The Good Friend & the First-Born Fabulist of Bossier Lane
by
M. James Cooper
...Julian was a lucky man, or so he had been told. Friends, neighbors, even his sister-in-laws seemed to think so. Secretly, they thought Ilene was the lucky one. She had been lucky to find such a good looking man. It was all that mattered. Perception and what people thought was the center and main component to their upbringing, so it is what they gave the most energy to. The Grandmother had a sharp tongue and a skeptical eye. They were a watchful, judgmental people, never once did they focus on love. But she was mute now, the Grandmother, silenced by an attack on the body, two strokes, yet she continued to sneak the salt, somehow, into the pocket of her duster, or the band of her knee high stockings, which she refused to stop wearing long after she had retired from the library. Removal of the salt barrel from the kitchen did not stop her cleverness. God knows where she got the ingredient from, covered her food with it is what she did. She complained that her granddaughters did not put enough in the food when they cooked.
"Ah can't taste none!"
Granny would say.
On fruit, vegetable, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Every dish was laden with white granules. Now she just moaned a sound of anger and frustration and pent up evils that would never again be vocalized. Mother-daughter didn't care. It was her time to reign. Ilene relished being in charge, who else, now that her mother was next in line after the dog, she had inherited her mothers sharp tongue, her heavy handed approach to all things arguable. Ilene was only waiting for her to have that third and final stroke, for her to die. Yes Julian was still there, he would proceed to the table for supper eventually, and ask,
"What we drinkin'?"
A Father always wanted to know what juice was available.
"Ah man deserve tuh have juice after workin' so shittin' hard everyday."
Never did he raise his voice, even tones. Like the Mother and the Grandmother, he was habitual, doing the same things the same way, saying the same things the same way. Parenting? It was the only confrontational thing he allowed himself to say. It was the only utterance Mother had no rebuttal for...

BUSH: A story of commitment and pain through survival.

BUSH
by M. James Cooper

...No new religion needed, they were fine. So on the white-man's Christian God's Sunday, the day he thought about what it meant to be Christ-like, the sons and daughters of colonial oppression saw fit to love themselves. Taking their belabored bodies, the hands and feet along with the song of mouths, somehow these were often forgotten about until day seven. They gathered and walked slowly down the path situated behind the barracks where they lived, further and a slight turn down past the first cluster of poui-trees, back behind dey'so, by the bush. Another world it was. Surrounded by tall swaying grass that kept the trees company, a never ending courtship. Big stones to make short people tall, or resting place for a bleeding man to ketch'he'self good. Even in 1834, after emancipation, this kind of activity was illegal, nonetheless, their blood required it. In a sky full of stars they were the bottom. It was day now, but after the stars performed to perfection just a few hours ago, here came Dawn with her sun-rays, beating the waters surface making Ocean and River shine, showing off, something spectacular. Six days of waiting, working his land made for languid feet; SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! went the branches, feet no longer dragging the ground and the warmth of the sun urged heads up and forward. Circling the gayelle, in preparation, drummers warmed their hands on stretched surfaces. Men wearing loose fitting pants made of cotton, tied at the waist and rolled on itself, alpargatas covered their feet, bare backs. Those entering the gayelle from the path reached hands to make a clean break and took with them a good sized piece of poui-branch for today's Kalenda...

This story, my 25th, is part creation narrative, part examination of the human condition. Heaven or hell, knowing and not knowing; the ability to see and be everything God wants us to see or be; this is the struggle I examine here within these pages. I hope that by writing, reading and eventualy publishing this story in its entirty, it will do for others what it did for me.

The After
by M. James Cooper

The after comes when the years go by and the days turn into days after the coming of new eyes, new skin, reborn souls and new hopes. This world has been in existence for quite some time. The mistakes, dissolving of truths and violence that feed and assault its nature give no ease to the burden of beings. Living is made hard, happiness avoided, and suffering at our fingertips. Ground tumbles, fires burn, reason speaks and seas part daily but consciousness is disregarded, no pair of eyes notice, and permissiveness is praised. Branches give their leaves away like unwanted offspring and mothers cry despite the pain they knew it would bring. A sort of rebirth, everyday a newness, the sun delivers his light and we beg for more. More blessing, more please; wanting for everlasting life because we cannot wait for it to be earned. Rains fall like men do from mountains and give seed to a new thing, sinking beneath the ground, eventually, becoming food for the trees that will give us more leaves. But only after, they know what sacrifice is for, only after, and revelation gives warning of the beast can we know what the days were for....

Split/Personality 

by M. James Cooper 

My two-ness is confusing.

It is sustaining, possibility bringing and terrifying. 

It is terrible, abandoning and sacrificial. 

