Tag Archives: African-American

Nana

Posted by Zeannaroux on

I melted to a tall tale
Whispered children with the braided hair
Her skin, aged like the earth, brought forth stories on unknown worth.
I melted as far as the oak tree stands
Wine in hand with berry delight
A beautiful sight on a beautiful night
Clear cut eyes crinkle under the moonlight


Whispered the children with the kinked up hair
Her skin, aged like the earth, showed visions of stories never told
And I melted to hear the tale
My dark brown skin and coiled hair, My children!
All standing there
Whispered, ‘Nana, thank you for being here.’

Written for my Nana Vivian Person

Love you

If this is how we treat our heroes…

Posted by Zeannaroux on

I wanted to graze my finger tips across a surface roughed by bad intentions

Cut my teeth on twisted lips and indigestion

Was it just my imagination that this blue belonged on me

With a silver prong stylus in my hand, this the freedom I understand

The one that boys painted hues of black and blue while wearing green berets

My body is littered with there words. Their taunts of encouragements

Their disgusted repose

A hero really, for the lack of a better word

Who put such fitness into me I thought I would burn

But here they lie, with stained tongues and strained eyes

Having kissed the encouragement that came at a surprise

My color, my blood, spread quickly in the streets

Fingers one raised on intention now begging for release

Lips clenched in indignation now chewing on my teeth

These boys, so precious, forced to grow up

It is my imagination or did they forget how to trust?

A/N

Thank you dear readers for sticking around through these trying times. I know my angst has gone up a fee notches. So hopefully you can enjoy this one. I would love to see how people interpret it.

Much love from mine to yours

A state of emergency

Posted by Zeannaroux on

The bugs are back

With their expectations and condemnations

They proclaim as fact,

how my retreating form is more telling than my words

I ignore them as best I can, spray at hand

To wipe them from existence

But they chatter, as they walk across my kitchen counter

Accusing me of all matters of depravity

I am doing the best I can!

But I remain ignorant of the growing hoard

Paper plates and bile play like friends who can not separate

The bugs are back again

Spending their existence, of which I will end, twisting my lips into

Into futile verses of how I am ok

A blacked out sun

Posted by Zeannaroux on

This is a plague,
A harmonious disease that spread. Invaded the deep crusted lungs that once saved.
It is easy, no really, to see how it may have led to this.
How the blacked sun with a burnt out ring lead to people fighting, and dying, and lying,
They did not try, or so we are told, to change the ways that their ancestors taught
But so covered in ash are we
We do not see that we too are diseased
Picking at scraps and scabs that bleed
The ones that turned our lungs to lead and spread
To unknown places that lay us dead
We fight for a time when the moon bleed gold
When the sun fell upon our shoulders on a once forgotten boat
But those times have come to an end. Twisted within the desserts wind
Our ancestors taught us well and well this wound has festered
Growing daily in blackened sun while they sing hymns of battles won.

A movement that stills

Posted by Zeannaroux on

I have been accused of being a follower. Why? Because I decided to share my thoughts on a movement that means to so much to me. Yet they did not believe me when I said this. Told me that I had no place to speak out on such a subject.

It took me awhile to realize that this is because they thought I was white.

See,I am one of those people who has a particular skill. I can “pass” as a different race as long as my face isn’t shown. My name, my voice, my way of writing. All passing in the eyes of society. It is not something that I like to think about but I do acknowledge that I get a sense of pleasure when people first stumble upon what I looked like.

My name is Jessica. Such a mundane and boring name. I hated it as a kid and I hate it even more now. There is no history to this name. No culture related stories I can tell to my friends. No one will look at me and ask me the origin of my name. I hated how unoriginal it was growing up. It didn’t help that people teased me over it, but really, that was a given since nothing is sacred with it comes to bullies. So yea, I hated it and I hate it now. Though less so than I used to.

As a brown skinned Jessica I pass. I am assumed to be not like “them” as though that is something to have pride in. Not like “them” but I am not accepted into any other group. So who I am? It doesn’t matter as much as it used to.

Still, I fight for the culture I was born into. I feel pride in my brown skin in the proper way, whatever that means. But because of my ability to pass I am often faced with those who feel like I have no space to speak in.

This girl told me that I should stick to my own kind yet when I do so i am ridiculed. It isn’t my fault that can’t see who I am really am but once I educate her on that fact I get blocked.

