Tiffany Pennywell

  
Nothing But The Truth
By:  Tiffany L. Marcantel
©2003-9

 
Look inside my heart and soul
And tell me what you see.
You see nothing at all.
You see only me.
 
I do not see, but I see all.
I do not feel, but the pain is deafening.
It’s tearing inside devouring nothing in its path.
 
What you see is what you get,
But you get nothing at all.
Try to understand any of this
And it will cause you to fall.
You try to understand any of this,
But there’s nothing at all.
 
You try, but you cannot.
You say you do, but you do not.
All of this you say are lies.
All of this you say are sins.
 
Nothing is here.
So stop trying to see.
Stop acting like you care for me.
For the tell the truth;
To tell not in sin.
To tell you of how I feel inside.
 
Nothing is there.
Nothing but air.
And to tell the truth
I really don’t care. 

For Better?  No, for Worse!
By:  Tiffany L. Marcantel
©2000-9
 
They think they’re all powerful.
They think they’re all mighty.
They think we’re dumb and we don’t understand,
But they’re the ones that are dumb, because we understand all too well.
 
The goals they’ve set for us are way too high.
They say they’re trying to make it better, but really they’re out to destroy us. 
 
How are the ones that come after us going to stand?
They’re all going to be blind, they won’t understand,
But something tells me it’s all part of their master plan.
 
Everybody’s going to be blind.
They’re all right now standing on the ledge.
Soon they’re going to fall off the edge.
They’re going to fall, because they won’t be able to get a grip on something.
They’re going to fall, because there’ll be no ground underneath them. 
 
They’re pulling the foundation up from under us.
Nothing’s stable; we’re slowly losing our minds.
 
They say it’s better this way,
But maybe they should walk in our shoes for some time.  
 
 
 

 blues 

if I had a nickel

for every one of my blues

I’d be the richest woman

in the graveyard

in praise of hair 

on a hill of baked earth

the sannyasin presides

abundant coiffures of untamed mantle

coiled top-knotted above ground

shoulder length streams of blackened sea

the blood has clotted into the veins and arteries of hair webs weaving

claiming the unfortunate invaders of nonexistent scalp

insects wings

dirt

pollen

mountain air conjures the barnacles of wind

the weight of hair whips across his face lashing cheek to cheek

there is harmony in matted locs

wisdom of ancient

even Jesus  was a dred 

Mawiyah Kai EL-Jamah Bomani is a native New Orleanian. Mawiyah’s writings have appeared in The Crab Orchard Review, Dark Eros, Catch The Fire, Freeform Magazine, Beyond The Frontier, Kente Cloth, Fertile Ground, Family Portraits, Chicken Bones: A Literary Journal, Survival Digest Quarterly, From A Bend In The River, The House of Misfit’s Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment,  and Women’s Issues and Feminism in the 21^st Century. She is co-writer/director of the play Brown Blood Black Womb. Mawiyah is an educator who currently resides in Shreveport, Louisiana. 

 Congo   

40,000 violated vaginas

ages three to eighty flee to the jungles of the Congo

combat bruised battalions lesions of scar tissue welcome you

as they cannot bury themselves

pussy has become a prisoner of war here in the Congo

vaginas are not safe on route to market

or shadowed privately between their owner’s thighs

soldiers plan grand scale warfare

undermining the insides of African women these

covert operatives seek only to scatter guerilla semen over salty mines

the general consensus is

sex with a virgin

will cure a man of aids

here in the Congo men just want to be washed clean

just want to outlive the preceding generation 

they want to believe with every available t-cell in miracles

and their ability to haunt

the sacred ruins

of  moistened  villages 

UniverSouLove