Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Sunday, May 08, 2011
Saturday, May 07, 2011
Mother's day...
History of Mother's Day
"The first official Mother's Day celebrations in the United States took place in West Virginia in 1908, at the urging of Anna Jarvis. Anna's mother (also named Anna), who was active in her community, frequently organized women's groups to promote friendship and health. It had been her dream to reunite families divided by the Civil War with a day dedicated to mothers. When she passed away on May 12, 1907, Anna held a memorial service at her late mother's church in her honor. Her mother's idea of Mother's Day quickly caught on, and within five years of her death, virtually every state was observing the day on the anniversary of her death. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared the second Sunday of May as the official Mother's Day.
"Although Jarvis had promoted wearing a white carnation as a tribute to one's mother, the custom developed of wearing a red or pink carnation to represent a living mother or a white carnation for a mother who was deceased. Over time, the day was expanded to include others, such as grandmothers and aunts, who played mothering roles. However, what had originally been primarily a day of honor became associated with the sending of cards and the giving of gifts and in protest against its commercialization, Jarvis spent the last years of her life trying to abolish the holiday that she had helped establish.
"Mother's Day is celebrated around the world, either on this date, or at other times of the year. In 17th century England, those who had moved away were allowed to visit their home parishes and their mothers on Laetare Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Lent. This became "Mothering Sunday," now celebrated earlier in the year in England. Some countries have also continued to observe ancient festivals; for example, Durga-puja, honoring the goddess Durga, remains an important festival in India."
Despite my challenging background, she said often and believed the quote I marquee above, and more importantly: she believed in me.
Mildred: Her name means "gentle strength." She was that.
Please honor your mother (while she lives), who assists you in fulfilling your dreams: http://www.e-cards.com/area/mothers-day/ (also source of "history of Mother's Day" above)
Monday, May 02, 2011
Madea's Wisdom
© 2 May 2011, The Griot Poet
Mildred Dean Goodwin: sunrise 15 September 1925, sunset 7 May 2009
My mother hung
a sign on my
bedroom wall
which read:
"It isn't smart
to argue with a fool:
listeners can't tell
which is which."
I wish Lawrence O'Donnell read
this
before expecting maturity
and lucidity
from the mother
of birthers: Orly Tate.
Who avoided any
notion of apology
by berating the president
on supposedly falsifying
not only
his short and long form
birth certificates,
but his social security number
and selective service papers.
Hate
has no logic,
but it has many fathers.
Who don't bother
with facts or data;
fairness or balance:
because Hermann Goering's chancellor
said
“Make the lie big,
make it simple,
keep saying it,
and eventually
they will believe it”
(and Goering said: "Education is dangerous - Every educated person is a future enemy.")
So,
I wasn't miffed
or defensive when
a hair's breadth
after the news
a man named Obama
ordered the kill of
a man named Osama
(ironic and poetic)
that the same
fringe element
demanding long form
birth certificates
(now in the public sphere)
strove mightily
to credit
exclusively
the previous
president
(or, the statement
this one wasn't
"enthusiastic enough"
about the announcement
or the grim duty
of putting special
forces soldiers
in harms way)!
I smiled,
remembering
my mother's
wisdom;
Tom Joyner
& Jay Anthony
Brown's
humorous
rejoinders,
knowing truth,
and the knowledge
that sometimes
doing a good job
is ITS own reward,
God only
promotes
and restores.
I smiled:
in full strength
of my mother's
wisdom...
stood tall,
straightened my back,
and
walked...
away!
Sundress, part 2
Over 200 + photos
and my index finger counts
the costs going numb clicking “like”…
You floss a million dollar smile…
And the spring breeze lifts
your hair like you’re on a yacht somewhere,
And it gently lifts your…sundress.
I digress to Phat Cat Players lyrics,
Doing a Google search and You Tube
to see and hear it (again) to recall its essence:
I, Cyrano, write prose to you…
The Sword Saint, Myamoto Musashi
wrote “Go Rin No Sho”: a Book of Five Rings
On strategies he used to slay 60 men
in combat from the age of 13
(the first sword versus his boat oar),
My sword is not martial,
but Chaka Zulu’s IXWA: my pen.
As I begin, I implore the spirit
of muse to ensure that I explore
the method of his strategy in
this Sundress piece to you.
Ground
Yours is an elegance deficit
of younger generations,
you lie there confident,
regal and appealing.
Capable of dancing “The Wobble”
and stopping traffic with
your queenly entrance to any room,
I swoon over the luck of mother earth
to touch your frame and tickle your skin
with blades of Texas Augustine:
royal, pious; scene serene as you
serenade the photo artist
from your throne of silence.
Water
It has a singular mission:
To travel several thousand miles
from the stratosphere, to become
one with the fabric of your sundress.
Yet the drip-drop of its cousins
causes you no distress,
wet fabric cools skin unmarred
by middle passages past,
like incubi fairies,
di-hydrogen monoxide rides
the membranes of your pours to
explore the sanctuary of
your fair membrane’s nucleus,
an intimate masseuse
mere mortals on Nefertiti’s skin
can only imagine.
Fire
The dress clings to the orifice of your skin.
You come in and light the fire,
kicking off those sandals, red, gorgeous toes
fully painted and exposed.
Fire aspires by radiation to touch you
as he does – steam pours from both of you
and you embrace Christian as a red/yellow blaze
embraces you: a spiritual Ménage à trois
of humans and element: the dress and his clothes
canopies the floor like a patchwork quilt un-sewn
(wine glasses thrown across the floor)
as you pull him close to kiss and pretzel
with you forming and entering Aphrodite’s and
Shakespeare’s altar;
Fire crackles, live writing sonnets on
entwined legs and logs, radiation heating sweaty,
luminous African skin,
clinging, touching, breathing to climax:
your pyro Cyrano.
Void
“In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God
and the Word was God.”
And following John 1:1,
the Word spoken was “light, be”
and a universe was born,
gases, accretion disks,
coalescing to planets,
forming firmaments and continents;
earth, water, fire – the spirit of void
represented by wind,
the same that lifted…your sundress.
In the beginning, the Word painted
the portrait of you in a sundress:
but first He had to create
a universe for you to reign in it.