Or I get told to shut up

Or I get called a race traitor

One I was even called an Uncle Tom. Though that one was because I have a biracial daughter.

I am brown. My skin, as my daughter says, the color of the earth we play in. The one that sheltered the plants. Life thrives beneath my skin. I am proud of it and my connection to such a beautiful phenomenon.

And I stand by my people, my culture that I love, and fight for the injustice thrust upon us. I may not be without privilege but I still have my sense of justice. And I will fight till my brown matters in the eyes of the law and the society in which I live in.

Even if people do not believe I am real

Distortion

Posted by Zeannaroux on

Wanna hear what I think?

We are tired of crawling in the mud

Covered in blood of our brethren

Screaming he was just a friend

Just a man who wanted to live

Wanna hear what I’ve been told

We are tired, this shit is getting old

To many of us have left behind corpse

With grieving mothers looking on

Broken daughters, and forgotten sons

We were never given a chance

Knees got torn when we tried to stand

Do you know how this can end?

Give us freedom from oppression

Listen to our whispered lessons

Lead us not to an early grave

And let us walk at an equal pace

I just want to be

Posted by Zeannaroux on

Sinner with the broken wings

How is it that you still sing?

I sing for glory and holy light

I sing with passion to set all right

But when the devil comes to play

I sing with broken wings on display

For I am a sinner through and through

And it is through him that I get to you

Hi! I am queer. I have no safe space. There is no place that welcomes me. Yet, I am supposed to delude myself into thinking that there is. I know that I am not wanted but I have been told that it is better to think that there is.

I used to have someone I could talk to. A person who I felt like would always be there for me. Sure we would fight every once in awhile. I can not tell you the amount of times I told them I hated them. But I was raised in a home where family was supposed to mean everything. When your parents are gone you only have your cousins, your siblings, your aunts and uncle, to stand by your said. So for this person to betray me as they did hurts. It hurts so fucking bad because at one point there were my best friend.

See my coming out story was pretty bland. Which, I should be grateful that it ended up being that way seeing as others can not say the same. My mother was one of the first I told and she was super cool about it. Way to cool if we are being honest because she soon told me about all the girls friends she had while I was younger and would often ask for peoples numbers while we were out and about. Really, nothing screams “please kill me” moments like watching as your mother flirts with people of all genders anytime she walked out the house. So yes, my coming out was pretty bland.

I had some people who made my life hell but they really didn’t matter. My mother was ok with it. As was my siblings. But that soon changed. A few years back my sister discovered christ and what used to be ok was now one of the things that tore us apart. Now, she spends every moment she can sprouting bible verses and telling me I will go to hell. That I am an abusive mother because I surround my kid in such sinful teachings. She talks about race a lot as well. Blaming white people for all of our problems and how they need to eradicated. But I am the monster.

No one seems to care though. My mother, the women who made my coming out story so boring and uneventful is now constantly telling me that I need to forgive her. Because when she is gone my sister is all I will have left. But what my mother doesn’t understand is that I am used to being alone. I don’t need such toxic people in my life to make myself feel something anymore. So why should I forgive her?

If I am going to hell I rather it be because the love I chose to live with over the hate I would have should I hide.

A soul infected

Posted by Zeannaroux on

I am writing this after seeing a post from a blogger talking about her parenting experience during the pandemic.

Now, she isn’t the only one to write about it. Probably 1 of millions if we are being completely honest. Yet, hers is the first one I had even bothered to look at. Not that there wasn’t any chance to do so, because like I said, plenty of people are writing about this topic. I just haven’t been in a place where I could read about other experiences. So when taking the dive to finally understand what others are doing it is interesting that I ran across hers.

This experience has been trying. As many of my readers know I have a mental disorder. One that can make like a bit more complicated than it needs to be. One would think that this pandemic has scattered me. Made it hard to do much of anything as I curled into a ball awaiting the day we all die. Really, that isn’t remotely near enough to the panic state I have been thrust into.

Instead, image this, a mother and her child sitting on the couch binge watching movies. Cut to a few hours later when said mother is in her room while her child is in a different area. They are both doing different activities but both are quiet. They are content in ways you wouldn’t image would be the case in such situations. They are happy with the lack of responsibility.

