Blessed & Curvy

I stopped putting up a Christmas tree the year after my mother passed. Christmas was her favorite holiday, it was went she knew all her children were going to come home or call her. She was busy cooking in the kitchen all of our favorite dishes, making sure the house was decorated and the tree was lit. I had taken my mother to the hospital for what we thought was going to be something simple, she would get medication and come home. I had ordered her gifts that were under the tree, I had thought she must have pneumonia because they are keeping her. She would be home in time for Christmas and what we learned was she wasn’t coming home this trip but she was dying.  As a caregiver you’re so focused on the love one that you have their schedule memorized, have the doctor’s phone numbers programmed into the phone, and you’re on alert. I had no control over this situation and it felt like it was in warp speed. When the dust settled she was gone, a piece of me was lai...

We are so numb to the news now. Another black man shot, killed, and a protest! Time goes by and within 24 hours another part of the United States "Breaking News" another black child, teenager,and man is killed! It's 2018 and I am 53 years old. As a nation are we not moving forward? Why do I think I am living in a Jim Crow area? Why do I feel that now we as a people don't value another person's life. We don't mind killing someone who looks like us.  If you did your research you would probably see that you're killing someone from your own tribe, a blood relative, and someone son . I have seen cousins in opposite gangs ready to kill their blood relative for the gang. My mind can't take it because the same blood that runs through you is running through me.  I have written five books and in each I always write poems about the mass killing in our community, senseless killing of a man over selling a cigarette, another pulling a empty clip out of h...