Luna Dwelling Races Might Get Better Odds in Mercury

I close the book while chanting the last few words aloud (spoilers!) for me and for the ghosts of reading past: “races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.” I let the words leap back and forth from page to tongue to brain, and I wonder if the pronouncement is only true for earthly fictions; or, if maybe, plots about Luna dwelling races get better odds in Mercury.

One Hundred Years of Solitude is a time machine.

When I was thirteen, this book (my favorite of all books) took me to prose full of floating fishes and blind leeches (that mistook a wrinkled back for a wall). On this day, decades after fishes and leeches, we went on our umptieth trip and ended up on a page where “Human beings are not born once and for all... life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” No wonder humanity is always screaming and pushing, pushing, pushing… for better (one hopes).

- as suggested in the piece, the quotations are bits from Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, a book that always transports me to interesting pages.

- for Poets and Storytellers United (Weekly Scribblings #30: Writing as a Metaphor for Living). Write new poetry or prose which includes 3 or more of the following words: allusion, conflict, edit, fiction, grammar, mood, pace, plot, poetry, prose, punctuation, rhythm, and stanza. I went with fiction, plot, and prose.

 the beginning of a reading journal project (which did not quite survive *cough*)

Of Love and Other Warriors

Hate loves despair—

be the most obsessive lover

of hope, it will break hate’s heart.

Hate is not to be

ignored:

enemies won’t be defeated

by denial or delusion.

Hate hates thought,

so think

of love and other warriors.

- for Poets and Storytellers United (Writers’ Pantry 30: The First Paulownia Fruit Ripen)

Urban Gardening Chants

If you are wondering why my passion flower looks so gloriously weird, just remember that “Trees and plants always look like the people they live with, somehow.”  – Zora Neale Hurston [and Moi]

When

every city

wails and wails,

my urban garden chants
comfort.

Hope,

my sweet

love, is bright

skies celebrating all
life.

In nature,

all shapes and colors
grow when loved.

 

 

for Poets and Storytellers United (Writers’ Pantry #29: Never Lose that Sense of Hope)

Things Aren’t All that Different

In a corner of my mind, in a dark bit of space that knows no peace, old tongues chant the same old words: “Things were different back then. The past was harsh and brutal, separate and unequal. But all is better now. Everyone gets a chance. Anyone who works for it gets to be whatever they want. Aren’t you glad? Aren’t you grateful?” My heart wants to say yes—if you love the dream, my heart sings, believe it and it will be yours—but heartsong can’t quiet lived memories. I know.

the only Black boy

in line, can not move ahead

before getting frisked

photo by Marcus Bellamy, on Unsplash

I don’t know the individual in the photo (I’m pretty sure it’s a self-portrait of the photographer), but the frustration in his expression spoke to me. 

for Poets and Storytellers United (Weekly Scribblings #27: Things Were Different Back Then and Writers’ Pantry #28: The rain is like my heart)