Jane Hulstrunk
Response

Blues
By Charisse R. Cecil
Inspiration piece

My music, my mood.

Billie and Miles.

Melancholy and mellow.

The berries

in my morning muffin.

His bow-legged, boot-cut,

denim-clad swagger.

The funky-sweet blend

of sweat, liquor, tears and sex

in every foot tap on the juke joint floor.

The bruises that hide

behind Bronze Base #5.

Branford’s band and Spike’s “Mo’ Better.”

B.B. and Lucille.

The Franconia-Springfield metro line.

The steely eyes of young Minister Malcolm’s

devils.

Langston’s weary and big sea.

The Saturday night cabaret voice

Singing in the Sunday morning choir.

Sea -deep sorrow.

A saxophone’s moan.

My hopes,

caked on and cracking

like Aunt Minnesota’s

electric

sky

eye shadow.

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Charisse Cecil
Unperceptive Glances
Collage/Acrylic, 8 x 10 inches
Inspiration

New Eyes
By Lisa Lipkind Leibow
Response

Get ready

to see the world through
new eyes. Get ready to shed
senses and notions like a snake slithers from its skin.
Get ready to taste the bitter, the salty, and the sweet.
Not a third eye, but compound eyes – infinite views
of surroundings.

The diverse views bounce around, adjusting
lenses, competing for lead vantage point.
The stubborn might speak their mind and then wait in
the wings for the next turn to talk. These points of view listen.
They pay attention to every voice.
Respect opinions.

Jumbled ideas sail around inside
like long locks whipping in the wind.
To philosopher’s eyes, dawn’s colors present new
questions why and the need to search for meaning.
Artist’s eyes see magenta,
tangerine, and gold hues filling the skies.

Sunset inspires poet’s metaphors
of passionate kisses like fiery daybreak’s
crimson rhapsodies.
Dancer watches the sun climb above
the horizon. She sways hips, swings arms, and leaps.
Interludes for tenor sax and piano play
in the Musician’s mind when she watches the sunrise.

The Journalist reports the facts – the who, what,
when, where, why – giving an accurate account.
Astronomer sees Earth rotate on its axis
and orbit around the star
in the center of a solar system in a vast universe.
Chemist spots hydrogen, helium, oxygen, and more.

Anthropologist considers how members of
ancient cultures regarded dawn. He examines clues from
millennia-old customs
and cultures.
No more jostling of infinite
viewpoints. You’re primed to envision with open heart, mind, and eyes.

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or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or
artist is strictly prohibited.

Annie Perconti
Looking Back
Response

Lottie
By Charisse Cecil
Inspiration piece

Dedicated to the memory of “Mom” Lottie Mae Burrell

Lottie never smiles.
Her husband is dead, sons lost to wars
in arid, sandy, faraway lands.
Her hair once hung over her shoulders
like a silky, onyx curtain.
Now it is a frizzled, gray cloud atop her head.
Her hands are stiff now,
no longer the nimble hands
that washed rich folks’ linens
and hung them gracefully on the line
to dry and brighten in the midday sun.
Her skin, once supple and pliant
from passionate handling
and a daily spoonful of cod liver oil,
now drapes over her bones
like parchment paper
and feels like wind-battered leather.

Lottie never looks back.
She doesn’t pine for the days of her youth.
She will not become a pillar of salt.
Instead she will be a pillar in this community
of people so unlike herself.
She takes in boarders – young, brown girls
with bare ring fingers and full baby carriages.
She simmers lemon, garlic, onions and pepper
in a pot, the antidote
to stuffy little noses and congested chests.
Lottie gathers the forgotten pieces of her life –
John’s work pants, Junior’s receiving blanket,
Paul’s favorite pajamas – and sews them
into quilts to keep the babies warm.

When the feverish babies are soothed
and their young, fearful mothers can finally
succumb to slumber,
Lottie looks back, and smiles.

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Sandy Coleman

Response

Charisse Cecil

Inspiration

Farewell, stairwell

I’m ready.

I’m standing in these slotted
shadows, leaning against this
cinderblock wall that is coated in countless layers
of paint vainly attempting to cover generations
of ubiquitous crew tags and psychedelic
profanity.

Under this metal staircase, where I used to huddle
with my girls, harmonize to hip hop soul
pop rhythm & blues slow jams and practice
lyrical freestyles in an impermeable cipher
that the boys could not enter unprepared
for verbal battle.

The light shone through the slats and created
stripes across my loose-leaf paper,
shining on my algebra homework
brightly enough for T. to copy my answers
while I crushed on him so hard
that I didn’t mind doing all the work.

Tucked  inside that acute angle under the stairs
with T., I tasted my first kiss – a heady blend
of heat, his sour apple Jolly Rancher
and my pink lemonade Bubble Yum
that made all those late nights of memorizing
theorems and formulas worth every
missed must-see TV show and girly conference call.

