No News is...

For a while I've ignore

the all-day, every-day

news of fiscal cliffs and 

raped girls and football players who

get away with it on technicalities

and hurricane relief denials

after the water receded

I haven't intended

to disconnect but sometimes

no news is good for the soul

a fast from gorging on

the gore, and a retooling
for the next time
one has to face
the sadness

© Valerie Bridgeman
January 4, 2013

Make Lists

Make an adventures-to-have list
make it tell the truth about you
make it long and take your time
make it travel across the world
stop in every corner
make it choose your favorite foods
and foods you've never tasted but should
make it about jumping--
bungee jumping, double-dutch jumping rope
jumping from planes, jumping into the fire,
jumping out of bad situations--
make it about flying--
flying off into the wild blue yonder
make it about figuring out what "yonder"
looks like for you
make it about flying kites, flying your colors
being true to your colors, flying your hopes
being true to your hopes, flying in a space
ship and see where flying gets you
Make an adventures list about
adventures and the way life always is one
and how trying to play it safe doesn't make
you stay in one place, it just makes it harder
to enjoy the journey--
make it about how life doesn't wait
make it about how waiting is overrated
make it about how making lists
sometimes keeps you from actually
doing what's on the list
then get up from it and get to it
check them off one or two at a time
and remind yourself: this list
is only a starter
you'll get better at lists
as you get better at checking them off.

© Valerie Bridgeman
January 3, 2013

I Wonder

I wonder already
whether I will be true
to me or whether I'll give myself
away in bits and pieces, auctioned off
to the lowest bidder, daring anyone
to treat me with the kind of respect
that says, "You really shouldn't take me for granted."

I've gotten use to the nickel-and-dime
of it all, the way I let people
sell me short or write me off
or any other cliché that makes
no sense of living

But time is moving me closer
to wander a new field, another space
To wonder how my soul
ever settled, why you ever had
a say in what I would become in the first place
Why I moved aside while you pushed
your way into my life
and set up shop in my thinking
making me sing
off key and the wrong song at that
I wonder how that happened
and what I'm going to do
to get you out?

©  Valerie Bridgeman
January 2, 2013

(Edited to complete "first person" on January 29, 2013)

NOTE: none of these first postings are edited. I am free writing to make myself write. That's all. One day, I'll come back and edit (maybe).

Day One

Every time
I start over
I wonder what happened
to the last day one

to the last time
I promised myself
I would do
one thing or
another

and didn't

So, another day one
and I am leaning
forward
into day
two

© Valerie Bridgeman
January 1, 2013

Remembering Audre Lorde: February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Black Feminist Lesbian Mother Warrior Poet Audre Lorde. When Paula Cooey introduced me to her writings in 1985, I remember being shocked that I could be so persuaded and so moved by a lesbian non-Christian, given that I was so entrenched in a kind of Christianity that insisted such people were demonic. Cooey gave me Lorde in small doses and one day told me her entire identity. By then I could only be fully conflicted because I had come to love her and her insight on the world, her black woman self so much my auntie or sister, so kin to me. I suppose I have Paula and Audre and Alice (Walker) to thank for my walk toward at-the-root inclusivity and hospitality infused Christianity. It took some years, some experiences, some loving, some losing to get here.... And the journey continues. 

I learned of her death, as it turns out, 4 days after she had died (I found the journel in which I wrote this poem below on the spot and it's dated November 21, 1992). The day I heard Audre Lorde died, I was in a Womanist session at the Academy of American Religion. Mother Katie G. Cannon, Womanist ethicist and fierce-warrior, was speaking and someone walked onto the stage and whispered the news in her ear. She paused and gathered herself and then announced it to those of us gathered.

We all gasped and sighed in a chorus that dissolved into sobs. I was sitting between Womanist religious scholars sociologist Cheryl Townsend Gilkes and theologian Cheryl Kirk-Duggan and wrote a poem on the spot that Cheryl Townsend Gilkes made me get up and read. I was shaking from fear and grief. Sister Outsider essays had changed my life when I was in undergraduate with Paula Cooey at Trinity University. Thandeka and Summer Cree both made their way to me and just stared at me before they in turn hugged me so long and tight for the offering. I fell in love with Thandeka that day, and later wrote a poem to honor her. I wrote like mad for three days straight. It was the gift our Elder/Ancestor gave me as she left this plane. I honor her today as I remember. Thanks, Aishah Shahidah Simmons, for reminding me.

ON HEARING AUDRE LORDE DIED

She is dead
and I did not know her
but I did

I knew her in my body
hot with the writhing

of power welling up
and flowing down my legs
to nourish the earth
and all my lovers.

She taught me to love the power,
embrace the pain--
be in charge.

I did not know her
but I did

I knew her in my heart
torn with the ambiguities
of living between, outside
the known world,
diving deep and walking away
from my heart to claim
the cosmos
as my own--

to love men and women,
separate, together, whenever
without backing down
from the power.

I did not know her
but I knew her well.

(Farewell, dear Audre)
© Valerie Bridgeman

November 21, 1992
1:40 pm

SHE is an Experience

SHE is an Experience

Every blue moon or so

A woman steps through clouds

Shines like a blue diamond,

Catches the light, amazes everyone who sees her

Rare form and sturdy, African-violet strong

She thrives in harsh conditions

Does not wither under heated gazes of disbelief—

She makes believers fall to their knees in adoration

She is an experience all her own,

Needs no supporting cast though she calls others to her,

Like Lady Wisdom, her voice sounds clear

And people answer

Subtle and muted, she doles out

Hope in abundant increments

Takes ups and downs of living with grace

Like blue diamonds or blue moons

Mountains and valleys, she climbs and descends

With the presence of mind to pace for the journey

She accepts her plump thighs and heavy hands

Weighted with history, her eyes speak stories

Still waiting to be told, and she tells a fierce truth

She-bear strong, she lives from the center

Of all she believes and does not back down

She is an experience all her own.

© Valerie Bridgeman

October 2007

Caught Loving

I have some favorites

of the pictures of us

but mostly I love

the energy exuding

from them, the sheer

joy and laughter

that overtook us

that filled the space

that engulfed us

flooded us 

mostly I like 

that the camera

caught us

loving

© Valerie Bridgeman
August 2013