You won’t get what you want
from those who believe
love is cheap or sell their souls
for a knock-off of self-esteem.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Blog
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* KIDNAPPED CHILDREN FROM MIAMI-DADE, IN GRAVE DANGER * #poetry by jay
The bamboo whistles as night sets in
the sway of the palms, shivers his skin
and he raises his brow to the West.
Let the sun go, let it go for today.
He melts back down with a silenced
surrender, as his * Amber Alert * buzzes
from the kitchen table. * Kidnapped
Children from Miami-Dade, in Grave Danger *
Annoyed by the constant onslaught of bad news
marking the violence, of this, or that kind,
perpetuated against children, he hangs his
head down and prays. Planes and hawks
intermingle in the clouds, no real silence is found.
Calm, but not silent. Sadly, nature untouched by
human hands is a prayer unanswered.
How many times, how many times, to count the
numbers of stars he left hanging in the night
with the moon calling his name, clear as
day. He vanishes into some hurried way of
forgetting that none of it matters. Only the
way of the grey, the dark matter, the star’s vaporous
dust, the way of the sun, the way of the moon
the way of the solar flares, the explosions, only
the way of the magnetic energy and
the way of the cosmic force fields,
only they care, about the fortitude
and good fortune of the sun and moon.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Ryan Holloway on Unsplash
#Prosepoetry #Poet #Cosmic #Writers
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EDGAR AND VINCENT #poetry by jay
The melancholy of sweet depression
like Poe and Vincent Van Gogh,
those who were fraught with despair
have created haute cuisines
of flesh, of reds, of spleen.
They’ve picked up their brushes
their pen and ink
and palette’s exploded
fit to repair,
splayed open wide-
their vision
their loneliness
and,
the haunting beauty
that possessed their mind.
Their art wild and wanton,
masterpieces of expression
born out of tongues
that spoke with hysteria
and sights of historical blessings,
that spoke about the Starry Night
of Annabel and The Raven’s delight,
that spoke of shimmer, shiver and fright-
of howling, wailing, wicked light!
The melancholy of sweet depression-
like Poe and Vincent Van Gogh.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
revised 6/1/21
Photo Credits: Vincent van Gogh and Edgar Allan Poe
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SHAKESPEARE WAS AN INSOMNIAC #poetry by jay
Shakespeare was an insomniac
A maniac, word-slinging poet
who ate his delights, masticating
his sorrows, while feeding our
wide awake hearts
with his poetic desires.
Shall we in return dance tarantellas
to celebrate you and…( read more )
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FREEDOM #poetry by jay
I go inside where rain pellets the skin
piercing and drenched
I recall, as I sit and feel the years
of despots and dictators reign control
my belly contracting like a beast,
unwanted and violent.
I recall my youth, the beginnings of me
I recall my innocence, I retract and recoil
the memory of despots and dictators
lurking around and about every corner.
Rough, tumble, soft,
plush innocence.
To un-know would be pleasure.
Yearning to un-know
that the absence of light
is black dark colorless
thrusting that back inside,
is all but impossible.
Yet, to be wild again
if I can for a minute,
even recall how that feels.
The un-infringed upon mind.
Freedom.
Yes freedom. Free-dom
Free dom dom
dommm…
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
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EMBRACE IT #micropoetry by jay
The short tale has arrived
Hand feed
them
one
at
a
time.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh revised 5/22/21
Photo by Porapak Apichodilok from Pexels
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THE ARTIST FROM THE INSIDE OUT ON FEEDSPOT #poetryblog by jay
“ I would like to personally congratulate you as your blog The Artist From The Inside Out has been selected by our panelist as one of the Top 100 Poetry Blogs on the web. “
https://blog.feedspot.com/poetry_blogs/
I’d like to thank Jaya Avendel for introducing me to FEEDSPOT and urge folks to give them a visit. They have many great sites and Poets.
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IF I WERE A COWBOY #poetry by jay
Wheated fields
raging bulls
prairie natives
all roamed
a festive thriving
Bless-ed home
A bedeviled
creature
wasted
this throne,
Alas, not me
to never be,
If I were
a cowboy
I would poke
the earth and
straddle the
land, rock a
mountain on
rivers grand
A cowboys cattle
who knows
of no clan-
a buffalo, an eagle
or gallant man,
that would
battle boulders
thundering down
a canyon, a slip
knotted tightly
bound, to a falls
lying slantward
facing a steep drop
cliff,
a water-whittled
acrid,
dry drip
If I were a
cowboy, there
would be no
‘last stand’
no dust bowl
no famine
no tumbled
weeds rolling,
no smoked winds
blowing,
out of control
like a lost herd
or vacant soul
only green valleys
and rugged knolls
would blaze this
land of sacred souls.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh revised 5/21/21
Photo by Mahir Uysal on Unsplash
#Poetry #Rhymes #Spokenword #Cowboys
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THE POET SHOUTS #poetry by jay
First posted 8/2020, then revised today…
And so it goes, and it came like this-
you may like it,
or you may not…
The Poet Shouts Versefully Out
The crowd stops and gathers about
He stands tall and projects
Do Not Forget-
Do not forget from whence you came!
