Listen to my voice. Listen to the sound of my voice intoned the old Victrola.
Ecstasy, Passion — A Holy Orgasmic Release.
Leda began her hair color ritual in the usual way. She carefully laid out the tools of her trade on the bathroom sink and the top of the commode. Being a small bathroom there was not much space but Leda made do within her sanctuary. Hair color, towels, mirror, comb, gloves, check. Now Leda was ready. Using a wide tooth comb she divided her thick unruly curls into sections applying even amounts of color first to her roots then all the way through to the ends.
Pulling the comb through her mane Leda envisioned LeRoi’s rough hewn yet well groomed hands entangling themselves within the kinks and knaps of mother Africa all the while gently massaging her scalp and kissing the nape of her neck. Leda massaged the remaining color through her tangled tresses then set the timer for 20 minutes walking the short distance to her bedroom to meditate while the process worked its magic.
During the 20 minutes of meditation Leda visualized her lover LeRoi sitting next to her on the bed speaking softly and gently in his deep Country Kitchen flavored with hints of Brooklyn accent all the while kissing her brows, the bridge of her nose and finally her lips. He sometimes stopped to look deeply into her eyes mentally willing the both of them to become one flesh.
She could feel the bristle of fresh grown five o’clock shadow against her face all the while falling into a deep blend of mahogany skin intermingled with African, Native American and French blood lines. From his lips issued the voices of ancient Kings worshipping the Queens of Africa, Sheba and Candace. Raspy rivulets of Pleasure streamed down her thick thighs. His hands, His lips, His body emoted sucker cup tendrils adhering to every sensitive site on her body. Sighs and moans escaped softly parted lips.
Suddenly the buzz of the timer interrupted her reverie and off she went to turn on the shower preparing to rinse out the excess color treatment. As Leda stepped under the powerful flow of the water LeRoi’s spirit stepped in with her and they were transported to the thunder of Caribbean waterfalls, enveloped in thunder of the cascading streams. LeRoi’s hands were like the streams of water entering into every sensitive place of her temple. She could feel his lips and hands as they worked their way down from her neck, breasts to that soft mound of flesh above her pubic area where he loved to rest his head after a night of lovemaking.
He cupped her full derriere with his hands enjoying the firmness of a well developed ass pulling her in and closer to him.
Water and Burgundy ran down over the nooks and crannies of her curves. Fountains of scented oils sprayed anointing from the Seven Continents co-mingling with her own pheromone essence.
Water and Burgundy ran down over the nooks and crannies of her curves. Volcanic orgasmic waves shoot forth.
Ring, ring, ring, the sound of the phone brought Leda out of her fantasy and quickly toweled off and managed to answer before the machine kicked in.
“Greetings Empress of the Seven Lands. I just arrived at JFK. Taking a taxi to your place. See you in a few minutes.”
Leda rejoiced. Her fantasy was about to become real. Her Lover was almost home. Her thoughts wandered to a romantic tryst in the hot tub at their friends chalet.
Shall we regard our girl children as Jephthah’s Daughters? How long will we continue to perpetuate the adage, “Women love their sons, but raise the daughters.” Every child deserves the opportunity to succeed in life but success comes through accepting responsibility and learning to be accountable. Any child male or female who constantly lashes out at authority figures in a bid to always be “right” is a child bound for prison or the graveyard. Stop making girls the sacrificial lambs!!
Ladies, let’s love our girl children and stop putting them on the altar in order to save a son who does not wanted to be saved and does not think he needs help or worse some no account man who should not even be a part of our households to begin with. Let us not return to ancient times when girls and women were thought of as little more than chattel or commodities to be bought and sold. (See below for more details on ancient economies)
“One of the unusual things about the Bible is that it preserves some bits of this larger context. … It would seem that the economy of the Hebrew kingdoms, by the time of the prophets, was already beginning to develop the same kind of debt crises that had long been common in Mesopotamia: especially in years of bad harvests, the poor became indebted to rich neighbors or to wealthy moneylenders in the towns, they would begin to lose title to their fields and to become tenants on what had been their own land, and their sons and daughters would be removed to serve as servants in their creditors’ households, or even sold abroad as slaves.
