I have had a lot more happen here in the last week or so, but I likely update you on that in a few days time! Until then, I have been watching a lot of spoken word poetry lately and thought I would give it a shot. I have mentioned her before, but Sarah Kay has some great poems, so if you aren't positive about what spoken word is give her site a look!
As many of you may know, I sometimes write to clear my thoughts, or even to just get things out on the table and into the open. That is basically what I was doing here. It is a bit of both sorting through things spinning around in my brain as of late and then putting them out in the open. So, if you feel like reading it, below is my first poem (don't judge to harshly as it is meant to be performed rather than read on a 1-D page!):
Kentucky’s Home
That
moment, in the dead of winter, when I’m taking the most wonderful, beachy nap,
dreaming of the palm trees and 5 o’clock somewhere, then BAM the florescent
light bulbs giving me “vitamin d,” time out. First world probs.
Starbucks
put only two pumps, not three, in my double, tall, non-fat with whip, mocha. First
world probs.
I
forgot my maid’s last name to write her her check. First world probs.
My
iphone charger is all the way downstairs. First world probs.
Auto-correct.
First world probs.
The
third world, the third world really is living a rough life. No really, stop and
think about it. Just for a moment, or maybe a few, fathom the unfathomable.
That
same “vitamin d” I am longing for, they can’t escape.
They
have no house to take shelter in, or even a job as a maid to allow their skin
to soften for a few short hours. That same skin that will one day, hopefully,
if they make it that long, feel like leather.
And
they have no over-priced store to purchase a drink in. Not even a well with clean
water. And they also have no phone to call their mother who left them to make
money to send home so that someday, someday maybe her babies can go to a
school.
There
once was a girl in third grade. Her teacher turned on the TV. It stayed on all
day and kept repeating the same images. Those same images continued for a week.
Two identical buildings, with steam like that from hot coffee, streaming from
them. While coloring a picture for the rest of the school day, she sat and
remembered those two buildings from summer vacation a month earlier. She was
smart enough to know the buildings would be gone forever. All she cared about
though were the chocolate covered strawberries her mother wouldn’t buy for her
while they were in the buildings. First world probs….oh wait, those really are
first world problems.
Little
did this girl know that over the next twelve years she would come to understand
what really happened on that day. That coffee steam was really the souls and
memories of good people going somewhere better, or so she prays. She would even
one day meet people whose lives had spun out of control on that day. Their
world stopped, while the rest of it seemed to be spinning, loudly like a vortex
around them. Much of this dizziness is still felt today….This girl learned
about the uncontrollable spinning also going on in her classmate’s lives. Her
friend’s lives. Her family’s lives. Her life.
Every
time she watches the news, reads a first world hashtag, or hears more grape
vines being cultivated, she fathoms the unfathomable, or what might seem more
fathomable than my own circumstances. I always spring back into my own shoes
though because no matter what ditch I may be digging in my Hunters, what beach
I may be walking in my Rainbows, or what problems I may be sprinting from in my Frees, I know I couldn’t walk a day in someone else’s shoes. They say, the sun
is always shining bright somewhere in my old Kentucky home…well life’s
brightness will always be alight somewhere in my old Kentucky bones.
