The Miseducation of the misunderstood

The Miseducation of the misunderstood harbors overwhelming anxiety; which creates layers underneath the shell.

Always home like a tortoise, but I am a nomad in my own body.

The feeling of loneliness sets in every time one of my personalities decide to leave.

I am wandering

Invested in a venture that is company to misery.

I declare communicative bankruptcy.

Do me the service of sending all my messages, subliminally. This misinterpreted status will be one for the books.

Face it —

Who are we without the royalties in freedom of speech?

Too many unwritten rights you have, that wasn’t taught to me.

Do you know me?

Do I know you?

How valuable is identity to a thief? The only benefit in this hijacking is the doubt you will finally understand that…

I volunteered, but I never asked.

Never raised my hand in class.

So many questions that still need an answer

So many answers that should be questions.

What will be the solution?

It seems I’m the problem.

I am a weapon – non lethal

A dangerous mind shooting stars

Trynna reach the moon, cause I was told that’s as far as love can go.

I am a victim of time!

Trapped behind the bars in the same cage the bird sung.

Those melodies still linger.

The ink blots begin to show.

I think it’s bleeding through!

I use to dream in cursive until…

Murder she wrote.

Now it’s killing me softly.

The standard is to understand

The extreme is to overstep.

The Miseducation of the misunderstood can’t be taught only felt.

-Leighrick

Creations of Love

Feed off your emotion – a mixture for one of the sickest potions.
Cough syrup gotcha leanin’ on my shoulder.
Carrying weight all the weight on my back, like I’m an ocean.
Wave at the past while I’m running through what’s approaching.
Damn man, time moves fast.
Just watch as the leaves transition to green.
Who say’s money doesn’t fall off trees?
The I air breathe is about to cost me,
Body can’t process the food, it’s so insulting.
Water getting drier than machines.
Who got the WD40?
Pardon me for spilling the oil, but I’ve been impartial.
The type to bring panthers to a party.
Poetic renegade, riot if we have to.
Keep fighting to keep the dream alive,
What’s a coma to the patient?
Locked and loaded with some comas, hold that thought
until I finish my sentence.
You just became the eyewitness and the victim.
Pigs leaving our hoods in critical condition.
Trigger finger ithcin’, scratchin backs with knives.
Closing schools, parks, and libraries
So all they can do is play inside.
Virtually embodying a solider with only murder on the mind.
No matter sin or color, in all the darkness
The youth is walking blind.
Sprinkle some light and shower love.
Give that stranger a smile, if you’re skeptical to hug.
You hold the book of faces, but you’re make up aint that good.
Shifting through my diction, but pretty soon I’ll be out this world.
There’s a universe inside me, and you
Don’t be so afraid to look.
Adam came from an atom, so
we’re all creations of love.
Not trying to pass judgment, but those thought sound kurupt.
Walking down death row.
This language is crucial, universal
Instrumentation playing symphonies of malnutrition.
Feed the third eye sight, and stop looking.
Stop all that hearing, and listen.
Pay attention, but don’t sell your soul.
Ya feet were meant to get dirty, so embrace ya milestone.
Be weird.
Love Earth you walk on, break down the concrete stairs.
Reach the pyramids through prayer, but you still gotta use ya hands.
-Leighrick

Phone Home

I’m trapped in a box with a cell phone, white walls and a stop sign. I’ve finally caught a signal… I began to phone home. No answer — I guess the answering machine has a mind of its own. Who would have ever thought that the sound of the dial tone, could set the tone for my sickness. I lay flat on my stomach – ill. Until the satellites come correctly into place.

Walls cant cry, windows don’t have arms, and with a mattress full of money still none of it builds a home. I know they seen it coming down my eyes, but I couldn’t feel her text message cry. I peeped it through the mirror, it almost seemed 3D, but not forgetting its reality. I turn over on my back and begin to ponder. Did you see the image you portrayed clearly? I thought at least some of the things I was doing was brand new…

I blink twice, hoping that this is a dream and I’m sailing off in the bay out the double standard cell, cell phone free because my hearts hope isn’t for sale. Transcribing feelings through technology shows no emotion, that goes for the smiley as well… So when that door opened up for me. I grasped the shadows of 3 strong women standing tall….with their hands held out, my future blueprinted. Now I can say that my future at hand will be successful. You’ll miss us when we’re gone…

