"renovation" poems
At the third street on the left
from Bourbon Street,
the reddish brown waterline
follows us to the hotel
The sleek white walls appear
to be from ‘after Katrina’
like many here
In the spring sun
the pale green lies deserted
in the shadow of
a long line of soot
coughing cars
Where Sachtmo's park
seems forgotten
after cleaning and renovation
is the home of this
other musician with worldly
allure, like a fresh blueberry
on a flat beaten hill
full of loose ends
Apr 7, 2014
Apr 7, 2014 at 9:21 AM UTC
a dark place,
dingy and cobwebbed:
the forlorn basement
below an unfinished house;
there is no hope
of an HGTV house-flip
or a makeover
or the sort of boring/heartwarming story
where some nice white family
—or conveniently diverse—
sets up shop,
smash-cuts through a renovation
and gets their dream home.
no,
the house will remain gloomy,
this basement filled with emptiness;
no one desires
to come through the door,
no one except the tweakers
and the vagabonds
and the runaways,
the ****** and the pimps,
the celebrities and psychiatrists,
the demons and the ghosts,
the preachers and their seething
congregations of judgmental ******
that live across the street,
and the ***** teenagers
hunting for a place to try out ***
no cleaning crew
or maid service
or organize-your-life guru
or even the most experienced
of all the world’s janitors
could enter this house and clean it
or beautify this basement
or disenfranchise the squatters within;
the neighbors just try
and demolish it
every chance they get,
to rid their sparkling, spotless community
of this disgusting eyesore.
Dec 5, 2018
Dec 5, 2018 at 10:15 AM UTC
Beat the Congo
Blow the horn
Wave your hand
Out of many one people
What a vibration
In a this little island
Even though we can’t live as one
But when a party time
We unite
Nuh matter the culture (it doesn’t)
We a full joy we self
You have Rasta talking
Christians praying
Bay song playing (in the context Bay means a lot)
Smiles on everybody faces
Out many one people
So come the Chinese, British, Syrians, Americans, Indians
Every Caribbean and rest of the world
Come to Jamaica
And feel alright
Listen some Bob
Don’t carry no jewelry
Because you will get rob
But come and eat
Have a feast
Enjoy we beach
Entertainment
Energy a shot
Drink a cold beer
Relax under the coconut tree
Feel free
We have **** chicken
Curry goat
Festival, rice, Bammy
Fry and steam fish
Come enjoy we cultural dish
Food galore
Go back a your country
Tell every boy and girl
Say Jamaica nice
We know say crime and violence
Corruption
A plague
But don’t let that stop you
Cause everybody welcome
Nuh matter taste (It doesn’t)
Come in a haste
Cause we have a celebration
Jam dung vibration
Me a tell the politician
Say me a send out a special invitation
But first we yard need renovation
Build up Jamaica
And education
Cause we live in a paradise
Black, green and gold
We proud and bold
As we motto say
Out of many one people.
CHRISTENA ANTONIA VALAIRE WILLIAMS ©2012
JAMAICA
Jan 7, 2013
Jan 7, 2013 at 12:55 PM UTC
There are conversations in which my mental frame leaves the
parameters of my body.
No longer can I fathom the concept of ‘being in love’
I witness dates
and
feel as an apprentice of such a trade might
an inadequacy to replicate the models of those before me
Gone are my indefinite moments of sanity
Childhood is laced in linens of silk
Soft-spoken words
and
Finely crafted spontaneity lacking responsibility
Ceaseless are the times in which I must conceal the thoughts I abhor
Depravity seems to chain my soul
which leads to
a Resolution in pixelation
due to
a visual handicap which has left my eye blind to choosing right
My friends make me happy
but as a glass transforms back-&-forth between half-empty &
half-full
one glance across our wooden dinner is all it takes
for
My thoughts to liquidate into bars of gold
Telling myself I must exchange their conversation for my motivation
heavy on the mind
light keystrokes
Once i reawaken at 1 A.M. from my conscious-coma
i ask myself
What good is it?
To be thoughtful
Yet have no action
What good is it?
To fantasize
Yet refuse your own inclination for renovation
What good is it?