One of me wants to run too and the other wants go back there and stay. My two-ness is misery and beauty, is guiding hand and ballast. 

Yes it is shared love and loyalties. Somebody, help me find my way home.

Truth-Telling

by M. James Cooper 

So what if I told you I had one secret that I could not tell.

It does not affect you.

This secret is about a lie I tell myself, to stop me from knowing, to stop me from believing the truth.

What if I told you I had another, a half truth, an omission? 

So yeah, four.

Of Course

by M. James Cooper

Carry because I can, carry because I am willed. 

Bear because I must, becasue I have faith I trust and do continue to bear it all.

Birthed because I was meant, then give birth, not becasue I can or desire to, it is natures will; nature caries, bears and gives birth all the time, why cant I...

Ugly

by M. James Cooper

I am spirit first then born.

Into a boy I grow until I become man.

The possibilities are many and then I decide to fight, I become warrior,

Bucking, kicking, loving, procreating.

Am I too loud for you? Is my power too much for your head that it worries you so?

Please forgive me for I was blessed and I am Purpose and Strength and Vulnerable.

Then subjugated, and moved and positioned and told to stand where you say stand.

Only then am I ugly, because you say so, because you want me to be. 

How empty of me to be so full of your Ugly.

ADORE

by M.James Cooper 

Adore the complicatedness, I do.

The messy afterness of living through pain, the laughter that falls from within like hurt turned to gold.

Adore the forces of will and the intent of forgiveness. I want your everthings and your anythings. As long as I have you I will never wither, I will never wane, and it seems I could live forever.

My Black is Ordinary
by M. James Cooper
Our reaction to any chaos,
Any attack,
Any dis-order is not unique to us and us alone.
In fact, violence, self-hate due to dissent and frustration is a natural response to the stripping away of freedoms, the tying of the hands, the hardening of the heart, the abandoning of the soul. And we respond in kind and sometimes with kindness; despite it, we are human.

What Can I Say? 

by M. James Cooper  

Sometimes words are useless and just a look will do. 

Sometimes a photograph captures the moment better than a mind can. 

All I need is my reflection to tell me otherwise.

My Imagined Past-Self

by M. James Cooper 

I would have jumped ship. 

I would have run to somewhere and away from here. 

I would have fought for the freeing of my physical and spiritual self. 

I would have planned the escape, chopped and burned and shown them a teaching so brutal and so raw; a terror so oppressed it had to show its teeth in time.

Truth is I am not sure what I would have done because that past is not fully my own. 

#poet #writer #storyteller / #black #history

Spirit

by M. James Cooper 

We are before we are.

Before out mothers and fathers meet,

Before we are named, baptized and overcome with living.

We are, even when we are gone from this place.

& the Lord said

by M. James Cooper 

Levitate.

Like Jack Rabbit moving through the air, like

Langston Hugh's words long after he has left us, like

Love on the edge of doom, float as if 

Liquid in space, no gravity, no oxygen,

Limitless.

Some Sort of Bloom

by M. James Cooper 

Cultivate me and I grow like a weed

Untended 

Full of Gods love and natures will.

Cultivate me and I cannot be tamed,

At home in the wilderness, at odds with the shade; I grow despite the lack of rain.

Pour

Your goodness allover me

Nourish,

Spread

& Pollinate

I am blessed thing that dies and returns for more air...

Before the Garden

by M. James Cooper 

Love is paradise before paradise was imagined or given form.

In it we forget to cherish it, out of it we envy the ones within, hoping they make room for us or invite us in.

But this utopia is fad, or dream or illusion or something intangible and crafted from our imaginations, where color is too vivid, dimensions flat, and inflexible. 

If I am wrong and there is a heaven resembling this world I want to go. 

And yes I want it to be a better version, alternate in some but not all ways. 

I want dirt to stain and rain to fall and streets not paved with gold less I fall. 

Ill intentioned men, hungry eyes, unnecessary friction and hands with no healing the old world can keep. 

I want more love, for love is my paradise envisioned.

Second Time Around: Ode to follicles and strands I could not keep

 by M. James Cooper

My crown is now loc'd upon my head and I am satisfied.

Satisfied with the way it is and the way it looks and the ways it could be. No slipping through my fingers, no easy breezy flow.

Twisted, knotted, shinned and ready to make matted matters, because I and you matter brother and sister, we always did. I, and you too, wear the crown. 

Friend or Foe

by M. James Cooper 

You heard what I said.

You heard what I said.

Yes, you heard what I said.

Laying next to me,

Strolling beside me,

Tortured by the same things that make me mad.

You know what words mean.

You know what words mean.

Yes, you know what my words mean,

Choosing not to hear them

Not wanting to see me

Not caring to know me.

You are complicit, and I want to know why?

