A poem

It’s Not That I don’t love You

A.A. Clarke

It’s not that I don’t love you

lone star. 

By all accounts you birthed me

during the dry season you set my brown skin in your

red

dust

I rolled in it, tasted of it,

 people could smell it on my skin,

my breath,

I reeked of you

Liberia.

I plunged

my hands into you

and built castles from your clay,

whole villages in fact—mad,

mud huts and palaces

baked hard in the equatorial heat.

I was you.

The best of you

and alas

your heathen, ugly face.

The best of you; Pearl of Africa,

rich, yet forever poor

a beckoning beach of shifting sand

you called,

as a mother would

to suckle at your breast

of grain and green,

rain and roots,

of ever short-lived joy.

your mirror has a face

or two,

(one is mine, ours)

the other is petty, small,

self-serving and full

of pompous sacrifice.

you murder your elders

and you kill your wise men,

your milk is soon to sour

even at your finest moment

I’m not so sure of you;

The Metamorphosis is Kafkan.

your Iron is just a myth:

a figurehead

guided by a serpent’s hand.

And furthermore,

you don’t love me as I once loved you.

I sung your odes for years,

bore you like a badge

over land and over

sea

but

I have since outgrown your insolence,

and

your unremarkable pride.

You have successfully anesthetized me.

And so I wash your dust from my skin

(I am not unaffected by this).

It is my beginning

again.

Seeing not through the dark glass

but the

clear diamond shine;

I see the blood on your hands,

the stones in your rice,

the black on your soul

scored with a sharp, hot thing.

and what is left

does not wash away with water

or heal with time

I am un-breaking my heart of ache,

displeasure,

fear and distrust.

Relearning what I’ve always known,

as well as many new things.

And since I cannot yet change you,

I must change me.

But remember,

It’s not that I don’t love you.

In The Constellation Leo

By Alfreda L. A. Clarke

During the early 1990’s, my family and I resided for a brief time at one the capitol city’s finest hotel resorts—Hotel D’Afrique; courtesy of the Liberian civil war. If you had been living under a rock for a while and were dropped at Hotel Africa during that time, you wouldn’t even know that there was a war going on. From the palatial high rise hotel with its jumping nightlife, to the fanciful villas strung out along the beach, the resort boasted a simple grandeur that had now become the playground for the civil war’s pseudo-elite; a group which my family and I had become a part.  It was all in who you knew now, (who had the most guns and the most power). Or had it always been?  Someone in the know knew my father, so the result was a lovely beach-front villa with sweeping views of the sea. It was a haven temporarily safe and unspoiled. One would have to drive down the long stretch of private road that intersects the city main and then drive on that road into the heart of Monrovia to notice any desolation and despair consistent with the cruelty of the war; or maybe you’d have to hear the gunfire or cries of woe drifting from one of the frequent death scenes. From here, for now, all you could hear were the gentle lapping of the waves, soft breezes that swayed the palm and coconut trees, the sound of laughter and good times.

We latched on to it—the good times–it seemed the only way how.  And with four post-adolescent girls residing in Villa #5, it was hard not to. There were frequent get-togethers, girls’ nights and outings to the hotel’s nightclub (no ID check).  One all-nighter ended with us leaving the dark atmosphere of the club in the early hours of a Sunday morning.  A Sunday morning. Sunday afternoons were the most fun. It was when all the main town folks flocked to the beach for the day. There you could hear the frequent squeals of long lost friends; friends we thought had fled to America, joined one of the fighting groups, or were dead. There were always simple joys on Sundays. Like not being dead.

The rest of the days held a fascination for me that centered on the beach. I craved the feel of sand in my toes; loved watching the sun kiss the horizon on a quiet evening. And the water—on a clear day, the sea sat so low that you could wade out for nearly a mile and still be standing in waist-deep clear blue water.  A friend and I had gone out that far once, under the auspices of learning how to swim.  But more often than not, it was just me and my notebook, writing down the things a teenage girl from the other side of the world writes down when caught in a third-world country’s civil war: boys, of course.  Along with that was a feeling of sadness for the land I once knew and an apprehension that we all felt but no one talked much about.  Nothing now was certain or any condition permanent, as the locals were fond of saying. Somewhere in my teenage mind I knew that this idyllic island existence could not last much longer.