To be dramatic
Yet have no one at your performance
I do understand what it means to ‘be’
Watching Tuesday suns burn in loops of ongoing weeks
- lacking peaks -
As I continue to lay under clothes line
Wrapped in a melody of melancholy
But I do not understand what it means to be ‘me’
My mind feels as a lemon candy might,
sour at first bite -
hollow on the inside, then gone
Without ever truly knowing what it tastes like.
Aug 3, 2018
Aug 3, 2018 at 9:03 PM UTC
first date conversation: research
on lemurs and taxis without floors
because the city is too poor
for upscale renovation
and we exchange backgrounds and
drug stories and some-day-soon
kind of musings
/a southern peach and a sour
stiletto; the man in corner singing
slowly Nobody's Child/
and eventually we write our names in chalk
on the ceiling (and the wall because
I'm tired of places appearing as if I'd
never been there at all)
and later still we write our names in heat
against the cloudy window (twice
because the steam keeps swallowing up
our evidence of existence)
but it's easy to write again and
again because our names are the same
and I'm starting to believe in this idea
of genuine permanence
Nov 9, 2014
Nov 9, 2014 at 12:35 PM UTC
It was June and not summer,
Splashy, muddy, slimy,
wind-kissing roads of Chennai in sight,
I hear, "Jennifer, Jennifer."
Aloysius' wife answers in.
Break - in the movie, I sip my coffee.
Water was rising in the southernmost state of India,
Destruction or development,
Recovery or renovation,
Right words struggled to meet right arms,
Jennifer and Aloysius buffered in the background,
House I was not in was sinking.
I stopped watching snowflakes in the Americas,
Wished for a sun-feast in Kerala,
I lapsed to places sitting at the window pane,
Netflix didn't help the cultural fix.
here, thoughts succumbed, coffee mug dried up.
While uninvited ants,
swept my coffee off the sugarcoat...
May 14, 2019
May 14, 2019 at 12:42 PM UTC
voices, mirror glance inward-outward
-inward-outward-inanoutandinward
in simultaneous disease-like passion--
divine like bacteria kneading and bleep
-ing up to one to one against to one toward
a unity, a collective evolutionary force begin
-ning in a marshy wallow-- forward to a creature
slithers rocks unsure if fish or finger-- beyond unto
a sharp-claw carnivorous terror (the Divine Right of
Kings) and slowly, in the wake of the destruction the
shattered continental plate lifted like a carpet during
renovation violence, the bacteria stayed away and
under soiled-earth to slowly form toward the muddy
saliva of a strangely-fit mouse-rat....
through the dissipating wake of molten mist, a
sabertooth tiger yawns with a growled-tremor
and an after-bath shake-- ends a trampled scrap
under mammoth foot having indicted this panic
in its desperate mammalian hunger-- this bacteria,
kneading and bleeping, continues its one to one
against to one as a meaty slab metabolized by
opportunistic caveman feeding his cubs and his
loves before courage became the theoretical pond
-ering of Voltaire's and Descartes's and Camus's...
Nov 23, 2014
Nov 23, 2014 at 6:56 PM UTC
I blocked out the world,
Closed myself in.
I busted the locks,
To make sure they stayed,
Shut.
I never opened up,
To know the sun.
I made friends in the shadows.
I made friends with,
The cobwebs.
This was how I protected myself.
Protect my home,
From burning down to the,
Floor.
Protecting myself,
I'd say.
Closed up,
My arms wrapped around,
My legs.
I will never open up.
My heart is shattered,
It is far too dangerous.
But we met that day in,
August.
A beautiful day in the,
Summer.
You said my name.
Ripples of shudders
You said my name,
And I have never felt the same.
You took your time,
With burned floorboards,
And broken locks.
You held my hand,
When I was afraid,
To open up.
trust
Rebuilding from the foundation,
Remembering that love is innovation.
You hold my hand through,
The toughest of renovation.
I'm opening the curtains,
Bringing in the sunshine.
I can't remember the last time,
I accepted this sunlight.
I'm warm again,
This is home.
I want to dance in the rain.
I want to sing,
Belt out every little love word.
We dissolve ourselves of shame.
I want to sing it with you.
*I love it when you,
Say my name.*
I plant flowers and prepare,
For May.
I smile just a little wider,
Than I ever did before,
The fires.
I feel new.
You brought the light,
Into this broken,
Old soul.
