Black Poetry Day

On both my little bro's birthday AND Black Poetry Day, here's a Saturday Post!
 
From October-13
My family is an amazing maze of triumphs and failures
Heroic acts and artistic neuroses
I love them
More and more
The more I love
The bigger the family gets
There are some
Still lost
In the wilderness
I want them to know
There is a home hearth
Waiting
In my heart
In my house
No judgments
No past
Just now
Just a big hug
And a
Let's move on
From here
To the legacy

For those of you I haven't met yet, this image is my brother.
He will fly across the country to defend OR correct me,
and after the carnage, he will take me for coffee.
And be sure, he isn't even my fiercest protector... You've been warned.

Criticism

can be

Constructive

Growth can

Often

does

hurt

Petty prides

Cut with malice

Seeking destructive details

Why?

Because

Hurt people hurt people

Proud people

Sad people

Lonely people

Controlling people

Confused people

Normal people

Human people

That's why

Let's go viral

Growing up

Getting up

Pulling up

Pushing up

Why?

Why not?

With words, song & prayer,
TiMo

Yours Truly, Summer 2011
© Tiffany Monique

Tell Your Story

Excellence to you and yours! Here's your Saturday Post!

I come from storytellers.

Our history is such that our mundane happenings become performances in sharing with others.

Last night, my brother reminded us of how he wrapped his desktop computer in a pink woven blanket, wrapped it with duct tape (for handles) and took it on a plane to England, just to have it  fry due to a faulty converter on his first plug in. The memory always made me smile, but last night's remindering lit my laugh muscles on fire for about five minutes. I'm still smoldering with hahaha's.

And so, for him (and some other people) -  here is a reminder to tell your stories.

I wrote this for a group of ladies at Goddard College, and now redirect the point to all storytellers, griots, cantadoras and the like.

Find your chairs, your trees, your stages and platforms. Your audience is already listening, whether you see them or not. The sun is going down, and it is time.

With words, song and prayer
TiMo

Here's where you can read me:
www.pmeqme.blogspot.com

How Much?

With much joy, here is this week's Saturday Post:

For Tony Vakilian 7/27/14 and 11/1/14

© Tiffany Monique

With words, song & prayer, TiMo
www.pmeqme.blogspot.com

Onward Looking

© Tiffany Monique February 2014

In Letters

Good day to you! Here is this week's Saturday Post:

My most heartfelt writings always seem to be in letters.

On American Politics
 April 2014 © Tiffany Monique

With words, song & prayer, TiMo
www.timobe.com
www.pmeqme.blogspot.com

Onward Looking

© Tiffany Monique February 2014

Saturday Post 3.22.14

A ChoreoPictoPoem from Salton City, CA, March 2014 © Tiffany Monique

With words, song & prayer, TiMo
www.alwaysalreadyalright.blogspot.com
www.pmeqme.blogspot.com

Onward Looking - February 2014
© Tiffany Monique

2.1.14 Saturday Post

Morning Hindrances

I had a plan this morning to create a sparkly - my morning cup of coffee, resplendent in its shiny-girly-glitteriness.
But the plans fell through and there wasn't much I could do.
So many things are this way.
Like life.
So I had to rebuild from the ashes of my failed plan.
I had to go back to square zero and regroup.
So many things are this way.
Like life.
And even though what I planned and wanted didn't happen, what art I created made me feel good.
I birthed success from a derailment.
So many things are this way.
Like life.
Turn the page and be new.
Or don't.
The greatest common factor in your life is you.
So many things are this way.
Like LIFE.

Morning Goes Awry by Yours Truly

With words, song & prayer, TiMo
Here's where you can read me:
www.alwaysalreadyalright.blogspot.com 
www.pmeqme.blogspot.com

Friday Poetry 10.18.13

For the Baby

Blessed by blood and bone
Portents of a coming life
Dark days contract
A beautiful harvest of life to come
I am not my own
I never really was
And you
You were
ultimately
never mine

My family is an amazing maze of triumphs and failures. Heroic acts and artistic neuroses. I love them more and more, and the more I love, the bigger the family gets. There are some of you still lost in the wilderness, but I want you to know that there is a home hearth waiting for you in my heart. No judgments. No past. Just a big hug and a, "let's move on". For those of you I haven't met yet, the above image is my brother. He will fly across the country to defend me, and after the carnage, he and I will go out for coffee. And to be sure, he isn't even my fiercest protector...