It was from the gentle slope of sand of the back end of the villa that I heard the commotion. My father called out and all of us (my mother, sisters, brothers and I) gathered to the front car port to watch a procession. It seemed one of the reigning warlords had taken it upon himself to ride in a presidential-style convoy, along with his young entourage of gun toting freedom fighters, through the resort’s tiny streets.  It also seemed we would indulge him. Other households stood as we did, waving and cheering politely as they snaked their way through the villas. Our “saviors”. Hell, no one wished to die that day so we played the part of a doting people. The warlord walked a part of the way and paused to shake hands and chat.  As he passed Villa # 5, he stopped in front of me, as say a stripper in a strip club who’s confident in his prowess and reputation finds the one female patron in the room who looks terrified to death and in awe at the same time.  He reached out his hand to me. I looked to my father. He gave a small nod, so I reached out and shook hands of a known killer. I didn’t know this for a fact and there was no physical blood on him but, one heard things.

That night it rained something awful and the following morning, on my pristine piece of beach was a dinner plate sized section of black rock.  I thought it blemished my paradise and I wanted to cover it, which I did, with sand.  Over the next weeks the season changed and more rocks appeared as the sand washed away. I sat there some days, now on a smooth part of a large rough stone instead of soft sand, and watched as the seas became harsher; angrier, the waves growing bigger and eating away at the beach.  One Sunday morning soon after that, I opened the window looked out toward the beach to find the biggest black slate rocks you have ever seen gathered in one place at one time. It’s like they came out of nowhere; like they were flung out by warring angels in some overnight battle.  No more sand; just huge car-sized stone being slapped and beaten by the encroaching sea. A wave landed at that moment and sent enough spray to drench my face.  I figured it would soon be time for us to leave this place. I shut the glass and tasted on my lips the bitter, salty sea.

An Excerpt from In The Constellation Leo by A.A. Clarke

It was such an improbable journey for an eight year old girl to make, this trip to Africa.  I felt like Dorothy leaving the farm for Oz, my thoughts spinning like the tornado that took her there.

I fidgeted in the window seat on the nine hour Pan-Am flight to Monrovia. Previously sandwiched between my mother and father, I’d successfully pleaded with my dad to have the seat closest to the clouds.  That’s how it had always had been–me in the middle.  Our neighborhood in Ames was a small one, college town with a diverse group of close knit foreigners and locals alike.   But I was their “only” here, and was protected as such.

But we were leaving Kansas now; well, Iowa to be exact, and Africa was beckoning through airplane glass.
“Come see me,” she whispered.
And I did.

She was magnificent from the air.
The ground was green forever. Miles and miles of it stretched like a bumpy green carpet separated here and there by sinewy rivers or brown clay road.
The plane began its’ descent.

“Mommy, Mommy!” I reached across my father to grab my mother’s hand. “We’re almost there!”

My hair, beaded and braided, bounced about my head in sync to my eight year old joy. I picked my favorite dress for this trip: my red orphan Annie dress, similar to the one Aileen Quinn wore at the end of the movie when she and Daddy Warbucks sing “I Don’t Need Anything, But You”.  Annie was big that year.  Two redheads from my elementary school in Ames had auditioned for the role.  They didn’t get it.  But I always believed I could have.  Why in the world couldn’t a little brown skinned girl with big brown eyes and braids in her hair play Annie?

But my parents had gotten me the dress instead of the acting lessons I had asked for.  On this day though, I was bright Annie-red; my red dress, white socks and shiny patent leather mary-janes.

“Sit down Mahmie!”

My mother gave me her best airplane cabin stage-whisper from her position between her knees.  She always kept her head down during landings.  Kept her ears from popping, she said.

I asked my father once if Mommy was just being a scaredy-cat.
“Yes Alfreda”, he answered.  And the two of us  laughed hysterically.

He looked at me now with somber eyes as the captain announced our descent over the plane’s intercom.
“Remember what I told you? About how things will be unlike America?” he said.  I nodded.

His voice was stranger.  Not at all playful, like before.  It seemed in the 9 hours it took us to leave North America, Daddy had become more African.

I could feel it in his voice, see the change in his shoulders.  Shoulders I rode on after kindergarten class when Billy Aster had poured paint on my sneakers and I refused to wear them home.  The slight pot-belly I had fallen asleep on night after night when I was too afraid to sleep in my pretty little blue room sucked in a little as he sat up straighter.  As if slouching, along with shoulder rides and calling your mum a scaredy-cat were now a no-no.

I nodded again, fighting to urge to cry.  My Daddy would never yell or be cross with me, I said to myself.  After all, I was his Princess.  But that was in our American home.  We were going to Africa now.

I wanted to close the shade on the oval as the ground rushed up to meet us.

Many things would be different in Africa.

So the holidays are upon us. The sun has set on pilgrim-day,
winter’s breathing frigid on the east coast and everyone around
me has Christmas on the brain.

“Have you started your Christmas shopping?”

“What are you getting you______for Christmas?”

“Did you get a tree yet?”

Hmm, No.

