nuance-ing shadows
(is it is what it is)
how’s glancing ever seeing
when you’re never quite is-ing
almost hearing something being said
running ‘round’n’round like you’re living
‘cause breathing’s implying you aint dead
and always pretending you being themmm
you might not be want’n to be
virtuallings there inside your head
cussing at each other instead
Copyright (c) 2019 Asili Ya Nadhiri
nadhiriwrites 
OUR STATE
(in memory of Virgia Brocks-Shedd, 1943-1992 )
In our youth, invisible empires
secretly granted us a wisdom of silence,
energy of tears to baptize spaces for our lives.
We navigated rainbows of dust,
linked by the crystals of fate
and discontinuous sparkling of joy.
Good morning, heartache, you always come again,
good evening, mindscape, our faith-bound friend,
good night, necessity, good night.
Yes, the fierce silence of prayer
guided our quest for sanctuary,
for a peace we bravely misunderstood.
Mississippi made us
photographs of ourselves
to accuse love and hate and chaos.
Water, our first memory,
the mother/father sea
that tempest for tasting the salted fruits of trees.
Metaphysics of time
leaned us and learned us
to be tall pines in buckshot mud and sun-baked clay.
Bogus vocabularies crammed our mouths
as we shot the marbles and jumped the ropes
of the troubles and hopes the folk saw fit to see.
Our photographs darkened
as our music drizzled Delta blues in our ears
and promises of jazz in our eyes.
Good morning, heartache, you always come again,
good evening, mindscape, our faith-bound friend,
good night, necessity, good night.
Owls in our brains
itemized the humanity of our rites,
voiced the sovereignty of our questions.
Secure in being native daughter and native son
we trod our Mississippi roads, brave, defiant, as now
when I speak the sugar of your smile and inhale the incense of your genius.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr.
The nuance is often the message which is the memory but not the whole history and nothing but the history, and memory is proof of who is entangled with whom.
THANK YOU FOR ALWAYS BEING YOU