Mothers of Incarcerated Sons

October 2008 I began a free weekly writing workshop in Chicago for mothers who have or have EVER had a son in prison. I even received funding for the publication of the complete anthology titled "Mothers of Incarcerated Sons Speak~M.I.S.S."

The group meets at the Howard Area Community Center, 7648 N. Paulina, Room 2, every Thursday from 6-7:30pm.

I had several inquiries from mothers outside of Chicago who were very interested in the group, so I started MISSspeaks Yahoo group.

Click to join MISSspeaks

Inspiration from Blaga Dimitrova

Yesterday I was emailed a link, something that happens ever so much with email--"check this out," or "we think you'll like this." Oftentimes, I just hit that delete button, as I'm sure most others do as well. Fortunately for me, I followed the link and was so inspired I wrote immediately afterward, something that hasn't happened for quite awhile, obvious by the lack of entries in this blog (or any other).

The link was to an Interview with Blaga Dimitrova’s Poetry by Farideh Hassanzadeh-Mostafavi.

It was an interesting article and a unique way to conduct an interview--by using the interviewee's poetry as the answers. I read the entire article and then wrote a piece of poetry about poetry, words and images that just came, lit with the passion of reading good poetry.

I Steal Lexes
1-3-2009

I steal lexes.
Deliberately plucked
from the cosmic garden.
Inspiration flows from the pilfered
imbibes me with the soul
of the owner, the owned and
the released.

As Prometheus
who dared to steal from the gods,
I too embrace idiom's fire,
happily scorched with the brilliance,
engraved with the eternal language
of those before, those beside, and
those in dreams.

I am frozen on the ice floe of
continuous sheets of slick, sterile
whiteness, only to be thawed
by the bristling and whirling heat
as meaning sprouts from the nothingness,
and Phoenix spreads wing over the ashes.
I steal lexes.

Format and syntax and metre confined
within Pandora's box, released at will to
express the last, the essential, the hope
that my revelation is dispatched refined.
Articulated with the reverence of a call
carved on the prison wall, a letter
written with deaths' hand.

I steal lexes.
Grasped and gathered by the muse
slave fingers, bloodied with the quest.
She is driven with the passion and lust
into the dark fields of babble to emerge
with blossoms and fruit that feed the
insatiable hunger of the master huntress.

The voracious feast begins, tearing asunder
the plant, discarding the weeds, the waste,
to reveal the succulent heart of meaning
that drips with the addictive sweetness of
unquenchable knowledge, absorbed and
discharged to the fervent masses who devour
and regurgitate the plunder.