When the economy went south earlier this year I had hoped that the fervor that would cause crowds to gather at 3 a.m. and eventually trample another human being in an effort to get the best deal would slow, if not cease altogether.  That we would graft ourselves away from the commercialization of Christmas; aka the overspending, the excess.  I didn’t get that wish.

So for me that meant shutting the hoopla out completely.  Charity starts at home, right?  No 8-ft tree this year.  No lights in the window.  No all day sing-a-longs to 106.5 FM while stringing popcorn garlands–wait, you didn’t think I actually did that, did you?  Just checking to see if you’re paying attention.  No buying out Toys-R-Us– cuz the kids have all they could possibly ever play with anyway.  No nuthin’!  Get out of our heads marketing ad-campaigns!

Harrumpf!

….Unfortunately, I forgot the #1 rule of cutting back: Cold turkey is just a bird on a farm in North Dakota.  It simply doesn’t work.  Evenings at my house for most of  December were becoming joyless in my feeble attempt to save pennies and buck the status quo.  This modern-day Grinch was having second thoughts (and the evil-eye from my husband, mother and kid)!  I had to rethink my stance: scale down, instead of cut off.

Thank God for a family who understands my, shall we say, quick and crazy crusades.  Faster than you can sing “The Twelve Days of Christmas” my boys brought home a “modulated”  4ft Christmas tree, lights, tinsel, an angel topper and the joy and cheer that those symbols of the season bring.  We decorated, drank hot chocolate and my six year-old asked for only 1 (Yes, one!) thing this Christmas.  Well, maybe two–but that’s neither here nor there.  The point is, we’re refocusing on the reason for the season by celebrating simply, genuinely and with all of our heart, not our wallet.

Now, where’s that popcorn?

The Words of Sifu Bruce Lee

On the Power of the Fluid….Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.

When asked "What do you want to be when you grow up" in my kindergarden class in Ames, Iowa my prompt response was "A lawyer!". Well, from then on until my graduation from high school I went from doctor, to vet, to Janet Jackson dancer, to actress (still holding on to that one). All great occupations I'm sure, but some of the peolpe inhabiting them are some of the most socially and personally challenged people on earth. Myself included.

Which makes me wonder why we we don't ask "What kind of person do you want to be?"

Yeah, the goals and aspirations are essential to a growing child, but think how awesome it would be if we could teach them good sense, emotional stability, money management and planet responsibility as we teach everything else in school. Just a thought. A chance to grow up encouraged not only to set goals for what we can be, but "how" to be.

It persists over generations and decades of endlessness,

turning over on itself

collecting, as it goes, footprints

and memories,

masquerading as our lives.

A.A. Clarke

Hello! I’ve been writing more and more over the last couple of weeks (more prose than poetry), so I decided to return to poetry, all the while examining “how a poem feels” (Wit) and what is important about our relationship to poetry or any other literary piece.
It is nothing more than meeting it and saying “hello’, that first eye to eye that’s the thing, then going from there.

It is that first introduction, between poem and reader that is so purposeful to the role of the work. It’s similar to meeting a person for the first time, or meeting again someone you once knew. We don’t like everyone we meet—some we end up being drinking buddies with, others we take home to meet the family, some we keep under wraps, yet others we want to sleep with on the first date; we end up dating and leaving others(fondly or with contempt), others we marry or cling to forever. And even if none of these things occur, we (or at least I) never forget a face or a meeting or the memory of seeing that face.

So it is with a poem. Impressionable, it marks our future relationship: Love it or hate it, :I KNOW this poem”. Even if it doesn’t strike a chord, it still lingers in some dusty drawer of the memory, important enough to have made some small fissure on the otherwise smooth contours of our minds.

From poetry to piracy. This is not the tale you tell your young sons (or daughters) before you tuck them into bed; Pirates of the Caribbean this is not. This is Pirates of the Gulf of Aden. News reports say Somalian pirates have been attacking ships–mostly carrying weapons–and overtaking the vessels and cargo. As the international community continues to rally forces to stop this treachery on the high seas, one can only wonder about their interest (or lack thereof), in Somalia’s continued instability. Can we fix one without fixing the other?

And BBBBRRRRHHH! All my Minnesotan friends and family are telepathically transferring their cold front eastward, and let me tell you: IT’S WORKING! But I can take the chill. I’ve been braving unbearable winters in the Rockies and 5 footers in central Iowa since I was a kid so, no worries Mon. And as I told my cousin earlier today, there are so many inventive ways to keep warm in the coming months. Let your imagination run wild. Seriously.

Once that imagination gets revved, give yourself a gift, write a poem about a part of your body–any part, and see what develops.

Love it or hate it, it’s yours.