It may be a long away flicker- but it burns like the embers
in the fires of life!
What, you say, Does This all Mean?
It means, that we will not lay down and die.
” For what greatness does this betray to lie down and die? “
The greatness of our land
the beauty and justness in our being!
The great land we know in Palestine.
‘Oh the tales he weaves
the shoulders he stands on
whirling dervishly
he sings, he shouts…
Palestine Rises!
Victory is on our horizon.
Palestine shines like the ripeness of the sun on our olive trees
It shines in the pupils of our youth, in the spirit of our elderly
Palestine shines! Palestine rises! Palestine lives!
As the crowd spun around
pinned silently to
this sacred ground
entranced by his
profound sagely sound
he continued
aloud…
Palestine complete.
Palestine is burning, it is bleeding
in the streets.
The people are rising up
to face their enemies
Almighty fighters
who sacrifice complete
Complete sacrifice…
Until the sun is shining again
over the beauty of our Palestine
Palestine complete!
And in a misty, subdued haze
the crowd dispersed
into the forward gaze
of a poet left
in an unshaken state,
stepping down, for now
until further regain.
that’s the story of how it came to be…
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
#Poet #Palestinian
Photo by Hulki Okan Tabak on Unsplash
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EARLY MOURNING IN PALESTINE #art #poetry by jay
Early mourning
in Palestine,
not an unusual start,
children proceed play
fledgling friendships
in mourn’ they depart.
The child an unbroken dove read more…
art and poetry copyright© Jay Mora-Shihadeh
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CAN YOU BE MORE DESCRIPTIVE PLEASE? #poetry by jay
Hmmm…It seems misplaced
I know you want to- EXPLODE ME – into my place
Yet, there’s something missing
I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s
screaming so loudly
into this space
Where can you find the words?
Words to grab me, hold me
in your most compelling embrace
Words that come pouring from
the depths of your most
descriptive place
You see- I believe you are holding back
Holding back the crowds
the images, rushing the gate
the words of poets trying to escape, years
of exile from their place, their homes
their words, their ancestors
beating their tongues, their drums
their words
return- return, return, return!
Can’t you be more descriptive than that?
I’m losing my taste
Your words just seem so
out of place
These words of your ancestors,
overwhelm my ability, to grasp
control, control of their
proper place,
these ancestors, these poets
who speak so eloquently
need to remember, their rightful
place
Places misspelled, covering the trace
of words, so right, so worn, worn with words
lacking in grace
You see- Can’t you be more descriptive please?
But with taste, taste my place
this is where the words should come from
Those ancestors are all wrong, they all belong
In captivity! Capture their song
Your words are stifled, not strong
But, I see a flower waiting to bloom
Your words are steeped in a sadness that
has longed, for sweet freedom
Your words are imprisoned
your words are all wrong
Can’t you be more descriptive please?
Scholarly words, smart words, words
of intellect. There is no place for your words in this
world. If you forget those poets, those ancestors
of primitive place, perhaps
Perhaps, we can embrace- most certainly embrace
Your words would make sense
EXPLODE in my face
Words of descriptive meaning would trace
a grid for me to embrace, most certainly embrace.
I don’t understand that place
where our ancestors have been driven
Driven behind those gates
Of HELL
Their words beaten back by captivity
Can’t you be more descriptive
than that?
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Khaled Reese from Pexels
#Poetry #Ancestry #Exile
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POETIC IN JUSTICE- #poetry by jay
This is a cropped part of a painting I hope to finish one day. It is a mixed media collage and it is on a large piece of plywood. The painting is an expression of the pain of occupation, oppression and turmoil in Palestine; and being part of a family from the larger diaspora, feeling a sense of deep sadness and dismay about the current situation rocking our brothers and sisters in Jerusalem and Gaza today.
Admittedly, The pic is not so great, but I hope you get an idea of it.
And this image below, is a close-up of a piece of poetry, by an unknown Palestinian author, interspersed amongst some of my own poetry (and others) attached to this collage…to this day unfinished but I am hopeful…as I am, for the future of Palestine.
I have coupled it here with some poetry I wrote. I wrote this a long time ago, but after revisiting it, it is exactly how I feel today, with all this chaos in our world.
