okay I cheated

Sort of I cheated I read but didn't realize the response was due before we met . I have an unfair advantage and plenty of my on realizations. But let's just get it out there. I have serious white guilt and it's scary I want to expand and grow but that take s risk. It is going to be an experience. Just an FYI I was sold at birth. So I feel deep connection to being sold and searching. I have no answers I might not get them but pain, suffering is universal.

This class explores many colors, identity's ,wounds, words, and healing. First class was intense. I will put it out there I am afraid to make mistakes, hurt others feeling, speak on things I can't possibly understand and I want to transform it all.

So now to Langston. In Seattle I lived a block from the Langston Hughes theater and I got to participate through a Ritual Poetic Drama class. Oh yeah that's about me.

Negro Speaks of a River : I think first person was intended to be universal. It is laid out historically. I believe in historical memory. Why do some black people not swim? Is it just really hard on hair or for some it is an historical memory of a tragic of confinement to water. I am not going to use African American because I got told thats not PC any more. which is funny because I am still trying to be PC. But it just a long word that makes me feel conflicted and gets in the way of what I want to say. Funny how word choice becomes a huge conversation in your head.

Hughes took history in design to say this is where we came from. Freedom is still a dream and yet his soul is deep for the trauma. I am white and I have lived in that river. It was just the LA aqueduct " Ancient dusky river" the Mississippi river is nasty and the LA aqueduct is where you buy dope. I loved someones comment about bodies about the flow from human blood in human rivers. I had missed that. The history and horrors of rivers of racism continued when men with A.K.A.'s kept black people from leaving during Hurricane Katrina. I think of women who got sent down the river, discarded because of their gender and maybe I am wrong but wasn't that the Nile river? River's feed the largest body of the world they feed it nourishment. My soul is deep like the river. It has just become that way by a seemingly cleaner river. You should always boil the water before you drink it and do something similar to people. I am Buddhist so I believe I have been both/and. It doesn't make me feel better. It makes me understand that I am not above doing what has been done to me.

Theme For English B

love it all. But the line" So will my page be colored that I write?" I felt that in this piece he grappling with the racism in school , and how do you learn when being assigned, how do you get the grade when in fact you write for the prof and a grade.The last stanza speaks directly to that. I want to learn. Often I have wished for a change of color, a community to identify and fight with But I have serious doubts that I could handle all that might come with that.

An Aside: the free write I read was the first free write poem and blues song I ever wrote I didn't think I had it in me. The words free write usually make me want to pee and run

So Dream Deferred.

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

My wish, hope , dream for all people is explosion. There is so much in this piece. maybe it has been over examined but I have not looked at what the imagery means to me. So......

Here is my creative response I had something totally different and my computer crashed. So I am not sure how I feel about this but... here it goes.

Passion fruits sold for money

Bills paid and we hide

Mass media beliefs
corrupted insides

Dreams become left overs
Rotten food hidden under the bed.

People smile
Wide toothed and lying
Wake, the puffy faced
tired and dying

Dreams become Disney Land wishes
Cheap trinkets on shelves

Repressed desires
are a heavy load
I pray for explosions
Connections, hot coals