mostly, i think of you on rainy days when thunder claps outside my window
and i remember how comforting your arms were as i snuggled against them.
i can recall the times when you came to my rescue for any number of silly reasons.
yet, you always refused to take no for an answer and you never judged me.
you’d always been my soft place to fall whenever i was blue and just needed a sympathetic ear.
your heart was open and giving and i …

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Photo credit: www.seo.com
* People who burn leaves and pollute the neighborhood. Apparently, their olfactory nerves are shot and they don’t realize how offensive the smell is. Meanwhile, we (the neighbors) have to seek refuge in our homes like we are trying to escape the next application of agent orange. Moreover, why hasn’t our local government banned that activity?
* People who will walk right past you at work as if you were invisible. They will …

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I imagine your lips searching mine
for answers that only my heart can answer.
Your staccato-ed eyes try to assess any tell-tale signs
of my body betraying my truth.
But I will keep silent; my words will never utter
how you make my heart leap with
anticipation…each time I see you.
You have unfinished business with another,
so when those ties are severed…..
You will learn in time
that I love you.

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Photo credit cuny.edu
Here are four poems that I’ve loved for years because each has taught me lessons that I needed to learn during a particular time of crisis or happiness in my life……
1. Nikki Giovanni’s “I wrote a good Omelet”
I wrote a good omelet…and ate a hot poem…
after loving you
Buttoned my car…and drove my coat home…in the
rain…
after loving you
I goed on red…and stopped on green….floating
somewhere in between…
being here and being there…
after loving you
I rolled my bed…turned down my hair…slightly
confused …

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Tina was 13 chronologically, but much worldly and wiser than her years would betray. She spoke with such authority and confidence that you would have to remind yourself that you were talking to a child who happened to be…..carrying a child.
Tina was my roommate at the home and hospital and as it turned out was more experienced than I when it came to the mysteries of motherhood. This would be her second child…..same father…..a guy who she’d accused …

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1. Learn to speak French fluently. I am studying via pimsleur cds and even use the French Coach game for my Nintendo DS. I think French is the most romantic language on earth, so I can’t wait to be able to whisper sweet french ‘somethings’ in my beloved’s ears, preferably as we cross Le pont neuf in Paris.
2. Spend a leisurely weekend in a lighthouse off the coast of Maine in the summer. It will be nice …

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One day,  I’d like to make enough money on my travel website so that I can quit my current job,  sell my house and travel the world without looking back.   I tend to feel this way when I think about the years that I’ve wasted when I did what I thought others expected of me rather than following my own heart and ambitions.
I believe that I became less like the person I was meant …

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I was thinking about the fuss that was made over the hat that Aretha Franklin wore during the inaugural ceremonies and I was amused. Anyone who has spent any measurable time in a black church knows that this is not shocking to anyone else except those who are not aware of the rich history behind this phenomenon.

There is a long-time tradition of head adornment in the black religious community. While it may have started with the biblical …

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Reading an account of a friend’s life struggles served to be a very powerful and personal reminder that we are in large part responsible for our own successes, failures, near-misses, joys and sometimes sadness. At the same time I believe in the existence of things that are beyond our control like fate, divine intervention and sheer bad luck. Nevertheless, I believe that we determine the where and the how we eventually end up in this life.
Strangely enough, I …

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When you promised me your heart,
You didn’t promise your soul.
When you promised your devotion,
You didn’t promise that we’d be joined at the hip.
When you promised to be faithful,
You didn’t promise to become a slave to my insecurity.
When you promised to love me,
You didn’t promise to consume me.
When you promised to trust me,
You didn’t promise to be indifferent.
When you promised to honor me,
You didn’t promise pedestals from which I could easily fall.
You promised a sweet, tender love that seemed so foreign …

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