Issil
i participated in my one and only national slam during the summer of 2001, in seattle, the highlight of this event was seeing Ishle Yi Park and hearing her poetry. do not get me wrong... there were amazing poets there, from all over the country... but Ishle... her poetic performance was a spiritual event. After her recital i asked the friends who had accompanied me, "did u see that, did u feel that?" they both looked quizzically at me and said, "what?" LOL... i went on to explain how i saw the roof split open to the heavens, the room was flooded with ancestral spirits who had come to hear Ishle speak. their granddaughter was paying homage to them in her poetry, they had come to watch her. it was as visible to me as these words are to u. at that moment i knew i wasn't a poet yet... but now i knew what to reach for, to aspire towards [writing poetry that transcends the barriers of time... makes the Ancestors want to come and listen]. after u read the effect of her words on me... click on the link to her new book below and let her open the floodgates of heaven to u too!
Queens... is in the howse!
Feet firmly planted upon the fertile soil of a poetess’s stage…
Transforming what was once just wood and nails… into a holy ground.
Her words used to be empty vessels….
She filled them with her spirit…
She filled them with her spirit until they vibrated so fast and furiously…
They broke sound barriers. NO! correction… they broke ALL barriers…
Especially the one between Heaven and Earth… between the Land of our Ancestors… and this spherical ball of mud we call… home.
I watched her with awe as she invoked the Spirits of her Ancestral Mothers…
The ones who… dove into oceans of time… time… and time… again…
so that their children would have a future.
I watched with awe as they... answered her…
Her Ascended Elders…
descended… upon the bridge between our worlds…
fashioned from the words of their… Descendant.
I felt a chill… run down my spine… I thought it was just the thrill of witnessing this high priestess in action, becuz...
She was… fine... But I was wrong…
see… she who holds her breath the longest, she who dives the deepest…
had leaped from the pinnacles of heaven… plunging deep into my soul…
ignoring the freezing waters I had let enter… she...
dove… into my heart of hearts…
using fingers strengthened by years of parting waters…
she pried open… the shell I had placed around the chamber of my love…
Cuz… shit! Love hurts sometimes… and if you love as intensely as I do…
that pain can be excruciating…
I wasn’t trying to feel that... pain... again…
still... she who holds her breath the longest, she who dives deepest…
was also she who will not be denied… so she pried open my heart of hearts…
with fingers strengthened from years of parting times’ waters...
holding up a pearl… whose existence I had forgotten.
she swam towards the surface of my “being”… the pearl grew in size…
until it be came a moon…
a shimmering globe of luminescence that she placed upon the brow of her daughter… physically separated by generations… yet… one with her.
See! She who holds her breath the longest, she who dives the deepest, she who would not be denied… is…
she who is always there when you need her…
looking through the portal between two worlds…
that had been opened by her… Self!…
nineteen generations removed.
seeing my need for love… and the… fear of pain that denied its fulfillment…
she… placed the pearl of my heart… upon the brow of her… Self!…
nineteen generations removed…
where it’s fullness… generated a light that removed all fear of pain,
returning me… to my once forgotten dream of… submerging my ‘self’…
so deeply into the essence of another… that “we” ceases to exist…
beyond U and I… it is just… U.N.I… ONE!
U See! She who holds her breath the longest, she who dives the deepest, she who will not be denied, she who is always there when you need her… stands before… me as…
she who… opens doors between worlds, wearing the moon upon her brow…
that moon… is my once forgotten dream of love.
As you can see… I have been burned by fire…
and in case I didn’t mention… I have been burned by love as well…
do not ask which hurt the most… just listen…
I have seen her… this High Priestess… as she opened the gates of the Ancestral realm… with the spirit of her words…
wearing my once forgotten dream of love upon her brow…
they call her words poetry…
I call them prayer…
and you... may call this written piece… a vow.
I will walk… casually…
through a fifty foot wall of fire…
annihilating ME… if… SHE!…
is on the other side…
just… so that I may hear her voice…
and see her smile…
as she opens doors… between worlds…
with her words…
wearing my love… upon her brow…
whispering…
LOVE hurts… so… damn… good!
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