DIMPLE by Flaco Navaja

A REPOST
    from Def Comedy Jam

If you don't grin or smile
Get a little tear in your eye
Your heart might not be alive

FOR ANYONE WHO HAS HAD TO DEFEND THEIR MAMA'S ACCENT

Feeling Rebloggy




A Latina poet beautifully explains why we should be proud of our parent's accents.

"If there's one thing we know about #GrowingUpLatino, it's this— there are just some words that people who grew up speaking Spanish as their first languagecan't say for sh-t. But we also know that there is a certain type of beauty in being able to pronounce English words in your own unique way.

Award-winning Latina poet Denice Frohman explains this all perfectly in her piece "Accents," in which she describes all the ways her mother's accent adds more rhythm and flavor to normally boring, harsh-sounding English words..."

Read More http://www.theflama.com/for-anyone-who-had-to-defend-their-parents-accent-1476343338.html


Hear It Here

A daughter convinced her beauty an abberration...

WHAT I'VE LEARNED by Aja Monet

WHAT I'VE LEARNED - Aja Monet

I know cloud formations
that raindrops don't fall in a teardrop shape
they originally fall in the shape of a flat oval
I don't remember where I read that

....

how to be broken and put together again

I know my arms are long
and my hands remind me of vines
I know laughter
sometimes sounds like bubble wrap
and it's my favorite part of unpacking boxes

When I smile I quint my eyes
i know men with deep diaphram laughter
and lady bugs aren't really ladies..

I know they like to follow me into subway cars
on days when I need to be reminded of magic

I know spider webs sparkle like diamonds after rainshowers
I know yestedfay is the day before tomororw
and tomrrow is an illusion where I imagine...

Aja Monet

Poet
Feminist



A child whose mother lied about where they lived to get her into school
A child who got a good education and had a mother didn't go to jail for it
not like A J Paches's Mom who got 20 years in Ohio in 2011,
like Kelly Williams-Bolar did in Ohio in 2014


A child that grew up to be a feminist woman
who inserts black women
BACK INTO THE MOVEMENT that they started
BLACK LIVE MATTER
thru
SAY HER NAME
will create
ALL BLACK LIVES MATTER
if we come
each time she calls

POEM: WHAT I'VE LEARNED

SEE A MAP THAT SHOWS THE STATES WHERE YOU CAN GO TO JAIL FOR LYING ABOUT YOUR ZIP-CODE TO GIVE YOUR CHILD A BETTER CHANCE AT LIFE
http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/america-tonight-blog/2014/1/21/where-school-boundaryhoppingcanmeantimeinjail.html

MASKLESS - by Myles Hodges

Autobiographical in nature - just to put it in context

Everybody knows 
you can't trust a pretty boy with light skin
/
Lies at the brim of his smile 

cheeks safety-pinned to the edge
by a pile of regrets
/
Everybody knows
you can't trust a pretty boy with light skin
/
Lies at the brim of his smile
lined by 400 years of white sin
got the plight of my father's folk
looking real real grim
/

Seems
like all my black friends are broke
but I'm puncin' in a pin
less melanin, more wins
more accepted at bank ATMS
/

Cheek
pinned to edge by a pile of regrets
Flesh
can indeed be too glisten,
too golden to be honest
His reeks
of musicians
of sad violinists
of kush smoke, coulda beens, and shoulda beens
I wonder
how do you trust a man
whose eyes can go from green to gone
in a single night
/
Check his mask.
He wears it well
/
Check his brash,
his brains and his face get girls
but his veins don't listen,
they skip curfew
No longer young and dumb,
he's smart and fake
his days are long
but his nights are GREAT
/
There are riots,
riots like slum
like the projects after Malcom's death
in his chest
From the outside he's cool
he's all blunts,
he's all booze,
he's all... ruins
[...] the ones
/
he's... a stomach
he's... Sunday Night dinner
with no Grandpa to fill the table
He knows that a father and his oldest son
will forever be lynched together by the lip
but...
/
But sometimes he comes home
and he's lonely
/
------------
/
He turns 21 in a couple months,
but he's had a fake ID since he was 14
And that's sort of...whatever
/
He wrote his will this year
Sometimes he does things
because he knows that tomorrow
he will choose to forget them
/
/
Maskless by Miles Hodges


* * * * * *
Listening will bury this poem deeper in you. Promise

FAKE DEEP by Cecil Emeke

"If I hear one more poem
written by a man telling women
how to live their lives
by policing their clothes,
bodies,
sexuality,
make up use,
reading habits,
exercise regimes
and cooking skills,

I’m going to slap somebody…

TOUGH BOY LOVE POETRY: FLACO NAVAJA's "DIMPLE"

DEF POETRY JAM

If you don't grin or smile
Get a little tear in your eye
Your heart might not be alive