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Inspired by Akala, I wrote a new rhyme

The power is within me
 The power is mine
 The power is in me
 It's there to be mined
 The power is within me
 Not the power of the mind
 The power of the feminine
 A force of a kind
 Not the kind that recommends filial piety
 More akin to a female deity
 It's not like a film script
 Where it all falls into place
 It daunts and it challenges
 It gets in your face
 It's the power that is needed
 The power that is felt
 It's a power to be heeded
 To heal and to feel.
It's a force and a power 
and it is real 
 It's angry
 It's forceful
 It knows what it wants
 I won't use it to hurt you
 But to heal you
 and grow you 
and show you,
 to know you
 Its my power
 I know it
 My yin for your yang
 It's your power that dominates all over the land
 I won't use mine to hurt you
 But to righten a wrong
 Not to whiten, but brighten 
and shine the light on
 The crimes of the past that still go on.
 There's a fire in my belly
 Not a fire in the booth
 Akala said it,
And I sought out the truth

Love Sorrow

A friend gave me this poem by Mary Oliver.

I identify …

Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must
take care of what has been
given. Brush her hair, help her
into her little coat, hold her hand,
especially when crossing a street. For, think,

what if you should lose her? Then you would be
sorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessness
would be yours. Take care, touch
her forehead that she feel herself not so

utterly alone. And smile, that she does not
altogether forget the world before the lesson.
Have patience in abundance. And do not
ever lie or ever leave her even for a moment

by herself, which is to say, possibly, again,
abandoned. She is strange, mute, difficult,
sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child.
And amazing things can happen. And you may see,

as the two of you go
walking together in the morning light, how
little by little she relaxes; she looks about her;
she begins to grow.