MIND FOOD

I, and other women of color are in an ongoing struggle to survive in a world that still does not recognize us as viable assets. Today's media constant focus is physical beauty, and we must remember to nurture the internal as well as nurture the external. The expensive bags, shoes, hair, implants will not compensate for the inadequacies in your soul. Iyana Van Sant says "Broken little girls become wounded women" and I am in agreement. In not telling anyone of my molestation when I was five, I stayed broken until I was almost fifty. Silence about painful episodes most often lead to abuse of self and others. Instead of material things, invest in your emotional well being. Buy some inner pride. Filling your emptiness with stuff and things,toxic situations and substances will kill your spiritual self.

"I" used to think I can't be a poet because a poem is being everything you can be in a moment speaking with lightning protest unveiling a fiery intellect or letting words drift feather-soft into the ears of strangers who will suddenly understand my beautiful and tortured soul. U see I have spent my life as a black girl; a kinky-headed fat-lipped big-hipped black girl and the poem will surely come out wrong like me. If I could only be cream colored lovely with soft gypsy curls someone's pecan dream sweet sensation I'd be poetry in motion without saying a word If I were beautiful I Could be angry and cute instead of an evil pouting black bitch nigga' woman. Black girls cannot afford to have illusions of grandeur; not ass-kickin' always b trippin' too loud laughin' mean loose black girls. Even though in Africa I would b mistaken for someone's sister cousin neighbor down the way even though I swore never again to walk with my head down ashamed never to care those who celebrate the popular brand of beauty don't see me it still mattered! Oh, but now I can laugh smile trade stories write poems hiding my rage about all those years of putdowns I am through waiting for minds to change; the 60's didn't put me on a throne; I will always b black ebony like the night BUT I have seen in the mirror in the eyes of my sisters my women my lovers that I am beauty in darkness who flowers with loving.

VLC.......From Prison 1989