Was going through a mile of SL correspondence this morning, and found this… probably months old, but still powerful for me. Thought I’d share with ya’ll this rainy Saturday morning…

The Black Mother

Where can I find love that never changes
Smiles that are true and always just the same,
Caring not how the fierce tempest rages,
Willing ever to shield my honored name?

This I find at home, only with Mother,
Who cares for me with patient tenderness;
She from every human pain would rather
Save me, and drink the dregs of bitterness.

If on life’s way I happen to flounder,
My true thoughts should be of Mother dear,
She is the rock that ne’er rifts asunder,
The cry of her child, be it far or near.

This is love wonderful beyond compare;
It is God’s choicest gift to mortal man;
You, who know Mother, in this thought must share,
For, she, of all, is Angel of your Clan.

My Mother is black, loveliest of all;
Yes, she is as pure as the new made morn;
Her song of glee is a clear rythmic call
To these arms of love to which I was born.

I shall never forget you, sweet Mother,
Where’er in life I may happen to roam;
Thou shalt always be the Fairy Charmer
To turn my dearest thoughts to things at home.

– Marcus Garvey

While shooting the breeze with a friend in Second Life about two years ago, I was given a link to the poet Khari Toure’s mySpace page where I immediately fell in love with the tracks, “Beauty Queen” and “Thickness”, two tracks he streamed for free. This began a passionate appreciation and love of Khari’s style as a poet and a performer that outlasted the friendship of the person who actually introduced me to him.

I haunted his mySpace page for a long time, and followed him to facebook (along with his legion of fans) because his poetry is a real glimpse into the mind of a man–not one of these Step N Fetchit’s from JigabooTV, but the mind of a real man.

Read more…

So they use

the most tender weapons to fight with

joy stealers

hate mongerers

to break down our will

yet step by step;

We remain undeterred.

We do not subscribe to the malcontent

malicious intent

hell bent

pent and trapped

the definition of misery.

We do not deter.

We choose love.

We choose life.

We choose to keep this bitch moving.

I do not deter.

© 2010 N’Delamiko Lord

Publisher: Xcite Books
http://www.xcitebooks.com/
Editor: Adam Nevill

Cocktales – is a mini-series of 6 collections, with 4 or 5 erotic tales included in each volume. Two titles will be published each month until the series concludes:

- Between The Sheets
- Sex on the Beach
Pub Date May – Subs by 1st Jan 2010

- All Night Long
- Screaming Orgasm
Pub Date Jun 2010 – Subs by Feb 2010

- Kiss in the Dark
- Temptation
Pub date July 2010 – Subs by March 2010

[Writing to the theme is not essential with Cocktales, though feel free to have a go if inspiration strikes, but these collections intend to cover a wide range of sexual fantasy from dirty vanilla to kink. We pay a flat fee of £50 providing your story is 3 - 4000 words in length. Payment is made on publication; letter of acceptance is issued one month prior to publication].
##

As from August 2010 we will be publishing four new collections of original erotic short stories.

Themes:

- Threesome: When One Lover Is Not Enough. An Xcite Collection:
Theme: threesomes to group sex.
Deadline for stories April 1st 2010. Publication Sep 2010

- Kinky Girls: An Xcite Collection of Women on the Wild Side.
Themes: role-play, bondage/restraint, domination and submission, spanking, kink.
Deadline for stories May 1st 2010. Publication Oct 2010

- Sex at Work: An Xcite Collection of Inappropriate Behaviour on the Job.
Theme: I hope it’s self explanatory (Ed).
Deadline for stories June 1st 2010. Publication Nov 2010

- Indecent proposals: An Xcite Collection of Sexy Propositions.
Theme: swapping, sharing, escorting, and other curious offers.
Deadline for stories 1st August 2010. Publication Jan 2011.

Submission guidelines: your short story should not already be published anywhere in the world. Thematically, it should be written with the Xcite guidelines in mind. Obviously you will not be tied to having to provide detailed plot, numerous characters and enough varied types of sex to fill a novel, but the story should be about more than ’some people having sex’. The emphasis is on intensity, imagination, erotic tension, pleasure and explicit action and what’s-at-stake for the main character. We want to position these as suitable for the general reader as well as erotica fans.

We pay a flat fee of £50 providing your story is 2 – 4000 words (though 4K is preferred). Payment is made on publication; letter of acceptance is issued one month prior to publication.
##

In addition there are three other collections already scheduled that are still taking submissions:

- Ultimate Spanking – pub date April 2010 (best to get a story to us by Jan 2010
- Ultimate Uniforms – pub date August 2010 (subs to us by March 2010 ideal)
- Boy Fun – pub date Oct 2010 (subs by May 2010)

Currently playing in iTunes: Ooh Child by The Five StairstepsM

Glass moments

suspended from pendulums

swing in a frame;

each has their own arc,

each has their own smarts,

and they reflect the light

in prisms.

On one end is a moment in time,

13 hours into my future.

On the other end,

Is the drawing on of me.

The swing of moments,

glass delicate

and fragile,

allows a portal to emerge

from the synchronicity of

imagination and

desire.

Aligned briefly,

these swinging moments

deliver an opportunity;

a chrysalis of emotion

and a pipe

to flow through.

I am nailed,

riveted to the moment.

