for all the demons, monsters and liars,
today and always, everywhere:
she cries “wolf!” so often
that it becomes tempting to ignore
yet the wolves were always nearby,
stalking, steady clawing at her door
there’s a Wolf curled up at her feet now,
but he’s not of the pack of violent beasts,
you see, this Wolf is not a hungried one,
and He does not want her for his feast
Anubis is the Wolf’s name,
and He waits to gently weigh her Heart
on the Golden Scales of Justice
He’s balanced with a badge and service glock,
these reparations just for her, and Mothers like her,
in lieu of the Feather of Ma’at
FOREVER “you”…
My childhood friend, and through the years, we've grown together, shared joy and tears, were bonded like the day and night, our hearts forever will unite, you've given me, a chance to be, a friend forever, most definitely, I am forever, there is no end, you'll always be, my most best friend, each day and night, I keep you near, always know, that I am here. Thank you for, the love you've shared, nothing else can compare, So much we've grown, and been all through, forever is forever you.
Poem by Lajuana Lampkins
©️copyright Lajuana Lampkins
September 2023
This Hydrangea nostalgia bush was grown from a 2017 autumn cutting from its parent which is, or was, located in the front yard of my brick 2-flat in the northwest side neighborhood of Portage Park in Chicago. One of a half-dozen or so white hydrangeas planted by me in the late 90s, I had nurtured and obsessed over them for nearly 23 years — this one is now the lone survivor in my care at my rural home in Michigan.
The genesis of my hydrangea devotion was not Martha Stewart’s ubiquitous “Living” magazine, also of 1990s — though she certainly named, informed, inspired and validated many a hydrangea obsession within those pages — rather, it was the nostalgic ubiquity of enormous white snowball blooms and arresting blue-purple poms on heritage shrubs that I admired, coveted, played and hid among during my childhood summers spent with my maternal grandparents in Murphysboro — a sleepy, rural town in Southern Illinois — where my maternal great, great grandmother, my great grandmother and grandmother were all born.
I was entranced by those plants each summer — yet without the language to name and fully describe them to my mother when I returned back home to the Chicago Housing Authority’s Lathrop Homes aka “the projects” – which was usually, just in the nick of time for back-to-school in late August. Interestingly, I don’t recall ever drawing a picture of hydrangeas or taking a photo of them with my hard-earned Kodak Instamatic pocket camera as a child – even though I frequently used both methods to capture/record my favorite things. //
“Nostalgia Kills”
Nostalgia makes us psychologically pine for a sweeter but largely false time in our lives — a naive, shallow or ignorant time that we prefer to, that we choose to, remember as “innocence” or romanticize, idealize or distort as the “best times of my life” or the “good ol’ days”.
Instead of thoroughly revisiting the entirety of the time, place, people or experience, nostalgia often robs — or kills — the opportunity for true introspection and material dialectics. ///
Continue reading “Hydrangea nostalgia”Nostalgia sounds like the name of the a psychological condition catalyzed by avoiding “dis-ease”
These two gorgeous, requested works by the most gorgeous and extraordinary artist and person Mz. Lajuana Lampkins of Chicago.
You might find her making her art in the late night scene of her favorite spots in the Wicker Park/Bucktown neighborhoods of Chicago — or reach out to her on Instagram at Lajuana.Lampkins1 and peruse her art, her process and her community.
Lajuana Lampkins has had her art exhibited to great praise; she is a prolific and widely collected street artist; and she has edited and published a book of her late son’s essays, poetry and letters: The Collected Works of Prince Akbar AKA Jus Rhymz.
She is also a sister, aunt, friend, poet, community member and activist, writer, rapper, historian, archivist, fashionista, paralegal, social commentarian and modern philosopher — but most proudly, a mother, grandmother and great grandmother
— and to me, she epitomizes the Crone.
Muhammad Ali
Champions aren’t made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them: a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have last-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill.
Mz. Lampkins works may be exhibited again in autumn 2023 in a community art show that she is hoping to create and develop —-and she aspires to publish her next non-fiction book in the nearer future.
She is also the subject of the forthcoming documentary “My Mother is An Artist” which follows Mz. Lampkins’s journey from 2019, eight years post-release from a 30 year incarceration as a wrongfully prosecuted and convicted young woman and mother —to 2023, as a working, locally-renown and yet-still-struggling artist living in these American systems of modern oppression and exploitation.
Continue reading ““[S]he floats like a butterfly …””
the volume of love, tenderness, peace, comfort, safety, and security
that she so profoundly deserves
might never be offered in the sustained abundance
requisite
for her to heal
from our
sins against her and hers,
our sins, once or twice removed, from us — or so we proudly imagine//
we failed her and hers — over and over again
in our refusal to just stop
in our refusal to just start
in our refusal to just not
so her and hers’ trauma untreated became epigenetic, chronic, lethal
her sorrow and rage manifest in righteous and rightful litanies against our society, our systems, and the falseness of our lives //
because of us, because of the world we’ve built, maintain or co-sign for privilege
her and hers’ lives remain
unfair
unstable
unsafe
un “forfilled”
she has not for one single moment stopped working and fighting to live and thrive for her and hers
ease, rest and respite are not her companions
her pursuit for her and hers truth and justice — and for universal justice and truth is unrelenting and well-beyond humbling //
let none of us proclaim her “strong” or “survivor” — those titles are unwanted blood medals forced around her neck standing atop a podium made of her ancestors’ and son’s bones and of her own
she is more,
so very much more,
more
than her 66 year-long sentence of struggle, more than this 404 year-long American genocide and apartheid
she is an activist, a mother-warrior, a revolutionary
but
all she ever wanted was to be
a baby, a child, a daughter, a sister, a woman, a mother, a lover, a friend, an aunt, a grandmother, an artist, a poet, a writer, a philosopher, a scientist, an historian, a teacher, an advocate, a protector, a provider,
and
to be human
to be human
to be human
the same,
no less, no more
just human
like you
like me
like Her.
Continue reading “Her”
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 