now you’ve left us
with mouths wide open shut
With a longing, and indefinable stirring of gut

Madiba Mandela
We want to reclaim you
But you say no
“I’ve given you enough”
Madiba Madiba – it’s true
You’ve Left us in disguise
Something Stronger Than Pride

Madiba Mandela
We heard the sound of gates
Flung wide open as they lifted up their heads
To let you in
We saw the silent nod
From your Maker
And we understood

Madiba Mandela
Mover and Shaker
Of the Earth
Heartbreaker
Soul Whisperer

Madiba Mandela
Ninety Five
Minus Twenty Seven
Equals the lifetime
It took To fulfill the Book

Madiba Mandela
We Muse
about you and
The One
Who Fashioned you in love
And sent you from eternity
With an open Love letter
Written and imprinted by a sacred Hand

Madiba Mandela
We’ve read and We understand
All the writings on the wall of your prison cell
You were sent....
You came
Like a conquering soldier
You've Left us.....
To tell The perpetual Love Story
Of the fearless and the brave

Tribute to Madiba
by Zpora

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The Pulley

9/24/2013

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Karen Margulis

The Pulley
by Zpora

Look Away
Way across the Green
Keen attention to dots of colors
Flowers of joy and peace rising
Taking you miles from the task at hand
Land staking claim to skull and bones
Moans and groans intermingle with squeaks and screeches

Speeches of hope and eternal rest
Breast full of pain and sorrow
Tomorrow still to come
But, today demands your attention,
Pretensions will never quite fully
Dull the sounds of the Pulley

But, try as it may,
The pulley
Can never fully
Place in its hold
The soul of the unencumbered spirit rising
RIP OFO

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Got A Story To Tell? Find Your Soul: Say it Well!

3/16/2013

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Everbody's got a Story to Tell
Unlock Your Soul Say It Well

Before you exist there is but one soliloquy for humanity a singular GIST

Then from stage left the newborn emerges with its indignant yodel
indicative of doom Jarred from its romper room…. in the womb.....delivered into the cradle.

The babe in arms gurgles an ode to the milky way
Not much to say by way of an in depth commentary. There from its suspended state of euphoria
Offers, but a main idea born of a milk induced stupor.

A cruising toddler knows and tells no lies
Sees no guile
In its circuitous tall tales of no. ......Oblivious to its
circumstance

Ere comes the phase of youthful eyes, looking
through glass........
At Adolescence
Adolescence
Marked by blooming bluebonnets and lavender
fields, sun kissed turquoise shores, cityscapes encrusted in a billion points of twinkling lights, mosaic inlayed mosques; Easter hats, dresses and polo matches…. a life of bliss
Enumerated in journals with fountain or rose colored pens of variegated ink…
pretty in pink.

All the while with your story balled up in your
head….going nowhere

And what of love
Perhaps a grown up fairy tale of Cinderella
What is your potion….. What is it that is written for you in the stars?
Is it an epic love
trilogy of Tristan and
Isolde that may yet
unfold?
A doomed throw back to
A tragedy of the stuff
Aida was made of ?
Your Love story coming at you from the west side with
destructive gale force winds
from the East

Take two......
A Google eye view of a teen hood ruptured
Squinting at life
through Shattered glass

At the other side of midnight
Life on a stage built for
a different script.....
A different booklist filled with routines and themes of
endless turmoil
Here lies unfinished drafts of Bleeding sweat
in stifling shops;
Terrifying Tippy Toe Treks through
Merciless Minefields
Sweltering Safaris
to
mud holes
for a drink of
water before you die.....

Imploding your reverie into smithereens.....
Love Gems as yet unspoken Falling silently from your lips….
into the dust
Undulating no more; your unrythmic hips......
lay unreponsive; fractured …. devoid of lust
With Dewey Eyes flung wide open in disbelief on first sight of the seedier side of love

And all the while your grown up Christmases are coming at you fast and

furious.......

Life and death, Love and War, Joy and Pain happening at warp speed… faster than
your pen can fly across the page. YourLife becomes a constant struggle to accurately Capture and Post YourPurpose and existence on the Wall of the Universe.

Frustration sets in and you switch genres in desperation; in an effort to manage the birth pangs of your unfinished story. Your poetry becomes prose; Truth reads like fiction; Your world has come undone.

But wait…. there is that glimmer of somethingness; that insurgency in your soul that cries out and looks back in wonder at the nothingness from whence you came. A soul poised in readiness to receive and accept the comforting overtures made by mother nature. A Soul that embraces those unexpected moments of restoration of faith in human nature... And then…..There’s that soul stirring glimpse of the Mind of your Maker…….

These saving Graces give voice and
structure
Proffer meaning and avenues through the
rupture
Provides A Centre that can
hold
The GIST of a story that MUST be
told.

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Black Out Poetry - To Know You is To Love You

12/15/2012

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Race with Grace - Accelerate Your Faith

7/25/2012

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Courage For The Journey

Grace Under Fire
by Tzpora

When the terrain gets rough
Gear down and Power up
Time to Show your stuff

When life's got you under the gun
Fire up your Faith
It's Time for A test run

When adversity blindsides your hood
Pray the pedal to the metal
Its about to get good

When King Jesus takes the driver's seat
Move right, sit tight
The devil just bit the dust under your feet

When you spy the Grace checkered flag
Lift up Holy hands
You're about to win this drag!