You've been warned.

With words, song & prayer,
TiMo
Here's where you can read me:
www.alwaysalreadyalright.blogspot.com 
www.pmeqme.blogspot.com

Yours Truly, Summer 2011
© Tiffany Monique

Friday Poetry 10-11-13

Summer 2010, Washington, DC © Tiffany Monique

Two Weeks Notice
If overthinking were a job
I was a Chief Administrative Officer
And hating my position
I had a beautiful office
In a beautiful building
In the middle of a storm
Of my own creation
And I loved and hated
My own mind
My beautiful mind
My mental self-weapon
But
I put in my two weeks notice
I was not fired
Terminated for cause
I quit the job
So that my heart could beat
So that I could dream
So that I could love
So that I could create
And laugh and sing and dance
In the clear light of the sun

And some remindering...

 

 What an adventure!
Simply being my own self
How BLESSED I have been!

Yours Truly, Summer 1996, La Jolla, CA
© Tiffany Monique

Yours Truly, Spring 2009, Glen Burnie, MD
© Tiffany Monique

Yours Truly, Spring 2012, Santa Barbara, CA
© Tiffany Monique

Yours Truly, Winter 2012, Borrego Springs, CA
© Tiffany Monique

With words, song & prayer,
TiMo
Here's where you can read me:
www.alwaysalreadyalright.blogspot.com 
www.pmeqme.blogspot.com

Yours Truly, Summer 2011
© Tiffany Monique

Friday Poetry 10.4.13

DC 2008 © Tiffany Monique

My Family

Beautifully awkward
Every joint supplies
Thumb, thigh, lip, hip
From the grave to the skies
Ugly drawers, pretty panties
That's my family

15 minutes of fame
Six to zero degrees
Elbows, spine, ears, hair
Lifted hands and bended knees
Ugly drawers, pretty panties
That's my family

I forgot I was loved
Lost it in a lie of fear
Wrist, chest, abs, calves
I've returned home and everyone is here
Ugly drawers, pretty panties
That's my family

My daughters are not lost
My sons are on their way
Ankle, knuckle, biceps, triceps
I loved you long before today
Ugly drawers, pretty panties
That's my family

Some by blood and some by blood
Adoption sacred and true
Palms, skull, thighs, eyes
I never let go of you
Ugly drawers, pretty panties
That's my family

Yes, I said it
No too many would
Heart, head, hand, land
What's mine is mine, and He made it good
Ugly drawers, pretty panties
That's my family

Hiking Shenandoah Mountains 2008 © Tiffany Monique

With words, song & prayer,
TiMo
Here's where you can read me:
www.alwaysalreadyalright.blogspot.com 
www.pmeqme.blogspot.com

Yours Truly, Summer 2011
© Tiffany Monique

Friday Poetry 9.20.13

Weeding Word Weeds
  A word weed, finding itself sacred, begs to overgrow and overthrow me. It's like being accosted by a thought, or worse a thought process that chokes the effervescence of creativity within me.
  I don't want to be this weird. Please let me be normal. Says the word weed over and over. It tendrils and vines around my hopes, my art, my self.
  In my efforts to remain unsullied, I find pruning this thought a constant. I find pulling down this thought process a necessity.
  I am a song lyric. It wants me to be a sentence. I am lightning. It wants me to be a desk lamp. I am a torch.   It wants me to be a match. I beg to break out of my own limitation. It begs me to be quieter, more afraid of what people will think.
    In my efforts to remain unsullied, I tell myself I am worth the weeding, the pruning. I tell myself that this weed is beneath me, for all its toil.

"Almost" © Tiffany Monique

Satan and a Spot

FARCE: noun

1. 1.

   a comic dramatic work using buffoonery and horseplay and typically including crude characterization and ludicrously improbable situations.

