There’s an inclination to hold my tongue
But something inside of me says
Tell her what she wants to hear so she doesn’t run
That kind of thing
That kind of thinking that has me undone
Is the very thing that has me doing things with you
That with no other woman I’ve ever done
I you shouldn't tip your hand before the cards have been laid
But the more I contemplate
The louder the voice in my heart states

In what I feel
Despite how it looks
Be still
It says if you have the will to risk the ending
So I can have it in the beginning
Truth will reveal

You and I are one even
Just as Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden
Lay your head on my chest
And you’ll hear not only mine
But you’ll hear the Heart of God beating

Innocence replaced with a conceitful attitude
A mission fueled
By deep seated anger to show your mom she can’t tell you what to do
To prove you’re a child no more
If you took a second or little more you’d realize that at 29 no man should see himself as a child proving himself a man
At this stage you should be I am
But you stand in defense of you
Believing your family wants the worst for you
I’ve realized there is nothing further to reach for and admit too than the truth
And the truth is little brother you make poor decisions
Based on the immature childlike lifestyle you’re living
If someone comes along with a difference of opinion you demonize them
In your mind they’re bailing on their responsibility to support your foolishness
When it comes to you everyone is a hater
But could it be you who's full of hate?
Could it be your constant contrarianism which brings you in contention with everyone you come in contact with that keeps you in a state of constant void and anger?
I think you like residing on the outskirts of rationalism
A place where making concessions in the name of courtesy is as profane as cursing
A land of misery where those hurting go to feel sane
As long as you live in denial of your need to deal with your issues little brother
The abused asylum is where you’ll remain

Kissing never lies
It tells a woman everything she needs to know
About the kind man your are inside

A fanatic
In its truest form
An addict who can’t overcome her demons the behemoth of being in love with addiction to crack
A ***** making scores of money for a manipulate
Who could care less if she ended up OD’d or in prison
Of her own volition giving her body to make an ingrate coin
A black woman, mother of two boys, a daughter and two others she can’t raise because she’s unemployed
Deemed unfit incapable of providing a healthy place for her children to be raised
I know this case because my mother adopted two of her sons so they wouldn’t become wards of the state
Beautiful kids with no idea of their biological aunt now adoptive mother did
They weren’t her problem but they were her family
And she just couldn’t sit idle while these innocent babies slid
She saved those boys is what she did
Imagine being 58 with grown kids
Now you’ve got one age seven ir eight and the other age 10
My mother
By no means a patron saint
But the mandate she willfully embraced
Carries with me to this day
It shows her growth as person and as a mother
Reflecting the need to live in service someone else
She depicts exactly what the bible says when it says despite everything love above all else

Despite yesterday's view
In retrospect my perspective was skewed
Imbued by necessity the obligatory nature of my being let me know by the time we got married what I felt for you wasn't love
In my head and in my heart I was in love with someone else
What I felt for you was something else
Worried about what people would think if I backed out and how I would be perceived if I Iet all the people we invited to wedding down
I feel you suspected my feelings of wanting out
So as the paint cracked
And the lies of the facade seeped out Doubt crept in
AND so begins a twisted malodorous case study
Where the relationship that once existed
The thing that brought life in this world
all remnants remembrances and everything that went along with it withered
All that remains is a child who's person and emotions are full of tread marks and darks stains
Along with a relationship with her father that's depriving
By a mother
Constantly striving to lessen the idea of what it means to have a  father
Sedating relational ambitions
Withholding notes and teachings
Exhibiting passive aggression so aggressively
that at 14
my daughter's subconscious tendencies of moments of directed  anger toward me
What I get see is a child with idea of what a Fathers means all I do
I recognize the end game for you was a subterfuge
After all these years in your fight against me
You used our daughter as a guillotine  
Over something that for a long time has been over
You win
It's obvious to me that the power she you over my daughter means I  won't have a true relationship with my babygirl until shes much, much older

Rude and sarcastic
Egotistical and bombastic
Pretentious ******* thinking they know everything
When they're just full of ****

Its getting harder for me to run
Knowing full well what you gave
the sacrifice of your Son
Knowing this selfless offering
Softens my heart
I hear you why can I can't a small change
For never giving up on me and for the sake and gravity of your grace
As best as I know how I offer up this sonnet of thanks

For the sake of living I engage and socially interact
But the true and honest fact is that I
I've never had friends like the ones I had back when I just some kid on the block

Nakedly
Holding me
Knowing me
Like know one else knows the gaps and holes
In my character flaws
Deliberately, you embrace and accommodate them all
Who I AM
You accept it
With no prerequisite
I get to bend and sin
Fallback
Get up
And brush off the dust of my mistakes
Without being made to feel like an ingrate
You bring a grace and a headspace that provides me the space to calculate and learn
With you I don't feel alone
Like I'm just being tolerated or condoned
I feel like I'm with someone I can grow reap and sow
with whom I can dream dreams of incandescence
Holding hands with an angel staring far off in the distance
Watching river waves push against each other rippling through the gape
The infinity of space
And the hope of the vast beyond
So beautiful and great

