artWritten

(via picsandquotes)

punch-in-the-face-poetry:

[Video description: A poet from Brave New Voices Philadelphia performs on a spot-lit stage. The poet is Ethiopian, has an afro, and wears a flower behind one ear and a couple of rubber bracelets on both wrists. The performance is intense and the crowd responds and cheers to poet on.]

I’m tired of people asking me to smooth my name out for them.
They want me to bury it in the English so they can understand.
I will not accommodate the word for mouth.
I will not break my name so your lazy English can sleep its tongue on top.
Fix your lips around them.
No you CAN’T give me a stupid nickname to replace this gift of five letters.
You try to pronounce it before you write me off as Little One, Afro, the Ethiopian Girl
or any other poor excuse for a name you’ve baptized me with in your weakness.
My name is insulted that you won’t speak it.
My name is a jealous god.
I kneel my English down every day and offer my begging and broken [??] to be accepted by these [??] from my parent’s country
This is my religion.
You are tainting it every time you call me by something else, you break it and kick it you really think you’re being clever by turning my name into a cackle? 
He what? He why? He when-how-he-what-who-how-huh-did-what?
My name is not a joke.
This is more than [wind and the clap of consinents?].
My father handed me this heavy burden of five letters decades before I was born.
With letters, tried to snatch his Ethiopia back from the middle of a red terror
He tried to overthrow a facist,
he was thrown into prison,
ran out of his home.
My name is a frantic attempt to save a country
to perserve [a legend],
the only line I have leading me to a palce I’ve never been.
It’s a boat, a plane, a vessel will carry to to the earth.
I’ve never felt
I speak myself closer and closer to Ethiopia by wrapping myself in this name.
This is my country in ink.
My name is the signature at the end of the last letter before the army comes.
It is the only music left in the midst of torture and fear.
It is the air that filled my fathers lungs when he was released from prison.
The inhale, that ushers in a new begining.
My name is a poem, my father wrote it over and over and over again.
It’s the love of my life, sends homesickness to bed.
I refuse to break myself into dust for people too weak to carry my name in their mouths.
Take two syllabals of your time to pronounce this song of mine.
It means “life.”
You shouldn’t treat a breath as carelessly as this.
You cradle my name between your lips as delicately as it deserves.
It’s Hiwot*.
Say it
right.

(Partial transcript via lotus-eyes)

*Pronounced He-wut

(Source: amalgamozaic)

#sigh

While peeing I got to read this… #publictoilet #writing

(Source: weheartit.com, via picsandquotes)

On love and freedom… There one can’t exist without the other…

For me….

it hurts because it matters

time

distance

sea

land

thoughts

ideas

seems like everything is a divider

 

choice

need

want

tears

mine

yours truly,

hurts

it all matters

 

wish time added life

distance subtracted

seas bracketed

land divided

so our thoughts could multiply with ideas of love

togetherness

 

I need you.

(I said it)

it hurts – all of it

because it matters.

 

izzosibiya:

Nuff said… Then I keep my fingers crossed, hoping Muhle will see this… LOL!

(Source: weheartit.com)