WOMANS WORLD

SHE BREATHED (and the flowers came out)

Re-evaluate, meditate, and breathe.

NAILS TO DIE FOR

  Written By Zena Edwards 2001©

Melanie's nails tip the scales beyond the balanced rational of modern architecture.

Rhinestone encrusted, they arch entrusted to an adhesive, bonding live nail to acrylic

Unifying her in a mirage marriage of sophisticate Ameri-carib elite to brown girl in 
Beauty College from Tottenham high street. 

Mel got her nails from “US GAL, from a real Korean chick with her high heeled,
tiled floor cracking, sling backing tight jeaned or shorted skirt wearing, little tittied,
hair flicking, eye flitting but perfectionist focus for nails building self.

Three Saturdays of her minimum wage slave was the price Mel paid. Her manager points out the impracticality of her newly acquired appendages. Mel points a beclawed index digit retreating, hissing her warning like a lioness, cub protecting, "Don’t you come between her and her ten reasons for living!"

Mel's nails entrap the gaze of the mind ticking the gansta rap on MTV box - big black six packs and guns, undulating brown flesh in thongs... Mel imagines it’s her choice of rhinestones on her thumb that catch the sun and leaves them struck dumb.

Mels nails tell a tale of her clawing her way through a thicket
of charmless males, who liked her thigh, her buttocks tight and high
Her breast pointing to the sky, her clean wet eyes.
Mels nails meant she never washed a dish from that monumental day.
Like a buzz from a passing fly were her mothers the complaints -
Ignored or irritatingly swatted away with a curled lip
Her ears had closed to that voice long ago anyway.
The space between which was not full of air
as  maternal blusters and playground blasts had blown her to believe
from pubescent rebukes alluding to her bodily parts
that chose to round and swell before she had lost
her clumsy schoolgirl gait; those bulges that attracted 

an attention she only knew made her uncomfortable
made want to origami herself in to shape of a boat
or something even less interesting.
Poked at for contemplative visage mistaken for shy
inaccurately diagnosed as "Well She's just stupid, innit."
And her inclination for re-potting plants was not a reflection
on her personality as being an unanimated as a wallflower.
She just liked to help things grow.

 
somewhere down the line she had put down the gardening gloves
and picked up shears pruning that soft touch don't say much

into a loose lip l such and such
it wasn’t enough to just dispassionately exist
scratch the varnished surface and see after the eclipse

You find a small tongue cannot articulate big pain lying under cover, could not choose
which night was dream filled, could not wish away
the rain that fell on Mels small world. Her blamelessness
bent over backwards a rainbow under those dark clouds smelling
of thick mans smell and Tennents Extra unmasked
by the favourite aftershaveof her stepfather seeping
under her door and into her bed.


And between the mothers back teeth laughing, his big hand
her  mothers broad hip stoking and heavy whispering
in ears only open for compliments and good girl pay offs,
mother rationalises blindness for the impossibility
of his preference of her daughter over herself….

Thus after nose, brow, dimple navel and eighteenth ear piercing
through which her frustration escaped, Melanie painted
her nails a shock of colour  She chose herself. Definitively.
Uncompromisingly -  Nefertiti on her left pinkie with a tiny gold ring
punched through representing her vague knowledge of self, a sun setting
on an Island beach and solitary palm tree, firework, stars, explosions of a kaleidoscope 

Mel got her nails and face painted to accentuate the light and shade
of her dreams not to cover up the shabby seams of tear darned recoveries. No…. 

Misadventure was a survivor’s test. She knew this and her promenades into womanhood
Were strewn with the waste of her hurts.

But she prettied them up with polish and flares of yellow brick roads, 
glitterati carnivals, and the lazy sound of droning bees pollinating 
in a park in Tottenham filling 
her body to bursting, shooting out of her fingers tips like car headlights.
She had fine art Picassoed over her nails in the colours she chose 
for herself definitively and uncompromisingly. 
Cos Mel's nails were her dreams manifest. 

Her conquest. What she claimed.

Uncompromisingly.

aug 10

Click images for more and slide show.