There a deeper place of self
A richer place than wealth
A place where the soul is kept
inept to pretense and precepts
Where being present is a gift

We pray, we march yet nothing occurs
The line between love and hate remains a blurred
Line...
I...
Want to love them but their hate for me doesnt make the pain hurt less
When they put their bullets in my back, their knees in my back
Dead blacks in the street makes me want to attack
In defense of self
My pride for self
My love for self
Relishes not in useless killing or demeaning
I find myself grieving for every mother and father putting their child in a grave
In a day and age when social media shows the outrage live
The outcry just seems to embolden police officers lies
The 24 hour news, reminds us what we mean to Lady Liberty
And as her children sing the blues
Historical levels of un-education continue
Existential unemployment
Prison rates that makes for better business
The world witnesses police brutality and black fatalities in real time and does nothing about it
If you never walked a mile in my shoes then you know nothing about it
If you lived a day in my life you would never feel blessed
You would feel less vested in teaching your children that in the U.S. all men are created equal

We work so hard for their acceptance
We work so hard to let them go
Learning to love yourself,
Is understanding that to be happy
Sometimes yes means you have to say no.

I open my eyes and I see the sun
I awake and I feel life coursing through my veins
This is morning I feel lucky to have life
To take in the trees the wind
neither to shrink or fear
Power and love in my mind I feel
I am yours to do with me what you will
I need thee today to lead me and order my path
In my weakness I welcome your strength
With you I can do it
Without you there's balance I know I can through it
Existing without is chaos and malice
A man with no soul is as empty as a broken chalice

I thought daddy’s loved their little girls
Well not mine
My dad hates me so much
He won’t even make time
I sit alone sometimes
I close my eyes
And ask God why me
I hate the song "Dance with my Father"
Because it reminds me
That my father doesn’t want to dance with me
I suppose I’m not good enough
Not skinny
Maybe if I was pretty
Maybe if I were smarter he’d accept me
I wonder what it would be like
To have my father protecting me
Maybe someday
But right now
I don't think I'll ever understand
What it truly feels like to be loved by a man

Blossoming where you're planted
Is rarely a vision upon which you planned it
When you're born you're handed a set of circumstances that marginalizes potential and positions self-doubt in your brain
listening to people complain about what they could've done had society given them a fair shake
Breed a ingrate who probably going to make the same mistake and breed negative feelings until it gestate a belief that you can't aspire or differentiate
Between a dreamer dream and a dreamers escape
Success is a gape
Built on the architects mind and a hustlers pace operating on a bridge holding together purpose and space
potential unfulfilled is waste
Of time and Gods creative
You don't  choose what era we live, out parents,
how much wealth you inherit
All you can do is use the vehicle God gave
Then use every advantage we can
To make something of our circumstances and be more

Onward and Upward
Trending on mind-bending signals that send you on a trip to perfect love making
For the sake of awakening the inner child making a bad girl go wild
Letting her inner child out on her worst behavior
Save the Christian values for later
For now live in the moment of every lover’s dreams
Let your inhibitions roam free
Lets heat things up with rose pedals raining from the ceiling
On this cold crisp evening go see
What cupid has left you under the tree
Wrapped up in a bow
It’s time to let go and release the thing you’ve always been afraid of but wanted to be
Exalt intimate thoughts to heights beneath where the Holiest of Holies and great *** meet
Close your eyes
Follow each of my fingers on a ride
Each pushing electrical impulses pulsating until your body convulses and goes into a frenzy
Each one
Precludes the width and the tip of my tongue
And turnpikes all the way down until it touches the inner sides of your thighs then slides…
In and out
In and out of the walls of your gateway
Just point me in the direction of the pathway
The cove the place where I lay my suitcase and we make our case to fill the atmosphere
With rotating, rewinding, refilling
Our empty glasses with wine and no fear
A cycle of love making on relentless rotation being made...right here

Animals caged behind bars remain optimistic
Until the laws of realism and physics tell them they won't escape
The law judges you based on one real fact
And 'for that' there exists a gaping societal impasse
As it stands no witness nor clue can prove your innocence
Hovering over every black man, woman, and child is this impending life sentence, with no chance of parole
Being black...
A hard road lay before you
A choice made for you
That you will exist as a member of a dominated sect
Wrought in self-loathing depression and disrespect from the self-religious who live privileged high in their nests
The weight of the world placed around your neck  
Light on wisdom, heavy on ignorance
Placed on you like low expectations
With little to no consideration placed on the future of black children not swaddled in rhythmic sorts
Running, hurdling, or participating in some form of sport
Intellectualism dies in a vacuum when it’s assumed it doesn’t exist or when it’s assumed which path to choose
Conjecture is given too much weight when you’ve never walked in someone else’s shoes
Perspective is often reserved for someone with a similar background as you
But without the full story and individual testimony how can you bring yourself to decide who's who