I float high good bye. I will miss y’all

-Leighrick

Personal Statement

c/o 2010

I sit at my computer. I allow my conscience to marinate some of my best qualities and passions into my fingers — I begin typing. I enable my mind to go through this vigorous hard-laboring pain of molding my love for basketball into words. It is a love compiled of harsh metaphors and unimaginable personifications. Basketball is my poetry; my words wrap the ball like Spalding. Anything I am able to write on is my canvas, and any court, concrete, wooden or rubber I am able to play on. Half a piece of paper cannot stop me from expressing myself, and half of a court will not stop me from playing to my maximum potential. An empty pen and a flat ball will not dictate my future.

One night I dreamed so close to reality, I almost did not wake up. The announcer was calling out my teammates. Maya Angelou was the point guard, because she threw the most creative behind-the-back passes that ignorance could never capture– a true definition of The Heart of a Woman. At shooting guard appeared Alice Walker because her explanation of living as a black woman in America is perfect. She continues to put up shots. Hatred’s hand tries to contest the shot, only to fail and become the reason her eye has turned The Color Purple. As I gazed toward our locker room door I had to blink twice, because through those doors shone The Beloved power forward, Toni Morrison. She was ready to box-out all who would try to annihilate our chance to score, and to restore our rights as a culture. Right after her came Gwendolyn Brooks, the center, helping rebound our “Black Love” when the direction of the love and respect is unpredictable. She is the backbone and the strength of our team’s pride. I stand integrity as the small forward the smallest punctuation being the biggest part of the sentence. I call a huddle at half-court, and we all place our hands in the middle. Five minds, five hearts, five different personalities defined as one team. We all cross-over to a new chapter in the same book of life. The scoreboard buzzes, and I go to grab a last drink before the game resumes; only the last time I blinked, I opened my eyes only to find I was staring blissfully at my ceiling.

Every poet/author in my dream has taught me to be culturally and self aware. In basketball they say “practice makes perfect”, and in writing perfect practice makes an incredible writer.  So in every practice I allow my writing utensil to dribble my emotions across each page with sentences like quick passes, and every stanza is another quarter I’ve given my all. Each time I step onto the court all troubles seem to cease. The ball is a symbol of life. I know that the ball gets passed around to people and sometimes even plagiarized and mistreated. I understand the players in my life may come and go, some people may pass a way, but the lessons they have taught me are still invaluable.

 

-The Graduate
-Leighrick

Haleys Comet

Quick Bio: 3 years ago a friend of mine Cheyanne aka “Mariah Haley” was assigned in her Intro to Philosophy class, to describe her philosophy in a poem as her Final. This was to be strictly her opinion, and she came to me in aid of expressing her thoughts into poetry. We ended up collaborating on this philosophical poem, and I hope you all enjoy it.

I believe that through experience we realize, that we create our own reality.

One not founded upon other peoples visions, but through our own day to day experiences.

If we learn to embrace each breath, and rejoice because we’ve have gotten the chance to feel every day, then we will learn that knowledge itself is power.

The power to recreate your world, and at the same time be the survivor in the “big picture”.

In this race against time, to live and to learn, one will always encounter numerous hurdles.

Some are higher than others, and whether you fall or not; what keeps you running is ambition.

What separates our souls is that some looked to be saved, and others look for another alternatives.

If you fall you cannot wait for someone to pick you up, you must get up on your own and dust yourself off.

Ambition is a value embedded in the soul. It is who you are, and like sweat it seeps out from all over your body and overwhelms you with strength.

In order to stimulate that strength we must stand strong in our beliefs, but not ignorant to our mistakes.

Although religion is man-made, our souls are spiritually molded; a connection with a higher power feeds your conscience, and that is how one is able to digest this food for thought.

Look who’s left deserted. What about the living others around us?

Trees and plants provide us the oxygen, which replenishes our lives and animals revitalize our stomachs, but also protect us with and without training..

However, we as humans don’t see each other as equal.

Only the strong survive, but how do you know whose the strongest if everyone is authentic.

Just like the equator individuality is invisible, but it’s wanted across the world.

