Bring it home boys!!!

"Gloomy Plague" by Ashley Pannell

I cry, I laugh, I always think. When I dye, will my body stink? I wonder if it will have a foul smell of rotten love. The kind of smell when my heart died years before my body even collapsed to its death. I walk around with a pulse, but I don’t feel anything at all. I walk to the shadowy doom of the next person who will creep up and make me feel like Prometheus. Or like Sisyphus, when I try to push you out of my thoughts and  I’m almost at the peak...You somehow make me fall right back into my doom. Will my face have a smile? But if someone was to pull back my skin, would there be dead butterflies from all the sadness, that they no longer had the will to fly…No power to flutter so they just shriveled up and laid to rest with my emotions. I wonder if there will be a glimpse of red meat in all that bitter and pure and catastrophic anger, rage, and hate. That red meat would be the happiness that I had when I was younger, or the times when I could have a slight chuckle. That will be my evidence of once having no care in the world. But I’m sure, knowing society, the story of a death will be televised as a gloomy and unsweet disaster. While everyone grieves over me when I’m dead, they start to wonder why they weren’t there for me when I needed them the most. Oh everyone can ask a favor or two. But when I needed them for just 10 minutes to get something off my chest…No way-no how-no one was ever there. The screeching of the babies and the howls of the adults breaks the pastor’s glass. Prayers of forgiveness rises to the ceilings, while the women fan themselves and hum and cry and ask why…and the men try to keep back a tear because the fear of the hommies makes them want to act tough. But while the fake and phonies sit and observe, the foul stench of love, sorrow, anger, hatred, and bitterness seeps into their noses and stains their clothes. Tomorrow’s laundry will also have the odor of the dead. The smell will creep into their dreams as they wonder how things could have been. You call your friend and talk about me and how I was, how you should have been. Then you start choke off the grotesque smell….5 days later, your children will smell a foul odor….they know that smell…will yours be sweeter? Will yours be worse? That smell has some type of curse…Your children will be stained as well….and just know this legacy of me will be with you and yours for the rest of your life….because no one was ever there for that 10 minutes….



"Faith is taking the first step, even when you can't see the staircase" Photography by George Butler

What the game's been missing.....

Single parent homes detrimental to child development

http://www.pineforge.com/newman2studyfamilies/essays/single_parent.htm

More African-American males in prison than in college

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0881455.html

The Success Continues

Fingers snap, feet tap to the rhythm

The universe joins in

To the joyful celebration

Its been a long time coming,

Now I'm humming to a new tune

As the scribbles in my poetry book sing 

The lyrics of my pen

This song is battle tested

Risen above the ridicule

Flood waters subsided

Now my pages are shining

Gold thread lines my verses

All praise goes up and

Blessings sprinkle from the heavens

Running across my physical

This is my testament

Of empty days

Poured to fulfill my dreams

And since those days a no longer 

Imaginary.....

I share my toast but

Not to boast or brag

Instead to encourage your personal

Success.... Of the present and that yet to come

See, I'm planted to my Success

For it comes from the roots of my work

Now that it has sprouted

Budding with enthusiasm

I must spread it

Pollinating every surrounding fields

Even in my Success

I only play a part,

I'm skilled with my instrument

Letting my poetry ring out

Can you hear?

The echos fade in and out

Listen......

"The Success Continues"

-Eric Wells

Putting Richmond on their backs!!! Big shouts out to VCU Men's Basketball Team

The kids truly are all right: by Laura Sessions

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/03/31/stepp.kids.all.right/index.html?hpt=C2

One of my all time favorite photos it captures the essence of greatness

"Classic"

"I Shall Be Glad"

Poet: Grace Noll Crowell

If I can put new hope within the heart
Of one who has lost hope,
If I can help a brother up
Some difficult long slope
That seems too steep for tired feet to go,
If I can help him climb
Into the light upon the hill's far crest,
I shall begrudge no time
Or strength that I spend,
For well I know
How great may be his need.
If I can help through any
Darkened hour, I shall be glad indeed.

For I recall how often I have been
Distressed, distraught, dismayed,
And hands have reached to help,
And voices called
That kept me unafraid.
If I can share this help that
I have had, God knows I shall be glad.