Satan complained about his bad monkey
The one Ed bought him
As a Secret Santa gag gift
A running joke from East Hell
Along with the pink beanie & ball cap
Back then at a party
(We gave the ball cap to the monkey)
I told Satan I wouldn't date him
Not anymore
He seemed nonplussed by that
And still called me for booty at oh dark thirty
I told him to go back to East Hell
And I blocked his number
Unfriended him on Facebook
Stopped following him on Twitter
That's when Shakespeare's spot showed up
It moved in with me
And didn't do much
But look forlorn
Pining for Shakespeare
Pining for poor mad Hamlet
I was almost sad about it
Then I figured, I'd rather have the spot

Than Satan and his monkey

With words, song & prayer,
TiMo
Here's where you can read me:
www.alwaysalreadyalright.blogspot.com 
www.pmeqme.blogspot.com

Yours Truly, Summer 2011
© Tiffany Monique

Friday Poetry 9.13.13

Writings from the desert...

It's flippin' dry!
I'm parched!
Need fluids!
Need to LIVE!
Well,
If I'm alive enough to complain
I'm ALIVE!
HECK NO it's not comfortable!
But there's something beautiful in it
Beauty in the pain of change
A strength stirring as I learn
I am in fact not dry
Or parched
Or in need of anything
As if I lay dying
Because all I've done
Is left my comfort zone
And I have to say...
I'm kinda diggin' the difference
Kinda

© Tiffany Monique 2013

For my home-girls

You make me crack up
It's because you are so you
Crazy as ever

With words, song & prayer,
TiMo
Here's where you can read me:
www.alwaysalreadyalright.blogspot.com 
www.pmeqme.blogspot.com

Yours Truly, Summer 2011
© Tiffany Monique

Friday 8.23.13

I've been doing poetry expressing myself via poetry of late, and very happy and productive about it.

But I've also been traveling and I believe I've made yet another emergence.

However you got into the family,
you're in the family now.

That's my big "aha moment" that Oprah likes to talk about in her thirty million media outlets.

Seiling Tree
© Tiffany Monique 2013

I was in Oklahoma and Texas in the first part of August (yes, I know -- two of the hottest places to go in the month of August), but I was spending time with people who didn't care about my weird ways, strange sense of humor, or social awkwardness attacks. These people loved me for me. I realized that I loved them even more than I ever thought I would.

Blood, Marriage, Adoption, Covenant. Not everyone came into my family without blood on their hands. I can recount to you, with some unfortunate clarity, some of the daggers in my back, and trauma I've suffered at the hands of a few of the people I visited. And some individuals , I must admit, witnessed my own sinister deeds. But forgiveness is, I'm beginning to see, one of the hardest expressions of love. It's easy to be indifferent, well, easier than forgiving.

Temple from the Train
© Tiffany Monique 2013

On the other side of forgiveness is this incapacitating love. I mean, it incapacitates the need to revisit the wrongs. Don't get me wrong, they come up. At some of the weirdest times you'll find yourself with the PERFECT retort to some random phrase you heard 13, 14, 20 years ago. But when you forgive them, you find that you love YOURSELF so much you just can't relive the drama. You'll find it tastes like rotten cheese in your mouth or something.

At least, that's been my experience of late.

Closer Than it Appears
© Tiffany Monique 2013

With words, song & prayer,
TiMo
Here's where you can read me:
www.alwaysalreadyalright.blogspot.com 
www.pmeqme.blogspot.com

Yours Truly, Summer 2011
© Tiffany Monique

Friday Poetry 7.5.13

Changing Courses, and Forgiving Misdirects

Short Prose Inspired by Robert Frost
"Two roads diverged in a wood"
And you took them both
Sometimes you want so bad to travel on a particular road
And despite the detour signs,
Construction men,
And police ribbons
You find yourself hurt that the way is impossible to travel
It'll take a minute,
Regrouping
Learning the new way
(Thank GOD for G.P.S.)
And then you turn yourself around
And you get going on the right road
Yes
You're annoyed at the time you lost
At the ground you gave up
Due to wrong turn choices
But then you see this road is much easier
And faster
And your vehicle isn't suffering from the unnecessarily rugged twists
Turns,
Obstacles,
Roadblocks
And you get to where you were trying to go
Which was the exact place you were trying to go
When you were going the wrong way
But this new way
So much more beautiful
And easy
And you realize how lucky you are
To know the difference so thoroughly

With words, song & prayer,
TiMo
Here's where you can read me:
www.alwaysalreadyalright.blogspot.com 
www.pmeqme.blogspot.com