Climb this ladder into the night
Gazing from up high
down below
turmoil under the stars
the worlds’ picture show.
Leave it for now
in the lens of escape
the fracture upon
the collective landscape.
Bask in the comfort of
peaceful black softness
resting the mind’s eye
weary from exhaustion.
© [Jay Mora- Shihadeh] and [artistfromtheinsideout.wordpress.com], original [2012], and (revised 2021). Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material, artwork, or photo’s without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Jay Mora- Shihadeh] and [artistfromtheinsideout.wordpress.com] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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THIS PENCIL- #poetry by jay
Lately, since being vaccinated and also working on some other writing projects, I’ve taken some time to take stock of this past year and the immense gratitude I feel now, to get back to visiting in person with my mom, and some other outings we weren’t comfortable taking before the vaccine.
In that vein, I’ve been revisiting some older poetry I wrote, while reflecting on what’s ahead of us. This past year, as traumatizing as it was, has allowed me to shift my perspective to understand on a deeper level – what, where, and how do I want to spend my time moving forward. As an artist and poet, this is the “good” part where being alone and holed up can produce some good results, I suppose, in this collective trauma we faced/face.
The poem below was first posted to my blog August 2020, in the height of this pandemic.
I wrote this poem several years ago when I was still very much into handwriting everything. Things have definitely changed since those days. I can’t recall the last time I picked up a pencil to write any poetry or other writing, except to jot down some lists etc…
this pencil is my savior, it is my voice
this pencil sings of lost love
of lost hope
the tree of life that grows
the garden of the dark fruit
this wood; it is my (Read Poem)#Poet #Artist #Reflecting
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AVOID- #haiku by jay
dastardly hyper
avoid as- poison viper
escape mad people.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Etienne Marais from Pexels
#Haiku #Viper #People
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WALK HOME- #micropoetry by jay
I have never been so loved
then abused, then pitied
don’t confuse the two
love exists alone
take pity on none
walk home.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
#Micropoetry #Pity #Alone #Lovepoetry
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FRED HAMPTON JR- #artwork by jay
With all the focus on the academy award winning movie “Judas and the Black Messiah” I thought I would re-share my painting of Fred Hampton Jr. as part of the campaign to free Fred in Chicago in 1993.
Fred was a political prisoner wrongfully accused and imprisoned. He was a community organizer in Chicago with Uhuru.
see Wikipedia below-
Fred Hampton Jr. (born Alfred Johnson; December 29, 1969) is an American political activist, based in Chicago. He is the president and chairman of the Prisoners of Conscience Committee and the Black Panther Party Cubs.[1] He is the only child of Fred Hampton, the Black Panther Party leader assassinated by police in Chicago in December 1969, and his fiancée, now known as Akua Njeri.
Early life and education
Born in Chicago, Hampton is the son of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton and his fiancée, Deborah Johnson.[2] He was born 25 days after his father, at age 21, was assassinated by the Chicago police in a 1969 raid.[3]
His mother named him Alfred Johnson at birth. When he was ten years old, she had his name legally changed to “Fred Hampton Jr.”[4] She had already changed her own name to Akua Njeri, as she increasingly had identified with Africa in the years after Hampton Sr’s death. She wanted to drop what she and many in the Black Power movement considered “slave names”.
Hampton graduated from Tilden High School and sporadically studied journalism at Olive–Harvey College.[4]
Career
During the late 1980s, Hampton worked part-time as an auto mechanic while speaking at rallies and working as an organizer for the National People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (NPDUM), an interracial group. He also sold The Burning Spear, the newspaper associated with the affiliated African Socialist Party.[4]
He now serves as president and chairman of the Prisoners of Conscience Committee (POCC) and the Black Panther Party Cubs (BPPC), made up of descendants of Black Panthers. He continues to organize to bring people together across racial and class lines. He also is a spoken word artist and poet, and draws from his experiences with police and incarceration.
Legal issues
During his early adulthood Hampton was tried and acquitted on charges of armed robbery and murder. He and his supporters say that he was framed.[4]
In 1993, he was convicted of aggravated arson. The case involved the 1992 firebombing of a Korean menswear store and a Korean jewelry store in Chicago on Halsted Street. No persons were injured. The arson occurred in 1992, during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, a six-day period of protests and outrage in many African-American communities after the acquittal of four Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers who were charged with excessive force in the beating of African-American motorist Rodney King during an arrest. The incident had been videotaped and widely viewed in television broadcasts.