I remember that girl in the mirror,
I haven't seen her in
years.
The winter had her hidden away.
Where did you find her?
Where did they hide her?
It's time we go out,
To play.
Oct 2, 2014
Oct 2, 2014 at 7:10 PM UTC
Fifteen inches LCD
Electronic mouse
And bunch of scratches of sheets.
There were roof lines
Valleys and ridges
Encircling the overlapping layers
Some are frozen, some are hidden.
Estimation and calculation
Uttering numbers
With various actions.
3D walls
Inserting commands
Subtracting openings
Including doors and windows.
The formula was easy
To multiply and subdivide
Real aesthetical features
Future renovation
For firm edification.
(6/30/14 @xirlleelang)
Jun 30, 2014
Jun 30, 2014 at 11:01 AM UTC
A bumpy track led to the old cottage. The place hadn't been lived in for quite a while but was intact, a perfect timber-framed Tudor cottage. Even the old thatch didn't leak. Just two rooms downstairs with a small lean-to on the back, the kitchen still had a Dutch oven and an old copper for hot water. A kite-winder staircase followed the central chimney up to two bedrooms.
The place was coming up for auction. Desperately I wanted it. At the auction it made four times what I could afford. The buyer did not move in however. There was a story about him being in prison. At this time the farmers used to dispose of waste straw after combining by burning it in the fields, a practice now banned. That's how the thatch caught alight. There was no attempt to fight the fire because no-one even noticed it. Gales later blew in the gable ends, then the chimney crumbled, brambles grew over it until there was hardly a visible trace of the place left.
I wish I could have saved it. It would have been beautiful. Instead I bought a little terrace, then a detached needing renovation, then the one we have today. I got what I wanted eventually, but I still think about that old place sometimes, and how I wanted it.
Oct 14, 2016
Oct 14, 2016 at 7:24 AM UTC
I want to know more than one
Haitian
I want to know more than three
Jamaicans
I want to meet Nigerians that speak
Igbo
Kenyans that laugh at the Swahili I learned in Berkeley
Ugandans that correct my Mandarin
Tanzanians that teach me how to say it in Cantonese
I want to tour the holy city Ile-Ife
trace the pilgrimage path of Mansa Musa
then circle back to Timbuktu
See the reminders of Aksum
See the remainders of Kmt
Touch the Earth and envision the buildings that my ancestors constructed
thousands of years before they were invaded thousands of times
leaving the still standing walls that others never believed were thousands of years old
till their, “science” said so
I want to board a barge in the south and flow north with the Nile
I wonder what eight others will join me
I want to walk the same trail
that was the first trail
compare my foot print
to the first foot print
The vision I see
The things I want to do
The escape I want to take
Isnt one that is new
Its one that is old
so old that its in the blood
in the very fabric and design
of all that claim
Human
What I want is a realization
no
a reawakening
of my genetic inheritance
of my ancestral birthright
What calls me is the land so old
its true name
its original tongue
is the only
can only
be labeled
The First
There
that is what calls to me
There
that is what pushes me
that is the very intangible force that pulsates my heart
pumping the blood through my veins
That place that is forever older than old
yet
In a constant state of
Reconstruction
Recreation
Revelation
Renovation
Revitalization
Revolution
I want to breath the air in that place that is always in a state of newness
I want to feel the frequency in that place
where there are as many words for new
as there are people to speak them
That is the place
That is the space
That is
© Christopher F. Brown 2015
Nov 27, 2015
Nov 27, 2015 at 11:36 AM UTC
Funny how a small success
can make a large struggle
seem worthwhile.
The struggle pushes on your body
like the thousands of pounds of air pressure we endure every moment, adapted since birth when we were exposed to the atmosphere for the first time.
We've adapted so much. It feels like nothing at all.
And such is the struggle, a gradual acceptance,
until one accidental success -
a perfectly carved moment of zen designed to seal one crack in our exterior, to smooth an otherwise rough outline of the idea of your person.
One crack we didn't know was there until we look more closely.
And suddenly - we see - !
Are we made up of billions of cracks,
of shattered thoughts and ideas,
dreams and plans and places and bandaids over the wounds that never really healed?
Are we scarred beneath the flattened affect of the I'mFines and the Don'tWorries?