Lore 

by M. James Cooper 

My art is a kind of letter, a word, a script filled with names & places & situations. 

My art has a Title, an Author & Voice. It allows for interpretation & desires attention, but, you must bring your own imagination. 

My art does not want you to stare at its pretty colors & delicate lines, it demands a taste for dialects & places and creatures you never heard of. 

My art floats like an island, it burns under radiant sun & makes you wonder, makes you yearn for more after there are no more pages left to turn.

For Future and Fortune

by M. James Cooper 

...in the name of religion, power and rightness: Colonists, Missionaries, Enslavers, The KKK, Jim Crow, Apartheid, Separate but not equal, Jihad, ISIS, Boko Haram etc...

It is time to put down your holy texts, if even for a while. Put down your swords and your guns. Unclench your fists and let your prayer manifest, let peace take the place of war, in the name of...

In Need of Good News
by M.James Cooper

I have lost it, not all, but some of my confidence, my hope.
I pray that it returns, having abandoned me
like some angry unsatisfied lover. No warning.
I have lost hard won blessings like these before and have managed to nurture them into existence again;
Breathed life back into myself as if Holy spirit.
Remembering how it was done does not give me relief from mental burdens.
Cold air brushing rudely against my face makes me feel less than warm, less than secure,
but I continue to breath, I continue to rise each day. Half the battle is won. I am not so afraid to be among the living. I want the good news, but it too desires confidence and hope so that we can stand erect and smile.

A story about a family torn apart by race, hate and miseducation. The Price's and Cotillard's, decendants of a tortured past; thier stories told, recalled by a shopkeeper and a washerwoman, but will it matter, would it save, redeem and heal?

ANew Ancestry
by M. James Cooper
      The Washerwoman: The good old days never existed. Your Tanty Cynthia lied to you because she didn't want you to know the truth about uncle Byron and the rest of them. That notion, that fantasy, that corrupted telling survived all the ones that the past was no good to. Your father and I tried to keep clear of all that corruption; orphans in a land of strays were we; the well-to-do have no more use for us, and the corrupted blood of our mothers and fathers detested we and our skins that made them remember acts of a tortured past. They walked a joyless and privileged path. My name is Blessed Marie Cotillard, daughter of Doreen Edna Price, mother of Inis Cotillard. I write these words down for him and his children, and his children's children. The year is nineteen hundred and sixty six, four years now since we were granted independence. Not much seems changed, a new world full of old memories, a new people with old haunts. This is the way I see it, and I am certain there are more who do, but I have not met them yet. I was born in 1949, daughter of the colony and to crown rulership, and would be slave to my own mother and her kind. Three things happened in that year on the twenty-fifth day of August: I was born, the British West Indies dollar was put in place and my mother screamed at the sight of me. According to my great grandmother, known to all as Ma Arabelle, Doreen, daughter of Alston Price, covered her face and said aloud, "Take it from out'a here! Fast! Before She see it!" That order of instruction was given to my grandmother Salma, daughter of Arabelle, the 'she' was the lady of the house, Mrs. Valerie Price. Doreen Price, the daughter that would be mother of four, only twenty years of age then, and sure of nothing except that Ms.Valerie wanted this daily reminder of her husbands obsession with black flesh gone.
Years of mistreatment. Rivers of tears. But one savior. Ma Arabelle, the woman who protected me, named me after my own mother refused me. No breastmilk, no warmth or claim. I would be given the name Cotillard, a clear indication that I was undeserving of any reciprocity, any stature associated with the Price name. Salma was weak and scared of her own shadow, so she would not or could not fight for me. Abused by the man who forced his love upon her and the woman whose house she labored in. She birthed three children, a son, Doman and two daughters Doreen and Helen. Doman had a son, named Winston. His sister Helen gave five, Rachel, Bernard, Marcel, Robert and Katharine and my mother Doreen gve four. A blessing, they assured themselves, convinced that God himself had finally saw fit to bless them, first visibly with fair skin, then, the children, offered permanence. All carried the Price name, all assured a place as long as Mr. Price breathed air. After the death of Ms. Valerie years later, a jostle for position among the two sisters began. Doreen won. One by one she defeated them, first her sister Helen and then her nieces and nephews. By Ma Arabelle's account and by the time I knew my own name most of them were gone. One man named Benoit, son of Paul, who was brother to Salma stayed behind after the cleansing. Salma who had developed a strange habit of talking to herself, one day decided to walk off the compound and never returned. Mr. Price, Doreen, Ma Arabelle, Benoit, and two other black boys with no names that I could recall, lived in that house in 1950. That was the year Ma Arabelle named me; she was sure now that I would survive the fall from heaven, sure that my sacrifice be worthwhile. Now they call me, Bless.