TRIBUTE TO 9/11

Two poems from 9/11

No Thought of Surrender

(Written September 11, 2001)

Anguish spreads blood red

across heart and mind

numb with inability to

comprehend the unrightable

written eternally

on our national psyche.

Never began today with

blue sky and warm

smiles and no thought

of nightmares raining

ash and cinder,

no thought of surrender

of all we once knew

as norm.

Our knees bend with

involuntary motion, while

our souls roil in

anguish,

and blood red images

of all we hold sacred, dear,

safe, secure

spreads across our broken hearts

and minds and the cry rises

in unity:

dear God help us.

Peggy Eldridge-Love

YOU BECKON

 

For This Purpose

(Written in response to September 11, 2001)

We grapple, of the opinion

there are answers buried deep

in the inner linings of

our experience.

We are humbled, broken into

shards of the humanity

we had almost forgotten

was the purpose

of our being here.

Peggy Eldridge-Love

YOU BECKON

These two poems I included in my first poetry collection, "You Beckon". They were a direct response and reaction to September 11, 2001. Thank you for allowing me to revisit and share them with you today on this twelfth anniversary of that horrific event. We are still searching for the same answers we found ourselves asking that first day.

NOTE: If you have a problem ordering "You Beckon" from the link provided please EMAIL REQUEST HERE and we will handle your order directly. Thank you!

Never Mind the Castle

Never Mind the Castle

We are this we are living

it is our watch now

we are the guards in the tower

the protectors of

the moat.

If it gets in we allow it

it is ours to own

whether we cower

or slept

at our post.

Neither the left

nor the right

block our center view,

if we’re conquered

it rests with me

with you.

©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013

Photo Credit: 

Image credit: sahua / 123RF Stock Photo

"The Butler" - My personal processing of it begins...

I saw Lee Daniel's tremendous film "The Butler" yesterday. As a baby boomer it was a very poignant review of the advents of history that were the underpinnings of my own life. Stepping into that time machine the film unfolded was not an easy, comfortable journey, but one I am so glad to have made. If one can accept it, it answers many of the recent impatient, intolerant, hand on hip, finger waging scoldings of  "why don't you people just get over it". Wish it were as simple as that sounds. Wish all it would take is the wave of a magic wane of forgetfulness to erase the anguish etched on heart, soul, and mind of those truths we lived.

A Facebook friend asked what I thought of the film when I mentioned I'd seen it. I was candidly honest in saying it was going to take some time to process those thoughts and feelings. She asked if I'd share that processing along the way. I wasn't sure I wanted to, but decided that I would share at least this first step in that journey. 

One major incident that came spiraling to the forefront for me while watching that film was that of being in the fourth grade in a Kansas classroom, one of the first spattering of black children integrating schools following the passage of the landmark decision of Brown vs Board of Education. A memory of being jerked out of my chair suddenly by my white teacher, following about 15 minutes of humiliation and accusations in front of my 98% white class of having stolen another child's - a white child's - pencil box, being drug from the classroom literally by my pigtail into the bathroom where my mouth was washed out with lye soap until it was raw. Memory of my mother's horror as she saw my raw splitting tongue and had to comb my hair carefully for the next month due to the blistering from the pulling. Memory of my mother's terror as she sought to (and succeeded in) hide the incident from my father whom she knew would have in all likelihood reacted in a way that would have resulted in him going to prison. A memory of the principal's reaction when proof of purchase was provided and the accusation disproved...the reaction being that "well, you shouldn't have gotten one the same color as the one that the other child in her class had."

I had forgotten that I stuttered quite often after that for the next couple of years or that my grades went from straight As to barely passing. But above all I didn't forget that it was in the midst of these circumstances and conditions (no need to regurgitate the numerous heartless insults and belittling we endured at the hands of our teachers those first two years ... those are graves I refuse to exhume) that I ultimately found how strong and capable I really was, how truly fearless my parents were, in particular my mother who became an active part of every program the school had from PTA onward no matter how she was discouraged or who tried to block her, to ensure the fairest treatment for her own and the other handful of black children in that hell-hole elementary school, and how our faith and our church body encircled us on day in and day out basis to support and confront both in prayer and in action what it took to survive and ultimately thrive.

So, the processing begins of remembering what the reality, not the theory behind the struggle for civil rights has been. This is day one.

A Poem Before Dawn

Daydreams wiggle free of their harness,
kicking heels, prancing, promenading
before the filled arena
of startled hopes
held at rapt attention
by the amazement in my mind.

Peggy Eldridge-Love c2013

Photo Credit: Copyright : Viktoria Makarova

A Coward's Epiphany

I think of all the last names I prayed for
I think of all the last names I got
Think of the near misses
The grand slams
The rain outs
I think of the full circle
I think of the starting gate
I think of you.

©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013





Photo Credit: Copyright : Simone Van Den Berg

Back Ups

Never been one to be concerned
 about leaving footprints
 in the atmosphere
 if I've backed myself
 into a corner.
 I'm coming out,
 need be,
 tracks proof
 printed on time
 where I once stood
 before landing
 here.

