"Oz Never Did Give Nothing To The Tin Man, That He Didn't, Didn't Already Have...." Mental Ramblings.....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I have a lot of things going on in my life right now and I guess that has me in one of my 'deep reflection' modes. Right now my mind is stuck on the TinMan. What made him decide to follow the advice of a fool with no brain and a chick who was lost? He was already better off than those two- he had a brain and knew just where the hell he was. He was better off without that heart. As a matter of fact, one of the very first things he said after getting the heart was speaking through his tear as he said goodbye to Dorothy, "Now I know I have a heart, because I can feel it breaking." Yeah......... that's what hearts do, they break by our disappoints or we allow them to be broken others. Is the amount that a heart feels/receives love worth the amount that it feels PAIN? The TinMan was minding his own, I suppose going through the motions of every day-to-day while all the while longing for a heart. That's human nature I suppose, always longing for that which we lack. (or think we lack) How was he to know that the one thing he didn't have, could be such a painful thing to have. People with big, generous, loving hearts are the most vulnerable to pain, disappointment, and heart-ache. And sadly, it's often the people closest to us, the ones we love the most, that inflict this pain. Our heart-ache can even by caused by pain we have inflicted on others. It doesn't matter if it's friendship, relationship, or familial love- it's all subject to the same. I often envy people who are callous and and in-different and who can walk away from foolishness without the caution of heart-strings roping them back in. Once again I'm being sarcastic- nothing new there. I'm grateful to be a loving, caring person. I'm grateful that I know what love is and have been shared love with. I just get tired from the tight-rope walk of when to be open, opening up just enough- but not too much, who to let in, and who to keep the hell out, etc... I am tired of all the second guessing and guarded security of matters of the heart. I just want to love and be loved in return, without all that........... EXTRA. S.O.A.P.

Sinners Have Soul Too..... Insomniac Ramblings....

"Can't sleep at night and you wonder why Maybe God is trying to tell you something Crying all night long, something's gone wrong Maybe God is trying to tell you something Oh, you can't sleep at night and you sure wonder why Maybe god is trying to tell you something"--- GOD IS TRYING TO TELL YOU SOMETHING, The Color Purple ~ In the past three weeks, I've had maybe three decent night's worth of sleep. It's after 4:30am now and I've given up even trying to get some sleep. I wonder if maybe God is trying to tell me something. I wonder if the increasing insomnia is my subconscious' way of avoiding what would haunt my mind in my sleep. I'm wide awake most of the night, and in the day I'm beyond exhausted. I manage to keep up with all that I have to do each day and even my outward appearance masks what's going on on the inside. Looks can be so deceiving - on the inside I'm the walking dead. Yet when night falls again, I get an hour or a few hours if I'm lucky, then once again.... the vicious insomnia cycle starts again. Maybe it's my body's way of pushing me to deal with things I'm avoiding dealing with??? Perhaps my body is not going to allow me to rest until some situations in my life are taken care of. I'm certain God is trying to tell me something. I think I've been afraid to hear it even though I'm positive I already know both the question and the solution. I know my legs are far too short to outrun this Messenger. ~ "Sinners have SOUL too." Apparently, mine needs to listen and do, so that it can get some much needed rest. SOAP ~

Too Prissy To Escape....

I was recently watching a movie in which the protagonist was trying to escape unjust captivity. After being blocked from several escape routes, the heroine looks down and sees an exit through what appears to be a muddy, grimy, sewage gutter or something similar. I immediately cringe. “Ewww, yuck,’” is all I can think to myself! My mind is more fixated on ‘disgusting’ when it should be focused on ‘freedom’. I notice that the crowd around me is shouting, “Go!” and “Hurry!” at the screen. It occurs to me at that moment that my prissiness would have kept me captive because of hesitation at the unpleasant condition that might have been my only means of escape. Hours after the movie was over I am still pondering my hesitation at the escape route. It’s not the first time I had thought that way. My thoughts take me back to Morgan Freeman as Red narrating the escape route of Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption. “Andy crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of shit smelling foulness I can't even imagine, or maybe I just don't want to. Five hundred yards... that's the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile.” As much as I love that movie and as much as my spirit leaps to see Andy get his much deserved freedom, I still cringe every single time I watch him crawl through that human sewage. I ask myself, “What idiot hesitates at a chance of freedom because the escape route isn’t ‘clean’ enough?” “Me,” I reply in shame. And that is why I find myself mentally stuck in so many places in life. I want a clean escape. I don’t want to get dirty ‘going through’ anything. The greatest stories in literature are comprised of characters that went ‘through’ some sort of battle, suffering, or discomfort in order to get to their destined point. I become ashamed when I make the connection that Jesus Christ himself went through some of the most torturous of all struggles BEFORE he claimed the victory of resurrection. Who am I that should be hurdled over my obstacles rather than going through them? What hero/heroine ever got the end of the story immaculate and unblemished? One of my favorite Psalms, Psalm 40:1-3 says “1 I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry. 2 He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. 3 He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the LORD and put their trust in him.” The light-bulb goes on. For God to lift one out of the mud and mire, it must have been necessary to God for that person to first be in it. I am about to go through some things in life that I have been avoiding for a long time for fear of being ‘uncomfortable’ and ‘getting dirty’. But I’ve hesitated in front of possible exits for far too long. © 2012, June by Stacey Lynne Lewis as SoulofaPoet All rights reserved.