Hampton and his supporters maintain his innocence, claiming he was framed in both cases.[4][5] During the trial, fire officials testified that the bottles that held the gasoline never broke, preventing more widescale damage.[6] According to Hampton’s supporters, the fingerprint expert for the Chicago Police Department Crime Lab testified that none of Hampton’s fingerprints was found on the bottles.[7] But photographs of his hands showed blisters that were evident when he was arrested.[4]
Hampton was sentenced to eighteen years in prison. He was paroled on September 14, 2001.[4]
In popular culture
- Hampton appeared in Michel Gondry‘s 2006 film Dave Chappelle’s Block Party.[8]
- His 1993 trial is referred to in Fall Out Boy‘s song “You’re Crashing, But You’re No Wave“.[9]
- He and his father are mentioned in the song “Behind Enemy Lines” by Dead Prez, as well as “Clap for the Killers” by Street Sweeper Social Club.
Hampton and his mother both worked as consultants on the film Judas and the Black Messiah (2021), a biopic about his father co-written and directed by Shaka King. It stars Daniel Kaluuya as Hampton Sr. and Lakeith Stanfield as William O’Neal, a young FBI informant who infiltrated the Panthers.[2] With nearly equal screen time in the film, both men were nominated for Academy Awards as Best Supporting Actor; Kaluuya won.
#Artist #Painter #PoliticalArt
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GERMANY COMMITS TO RETURN BENIN BRONZES IN 2022- #Art
“ In a rare and nearly unprecedented step, Germany has promised to begin returning the Benin Bronzes held by state-run institutions in 2022. The push to send back the objects was announced on Thursday by the German culture ministry.”
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THE RIDDLE OF DEATH- #prose poetry by jay
Burst forth the ships! Time has come, forever traced, the
legend, the place where life lives to never-cease. She
strokes the night and whistles through daylight, the legend
of prowess and praise, her locks flowing like honey, sweet
and free. The deserts welcome the quenching rain, the
love from fountains above, pouring like wine into chaliced
mouths in an endless time. The forests and mountains
share their love forever-more, dipping backwards and
forwards through the valleys and hills. An infinity knot
mapped, the mathematician’s plot, a scheme, a schematic, a
mariner’s eye taut toward the East, toward the West. The
sun never stops shining where begging hearts stop.
No maps, no fortune, no ships on watery graves, no lockets
etched in fancy sayings, will satisfy the need for eternal life
living. This goddess slips through the streams and rivers
from clear fountains to the never-ending mouths of babes,
of youth, she ages never-never in the land of Zeus. A
perfect answer to the riddle of death, she delivers a gold
chariot that rages and rages! A fireball, a white star
shooting, streaking a blaze. A trail traces time through
clouds, through space. Unseen by eyes, by time but minds
great, the heavens fade away, away, afar across the ages
gate. A quest, an answer to the riddle of sages, handed
down for centuries… The truth, the myth, the legend of
Hebe… The mariner’s trips across seas and pages to land
upon foreign shores, a promise born, springing forth from
lore to lore, a search for truth, a sip of heaven to bless a
soul with endless youth.©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
THE RIDDLE OF DEATH first appeared in FREE VERSE REVOLUTION, Issue I: hebe (the fountain of youth) explores what it means to be young and the hallowed and mythologised nature of youth.
#Prose #Poetry #Literary #Magazine
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‘RAVAGED’ PUBLISHED AT SPILLWORDS PRESS- #poetry by jay
I am happy to announce my poem “RAVAGED” is featured on SPILLWORDS PRESS today. Spillwords Press is a great community of Poets and Writer’s from around the globe. I am so grateful to be included in this community, so stop on by and give it a read… and make sure you let me know when you do.
RAVAGED
written by: Jay Mora-Shihadeh
@painterspalate
That greedy glint
in the eye of the fooled
the eye of the lost
my heart left in the home of the tricked
what does it take for them to wake up?
to stop selling their fortunes
for the land of milk and honey
the land where the streets are paved in…read more -
CLASSIC CADDY LOVERS #art by jay
This fine looking Art Print, is a photo art collage, of a Classic Cadillac that I’ve created using the Figma platform. I am a huge fan of classic automobiles across the spectrum but have a particular love of classic cars from the 60’s and 70’s.
He is available in a variety of frames and sizes in my Art Shop
Smooth and luxurious—like if cashmere were a frame type. The gentle curves of the scoop framed art prints provide a contemporary aesthetic sure to highlight your favorite design. Framed prints available in six sizes, in a white or black frame color.
- Natural white, matte, 100% cotton rag, acid and lignin-free archival paper
- Gesso coating for rich color and smooth finish
- Premium shatterproof acrylic cover
- Acid-free dust cover on the back
- Wire or sawtooth hanger included depending on size (does not include hanging hardware)
- Every order is custom made just for you