But, if you wish to stick around a little longer, you will find the child sleeping and the mother crying alone in her room.

That is my reality.

See, I am used to staying home. Honestly not having to pretend to be happy while around other humans is amazing. I hate my job. I hate school. But I love them so much that I can’t stand myself. A perfect contradiction I know. But that is where I am right now. I am happy to be home and away from the world but I will it all the same.

I miss my co-workers. To the point that I have messaged my boss and a few others to check on them from time to time. I miss my fellow classmates. So much so that I wish there was a way to reach out. Zoom dinner date while we talk about Philosophy and how Socrates would have tots been a frat boy is given the chance. I miss my family and friends.

But by the grace of every deity, if given the chance to stay like this forever I would be grateful. I would welcome it with open arms and scream fuck y’all to the wind. Just me and my daughter, no school and no work. Yes please.

But, my reality makes it so I can not. I do not want this.

So there are days when things are good. I am “fun”(coughlamecough) mom. Singing and dancing while cleaning. Cooking meals and helping my kiddo with homework.you want to make some slime kid? I gotchu boo. Wanna jump on the bed? Fuck the neighbors, they know what we about! We will drown ourselves in laughter and not care about anyone else.

But there are also bad days.

Ones where I can not stop crying. When homework becomes a chore. When ignore the notifications from my daughters teaching asking if she has done her work. My house is a mess and the neighbors love me. My daughter has to fight the silence. Because mommy can not stand sounds. Everything hurts until it doesn’t. Ever tried to parent while feeling numb? As though someone else is living your life and you are playing third wheel to another’s reality. You, the voices, and the one who is in control. All fighting for recognition. With a child who is just to young to understand that not now means maybe next week sweety mommy is to busy fighting her demons.

I have gone a few days without realizing anything. A few hours where I can’t recall what I have done.

This pandemic has been a life saver in some ways. Allowing me to relax and give into my inner desire to stay away from the world.

But it has also been much like the beginning of every disaster movie. Only this one doesn’t end with a love interest and a white fence blocking out the burning city.

What time to be alive.

Please check out this fellow blogger who shared her story and inspired me to write me own. Also feel free to share you own experience while parenting (or aunting and uncleing, or cousining or sibling…ing… ok I’ll stop) during all that is going on.

Blog in question is Grieving Out loud. Thank you so much for sharing your story about mothering through the pandemic. While are experiences are vastly different in many ways I enjoy what you wrote. Seriously, I adore just about everything you write.

Keepsake

Posted by Zeannaroux on

I keep it on my sleeve knowing it will bleed

I think that comforts me, this pain.

When the world is going to hell and people are stuck in themselves

Who would dare to listen to a Brown girls words?

When so many aren’t speaking loud enough

To drown out the voices of the dead

So I hold it to my chest knowing it will die

Because it comforts me, reminds me I’m alive

Another Update cause I can

Posted by Zeannaroux on

Welcome to the musing of an extremely petty poet.

I have had a lot of new followers and am actually starting to get a lot of repeats as well. Still not a lot of comments but I am ok with that. Just wanted to let everyone know, if you all haven’t noticed already, I am a terrible speller. And *spoiler alert* my grammar is even worse. So feel free to judge to your hearts content lol. I have had some people tell me that it is ok but it is something I struggle with and want to work on. I do not do it before I post my work but when I go back I like to edit a few things here and there. Change up a line or two to help it flow better. But if you see some mistake that doesn’t look intentional just comment and let me know. I will not get upset…ok I will get upset if said person only commenter just to tell me what I am doing wrong.

I am a single mom who struggles with BPD. I made this blog first to hone my writing skills but later on I wanted to show what it was like to live with a mental disorder. My poems and little story tell about my life and that of my daughter. Sometimes I can be angry, happy, sad, depression, excited and even, you guessed it, petty. I enjoy each and every person who takes the time to like and read my work. There is not a lot of information out there that paints people with BPD in a neutral light. Most information seeks to vilify us. Well I am here to tell ya that we are just as human as you are. We make mistakes and successes. My poems go a long way into proving that. Because some of my pieces are downright holy while others sound like the musing of a very edgy teen going through puberty. You get no in between with me really 🤣.

So I thank you and say welcome to all the new faces. I am sorry for the mess and look forward to learning from you all.