The portal appears

and delivers:

This allowance,

This remittance,

This indulgence,

This reward for being light in flesh undeterred.

13 hours into my future

I see a man.

I see him very well.

He`s the one who started

the pendulum`s flow,

the pendulum`s sway,

Seemingly only to

swing me his way.

All I can do is go…

I am held by the invisible.

Held in the moment

by hands unseen;

by thoughts revealed;

by liquid chocolate

poured into my ear.

Shiver inducer,

Voiced seducer.

Increasing me to exceed

a body long

bereft.

Glass moments,

swing in their pendulum frame

and offer me bliss.

The fractured light displays itself,

like gold on the walls.

Lighting up a room that was

dark and inaccessible.

I want to bounce all the brightness

right back.

Push my heart,

my sex,

my hopes,

through the hole in time,

a door he opens for me…

… the way a gentleman does.

I glow through everyone.

He sets me on fire everytime.

He is the time traveller in my life,

coming from 13 hours into my future.

Possibility is a gift,

never doubt it.

I was going through my old posts and undeleting thousands of comments (not sure how they got deleted, but I think it was during The Great Comments Crash a while back).

I found this post, and wanted to share the whole thing, and why not? Poetry this beautiful should be shared and shared again.

I. Your love has penetrated all within me
Like honey plunged into water,
Like an odor which penetrates spices,
As when one mixes juice in… ……
Nevertheless you run to seek your sister,
Like the steed upon the battlefield,
As the warrior rolls along on the spokes of his wheels. Read more…

Announcing the release of my first collection of poetry for purchase.

I have been holding on to this collection for a while, some of the poems are as old as fifteen years. They`ve been in manuscript form for at least twelve years, but for reasons only Ori knows, I have not even attempted to publish it, even though I`ve been aware of Lulu for at least two or three years.

I went the self-publishing route for its immediacy, and minimum hassle. The book is available now, and you can buy it as printed volume, or you can download #160a copy. Maybe if I sell enough copies another publisher will invest in printing a Second Edition. We`ll see how it goes, you know?

However, my Ori spoke loud and clear (ASE!) and I listened. So it`s out there.

Buy a copy people. This is the official post for comments and feedback.

Technorati Tags:
writing, poetry, self publishing, publishing, lulu.com, ndelamiko lord, n’delamiko lord

Beryl Gilroy

I met Beryl Gilroy in 1996 at a Caribbean Women Writer’s conference in Miami.

I had no idea who she was, even though I had read The Boy Sandwich as a girl.

I was in the corridor waiting for another session to start, and she was sitting on a chair in the corridor waiting for someone to come get her.

I smiled at her and said hello, and she asked me to come sit by her. We were chatting for about 15 minutes before I realised she was THE Beryl Gilroy. Then I nearly fell on my face, but she put me at ease.

She encouraged me to keep writing and to keep working at it. She took my address and telephone number and about six weeks after the conference I got a copy of every book she’d ever written. We corresponded for a time, but I guess her age and illnesses precluded our discussions by letter.

About five years later she died, but I have never forgotten her.

Today was the day
I intended to clad myself in white
And enslave myself to a man
Who never once told me I was beautiful,
Who promised me the world in the palm
of his hand
And closed his fist as he extended it.
As my intuition began to scream
And my spirit began to retreat
I sensed dark purposes in him
But didn’t want to believe
Until
He himself, in his arrogance
and determination to get what he wanted
Took me to the floor of the Oracle
And there I was told
In his presence
To seek my own healing and solace
And to not chain myself to
the rock of his imagination
To be beat against it
As life’s waves washed over me.
Shortly thereafter, he tried to convince me
to ignore the wisdom of the Oracle
Even as he began to prove
the Oracle right
And in a moment of violence
I saw him as he truly was
A parasite
A siphon of spirit
A spigot in the cask of my soul
A mistake
An error in judgement
So I fled into the dark of an
early morning,
Carrying new life in my belly
with no road map or direction
but free to be me,
To choose life on my own terms
and with not even the slightest regret
And not missing anything about him
until I find myself here
Eternally grateful
That today is not my wedding day.

Public Resistance is an academic juried journal designed to confront and expose the lies of the right.

The editors of Public Resistance seek manuscripts that critically examine and expose the lies perpetuated in the larger neo-liberal and right wing assaults on democracy and the public sphere. Authors must demonstrate genuine academic rigor in addressing specific sets of lies and deceptions currently used to manufacture consent for increasingly draconian domestic policies and imperialistic foreign policies. We are soliciting submissions that are not simply based on opinion or conjecture. What is significant to changing public opinion and public policy is academically grounded and sound research.

Unlike federal funding agencies, we do not restrict research to “experimental design.” On the contrary, we heartily encourage humanities based, arts based, narrative, ethnographic (including autoethnography), visual, cyborgian and other methodological approaches. Submissions are welcomed from across the academic disciplines, and we encourage the submission of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary works. We also solicit articles that can document this traumatic and critical juncture in both American and world history and culture. Therefore, submissions from teachers, students, citizen groups, and teacher educators are encouraged.

Please go to the public resistance website for submission information

Karen Anijar Associate Professor Arizona State University David Gabbard Professor East Carolina University       Editors Public Resistance