A Tiffany's Mother's Day by Stacey 'SoulofaPoet' Lewis

Some of you who know me, know that help raised my nephew, therefore tis story is one that is truly from the heart.

A TIFFANY’S MOTHER DAY

“Happy Mother’s Day!” the nephew said beaming ear to ear, as he placed the light-Turquoise colored gift bag on the table.

The auntie’s eyes grew wide with surprise as she observed the highly recognizable jewelry store bag. No this boy had not gone to THE Tiffany & Co for a Mother’s Day gift!! How could he afford Tiffany’s when he still owed her $100.00 for two past months on his cell phone bill, she mused to herself. Although she had yet to ever make a purchase, she on the mailing list and knew the catalog from front to back. There was nothing in there less than the amount of his past due cell phone bill which she had already paid.
Nonetheless, there it was, the cute little bag whose brand recognition alone caused a women to smile and giggle before even seeing the contents. But that was the nephew for you, top shelf all the way. He was a full-time college student with two part-time jobs, barely had beer money, yet he had Champagne tastes. Bless his heart. He had come a long way- the nephew had.
Aunti was flooded with emotions, as her mind floated back fourteen years, to when he was nine years old. It was then that he first began permanently living with them. His mother had gone back to college in a neighboring town leaving the nephew with his grandparents. It was only natural that he’d preferred staying at the auntie’s house as she was younger and had his little cousins for him to play with like siblings. They’d jokingly referred to the nephew as ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’ after the Wil Smith character, who also lived with his aunt’s family. Plus, like Uncle Phil on the t.v. show, there was no one in the world who adored the nephew more than did his uncle. From football practices, to games, to school events, there was never an event the uncle wasn’t front and center, even the many times the nephew’s own father wasn’t there.
Auntie remembered with pain the many conversations she’d had over the years with the nephew, particularly on weekends when his mother couldn’t make it to town to visit him, but had been able to make it a hundred miles further away to spend time with her then boyfriend. His father was a consistent ‘no show’ so many times, one would have thought the child would have caught on. Yet he waited at the door like an excited puppy, every time his dad promised and had been surprisingly disappointed each ‘no show’ time.

“Why don’t either of my parents make time for me like other parent’s do for their kids?” he'd often asked. “It’s not fair,” he’d cried, through so many tears it broke auntie’s heart to see him suffer.
“It doesn’t matter,” the auntie had told him, trying to console him. “There are so many kids that for whatever reason don’t have their birth parents taking care of them and they have NO ONE to stand in the gap. God blessed you though. You have us. You have grandparents. And you have lots of extended family and friends that love and support you. Stop looking at what you don’t have and focus on all the blessings that you DO have,” she’d told him.

She now snickered when she’d thought about his fifth grade year, the first time he’d been suspended from school. The principal had called her to the school because the nephew had been caught playing with a gun with some of the kids on the play ground. It turned out that the gun hadn’t been real. But the principal’s concern was that because it LOOKED real, the student’s should have been afraid of it. Explaining his rationale for the nephew’s 3-day suspension from school, the principal said he expected better from the nephew. He expected him to be one of the leaders, not a follower.

That night at the dinner table, the auntie had questioned the nephew on what he had been thinking to do something so potentially dangerous. The nephew’s excuse was that all the other boys were doing it.
“All the other boys were doing it?” the auntie had asked in disbelief. “If all your friends decided to go to hell, do you plan to go too?” she asked trying to make the child think.
“I…. I…..,” he stammered. “I just don’t want to be alone,” he answered honestly.
His candid reply scared auntie. She loved this child as much as she loved her own and she knew that his desire to fit in outweighing common sense, could be a dangerous thing. She knew she had her work with him cut out for her. She was determined to help keep her only nephew on the straight and narrow.

