(no subject)
Meet My Mother Liberation
Pregnant with the bastard child of an immaculate conception
She began her life on a plane, left JFK in lieu of a crowded train
There, three months too early birthed in an abyss, a mass-less abyss of people: Black, White, and Chinese-no Korean
An individual-there, she imagined she had created a new class, not a child, baby, but an individual
New York smiles, smirks at his cousin Ellis and creates his own intellect
More than my birth mother, Liberation, would permit herself
His smile produces the only creases in the tides of his face-
Predicting the sailors their doom, daring his own looming, imminent destruction
It never came
His statute to Babylon continues to stand erect
And his smile, oh, his smile deceives the child out of me and unto his lap-already crowded by vendors selling somebody named dignity
Glimmers of mockery resemble finely cut diamonds
Sweet, Sheer, Simplistic, delight
I wait for those hours he noticed me, ever so gently
Touching his red cloth fringe as he discussed the meaning of words he never discussed
I grew indignant as his newly shaped woman; touched one day the cloth above his heel, the blood my own
He turned, feeling the spring water tears burning his head
Smiled, his smile of mockery, deception and promise
I was given gumdrops and closed out of a circle he now shared with his wife-Liberation
My mother Liberation speaks no English
Ever tied to her native seas and now distant shores
One can only expect rivers to wait so long
She cries her country the best way she knows how
Stooping low, collecting stars and stripes like sea shells,
She whispers her sorrows in French, masquerades her seduction by just its memory in beats created of the Africa she has abandoned, rhythm of the sugars of the Caribbean, The spices of the Indias she has dared not speak
She shouts to me in undertones to the Carib in my bones
And I hand her food-a melting pot so it’s brown and full of sinew-I hope she would die, knowing her calls would only become stronger and that much more piercing
Her tears sound like drums with a hidden, unrepeated melody
And I watch New York, my surrogate father, move awkwardly
Oblivious to himself feed Africa, liberate Afghanistan, and terrorize the seas he smiles upon
My father does not see her shackles pulling her
He does not see my colors
Red black and blue-
He gives me money for the train and forgets my food
My mother, Liberation weeps in a different bed and counts to 21
7 X 3 - the seven things her God detests, the three that sustain her
My father New York stands vertically aroused protecting her with an unlit torch
I, sitting at a mirror they fashioned to expose my weakness and exploit my strengths survey my cavities.
~M. Ashford
Pregnant with the bastard child of an immaculate conception
She began her life on a plane, left JFK in lieu of a crowded train
There, three months too early birthed in an abyss, a mass-less abyss of people: Black, White, and Chinese-no Korean
An individual-there, she imagined she had created a new class, not a child, baby, but an individual
New York smiles, smirks at his cousin Ellis and creates his own intellect
More than my birth mother, Liberation, would permit herself
His smile produces the only creases in the tides of his face-
Predicting the sailors their doom, daring his own looming, imminent destruction
It never came
His statute to Babylon continues to stand erect
And his smile, oh, his smile deceives the child out of me and unto his lap-already crowded by vendors selling somebody named dignity
Glimmers of mockery resemble finely cut diamonds
Sweet, Sheer, Simplistic, delight
I wait for those hours he noticed me, ever so gently
Touching his red cloth fringe as he discussed the meaning of words he never discussed
I grew indignant as his newly shaped woman; touched one day the cloth above his heel, the blood my own
He turned, feeling the spring water tears burning his head
Smiled, his smile of mockery, deception and promise
I was given gumdrops and closed out of a circle he now shared with his wife-Liberation
My mother Liberation speaks no English
Ever tied to her native seas and now distant shores
One can only expect rivers to wait so long
She cries her country the best way she knows how
Stooping low, collecting stars and stripes like sea shells,
She whispers her sorrows in French, masquerades her seduction by just its memory in beats created of the Africa she has abandoned, rhythm of the sugars of the Caribbean, The spices of the Indias she has dared not speak
She shouts to me in undertones to the Carib in my bones
And I hand her food-a melting pot so it’s brown and full of sinew-I hope she would die, knowing her calls would only become stronger and that much more piercing
Her tears sound like drums with a hidden, unrepeated melody
And I watch New York, my surrogate father, move awkwardly
Oblivious to himself feed Africa, liberate Afghanistan, and terrorize the seas he smiles upon
My father does not see her shackles pulling her
He does not see my colors
Red black and blue-
He gives me money for the train and forgets my food
My mother, Liberation weeps in a different bed and counts to 21
7 X 3 - the seven things her God detests, the three that sustain her
My father New York stands vertically aroused protecting her with an unlit torch
I, sitting at a mirror they fashioned to expose my weakness and exploit my strengths survey my cavities.
~M. Ashford