Eerily present her presence existed in the absence of her physical appearance
remnants of her energy had the ability and spirituality of loss and chaos
fear and anger reigned
brokenness rained
the atmosphere weathered with spirits old
so tangible you could hear them screaming screeching reaching out for the next victim
hate hidden in the cracks of old feelings and misguided memories demons dead wanting others to die to accompany them in deathly prison desiring the maxim for others to feel the pain to stain their  axiom
existing only for the mass disintegration generalization and death of tomorrow's hope and the future of the next generation

Not everything is going to go right
But not everything is going to be wrong either
Why trudge through life by just going along
Wallowing in what you don’t have or what doesn’t exist
Existence is selfish
It’s full of valleys and embellishments meant to keep you high as kite or down in the basement
What’s interesting is
If you take an interest in investing in self
You’d know it only takes a few breaths to dream
In the gestation of what apathetic people call a weird thing
There’s growth and maturation
The process of success is failure via division and multiplication
Survival teaches that enabling someone only handicaps a person’s ability to go out
To take a walk about and make it on their own
Whether you’re born with a silver spoon
Or birthed into a family destined for doom
Sooner or later we all find out the same truth
That without passion and determination or a goal to place our motivation
We become like hamsters chasing projected images
Filling our medullas with hubris ideas of being moguls and tech savvy engineers
The sweet melody that plays in my ear says
Being fearless is kind of like being insane
Being vain ensures your forefathers don't die in it
The moment you realize how good you really are
no one on this Earth will be able to rival it

I’m standing
Waiting for my big break
Faithfully
Waiting for fate
To meet me
At this crossroads of clarity
Waiting while I bear my cross barely
Giving all that I’ve got
My soul's ready to give in
Closed door after closed door
Rejection from there to here
Down my cheek
Streams the first of many tears
I wonder if fate even knows I'm here

The ultimate hamster wheel of societal
Do's and don'ts
Manufactured fronts
Hallowed hellos
And awkward goodbyes

Im over it
Stop trying to cover it
Just admit
You're a no good
Lying
*******

There's a deeper place of self
A richer place than wealth
A place where one's inner pretenses and precepts are left
A place where the secrets of the soul are kept

Growing up I doubted my mothers love for me
she took care of us physically
But never once told me she loved me

Tripping backflipping slipping down a mudslide headfirst thirsting for a concert of conversions some type of diversion from the immersion of quipping and nervous head spinning
My headspace races yonder
I ponder walking for miles deep
Thinking how I can make things better for all of us
The fussing and fighting constant bickering bitterness lingers from ancient arguments and disputes that never got any resolution

The media portrays prejudiced inhabitants actions as misguided predicaments
Politicians turn these incidents into opportunities to mislead and manipulate constituents
Mantras like "Black lives matter" is a tool
Rhetoric used to manipulate a mass of fools
Smoke screens to distract you
To attract you to a vote for an agenda that will never benefit you

I've seen beauty before
But yours has a distinction
Like different hues
Of the same color blue
In you
I see the fashion of God's artistry
Beneath the contour lines
Beautiful brown eyes
Lies this unique balance
Its like I'm looking at the quintessence of beauty
Where confidence and intelligence inhabits
It's obvious your outer thing
But it's your conversation I find interesting
The breath of fresh air you bring
I find irresistibly refreshing
Experience tells me
Attraction ain't supposed to happen this quick
Because there’s always this sense of complexity in the mix
When dealing with male female relationships
But the feeling of transparency I get
When we spend time
Is on par with the newness I feel
When I look into my daughter's eyes
So indeed
If we decide to cross the line
That which lies between time
And this finite rhyme
I believe would tell of a not too distant future
Existing between you and I
With the sky as our outline
And in between an endless bounty
I'm convinced there is nobody
More perfect for me than you
And if you give me the chance too
I will prove the same to be true
There is no man on this Earth
More perfect than me for you