“[This is what the biblical book of Nehemiah is referring to in the passage,] ‘Some of our daughters are brought unto bondage already: neither is it in our power to redeem them.’ One can only imagine what those words meant, emotionally, to a father in a patriarchal society in which a man’s ability to protect the honor of his family was everything. Yet this is what money meant to the majority of people for most of human history: the terrifying prospect of one’s sons and daughters being carried off to the homes of repulsive strangers to clean their pots and provide the occasional sexual services, to be subject to every conceivable form of violence and abuse, possibly for years, conceivably forever, as their parents waited, helpless, avoiding eye contact with their neighbors, who knew exactly what was happening to those they were supposed to have been able to protect. … http://www.delanceyplace.com/view_archives.php?2009
Donations to this Ministry for the Housing Fund can be made in U.S. Funds via money order or bank checks made payable to Rochdale Village Inc. 169-65 137th Avenue, Jamaica, NY 11434, Account No. 083-11G-16924 or directly to deborah.palmer280@gmail.com via Paypal. Thank you and God Bless.
Listen to my voice. Listen to the sound of my voice.
Leda & Radu
Leda began her hair color ritual in the usual way. She carefully laid out the tools of her trade on the bathroom sink and the top of the commode. Being a small bathroom there was not much space but Leda made do within her sanctuary. Hair color, towels, mirror, comb, gloves, check. Now Leda was ready. Using a wide tooth comb she divided her thick unruly curls into sections applying even amounts of color first to her roots then all the way through to the ends. Pulling the comb through her mane Leda envisioned Radu’s well groomed hands entangling themselves within the kinks and knaps of mother Africa all the while gently massaging her scalp and kissing the nape of her neck. Leda massaged the remaining color through her tangled tresses then set the timer for 25 minutes walking the short distance to her bedroom to meditate while the process worked its magic.
During the 25 minutes of meditation Leda visualized her lover Radu sitting next to her on the bed speaking softly and gently in his Eastern European accent all the while kissing her brows, the bridge of her nose and finally her lips. She could feel the bristle of his closely manicured beard against her face all the while falling into a deep blend of olive skin intermingled from Slavic, Romanian, Turkish and Macedonian blood lines. From his lips issued the voices of ancient Kings worshipping the Queens of Africa, Sheba and Candace.
He sometimes stopped to look deeply into her eyes mentally willing the both of them to become one flesh.
Suddenly the buzz of the timer interrupted her reverie and off she went to turn on the shower preparing to rinse out the excess color treatment. As Leda stepped under the powerful flow of the water Radu’s spirit stepped in with her and they were transported to the thunder of Caribbean waterfalls, enveloped in thunder of the cascading streams. Radu’s hands were like the streams of water entering into every sensitive place of her temple. She could feel his lips and hands as they worked their way down from her neck, breasts to that soft mound of flesh above her pubic area where he loved to rest his head after a night of lovemaking. Water and color ran down over all the nooks and crannies of her curves.
Ring, ring, ring, the sound of the phone brought Leda out of her fantasy and quickly toweled off and managed to answer before the machine kicked in.
“Ello Layda. I just arrived at JFK. Taking a taxi to your place. See you in a few minutes.”
Leda rejoiced. Her fantasy was about to become real. Her Lover was almost home. Her thoughts wandered to a romantic tryst in the hot tub at their friends chalet.
“Oh, why have your people forced on me the name of Pauline Johnson? Was not my Indian name good enough? Do you think you help us by bidding us forget our blood? By teaching us to cast off all memory of our high ideals and our glorious past? I am an Indian. My pen and my life I devote to the memory of my own people. Forget that I was Pauline Johnson, but remember always that I was Tekahionwake, the Mohawk that humbly aspired to be the saga singer of her people, the bard of the noblest folk the world has ever seen, the sad historian of her own heroic race.”
Nobody knows my name or the real me except Jesus and him alone. Some ancestors unwillingly pulled from the breast of Mother Africa the others walked the “Trail of Tears”. Both had forced upon them the indoctrination of Euro-centric Christianity to the detriment of each noble culture.
A few months ago I traced my maternal ancestry back to Mozambique. When I made that discovery something in my spirit clicked and I knew that one day I had to return to the birthplace of my Great, great, great, great, great Grandmother, her birth name lost to time and eternity. Other ancestors born in this great land have yet to be revealed. Many times I wonder, “What was my African and/or Native American name.” The names of Finney, Halstead, Gordon, Palmer were all given by some distant slave-owner. Who were they and who were they 500 years ago?