Yours Truly, Summer 2011

Friday Poetry 6.21.13

Poetry and images

Breathing

Inhale

listening to birdsong

gentle breezes

even with engines humming underneath

Exhale

my input into the day

prayers and song

even clothed in a 6am sheath

Inhale

the smell of my garden

the taste of my coffee

the pressure on my shins from blankets or air

Exhale

my gratitude to God

my appreciation

the inspiration of stillness, just being there

Coffee Colored Word Play - A Words & Images Project

Coffee Colored Word Play by Tiffany Monique

The Whole You Naked - A Words & Images Project

The Whole You Naked by Tiffany Monique

Private Path, Locked Door - A Words & Images Project

Private Path, Locked Door by Tiffany Monique

Bottled potential

That's what they call me

Hope on copious amounts 

of drugs

Scandalous hope

I dare you to stop me

I dare me 

to keep going

Bottled potential

Shaken like soda

My limits are a tetris

Fit into my future

You sir

Are in my way

Don't say

I didn't warn you

Bottled potential

That's what I exude

That's why I'm creating

That's how I'm here

With words, song & prayer,
TiMo

Yours truly, Just before singing at the 2009 Inaugural Ball 

Here's where you can read me:
www.alwaysalreadyalright.blogspot.com 
www.pmeqme.blogspot.com

Friday Poetry 6.7.13

Gonna keep it griot (as in... I recorded these)

My friends are all artists
My friends are all magic
My friends are all crazy
Or maybe it's just me

My friends are all strong
My friends are all loyal
My friends are all weirdos
Or maybe it's me

My friends are all humble
My friends are all honest
My friends are all outrageous
Or maybe it's me

My friends are all mine
My friends are all growing
My friends are all with me
Lucky lucky me

Would like to go on the record... I think that poem is the "perfect world friend poem", because there are times when my friends are not all of those things... but then, maybe it's just me. Part of me wonders if I should have put a line in there like, "my friends are all gangsta..."

(c) Tiffany Monique 2013

Naaaah... I'm a lover not a fighter.

(c) 2012 Tiffany Monique

You'd think I hadn't been writing...

Hello there to those of you reading,

I just want you to know that I still exist, such as the case may be. There are as always shifts, cycles, and changes taking place. I am in the midst of some graduate school writing that is FINALLY starting to feel like it is mine, and not something some annoying teacher-megalomaniac told me to say. I've also been upheaved on many levels.

The more things change, the more I find I am settling into a "me" that is unlike anyone I've known me to be (and therefore, I'm overtaking and getting rid of some BAD habits, and starting newer, better ones). Dare I say I'm becoming more authentic?

I've started having some pretty awesome (and terrible) conversations with God. He's told me some things about myself that are bigger than I'm ready to deal with, and some things that I need to stop think-speak-do-being. And then there are all the people around me who are telling me wonderful things about who they see me to be, and how I affect them, which lines up with what God has been telling me my whole life (but of course, we can only imagine how I listened... but that was before...)

'Si Malakas at Si Maganda" by Rejeena Victoriana
~saw both it and the artist at an artwalk  5/6/12 in San Marcos
(this image does it no justice)

In the midst of this, life is happening... and art as well- in me, around me, etc. Sometimes it hits me immediately, and sometimes it takes a few days, but tends to be more powerful when it does. The above picture is what I will call a delayed ping (think active sonar, but for the artist's soul). Without meaning to, Rejeena inspired some of my graduate work. Si Malakas at Si Maganda is the Philipino creation myth, which fits in my Pme/Qme-Authenticity Spectrum pretty well (you have to read my papers to better understand that, and I don't want to post them here... this is where I wax Tiffanitious...lol). Suffice it to say that the split, strength, and beauty are pinging me to work on grad work. Right now I am exploring my subjective definition of authenticity and how that plays out in other definitions. It's beautiful, boring, aggravating, strengthening stuff.

By A. Aviles while a passenger in my Red Blessedmobile

But then, that is what is my life right now. Some of it is unclear, some of it is crystal clear, some of it is stone solid, and some of it is flower fading. I just wanted to spend some time sharing that God is working in/on/through me, and "I am loving every moment, even the strain" (India Arie, Good Morning).

I also have a story coming about a painting someone did of me that took seven years to get to me. More coming soon...

Imagine, plan, prepare, execute

And you will know them by their fruit