What a shock, then, when you finally discover the one smooth graft in your otherwise undetectably shattered self.
Oh! The elation!
One small, well-placed celebration
The seed of a new foundation
Can you declare a body unfit for inhabitance?
It's time for total renovation.
Sep 11, 2014
Sep 11, 2014 at 2:50 AM UTC
Waiting Waiting
slowly fading.
From everything that used to make me.
I'd come around but then you'd hate me.
Not in the mood to entertain thee.
Neglected pain, but now I face it.
Trapped in my mind, stuck in the basement.
Hoping that I'll better with renovation.
Took out the doubt, and put some faith in.
Dec 12, 2018
Dec 12, 2018 at 5:52 PM UTC
Nothing better than I chance to show you how I’ve froze over hell givin’ Beelzebub a chill,
Your fables hold little weight when you try to justify their existence as long as I continue dissect your deities,
Not that I am entitled but I can careless about how you explain yourself without the brain,
I’ve been broken and forced to put the pieces back together because I’m not ready to embrace the oblivion without a say,
Without of a chance to reciprocate what you didn’t do for me,
I’m telling you to **** yourself till I fill in your grave,
Get ready son for your vacant destiny,
I’m done with the mental constraints of your needs,
I’m fed up with taking a beating for the ignorance that breeds,
Your about to bounce a check that will leave you dangled at the neck,
Not a threat but I didn’t oppress the armed of ancestral resistance,
That desk can’t keep you from the reach of those who believe in unconditional independence,
And you know why you walk a thin line,
It isn’t because of those nickels and dimes you earn overtime,
It isn’t because you drive home to a white picketed life full of lies,
It’s because you know if one of us grabs a mic we might turn to the tide, the next chapter of this species existence,
Making you extinct,
You think daddy’s inheritance will let you pass any Bill,
But it only takes one to change the tone,
One to alter the course of ****** fostered governance,
Not suggesting a Reich’s renovation,
Or an imperialist’s intervention,
But an interruption to this Nation’s corruption,
**** your principals, **** what your father’s told you,
It’s our turn to mend this debilitated democracy,
To end this domesticated atrocity,
So sorry not trying to foment insurrection,
Just asking the children to picket your legislative lickings,
The documents you pen in order to silence dissidence,
But I’m not going to fear old men with millions,
Jan 10, 2013
Jan 10, 2013 at 1:29 PM UTC
Tell the ******* truth, Gwen Stefani, bleach blonde vamp.
Questions stack up in the recesses of my mind,
A renovation’s trash pile of drywall dust.
You changed me, but there are things to clean up.
Did you just take a break to remake your image
For swarms of chubby white suburban pre-teens
Swarming in packs at the middle school dance?
Are those the only bees you could catch in your hive?
How did you meld and mold the Harajuku girls
To fit in the camera’s crosshairs or to walk
the thin line of a New York fashion week runway?
I must admit I still have my bottle of L.A.M.B.
Was the woman who screeched she was Just a Girl
Just floundering for fame? Does this happen to
Every mid-level artist? Will my inkwell turn
To the blood of an easy fan base too?
I wanted you to be my mother, but you picked
my platinum model sister as your favorite.
But will I still become you, even though I know
You’re false? Your press coverage can’t reveal the future.
Black tar lies spew from US magazine covers
Eyes dark, I gobble them up in violent shudders.
May 15, 2014
May 15, 2014 at 10:49 PM UTC
I wonder how you are feeling exactly
If you miss taste of my lips
Say you care but I can't help but worry
To you I am just something broken to fix
Jul 5, 2022
Jul 5, 2022 at 4:58 AM UTC
skyward certified ledgers keep track of all the godly, gritty details we can’t bring ourselves to believe. just throw some words together and make it count. the dust between our fingernails flavors the few crumbs we have left with the taste of a world that turned it’s back on us. honestly, the real apocalypse is just simply going through the motions. only we’re not as important as i’m making us out to be. sometimes (mostly on nights where the cold infiltrates your bones like an incurable disease and the rain is hitting the roof so hard you think that maybe this time it all will just finally come crashing down) it feels like we were designed for eachother. excuse the sentiment, i know it’s not me. i still picture you in the under-renovation-library thumbing through indexes for facts or truths, or maybe even just a semblance of hope. but that’s just the kind of punch drunk love ******** that keeps me ticking. my smiles come and go with the knowledge that you collect expired medicine and listen to mp3s of seismic waves from beneath the earth’s surface. you’re that special kind of weird that only makes sense in the way you can’t even play a game of monopoly without falling apart. a true rivalry is the greatest form of love. i’m stuck somewhere in between holding on to a grudge. you’re at my throat, i’m in your head. i swear i’m trying to regulate my sleeping patterns again. but the autocorrect on tumblr tried to change “mp3s” to “mumps” so where does your allegiance really stand? melatonin nod. glasses smudged. overedited and overanalyzed. linking words is the slurred speech of typing. or something like that.
