April 2nd in the wee hours

 3 am 

Thinking about the Independent Lens seen on PBS.... that made me cry with the sudden arrow to the heart of understanding, like how is this our world... But is it wonderful this awfulness, the hippies becoming millionaires and hiring poor Mexicans who leave their beloveds to make money that buys cows and food and clothes for their daughters who mourn their missing daddy. And i thought of that insane longin to have my father home from work how we learn is a thing he must do so that we eat. As mother had to do it too - leave us, they had to leave us and all we wanted was them nearby to see what we create, what we made up and it is all desperate because there wasn't enough time, and though they mdae time, stillthey had to leave.

I remember resenting going to relatives house for a holiday because i wanted my parents all to myself, or us, even though i had to share. i remember wanting to parent my parents, buy them presents and experiences, keep them with me.... so wild for one who couldn't wait to leave home. But i always wanted them. So seeing these workers and their families longing made me remember, awakened the child who saw clearly her longing and the way of the world, how even then she wished for a way to help them who worked so hard and loved so hard.....

Saying GoodBye to Daddy

He goes because we need food and clothes

and by this sacrifice and duty he shows

how much he loves us

years away when he wont see

all the ways we change, from on to three

and then to nine because something

about inconsistently dilating time

he will return younger than me

when I arrive at 43, but in between

we ate and grieved the living death

of he who made me

who can watch by farview all we do

transmitted with varying delays

at one point weeks, or years or days

as tech improve such is life of a child

of a technoslave extraterrestrially deployed

returning younger than the kids he made

amazed at the freedoms they've enjoyed

the hearth and home his sacrifice made.

Akua Lezli Hope

National Poetry Month 2024 Begins

Laopoet Bryan Thao Worra, asked what folks are doing for NaPoWriMo.

I will post a new poem each week on The Poetry Line:  607.622.0414

I bought several poetry books

HydraMedusa

The FullMoon Whaling Chronicles (specpo novel) includes teenage werewolves sailing to a fabled sea monsters nest,

Black Observatory 

and one other to read this month. 

I will write a poem a day.

I aim to read 2 poetry books a week for Elgin nominating.

 

I updated and mailed list of speculative poetry readings to be hosted this year. 

I started working on speculative readings to be hosted in 2025 -- sent email requests to 5 poets.

I started the Specpo Booklist at https://bit.ly/specpo_bib. 

Working on an image for the speculative disability poetry reading in July:

From my Mask Series

 From my Mask Series.

#napowrimo #nationalpoetrymonth #akualezlihope #akuapoet #akuapoetry #speculativepoetry #afrofuturism #midjourney #blackwomanai #blackwomanpoetry #blackwomanpoet

From My WIFE series

I love the idea of ents (tree like beings) and love having this speculative element to my wife series.

 #speculativepoetry #naporimo #nationalpoetrymonth #akualezlihope #akuapoet

GIRL

 

My speculative fiction short story, in the new anthology For those Who Dare to Dream, is about black girl magic in Queens, NY, my homage to my homegirls. This microacrostic and the AI's response to it, reminded me of The Four ( the story's title).

#napowrimo #akualezlihope #nationalpoetrymonth

Child, come see

 The Poetry Vending Machine is decorated with a flower garland designed by me for it and with poetry magnet words. This is yesterday's lyric adorning the chute flap. 

#napowrimo #nationalpoetrymonth #akualezlihope #poetry #poetryvendingmachine #thepoetryvendingmachineproject

AFTER THOUGHT

Loved the prompt for today, these are the answers to the word questions re arranged.

 afterthought 

a shredding veil
hat cups  

pregnant absence

earth blood dripping
dry pungence

tape measure is a 

change agent
this blue sneeze

full belly lugging light

That Small Field in Belgium for Goran Lowie

That Small Field in Belgium

 for Goran Lowie

 

vocabulary floats concepts 

modern

feels an imaginary world 

that has become an example 

2 various gifts:

black star seed

bottles with bones in a river

a tower of ice

a mirrored universe

unborn planets

a star child

stimulates imagination concretely

remains, gives poems 

something better 

to stay closer, to try 

to represent 

a more idiosyncratic world 

 

an erasure of a rejection

Akua Lezli Hope

National Poetry Month April 2023 Begins

Creating 30 poems in 30 days again -- not hard to do, just hard to do well.