Whenever I hear the crunch of broken glass
and discarded Newport filters underfoot,
I remember the night L. forced me to my knees
under those stairs and pressed my face
against his open fly, when he was supposed to be watching
me while my mom went around the corner for groceries.

Under this stairwell, I learned one source of my power
that will take me beyond this stairwell and these shadowy halls.
The power is in my mouth –
to recite rules or rhymes,
to sing songs or wail battle cries,
to give ardent pleasure or exact excruciating pain.

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying
or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or
artist is strictly prohibited.

Charisse Cecil
Inspiration piece

Schizo
By Robin Peace
Response

“The eyes are the windows to the soul.”
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
“An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth.”

I am sure everyone has heard these quotes and so much more that featured the eyes.  But what happens when you look into someone’s eyes and you can’t trust them because of what you are hearing?  Welcome to my world.  I am Genie and I suffer from schizoaffective disorder.

My day starts normally, if talking to yourself and answering yourself is normal.  I have to talk to myself because my thoughts are running a mile minute in my head.  They need a release.  Talking aloud slows them down and makes them real.  So if I come up with an idea for a story or if I think if a poem, I have time to think and write it down.

Then I go to work, where I wear a headset all day for my sanity.  I hear voices.  I take people’s conversations or sounds (if I am alone) and turn them into conversations about myself in my coworkers’ or boss’ and if I am at home, my neighbors’, voices.  None of what is said is good – like she is going to kill herself, she is listening to our conversations, everyone knows she falls asleep, and stuff like that.  To keep my sanity I stay plugged in because I don’t know when I am hearing them talk about me – really or when it’s all in my imagination and I long lost the patience to try to sort through all the noise to figure it out.  The headset is like me talking aloud.  It calms the beast inside.

But the looks are what I can’t control.  Or rather, the looks I imagine people are giving me.  The headset blocks most of the noise, but not all.  Some still get through and those that do have eyes attached to them.  I can feel them crawling up my spine as I walk by.  They talk about my hair, my clothes, and my weight.  I feel stripped naked and laid bare.  I don’t know what I want to lose more, my hearing or my sight.

Sometimes at work, I think they are testing me to see what I can really hear.  They don’t know about my illness.  I never said I couldn’t hear anything.  I need to be able to hear announcements and the fire alarm.  My problem is I don’t know if the conversations I am hearing are real or my sickness!  I would love to scream that I am schizoaffective aloud and be done with it.  But with the exception of a few friends at work who would empathize with me, the rest would just behave the same way, therefore I wouldn’t gain the response I would hope for by the revelation.

After I leave the place I call hell and others call work, I come straight home for peace and quiet.  I still talk to myself when I get home but it’s a more angry discussion because I can’t leave the stress from work at work.  It also does not help that I think my Latino neighbors are watching me and talking about me.

As I walk to my apartment, I feel their eyes on me and I hear them talking in Spanish.  Then clearly I thought I heard them say,  “There’s the bag lady!”  I drop my head in shame.  But then I realize, if I have a ton of bags – that means – I have a job and I can afford to buy what I what.  I think with pride, call my ass a bag lady because I am not spending my days looking out the window talking about people because I have nothing else to do with my pitiful life.

So now, I walk a little bit with more pride when I walk by Latino neighbors but being Christian I pray for them, and hope they find jobs, because I’ve been there and I know how it is when you aren’t getting a paycheck.

Ah, Christianity.  How I cursed God when I began to hear voices!  My mother thought I was possessed with a demon and I needed to be exorcised.  My father thought I just needed a vacation.  My older sister was secretly bipolar and understood to some extent but she could not openly support me or else she would be under our parents’ microscope.  I was abandoned and alone in all this, because I was too vain to tell my friends how bad off I was.

I also had the worse luck with doctors.  Every time I got on a good medication regime, something would happen, I would change doctors, and then my new doctor would change my prescriptions.  For what reason I never understood why and they also never told me the side affects to these medications.  I was so young and stupid; I trusted that these doctors would not give me anything that would harm me.  For example – why would you give an already obese woman who wants to lose weight a drug known to cause people to gain weight and not check in to make sure she is not experiencing any side effects from the medication?  I gained 100#s in one year, due to being on two medications; not realizing both increased one’s appetite.  True I should have read the medication pamphlet the pharmacist gave you but when I first was diagnosed, I didn’t know my ass from a cardboard box!  I was taking pills praying for the voices to stop and the eyes to stop following me.

But now, the voices and I have an uneasy truce.  I respect the voices and their power and they respect me and my power to shut them up, permanently.  Of course, the voices know I’m too chicken shit and too religious prone to use it and I am afraid of the eyes.  How can I be sure that someone won’t see me and call the police to stop my bid for freedom?

So every night after dinner I sit, half glass of antifreeze in one hand and a half glass of chocolate milk in another.  I figure if I am going to die, I’m going to drink my favorite comfort libation mixed with the poison of the hour.  My suicide note was written a year ago.  I tinker with it every night, making sure it says exactly what I want it to say.  Perhaps tonight will be the night I will make the voices and eyes disappear.