Blankets and Roses - A Poem for my Mother

for my Mother

Watching Mama crochet
her concentration so profound     clear
seeing beyond the web     stitch
good times    bad times    play time    hard times
moments 

                 of no time
walks to the waters edge of still lakes
the warm smell brown earth sun drying
after a rain fall when she tends her roses
patient silent cooking
deep fragrant bath soaks

Mamas faces drops years when she crochets
the worry lines in her forehead lift          evaporate
like malt whiskey on the tongue
her silvering hair catches the forty-watt        glitter
and a mirror ball
I see her back is straight now
Her shoulders loose
Her feet out of their shoes and her red nail polish sings out
fingers deftly magic up a multicoloured world favoured by high purple

Mama crochets and I watch
My Mama unfold into a creation
spreading over her knees
onto the carpet across the floor
out into the street 
blanketing the earth with her affection
her patience and her passion

Watching Mama crochet
I learn peace

When It was My turn to Talk - Extract from "TRAVELING LIGHT" a new One Woman Show by Zena Edwards

When It was My turn to Talk

written by Zena Edwards May 2010©

I have been a woman that has
looked out of windows, stood on street corners,

cleaned floors on my knees,  borne children

on my knees and  chased rainbows
wrote my name out loud in a cloud
from a deep sigh on the glass

a silent gale force
that could huff and puff and blow

the houses of patriarch down

The space that my voice was to occupy

my part in the harmony, my heart on the melody

my life woven in the song of life’s symphony

was constricted, my voice,

hollow chest,  shallow depth, suffocating

See when it was my turn to talk
which wasn't very often (because I am a woman)

a child’s voice squeezed out, 

my voice on this tongue, hadn’t a chance to grow

this was lesson one

speaking my mind is a minefield

 trip wires every where,

in the court, where I must have wanted it dressed like that

at work after the sexual harassment case,

at war, after the 17^th rape

disgraced there was no returning

at home, he walked in the door, high, pissed and late,

full of misplaced hate, number 2million and 8 on the jobless list

and still punctuated his demands for dinner with a fist

but I found when it was my turn to talk

(which was not very often)
being black,  my tongue had the weight

of a continent wrapped in chains

fixed to a concrete slab (tied to it)
and a whip crack was all that came out

when I opened my mouth

when it was my turn to talk

 they told me I was to old, that I was too fat ,

that I was too skinny, that I was too fat

 they told me my skin was too dark, that I had to fix the attitude

 that came with it

 the one that asked “why not?”

 the one that said no and meant it

They asked me to tell that voice to behave,

to bury it, in this here conscripted government grave

Where it will be logged and forgotten about  for the next millennium

my input would only upset the equilibrium

you trade my voice, trick it, trap it,

 force it then beat it if it refuses

to sleep with man number 13 at this hour of the morning

stack it up as dirty money, stained. moss green –

bottle fly blue, purple aubergine, mucky yellow mottle

the colour of bruises, the colour of lust,

 the colour of  my  dreams

that stand in the corner stunned

turned, facing the wall

they cannot look at this me,

this scene of my dignity’s carnage

When it was my turn to talk

 It was made perfectly clear that there

was no space for me to talk here

 amongst the men, amongst the testosterone

 because the hysteria that sits below

my navel raises the risk of instability

 in a system that is evidently working so well

 war running smoothly, lining the pockets

of  arms and oil traders

might scupper the race to evacuate this planet made dump,

 by fantasy space invaders

the plot the rule the world

 is working thank you very much

to protect herself,  a woman has to know

when to make her presence felt and when to shut up

and stay skinny, stay fat, stay uneducated,

stay at home, stay on your back, stay in the kitchen,

stay under cover of broken wings,

while they sing with tenor, alto and bass

 sonic booms that crack the face of this earth

till she bleeds lava, tsunami whips her hair,

floods the land with her tears

and I am here,

looking out of the window of this body

displaced in my own skin

trapped between brick walls and the corrugated

 sheets of a run down shanty town

called life where I’m barely existing

What will be, will dream

My blood evacuates
sliding through the pores of my skin, red pearls
the atoms inside spun out, glittering,
to kiss pure darkness, to taste light
 
after the cornucopia had crescendo-ed in the western corner
and hedonist hawks* flew  into the sun
packs of she wolves convened under the moon
sung of solace so superb
echoed across my mauve dreamscape
 
Queen Lunar turned her face
but not her back
blew out  the stars, so my sleep walk
would be unhindered by the spikes of their sparkles
 
no diamond points to prick my feet
to bleed my mark on destiny pre-named
 
Zena Edwards© 
 
* somebody who favours the use of military force in the implementing of foreign policy rather than diplomatic solutions

sleeping

i do not feel beautiful while you sleep
and I know this is wrong
i should not need your words or your gaze
but they make me feel good

i feel good, good
like all the badness i've ever done
were things that somebody else sung about
someone else wrote in the chords of their imaginings
i have no part of them

whille you sleep i wait up for your return
from the dogs, swimming pools, dungeons and rope ladders of your dreams
that you tell me about in the morning