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The Empty Shirt - Father's Day 2012

6/17/2012

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The Empty Shirt
By ZPora

The Empty Shirt is Full of Pain
Try as you may It will not Regain
Its precious Contents

The Empty Shirt used to Clothe
A Warm Heart full of Love
One I Adored

The Empty Shirt Mocks and Comforts
A Silent Reminder, A Haven of rest
For my bereft soul

The Empty Shirt is stitched together
With sacred threads, memories of my Father
Who Journeyed safely home

The Empty Shirt could not hold
(Though it tried) the Spirit of St Elmo
That now accoutres me.

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Of Poetry Prose and Parables

4/21/2012

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Psalm 119:35 - Make me walk among the path of your commands for that is where my happiness is.

Saint Jerome Patron saint of Literature

April is National Poetry month, at which time I must pause por ponder on how our lives have been enriched by the power of the spoken and written word. Poetry is a good place to work out your salvation and to deconstruct your 'trouble'.
The following quote is poetry explained like only a poet can, by Tracy W. Smith, the winner of the 2012 Pulitzer prize for her book of poems, Life on Mars. She says, "For me a poem is an opportunity to kind of interrogate myself a little bit and see what ways I'm complicated by situations or even... I don't know... like somehow connected to in ways that might be uncomfortable. " Here, Smith also alludes to poetry as a platform for demystifying difficult discourses.
        My love and appreciation for the creative arts is surpassed only by my love for the Master Creator, our awesome God. My love affair with men and women who had their way with words begins with my grandfather Ivan (my mom's stories of his wit and sarcasm made me yearn to have sat at his feet). Then there was my high school English Literature teacher who we affectionately called Aunt Beryl. It was she who whet my appetite for the rhythm and rhyme of the written word, encouraged me to lend an  attentive ear to Shakespeare, and who nurtured my impulse to dabble in the writer's inkpot.
        Then on my own I discovered Maya Angelou. I found myself longing for the opportunity to sit at her hearthstone and listen to her heart speak just so her gift of words would somehow seep surreptitiously into my bones.
        In college I stumbled upon Zora Hurston from whom I've often and unabashedly so, stolen the phrase, "I've been in sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the kitchen pots" in my attempts to put a name to pain.
And then like an unfaithful lover, I might then turn and seek comfort in the arms of Kahlil Gibran's truth. When you wrestle with the idea of death and dying of a loved one and your hurt collides with Gibran"s enlightened soliloquys one cannot help but find solace and renewal of spirit. Gibran writes;
"Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you
truly dance"
         At other times when I seek to interpret and interrogate social  injustice issues of hunger, genocide and poverty, I resort to the words of the brilliant,  Ben Okri. In his poem, An African Elegy, he writes about the audacity of hope amidst pain and struggle:

        We are the miracles that God made
        To taste the bitter fruit of Time.
        We are precious.
        And one day our suffering
        Will turn into the wonders of the earth.

        Life's meanderings inevitably leads to the subject of Love. At such a juncture one must for a time make acquaintances with the mistress who so masterfully orchestrates the ode to love's seedier side. Enter stage left, Ms. Elizabeth Smart who weeps for her lover by Grand Central Station,  ere joining the ranks of the children of Israel who wept by the rivers of the Babylon when they remembered Zion.
        Though the theological debate rages, much of the Bible IS a study in prose and poetry. The lyrical expressions of joy, sorrow, praise and penitence of David; the mournful dirges of lamentations; the Love Songs of Solomon which accurately suggests that, "many waters cannot quench love nor can the floods drown it"

        Then there are those awesome literary exchanges between Job and God. One must remember that God is aka, The Word so Job could not really compete in that poetry slam. Here's a snippet of their conversations. God speaking:
        "Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
         Tell me, if you understand
         Who marked off its dimensions?
         Surely you know!
         Who stretched a measuring line across it?
         On what were its footings set,
         or who laid its cornerstone—
         while the morning stars sang
         together and all the angels shouted for joy?"
         Job 38
No wonder His son Jesus also had a way with words and loved to speak in Parables (spiritual truths embedded in earthly prose). Jesus' communication style helps us to stretch our thinking and consider His message of Salvation. In the following parable He reminds us to shine for his Glory in the Parable of the lamp under a bushel (Matthew 5:14- 16 NIV)
        You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.
         Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.
         Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.
         In the same way, let your light shine before others,
         that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

So even as we celebrate a Month of Poetry
let's gather and reason
about the Master Poet for all the seasons
of our lives
let our christian fire burn brightly
A reflection of His great Glory.
Love and Blessings
Zpora

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Pathways to Mauritania - Nahana Maakum

3/18/2012

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My Commentary on the Mauritania Slave Narrative

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Pathways to Mauritana
By Zpora

Will someone show me the road to
Mauritania
It is imperative
that I validate this narrative
that reads like pulp fiction
This study in contradiction

Will someone show me the route to Mauritana’s children

My blood boils at the
testimony Of ‘Marienne’s’story.
From these stories hitherto unspoken
The triangle seems yet unbroken

Come with me Spirit of Tubman
Let us rise up in righteous indignation
and seek out this tribulation
that troubles Mauritanians

Let us seek and find the root of this travesty
And loosen its Stranglehold
On freedom and dignity

What?
What is that you say?
What do you mean there are Many roads that lead to Many
Mauritanias?
Well then……
Come Let us pick One!
This journey has NOW begun
#startwalking

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I Grow Young by Gaye Boston

Madiba Mandela

The Pulley

Got A Story To Tell? Find Your Soul: Say it Well!

Black Out Poetry - To Know You is To Love You

Race with Grace - Accelerate Your Faith

The Empty Shirt - Father's Day 2012

Of Poetry Prose and Parables

Pathways to Mauritania - Nahana Maakum

Zpora

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