lemon trees and lemon-headed baby daddies...

I have had the privilege of invitation to work with performance artist Sekou Sundiata who is amid a residency at the University of Texas at Austin. Brilliant, wise, gentle man he is, to be as young as he is. As a part of that residency, he felt it important to work with area poets to journey with him toward completion of a forthcoming work, The American Project. we, the AMAZING collective of poets and I, have been meeting nights, from 7-10pm, mostly in intensive discussion incited by Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall,” Hughes’s “Harlem: A Dream Deferred,” and Adrienne Rich’s “Prospective Immigrants: Please Note.” What a blessing it’s been to just be with them for these days. (endless love to Shannon Bailey, Abe Louise Young, Deborah Paredez, Da'Shade Moonbeam, Enrique Cabrera, Florinda Bryant, Tony Jackson, Chris and Rene Ford.) I feel indebted to the universe (and Shannon bailey) for the opportunity. Anyway, the week will culminate in a performance of our work as it relates to the themes of our discussions.

Last night Sekou gave us this as a trigger for our writing… (finish
this thought)
“in the possible future that I imagine, there is/are/will
be…

My answer:
… groves of lemon trees, fields of sugar cane and
rivers…
(when life gives you lemons…)

It’s so hard to recover my sunken cheeks from the sour of lemons I’ve been sucking in life these days. But I’m looking for a humongous pitcher, some turbinado and a wooden ladle. I am sure, if nothing else, my life is just preparing to quench itself on some tangy/sweet, cold-lemonade-on-a-Texas-summer-day kinda writing.

Simultaneously, with the brilliance of this experience with Sekou et al, I have had a couple of the worst days in my recent divorce history. My soon-to-be-ex (who we'll call "Lemon Head," to protect the...?) and I can’t seem to amicably agree on the visitation schedule for our children and, being the “bad guy” I am, under the advice. hell the INSISTANCE of my lawyer, was forced to call “DEFAULT.” Unfortunately, that means our children will only see their father on Thursday evenings and stay with him every other thursday through the weekend. Lemon Head is livid about it but what else can we do? his rage has become the force behind the thing that he deems makes me less worthy than he to be the primary custodial parent for our children. can he get any more 1st grade? I mean, when the brotha doesn’t get his way, the only thing he doesn’t do is throw himself on the ground, ring his fists in the air and let out all of the air of his lungs into an earsplitting “Waaaaahhhhh!” this decision is NOT because I believe him to be a bad father. It is because the court says, “in the absence of agreement, we default.” We can’t agree, so we default. Simple as that. funny how we started out with one of the best split ups of any i’d seen before. But when the whole child support thing became a reality, well, let’s just say it got unpretty. if any of you want to see what a real custody fight looks like, live and in color, I assure you he’s promised to make this a good one. Stay tuned. The revolution will be televised. (sign me up for the march, flo!)

fasten your seatbelts y’all…