Poetry Saved My Life

Poetry saved my life. Literally. I wrote so that I would not kill myself. I know poets all over the world who tell this same story. But I also wrote to tell myself the truth. Even when I couldn't say it out loud, I could write it. Sharon Bridgforth was a mentor and muse for me. She still is, even though I don't get to see her or talk with her. I follow her work. She taught me to honor the ritual that arose in my writing. This poem, written in 2005, was for a Womanist Consultation gathering at the American Academy of Religion. And the ritual follows...

Voice

Senegal: sanibaat: “throwing voice,” disruptive means of entering discourse

Sanibaat—throw your voice into this talkin’ plain

We are responsible for the words we say

Wrestling angels/chasing demons

Holding the sound of the future

In our throats

We know what wisdom sounds like

Have heard its tones screamed

In hollows/sung low and loud

We know sanibaat

Throw our voices wide

We have eaten sorrow bread

It stuck tight in teeth

Years of dry and conjured sweetbread

We know how to throw our voice

Of hopes

Fears

Encounter the dust and guts we are

Dig in the dirt of our own hearts

Tell ourselves the truth

Sometimes lie out loud

Where are voices

Stilled by the thin fingers of death

That are never silences

Sanibaat-thrown voices

Into eternal winds

Whispering voices

Into our ears

We are responsible for what

We hear

Of mercies

Of wounds ripped wide

Of fire-talking grandmothers

Healing voices

Thrown into sanitized spaces

Bear witness

We know how

To create our own space

Disrupt what harms us

Participate in our own well-being

Claim the sound that rumbles

From our belly to our lips

We know how to welcome

The ancestral drums

The rhythmic cadence

Of laughter

How to let it take over our skin

To make us whole

Unfragmented pieces of wisdom

In voices long-since stilled

But not silenced

We know how to throw

Our voices into the mix

Beat witness

Make sweetbread

Change the world

Sanibaat

Throw it

Sanibaat

Throw your voice

Sanibaat

We know how

© Valerie Bridgeman

Ritual for Womanist Consultation (2005)

*This ritual was done to the rhythm of hands tapping and feet stomping like drum beats... the leader said the words and they were repeated by the participants... it's a ritual for women that bears repeating...

Senegal: sanibaat: “throwing voice,” disruptive means of entering discourse

my soul, intellect, energy, one good nerve

the unified whole

[we passed bread] and said:

this is the bread of our tears

of our years

of our hopes

of our fears

This is the bread of our plans

of our desires

of our yearnings

of our mercies

of our wounds

This is the bread of our healings

our many, many healings

it is the nature of the dependency that counts

it is the nature of the dependency that counts

what I thought counted, doesn’t

I have to own my self

my soul

my intellect

my energy

my one good nerve

i am creating my own healing atmosphere

i deserve it; i deserve it

i reject the evil that violates my own sacred space

i refuse the shame I’ve internalized

bear witness, my sisters, bear witness

bear witness, my mothers, bear witness

i am creating my own healing atmosphere

sani baat / sani baat / sani baat

I am throwing my own voice

I am disrupting every process that harms me, that harms you

My authentic self, my real self

welcoming my own self

into my own skin

unified whole

no longer fragmented; no longer embracing the wounds

bear witness, my sisters, bear witness

bear witness, my mothers, bear witness

writing myself into being

singing myself into being

dancing myself into being

teaching, preaching, thinking

myself into being

bear witness

bear witness

i bear witness

and welcome myself into my own skin

© Valerie Bridgeman

November 2005

Jaha the poet's muse

I started this blog (to go with the other one that I started) because of Jaha Zainabu.

My blog's title is a riff off her title, but not her life. She (my friend and niece and muse) has insisted many times that I should catalog my life, my stories, my poems, if for no other reason than I have grand daughters who will want to know me one day. And I haven't. But she inspires me and pushes me. So, in the days ahead, old poems will appear here. And I am sure that typing them up will make me want to write new poems and life's stories. The other blog will continue to be, mostly, about love, inthisplaceweflesh. But here, because of Jaha, you will get to read my poetry. Here's one of my favorites from 10 years ago:


We Came Roaring out of the 1970s

We came roaring out of the 1970s

On the back of a Suzuki 900

Four gears up, one down

And the only time I held on tight

Is when I wanted to feel the heat

From your body

We rode without helmets, 30 miles

Over the speed limit and wild

On graveled roads, kicking

Dust and rocks

We laid that bike down so many times

That we believed we were invincible

We’d get up with skinned knees,

Burnt calves, and laughing

At each other’s Afros laying down

Away from our face

We were foolish, and young

Doing what foolish young people do,

Laughing on the edge of death,

Unaware and unafraid

Sometimes, we’d hit a wind tunnel

And skid; we learned to lean

In the same direction on time

To steady the bike and our

Own heartbeats

We learned the names of rivers

In Central Alabama so we could

Plot our course by name

Rode past lichen-covered trees,

Sat on the sides of roads, popped

The heads off wild mushrooms

Told each other secrets

We were planning the future of the world,

And calculating the days to graduation,

Last embraces, good-bye kisses

And scholarships.  You never planned to leave,

But I didn’t know it at the time

That bike connected us

To the same dreams,

But you were planted in

Tall Sylacauga corn,

But I had Senegal

And the Ivory Coast

In my veins

Once, on highway 76 to Talladega,

An 18-wheeler played chicken with our lives,

Riding hard up on our bumper, he

Sandwiched us between him the rough

Wall of clay and dogwoods on the right

And a yellow pick-up truck

I felt your muscles tighten,

And my throat followed suit.

It was the only time we were ever scared

On that bike

I think of you on rainy days, and the times

We rode past the Hamilton house, the

Haunted hollows on our way to Waco pool

We swam upstream, and kept each other

Company in our madness

You, and that bike, were my best friends

© Valerie Bridgeman [Davis]
26 October 2002