Jan 19, 2013
Jan 19, 2013 at 12:55 PM UTC
Will you join me in this renovation
The one that fulfills our souls
The one God intended
I can feel that he knows
Building separately has yet to work
A sign we should have seen
Giving in is pride demolished
The devil brought to his knees
Attending church and counseling
In and of itself wasn't enough
Bare souls a necessity like
Standing trusting on a bluff
Vulnerable to one another
Dedicated to a higher power
All defenses down
Fear enough to make us cower
Easy is as easy does
Hard work yields bounty
Tomorrow hand-in-hand
Let's together up the ante
A season of tomorrows
Together in all the splendor
The one we failed to believe in
Worth it and oh so tender
Tender beauty
Tender hearts
Feeling like we see our parents
Together forever, never apart
April 16, 2014
Apr 16, 2014
Apr 16, 2014 at 5:17 PM UTC
Clumsy hands moving up and down
Haunted fingertips infinitely counting
For every pearl a tear dropped
For every tear a pearl counted
Memories attached
Feelings concealed
Plenty to reveal
Symbol of purity and renovation
A continuous prompt to be sincere
An urge to remain dignified
A push to keep searching for happiness
The perfect gift she has ever received
From the one she will always grieve
Nov 10, 2010
Nov 10, 2010 at 11:32 AM UTC
I taste your lips like the cotton candy
of a Newark sky, laced
with smog and dysentery. You lift
me up, roll me over and draw
me toward you. The gravitational pull--
'on my hair and tell me you love me'--
of your shoulders
and the intoxication of your
voice. Craning my neck
to hear--'you love me'--the grip
of your hands
on my throat.
The city is loud. Just
loud enough to gasp
through the static
of your car radio, pressing--'up against
me'--all the buttons.
Just change
the station. Where we rock
and undulate smoggy windows and
candied skies.
This last goodbye
tastes different from
my first time, clutching--
'my back and etching out lullabies'--
the shift stick. Put it in
neutral. We can just coast
from here and take it
easy--'she's so'--easy. Easy
falling into and letting fall and keeping--
'next to me forever'--from falling
over and over the bricks
of your building, shaking
the foundation, the exact
same way. You loved me
like a super dome and expanded
the words of your cityscape: a nice
addition, in need
of renovation. The cycle of
recycled buildings and veiled skies.
The monotonous gossip
of a Newark morning drawn out
past the night.
Dec 8, 2016
Dec 8, 2016 at 2:51 PM UTC
I am a rough draft. I am the crossing out of words that are not good enough in red ink, question marks after highlighted theories by your English teacher.
You are eventually going to ask about the dark lines on my right wrist, and I will eventually tell you the truth. I'll tell you the very first time was when I was only seven years old. I sat on my bed and stabbed my hand with a pencil. I have a few scars from that and I hope you will eventually have the courage to take a black pen and connect them to create a constellation and help me make sense of all of it.
When I cry because I get overwhelmed with how much I love you, take it as a compliment. Yes, I cry often. Yes, I love too much. When this happens, unzip your skin and make room for me. Fit me into your chest, because I will try my hardest to fit in between the bones of your back and the spaces in between your ribs. You will see every ounce of my love for you in the ringlets of my hair, every vein you can see in my wrists and every bone that pops out of my back.
After our first real fight, I will call back a half hour later, asking you to stay the night. When you get to my room, you will hear the kettle steeping and the bath running. I will run into your arms, and yes, I will cry again. I will plant kisses on every part of your body I can see, and whisper apologies for being such a mess in between every kiss.