A stacked life with the odds of the world against us
All the fuss over black lives matter is a matter of centuries of pent up frustration
Never mind the enslavement of our ancestors incarceration and prison yard gestations
I'm talking specifically about the manifestation of police brutality
A reality for black men and women who are seen as inhuman to certain police officers who have absorbed the institutionalized propaganda that says
black people
By virtue of being black are more dangerous and prone to attack, stealing, and committing violent offenses
This ignorant antiquated pervasive programming has convinced many police to see black people
and register in their senses a sense of threat and imminent danger
In a nation of immigrants, the only section of the population profiled and killed at this rate are the same people who have been brutalized for the better part of this nations history
And for what reason, what cause is there to be so afraid of the African American
A member of the human race who was kidnapped
beaten
*****
chained
enslaved
rip from their ancestry
hung
deprived
stripped of  humanity
brainwashed
so much so that our baby's are programmed to **** each other
So what cause is there to be so afraid of the African American
Perhaps the fear of retaliation
From a people wanting to aim
and inflict pain on those who took their very fiber
who's ire burns with a desire to see how it feels to be on the other side of power
But the truth is
no weapon can undo what's been done
The only thing that can belittle hatred is the unshackled
unbridled
emancipation
of love

How do you deal with the after effects
After tragedy lights a match
And blows your entire life into pieces
The anger and sadness you feel
As you hurt and yearn for the thing you loved so dear
Embracing pain is a deep revelation
A manifestation of meeting emotions
Tugging at your heart strings
Hollowed screams
Whispering
Offering stillness
To quiet your broken lamenting heart

She thought she was ready
But the consequence of having a good man got to be too heavy
So wrapped in her own head
She did what any scared woman would've did
She ran from that good man
Back to the arms of the kind of man she was comfortable with

I try not to get swallowed up by pity
But sometimes I do
And I stew in it
Everything about pity makes energy unsettling
Yet I continue to sit in it
I let it surround me until my anger gets lit
And frustration boils over until I’m so angry I’m ready to hit
Something or someone or anything in closest proximity to my fist

It’s not that I want to break things philosophically
But right now something’s wrong with me psychologically sooo
If I were you I'd put some distance between us
Because the way I’m feeling  
I welcome being hallow and sorrowful and ******* about everything

I try not to get swallowed up by the pity
But right now I feel ******
And right now I feel the best way forward
Is for you to just leave me the hell alone

They hate me
Without cause
All for their own
Righteous applause

It reminds me of you the most
A sweetness that swells in the smell of a rose
I can't put my finger on it
But it feels like...
the Essence of your intellect
the Harmony of your cleverness
the Strength of your confidence

It makes me want you more

Like an orchestra noire
Playing a melody
That keeps me standing
And clapping
“Encore!”

It lets me know you're real

An indistinguishable signature
Beautiful & Nameless
It’s the core of you
I like to call
Fragrance

I know now not to cry
Angel with broken wings
Without a voice I can still sing
Praise and worship to the King
Footprints in the sand
And on concrete
I find rest in your presence Lord
In your arms I find peace
What a time we had
What a time we all did
Even now in the end
I still call you my friend
Special can't even compare
To the message I can't express
As you journey in Him just rest my Frain (Friend)
As you journey just rest

Born to a single mother
Four sons, three different men
One of those cowards beat her senseless
And at eight years old
I had the misfortune of having witnessed it

From the foods we eat
Beverages we drink
Down to the very air we breathe
Genetic modification breeds anomaly
Leading us slowly on a pathway to cancer and disease

We were on the verge
Of going our separate ways
Then God sent us an Angel
And gave us a reason to stay

Rainy days have followed
Since you passed in the night
We pray for your soul continually
As you enter into His light

Yesterday's gone
Today is a new
Tomorrow's a mystery
The past is history

Glass of wine
A word that bonds our lives to His own
Peaceful and quiet nights
Granted liberty by His grace and His might
No distractions allowed since I surrendered my life
Just a newness and peace
Wrapped completely in comfort
Now I lay me down to sleep

I was hardheaded
I didn't listen
I know now
Not having a dad in my life
Was a key aspect of my life that was missing

In Him
I'm closer to grace than I've ever been
I'm grateful sin doesn't control my life like it did back when
Before I found joy, found peace
Glory to the most high God who supplies my every need
From the pain I carried around my neck like a leash
To the pile of pride I was buried beneath
I questioned myself if I would ever be free
In him I know I’m no longer condemned
There is nothing to gain by being away from him
My life is empty being away from him
If you ask me who do I love most my answer is always Him

Humility is a thorned crown.
It breaks you down.
It confounds arrogance
And runs it into the ground.

Humility is a perspective changer.
It changes you through and through.
Whether you like it or not, when it hits you
Humility brings about a new you.

Humility keeps you
From being so flippant with your judgments and false security.
Humility assures you, there are no sureties.

Humility is the opposite of invincibility.
It's subtle in its tranquility.
It teaches you when to fight a battle
Where to put your energy.

My childhood was hard
It was never easy
As an adolescent
I was needy
Rightfully uneven
I was often in my feelings
A center child is often left out
In response
I was emotional
So in turn I acted out
Back then I didn't care you had three other kids to think about
Looking back I was hard to put up with
I don't blame you for putting me out