But then, I always have to go tinkle.  I end up looking at myself in the vanity mirror and burst into tears.  I am so vain.  I love myself too much to kill myself.  Does that make sense?  God said love the sinner, hate the sin.  I hate the voices and the eyes but somewhere deep inside, I love me.  Maybe that is why I still manage to get up each morning.  Because this is greater than myself and I just need to close my eyes and trust that the world is big enough to hold sick people like me and sane people like you, passively reading this analysis of me.
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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Margaret Mair
Leave Me
Acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20 in.
Response

Metro Outlaw
By Charisse Cecil
Inspiration piece

I am an outlaw.
If you ride the Metro rail,
you understand me.

I have to sit there:
in the designated seat
for the disabled.

Those seats face inward.
No one seated behind you,
nor concealed inside.

No rude teenagers,
pelting me with their loud talk
and sunflower seeds.

No child behind me,
yanking at the cowrie shells
that hang from my locs.

No woman brushing
her hair and dander on me,
grooming in public.

No one like the man
sitting down, blocking me in,
brandishing penis.

I need to sit there:
In the designated seat
for the disabled.

If that seat’s not free,
I’ll stand up from Huntington
to Gallery Place.

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Blues
By Charisse R. Cecil
Inspiration piece

My music, my mood.

Billie and Miles.

Melancholy and mellow.

The berries

in my morning muffin.

His bow-legged, boot-cut,

denim-clad swagger.

The funky-sweet blend

of sweat, liquor, tears and sex

in every foot tap on the juke joint floor.

The bruises that hide

behind Bronze Base #5.

Branford’s band and Spike’s “Mo’ Better.”

B.B. and Lucille.

The Franconia-Springfield metro line.

The steely eyes of young Minister Malcolm’s

devils.

Langston’s weary and big sea.

The Saturday night cabaret voice

Singing in the Sunday morning choir.

Sea -deep sorrow.

A saxophone’s moan.

My hopes,

caked on and cracking

like Aunt Minnesota’s

electric

sky

eye shadow.

Michael Mineiro
Response

————–

SPIRIT OF THE BLUES 盐魂

Michael Mineiro 马明凯
Response

Knock Knock
It is a voice
In the evening, as the people gather
In the city square, local cafes

———————————————————————————–

TWO LEVELS

Being True   Being   True

I’ve got to be true
To the spirit of the Blues
The Spirit

———————————————————————————–

I’ve got be true
To the sound heard in Hong Kong
At a bar called 64
Six-four, Tiananmen

Ironic, an American
Travels to Asia
To learn the Blues
But I’ve got to be true

It ain’t easy, be true
I finally get it, payin’ one’s dues
It’s all about, being true

True in love
True in work
True to oneself

Others feel it,
Need it
Sense
Be it

———————————————————————————–

Another thought

Lunks to images of busking
In Lan Kwai Fong
Smells, street smells
Hong Kong smells
Of Beer, and laowais
Foolishness, noise
Yet hidden, in the back
People being True

Blues
By Charisse R. Cecil
Inspiration piece

My music, my mood.
Billie and Miles.
Melancholy and mellow.
The berries
in my morning muffin.
His bow-legged, boot-cut,
denim-clad swagger.
The funky-sweet blend
of sweat, liquor, tears and sex
in every foot tap on the juke joint floor.
The bruises that hide
behind Bronze Base #5.
Branford’s band and Spike’s “Mo’ Better.”
B.B. and Lucille.
The Franconia-Springfield metro line.
The steely eyes of young Minister Malcolm’s
devils.
Langston’s weary and big sea.
The Saturday night cabaret voice
Singing in the Sunday morning choir.
Sea -deep sorrow.
A saxophone’s moan.
My hopes,
caked on and cracking
like Aunt Minnesota’s
electric
sky
eye shadow.

Charisse Cecil
Inspiration piece

Amy Moffitt
Response

Choose
(for Charisse)

Every day is a decision.

Tonight, the crickets sing in the bushes,
and I choose to remember you:
dreadlocks flowing and bright face,
smile beaming and that glow you had
even when anxiety tightened
the corners of your shining eyes.

Every day.

Every day since you passed on
I choose to feel, and choose to mourn.
You left before autumn started giving the leaves
back their true, vibrant colors.
You saw past my surface, down deep
where dark and vibrant colors bloom.

I choose to miss you.

Charisse, sometimes I feel like
my whole life has been me bloodying my hands
trying to tear down walls that won’t budge.
You walked through a door in the wall,
a door I’d never noticed,
and showed me the blue sky I’d ignored.

Everyday, I have a decision:
Do I see the blue sky,
0r the brick wall?
Do I choose faith, or fear?
Do I believe in what you showed me,
or do I run away again, and hide?

Every day,
despite myself,
I choose
again
to believe you.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.