I will make you many mix tapes and write you lots of letters. I will kiss the corners of your smile whenever I see it. I will write you many poems and seal them in envelopes and mail them to you, even if I was going to see you the next day. I will want to cook with your mother and discuss renovation plans with your father. When you roll your eyes when I call them by their first names, I will laugh.
But please know, I am only a rough draft. You will get tired of my love, my poems and fitting your fingers in between the spaces of mine. You will carve your name into my bones and my skull, rearranging every one of my veins to spell your name and seal a picture of every moment we fell in love all over again on the inside of my eyelids. For every time I blink, you will be there. You will be everywhere, and I am not able to leave my mark on any boy who claims he loves me, so know that you will be free. I was only the rough draft.
Oct 7, 2013
Oct 7, 2013 at 7:07 PM UTC
something fit. something aligned under the breastbone
ribs pattered out and gave space for breath
that didn't taste of anything.
something clicked. tortured poet keeping a journal
walks the south route instead
and sees the spiritual spin on life through the stained glass windows
of a shack church in need of extensive renovation.
she is inspired and her need bottoms out for the day--
praise is good.
good.
great.
don't bother me when i'm sharpening my pencils.
i'm preparing for divine intervention
and the clarity i know i'm owed
something hit. my words, hey, i'm black and blue
and they? they're cut through and through
with flecks of tracts lent from life and beyond.
Apr 14, 2016
Apr 14, 2016 at 5:44 PM UTC
In adolescent vain, I studied myself
in a pilgrimage of identity.
I sought the avenues to find belonging,
I scoured song lyrics for personal truth.
In maturation, I have distanced myself.
I wish to perish my breath, my beliefs,
to clear my skies, my mind, so dutifully.
Hold true, my dear wholesome meditation,
so I shall live this life as an estuary,
opened-armed to all rhythms of the tide,
to be cradled by the land in life's dispute,
but still hear the whale-song of consciousness;
to realise this unifying truth.
Jan 24, 2014
Jan 24, 2014 at 2:22 PM UTC
Houses are built to be homes, so consider my clavicle your door frame.
These arms are slowly hardening to brick.
You see, dry wall has the tendency to give in to the weight of your knuckles and the press of your skin so the arms that so eagerly work to surround you in safety needed renovation.
One day you decided my rib cage staircase squeaked too much and the rooms you've filled where too small.
I could have Renovated, but you Doused me in gasoline and started a fire searching for flames of answer.
I hope my blanket of ashes brings you the warmth you needed.
May 22, 2016
May 22, 2016 at 10:51 PM UTC
*********
When I was traveling in the train,
With no strain on my brain,
Only peeping through the window,
To have a look of nature.
The flying birds, the grazing cows,
The race of trees in opposite direction,
The green green fields, the great mountains,
Lovely ponds and walking rivers.
The muddy huts and the children playing,
That was all that I could see,
My soul went somewhere else,
And I was thinking, what is life?
The gift of God, or the curse of devil,
Life is to enjoy or to suffer,
Many answers floated in my mind,
But the journey finished with answers incomplete.
Thereafter, I bombarded this question,
to each and every person I met.
A philosopher told, Life is sorrow,
A Scientist told, it’s an invention.
It’s a game answered the player.
No, it is a play, told the actor.
I went to a sage to get the answer,
Devotion is life, I was told.
Life is an ambition and dream,
Answered rich and cultured youth,
But the other youth not agreed,
Because he believes, it’s struggle.
Life is a chance, said the gambler,
No, its dance of happiness and pain,
Answered the classical dancer,
No, Life is Renovation, told the Archeologist.
Life is knowledge, said the teacher.
Life is thought, said the thinker.
“Life is a matter of self realization”,
It cannot be defined, defined the absent minded professor.
I met a roadside preacher,
That’s poor little creature,
Totally filled with confusion,
Said, ‘Life is an illusion’.
I asked this question to the driver,
Who picks me daily for the school?
He said, Life is like a bus,
Running on the roads of time.
So many answers, all were right,
But all were somewhat incomplete.
So it was difficult to compile,
And get the answer as a whole.
I keep on thinking all the time,
Deriving the answers as solving equations.
At last, I concluded as a whole,
That Life is Hope and Hope is Life.
******************
Mar 17, 2018
Mar 17, 2018 at 8:48 AM UTC