I could watch you sleep for days
that way I'd know where you are
that way i can be next to you while you expose the underbelly of your vulnerability
knowing you trust me, trust that i think you are beautiful too

Bebé del Carnaval

Image - Zena Edwards©

I was at Burgess Park last weekend a the Latin festival - Carnaval del Pueblo. I had my camera. My new camera bought because I had lost my voice for 5 solid weeks. I discovered how hungry the eyes are for food and how fickle they are - always searching for the next new scoop, the story that will curb the cravings. When I got home, they unfurled themselves to me like cheeky strippers, like lucky dips and silent constellations.
My first photo blog. Click pic for full effect.

Her hair is the earth, brown, deep
rich with mineral, a forest
of brand new thought
wind whipped into an ice cream quiff
she nips the familiar arm that cradles her
with gummy jaws, so sensitive, tasting
salt and tracings of some body spray
pursing lips that would speak purity
into jaded eyes that would break
tears imprisoning
any heart: shatter, tinkle - music

her own eyes focus on the resonance of voices
hears the emotion behind the guise of words -
she is that attuned

And one day her hair will fall the height of a great mountain
along her back, ripped from flexing, from wrestling
with the devil
cushioned by the fatty comfort of prayer
a woman's contours emanate
a softness, a gentleness
that cannot be hidden no matter how arduous
the game

because the woman that holds her
will not let her fall, holds herself
in a grip of a mirror gaze   

remembering her own innocence
laced with vanilla and her mothers magnolia plants
this newness that tugs on her hair
to know its texture, wizened
with disappointments and loss , washed 

with accepting, forgiving,

another new beginning

hair meets hair
and the hum of the festival bumps on

Poem written by Zena Edwards copyright Aug 2010

A photo of a girl

there is a photo of a girl
12, 13, slim wrists long neck
she walks wearing peach with blue flip flops
stepping with a familiarity over the slippery backs of  8 pipelines
she is at number 5
she seek protection from a gentle rain falling from the African sky
holding an umbrella with a bright yellow shell on it
behind her, between the giant palm leaves
dragons roar, bellowing black billows
belligerent belches of acridity in to sky
when I put my ear close to the photo I can hear her asthmatic breath
 
each clap of her plastic flip flop against her heel
makes a poem in her step
it is the sound of every day people
who live with pipelines like tapeworms
sucking the placenta and excreting
toxic into the bloodstream of nation
the rivers are graveyards
the wetlands, thirsty for clean breath
the land is hemorrhaging
miscarrying cocoyam and vegetable seed
 
boys who have given up waiting for jobs to come
eye her as she walks by,
a generation numbed by the futility of existence
it is ironic that their most valuable asset becomes their Achilles heel
the idleness of youth fervent for action
dumps them in the hands of   ak47 robber gangs
who howl in the night to the tune
of their masters - myopic mad men in business
all grappling for a fist of flaccid dollars
greed at the price of a village
 
but then again everything has it’s price in the world
like  this girl with the poetry in her step,  the poisonous air
in her lungs is a currency
as is her mothers sludge garden and her fathers chest
face and shoulders burned in the last accident
 
the truth is a jealous but patient thing
it bide no hazes of the facts or credibility gaps
there is only one fragrance that it harbours
time, the scent of time moves from freshness, to death
to rot, to the fertilization of new days
 
it is between the pages of a day in court
that a mystery of  can be solved
why it takes twelve long years to walk the twisted violent gauntlet to justice
why nine lives were thrown into a wound cut with a knife of lies
 
how the spirits of the tortured and murdered
can be redeemed from the dispassionate mouth of  brutal greed
and how with the wondrous alchemy of nature
instead of the bitter bile  rising to the mouth of the fisherman and the farmer
works songs will rise over the trees,
will dance with the fish along the creeks
will paint across a sky  uninterrupted by fire and towers of black smoke
 
and how the poem of the  girl in blue flip flops,
can be fetched from under the fattened rump of human disregard
and used to re-imagine the world
how she can close the umbrella with the yellow shell on it
and walk in the unpolluted rain falling from an African sky