Will accompany each with an image, made using words from the poem.

 April 1, 2023

lights flicker

darkened day 

song of wind as train     

rumbling around  my walls

in fierce embrace

the dings and dongs

of machine's misgivings reset

and now, past 

destruction's fearsome possibilities

sunlight slashes through slatted blades

of blinds

Akua Lezli Hope

DAy 9 In the Mood for Love film prompt

"DAY 9

’'Watch this clip from In The Mood for Love twice. And then go make something of it, following these guidelines 

Form:

- No more than 28 lines
- Include a pair of homonyms (e.g., ‘rite’ and ‘right,’ or ‘dear’ and ‘deer’)

Action:
- Consider ‘drift’ and ‘light’

Content:
- Consider anatomy (but not the heart, eyes, or lips); and
- A line, phrase, or name taken from this Wikipedia entry on the lunar maria and the mare basalts ( http://bit.ly/1IvLpEj )’’

And here’s the clip from In The Mood For Love! 

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ypY9OaKCfRU"

She descends with care

a dark passage to a deep hearth

past lamplight‘s arc,

long narrow stairs

to a crowded ark

where men work food forges

attend their singular alchemies for few cents

Fill her green thermos with delicious scents

nourishment’s promise of wanting more

She’s a sylph, a fixed, pristine curve

Ascends from the sweat, heat and steam

of the night kitchen, her semaphor swerves

float up the fragrant well

slink, rising to an unvisoned street

Violins sing of delectable things

swirl of her hips, her high heeled dance

his handsome face, a lingering glance

drifts in the heart’s corridor.

a funeral in my brain

"Find an Emily Dickinson poem – preferably one you’ve never previously read – and take out all the dashes and line breaks. Make it just one big block of prose. Now  rebreak the lines. Add words where you want. Take out some words. Make your own poem out of it! "

Felt a funeral in my brain

mourners kept treading

tromping, threading

winding frayed embrace

until it seemed each sense was breaking

when they all were seated 

a service like a drum kept beating

until my mind lost place

then i heard them lift a box

and creak across my soul

with those same boots of lead

then space began to toll

all the heavens were a bell

and being, but an ear

silence, some strange race,

wrecked solitary here

then a plank in reason broke

i dropped down and down

hit new worlds at every plunge

cracked barriers of sound

and finished knowing then  

Day Four: The prompt to write a love poem

No More Better




Caffeine jangles, frays, revs nerves
can't drink anymore
though the distant scent
from neighbors' morning brews
arrives with dew and fog strolling
mist shined streets, is welcome
once our time for once more
how I now greet grey dawn
sniffing for the chocolate scent
of unforgotten thrills
shared brews after shared
brewings

Mountains, Valleys, Forests, Music

Prompt 3 4/4

p. 37 from the 7 Types of Ambiguity

I began with crossing out, then used an OCR and rearranged.

Mountains, Valleys, Forests, Music

Is meaning possible from these notions?

We are at last in possession of all that might have been

Morning brings hope, light and labour,

evening rest, play and despair

They are the variety of Nature,

Venus, whom one dare not name,

and Mercury, who will bring no news of her

Mountaines, haunts of Pan for lust and Diana for chastity,

to both of these lovers appeal

for banishment; impossibility and impotence,

difficulty and achievement; greatness –

They give you the peace, or the despair, of the grave;

They are the distant things behind which the sun rises and sets,

the too near things which shut in your valley;

deserted wastes, and the ample pastures

to which you drive up cattle for the summer

Vallies hold nymphs, yet are the normal places

are your whole world, your voice can affect the whole of them;

places of shelter and comfort,

places of humility and affliction ;

rich with flowers and warmth,

dark hollows between the hills.

Forests, valuable and accustomed, are desolate and hold danger;

though wild and sterile, there are both nightingales and owls

Their beasts, give the strong pleasures of hunting;

Their burning is useful or destructive

They give freedom for contemplation,

Their trunks are symbols of pride.

Music, at once more and less direct than talking,

may please or distress,

belong to despair and the deaths of swans

It may share living beauty

be an inmate of celestial spheres,

illuminating occasions

on which each Nature is used

if we had understood