©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013

 Photo Credits: Image credit: tiero / 123RF Stock Photo

...miny, moe

Bark against back comforts

lean against tree

positioned right at the fork

of the next road.

©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013

Photo credit: Image credit: egorr / 123RF Stock Photo

Blurs

A right glance

behind closed lids blurs

the positive negative image

still burned, emblazoned,

the evidence 

of the could be

were we ever to see

eye to eye.

©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013

Photo Credits:  ©Peggy T. Love 2013 All Rights Reserved

Trayvon Martin: His Grim Reaper

 

 

 

TRAYVON MARTIN: HIS GRIM REAPER

You'll misunderstand my grief, confuse it
perhaps with a lost hand at poker,
cluck your tongue
at my sour grapes, scold me, tell me
time has come for me to get over it.
I'll be chided for not accepting the turn
of how these wheels of justice works,
move on will be the repeated whisper

under your exasperated breath,
as you tire of my whining complete
with its wine and cheese, but mine,
this bitter anguished whine
will not subside, nor be stilled by your
impatient sidesteps this time.
This time the bell rung that summoned
hell himself cannot be undone,
we've one too many sacrificial sons
dismissed with callous disregard,
his worth diminished by a bullet
through his heart.

It was the Grim Reaper he met

on his way home, the stalker

whose mission he could not

defeat, who stalked him,

blocked all routes by which

he sought to retreat. A Reaper

summoned straight from hell
whose spaws now paw and wish

him well. But this time
the bell rung that summoned
hell himself cannot be undone

nor the debt we owe to our

lost son. He is our catalyst

of change, not its victim

but its name as we chant

Trayvon in the streets, in our

prayers, in our sleep. As we
resolve to bring an end

once and for all to this

perpetual sin.

©  Peggy Eldridge-Love

Photo Credit: Image credit: mj23 / 123RF Stock Photo

Trayvon Martin - Ancestor's Grief

I really thought that I'd be able to process the verdict regardless of how and where it came down, so no one was more surprised than me that I absolutely lost it - cried hysterically (an absolute shock because in spite of some of my own recent very personal losses hysterics didn't come to play on those occasions) because apparently this grief was old - it was ancestor grief - it was from the bowels of the rotting ships crossing the Atlantic 400 years ago - it was that of that first mother seeing that first son put on that block and sold into hell - it was things I didn't realize abode within my rudimentary heart and soul. Now released it is truly for me the drum beat of change.

YOU BECKON

Do you have your paperback copy of  "YOU BECKON" yet?

 

Some of it's 5 Star Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A Poignant Must Have Poetry Collection... 

By Linda "Princess Dominique" Grosvenor

Format:Paperback

Being a poet at heart I must highly recommend You Beckon by Peggy Eldridge-Love. They say poetry is subjective but I beg to differ, "First Fruits: A Wedding Lullaby," "Cold Fever," "Wall Flower" and "Go" (a simple yet urgent plea) just to name a few herald the love and appreciation of this collection. Peggy has a sweet way with words that carress you as you read like waves on an ocean vacation. I love the memories as if they were my own. I look forward to reading additional volumes of poetry from this wordsmith. You've gotta get a copy. This is a must for every collection.

5.0 out of 5 stars Timeless 

By M. LaVora Perry

Format:Paperback

I feel fortunate to have been recently introduced to the poetry of Peggy Eldridge-Love. Her work does not provide easy, comfortable reading, but rather familar places, people and memories that figuratively beckon the reader to take a closer look at the tender ache that may wait beneath the surface of the ordinary. Through Eldridge's artistry, common contemporary scenes and themes of our shared recent history take on a new dimension. Her collection is filled with timeless peices that you'll want to read and read again.M. LaVora Perry,
Author of "Taneesha's Treasures of the Heart"

5.0 out of 5 stars A Creative Force At Work

By Mahogany Book Club

Format:Paperback

" You Beckon" By Peggy Eldridge Love, is a collection of voices: A young girl, an old man, a worried wife, a soldier, a cosmopolitan and a lover as well as many others. All within the pages of this fine collection of poetry Eldridge Love handles many characters and gives them clarity and dignity that is rare in voices.
The poems work because the reader can connect with them and relate, living vicariously through their losses and victories.
The majority of Eldrdge Love poems succeed because they evoke a satisfying emotional response. It is one thing to write a well crafted poem that follows the rules of poetry, another to make a poem that touches the soul.
from " Repertoire"
I gave up wanting long ago
Believing that i bargained away
all hope of arms that might hold
eyes that could see
ears that wanted to hear
the repertoire of my soul.
Eldridge Love's poems are direct enough to draw the reader in. Complicated enough to hold the their interest. Love sports a fiskle intellect. But she doesn't put herself on a pedestal. She wants you to come into her world of words, which are often deep, always provocative and razor sharp in their brevity. Her family poem's " My Father" are snap shots of a Black girls life in Kansas who describes herself as a "hick", but don't be fooled by Eldridge Love's modesty. These poems are the documentation of a creative force at work.Erren.G.Kelly

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