Over the next years, all the way through high school graduation, she had been the nephew’s constant warden /cheerleader. She’d kept steady monitoring on his friends, his grades, and his comings & goings. She knew that she undoubtedly bored the child to death with her life lessons, fables and proverbs. Often times, she’d prayed more prayers for the nephew than she’d prayed for her own children because his need was greater.

The years went by and the nephew
finished elementary school
went off to boarding high-school
graduated and then went on to college,
all the time coming home to his very own room at auntie’s house. His parent’s showed up when they pleased. (which it seemed to please them most during spotlight times- (times when they could say, on the accolades of the child, “Yes, this is MY son.”)

But the auntie and uncle remained constant. Always there, always available for whatever was needed, whenever it was needed, however it was needed, just as if the nephew had been their own son.

“Well??? Aren’t you going to open it?” the nephew asked with excitement, tapping the Tiffany gift bag he’d set on the table.
Auntie watched with amazement as her sister ooh’ed and awe’d at the Mother’s Day gift her son had just presented to her. It was a gift the auntie was just realizing that she’d help pay for.

“Happy Mother’s Day auntie,” he’d said both off-handedly and empty-handedly to the aunt. He watched with anticipation, as his mother opened the lavish gift of a silver necklace with the word MOM engraved on a heart-shaped charm. He didn’t even have a card for his aunt.
“Can you believe my son bought me this?” the mother asked gleefully holding up the silver necklace to show the aunt.

The auntie tried forcing a smile to contain her hurt. Other than for him to be okay, she’d never wanted nor expected anything from the nephew. But to be just a mere after-thought on Mother’s Day when he had been a ‘fore-thought’ in auntie’s life, required a special kind of self-less, sainthood that auntie did not possess. This hurt. It hurt deep.
The nephew no longer needed his auntie like he had when he was younger. He no longer had the questions of WHY he wasn’t first and foremost in his parents’ lives.
For a couple of Benjamins and light-turquoise colored bag….. he could buy his way there.

© June 2011 by Stacey Lynne Lewis as SoulofaPoet. All Rights Reserved
MCN: CFGWX-VM4H4-ASXEP © copyright Wed Jun 22 02:31:28 UTC 2011 - All Rights Reserved

The Devastated Diva

THE DEVASTATED DIVA

The devastated diva
Elegantly strolls through her space
Adorned in fierce fashion
Not a single hair out of place

You can’t see love’s war wounds
Or the hole in her heart
Or the invisible bandages
That keep her from coming apart

The devastated diva
Steps in stilettos on high
On her face is a smile
In her heart a deep sigh

Her bag is soft Italian leather
She rocks cute trinkets of gold
Appears much younger than her age
But inside… she feels old

The devastated diva
Has been lonely so long
She wants to sing about love
But forgets the words to the song

She’s been abused and neglected
Her own bad choices- she’s surmised
No longer has great expectations
And has yet to be surprised

But in the meantime she keeps it moving
Keeps working the ‘all together’ act
Rocks a Michael Kors outfit
With flawless makeup by MAC

The devastated diva
Longs for the day she’ll once again feel whole
When past pains no longer sting
And there’s a mate for her soul

In the meantime
A devastating diva
Is all the world need see
Don’t need to know that she’s devastated
Don’t need to know that she’s me

The devastated diva
Keeps stepping with grace
Cute shoes on her feet
And a smile on her face

©2010- March SLynneL as SoulOfAPoet All rights reserved.

COULD YOU? (Question for the TinMan)

COULD YOU? (Question for the TinMan)
Could you want me
If you had no eyes
Could you hear me
If I had no voice
Could you touch me
If you had no appendages
Could you breathe me
With no lungs
Could you speak to me
With dissimilar language
Understand me
With no mind
Recall me
With no memory
Could you hold me
With no arms
Squeeze me
With no strength
Could you stroke me
With no erection
Taste me
With no tongue??????
So how can you love me
WITH NO HEART??????????????
~
~
SLynneL as SoulofaPoet aka S.O.A.P.
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• Registered:Wed Mar 09 16:03:16 UTC 2011
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~~
Some no doubt well meaning fool, sent me a message that he liked what he saw, thinks we would look good together, and flipped me his number stating that I should call him.
When the hell did how two people look together mean any damn thing???? What good are your eyes if you have no heart??? He got me thinking, and writing, therefore I suppose I appreciate his ignorance.

THE BEAUTY OF MY SISTAHS

In honor of Black History Month, here's a tribute to all my lovely (often under-appreciated) sistahs out there. Particularly in times when no one else is doing so, Let's hold each other UP!!