The planet needs people who take everyday to learn something new, and surround themselves with inspiring dreams because a life without dreaming is not a reality at all.

We have been leaving the truth behind and hiding behind our walls of comfortable lies.

We have become a society so in debt to wealth and power; that we refuse to acknowledge our duty to the planet

Lost in this battle of greed and war, consumed by pollution, it is killing us slowly…

Education that teaches us to climb the corporate ladder instead of to live peacefully with our neighbors.

Our neighbors who are literally next door and physically across the world.

We don’t even realize that we share this planet with everyone, and at the same time, we share the same fate.

Our existence depends on the way we spend every beautiful breath, the way we step and every stride we take.

Even though the footprints we leave behind in the sands on this planet, are washed away…

Life is our choice, we have the power to create something beautiful.

We have the resources to build and live in this web of life.

-Leighrick

 

Photo on 2011-02-25 at 23.26 #5

Letter to the Future [Lost Children pt 1]

Dear Lost Children,

I am writing you this letter, asking you to take my hand. I would like us to take a trip to see this countries past. I am writing you this letter letting you know not to be scared, because I am here to prepare you. I know you yearn for knowledge and guidance, but they’re hiding and burning the books in which some truths are kept (in order to sustain this well lit Hell). I know you are starving, but please child, do not kneel to the Golden Arches of the Burger Kings. I know you want to play, but please don’t roam these streets following the blind, and unattended.

You may ask, “who am I?” or “who are you?“; I am the Present and you are the Future. You see — I am writing you this letter as a gift, so TURN OFF THE TELEVISION and READ. I know you’re young, therefore you need to understand they are killing Our Mother, Our Sisters, and Our Brothers! But this Nation was founded on lies and corruption, so you have every right to blame our Fore Fathers.

Lost Children you may not be concerned because they’ve put you in a box, and marked the target with an “X“, but Ive come to help heal you. They are trying to strip you of everything. I hand-down to you any and everything I have to ensure your Knowledge and Safety.

PLEASE PAY ATTENTION! I know it’s hard because your young, don’t let them trick you into thinking you have some disorder, they are just scared at the fact that I’m lining you up like soldiers and preparing for you the take over. I can BET my life and guarantee that these next couple of 16 years wont be so sweet. You’re absorbing all this like a sponge, but I refuse to let them dumb you down like Patrick.

TURN OFF THE RADIO! Don’t repeat those demeaning words, I know its hard because the tune is catchy, but my generation is the victim to the venom , and are now they have become lost generals. Listen to me, you Lost Children are our not so distant futures last chance at hope. But you don’t need the whips and chains, to see that this countries is trying make your life worth less  rather than change. Be the change, and the sense, you are worth everything I’ve wrote.

Do not eat the shit they feed you, because it’ll only stunt your growth and widen the chances of you being incapable, but NEVER GIVE UP! And if I am not present, and they so happen to knock you down its okay. Just GET UP, do not stand by and allow them to keep thinking they’re stronger. PUT THAT HAPPY MEAL DOWN!

Lost Children, I know it hurts, but I’m trying to ease the pain and heal you, because these battle scars leave marks embedded in you physically and mentally. I am sorry my children, but war has been declared. I’ll just end this first letter asking you to join me on the next journey, our brother and sister countries, and prepare to save them too….

Reminding you to DROP THE REMOTE & PICK UP BOOKS.

 I will be here to help guide you…

 

LOVE ALWAYS,

 

Leighrick, The Present

Masterpiece

Paint the face of peace.

 

White out the traces of hatred.

 

Highlight respect.

 

Sing songs of intellect

 

Plaster over the discouragement of humility.

 

Dance to the rhythm of equality

 

Recognize the facade.

 

Don’t act creativity – live it.

 

Pasting together actions creating history

 

Write the motivation of the movement

 

Photograph the mirror of the future- YOU(th).

 

Play the instruments of demonstration.

 

Let the vibrations travel through souls uplifting unity in all.

 

Speak Love.

 

Draw lines of tolerance…

 

Sculpt minds of awareness…molding our revolution.

 

There is no price on art – art is ones soul.

 

They say money makes the world go round, but the buck stops here. How much do you cost?…plus tax.

 

Leighrick