Like Tekahionwake I live my dichotomy every day even in my spiritual life wondering about the respective faiths of my African and Native American ancestors. Thinking about how their own unique worship was torn asunder only to be replaced by a Euro-centric “Christian” god who relegated them to a lesser status, below that of their European captors.
Children of an accursed Ham? (Genesis 9:20–27) I think not for the descendents of the great Realm of Ethiopia have risen again to the rightful place in the Diaspora.
Matthew 12:42
New King James Version (NKJV)
42 The queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and indeed a greater than Solomon is here.
The cries of my people would not be extinguished. The voices of my Native American ancestors called to me for redemption. Through an experiment called Carlisle Indian Industrial School History, really internment in re-culturalization concentration camps Richard Henry Pratt sought to erase the cultural identity of Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho and other tribes through forcing children into complete immersion in Eurocentric culture and identity, effectively erasing their own. Take away a person’s language and belief systems, telling them that how God created them was wrong and had to be fixed only serves to create indwelling images of self-hatred within those lost children. If eradicating my indigenous and African American culture, traditions, ethnicity and exchanging them for dominant white culture will I be closer to God? Will Jesus accept me in this new form?
As I gaze in the mirror as many Native Americans did 150 years ago neither my face nor my features as God made them can be erased. The efforts on the part of European conquerors failed. Nor were the colonizers able to erase the connection to the Great Spirit as he was known long before the white man touched our shores.
White man you tell me that only your version of Jesus can save my soul and deliver me from sin. And just what is my sin? Being born with a brown face, high cheek bones, full lips, long flowing Jet Black hair or locs that rise to kiss the sun. Does my sin lie in the dances my people perform to honor my ancestors and Mother Earth who gives us all sustenance? Am I or my ways at fault because we revere Nature as opposed to destroying the land, fouling the waters, polluting the environment in a never ending obsession to conquer, convert and control? Now who is the savage? Who is the so-called heathen?
Oh European who comes bearing the sign of the cross who is this God of yours that lifts up your customs and traditions but disparages mine? He is not the Jesus depicted in your Old Master paintings from Italy, Spain, France or the Flemish Masters. No, more than likely he was a swarthy man with kinky dark woolly hair, skin darkened by constant exposure to the sun. Jesus was someone whose looks paralleled the populations most of the indigenous tribes of Africa, North and South America.
Revelation 1:14-15
New King James Version (NKJV)
14 His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire; 15 His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters;
We Sisters and Brothers from what you named the “Third World” now know that Jesus came for us just as we are. God accepts us in all the richness with which he created us. We Black and Brown followers have redefined and returned Christianity to its original intent and meaning.
No longer do we walk the “Trail of Tears” or the Via Dolorosa. Now we stand together arm in arm marching onward to Zion that beautiful city of God taking our place among those who have been redeemed.
Today is the day we graduate from the school of hard knocks, cast aside fear and tell that special someone we Love them. Life is short, so let us break free from the prison of fear and hold tight to those who love us. Now is the time for hugs & kisses. Now is the time for consummation of a love long sought & desired. My beloved Dad had a saying, “He who hesitates is lost”. How long will we deny the Blessing that God has put before us afraid to take that leap of faith? Only realizing our mistake when you see God’s blessing in another’s arms.
My girlfriend’s death has made me more serious about my relationship with God and with people. It’s time for me to stop being afraid to share my feelings with those I love be they family or friends. The love of money and material things is the root of loneliness. Can we put our arms around money? Can it hug us and speak life to us in times of despair? Will money warm our beds at night? Will money celebrate our joys and comfort us in times of grief. No. Only another human being can do that. So what are we all waiting for? What is our relationship with God but our lives shared and intertwined.
The Awakening has come! Our Redeemer has come and we are saved.
We’ve through off the yoke of suppression! Our souls begin to arise and join one another in complete harmony. Exalting with each soulful eye gaze. Lips grazing up cheeks. Smooth manicured brown hands imbuing the memory facial feature. Long narrow fingers playing my body like an instrument.
Love and Joy are the rays of light at the end of a dark and winding roadway. Joy overcomes our sorrow with the promise of a rainbow after the storm.