Today’s guest post for our series on living Black in the United States was written by my friend, Elle Arra. I met Elle Arra through her poetry blog …
Guest Post | “Tightrope” by Elle Arra
Guest Post | “Tightrope” by Elle Arra
.what’s not to love.
Credit: Lucas Iacono (click photo to visit site)
Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both
parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard
Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps
you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house
Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down
on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity
i hate you
humanity i love you
-ee cummings
Credit: bonsaiempire.comI’m a pruner, constantly snipping, cutting, deleting the excess. I do this mostly with people. I’m a loner, for the most part, and don’t make friends easily. The friends I do have, the ones that I truly consider friends, have been so for 30 plus years. Other than that, the rest of the world is an acquaintance. My sense of loyalty and general distrust of most people makes it so. Being an only child, I’ve always been a watcher and highly protective of my feelings, highly skeptical of intent. I don’t warm up to you until I have observed you in the wild, so to speak. For those reasons, humanity has given me more to despise than love. Humanity’s resistance to change (mine, included), makes it to where I want to let in as minimal of an amount of it as I can at one time. The idiosyncrasies and quirks I exhibit are enough to contend with, let alone those of others, that I will have to learn and devise plans to maneuver around and through, with relation to my own. It’s simply too much work.
I really do love you, Humanity, but I hate you, and I mean that in the best possible way.
.eyes baritone low.
“…the innocent sleep, sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, the death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast.”
-William Shakespeare Macbeth II, ii
.i want that.
I want that.
I want to be with you.
You, plugging away at a pile of words for your one of many books,
and I want you to hear the keys jingle.
I want you to not look up because you know it’s me and you already have my smile committed to memory. I’ll come over and nudge your shoulder but not say a word because you’re in a zone that is not to be disturbed.
I will have ordered the largest cup of what you love when you write. I will get my own project and sit across from you until we, both defeated by our work, look into each other’s eyes. We’ll sit for a moment and simultaneously say we are hungry. We’ll go to the kitchen and make pesto or something else Italian. Your favorite.
We’ll eat and talk and laugh. Swim in each other’s words. We’ll hold hands on our way to the back room, your palm under mine, then we’ll lie in bed because every day doesn’t have to be extraordinary but every day must be one we are together in.
I want that.
.a nice cup of tea.
A Nice Cup of Tea
By George Orwell
Evening Standard, 12 January 1946.

If you look up ‘tea’ in the first cookery book that comes to hand you will probably find that it is unmentioned; or at most you will find a few lines of sketchy instructions which give no ruling on several of the most important points.
This is curious, not only because tea is one of the main stays of civilization in this country, as well as in Eire, Australia and New Zealand, but because the best manner of making it is the subject of violent disputes.
When I look through my own recipe for the perfect cup of tea, I find no fewer than eleven outstanding points. On perhaps two of them there would be pretty general agreement, but at least four others are acutely controversial. Here are my own eleven rules, every one of which I regard as golden:
not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase ‘a nice cup of tea’ invariably means Indian tea.
Secondly, tea should be made in small quantities — that is, in a teapot. Tea out of an urn is always tasteless, while army tea, made in a cauldron, tastes of grease and whitewash. The teapot should be made of china or earthenware. Silver or Britanniaware
teapots produce inferior tea and enamel pots are worse; though curiously enough a pewter teapot (a rarity nowadays) is not so bad.
Thirdly, the pot should be warmed beforehand. This is better done by placing it on the hob than by the usual method of swilling it out with hot water.
Fourthly, the tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right. In a time of rationing, this is not an idea that can be realized on every day of the week, but I maintain that one strong cup of tea is better than twenty weak ones. All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes — a fact which is recognized in the extra ration issued to old-age pensioners.
Fifthly, the tea should be put straight into the pot. No strainers, muslin bags or other devices to imprison the tea. In some countries teapots are fitted with little dangling baskets under the spout to catch the stray leaves, which are supposed to be harmful. Actually one can swallow tea-leaves in considerable quantities without ill effect, and if the tea is not loose in the pot it never infuses properly.
Sixthly, one should take the teapot to the kettle and not the other way about. The water should be actually boiling at the moment of impact, which means that one should keep it on the flame while one pours. Some people add that one should only use water that has been freshly brought to the boil, but I have never noticed that it makes any difference.
Seventhly, after making the tea, one should stir it, or better, give the pot a good shake, afterwards allowing the leaves to settle.
Eighthly, one should drink out of a good breakfast cup — that is, the cylindrical type of cup, not the flat, shallow type. The breakfast cup holds more, and with the other kind one’s tea is always half cold before one has well started on it.
Ninthly, one should pour the cream off the milk before using it for tea. Milk that is too creamy always gives tea a sickly taste.
Tenthly, one should pour tea into the cup first. This is one of the most controversial points of all; indeed in every family in Britain there are probably two schools of thought on the subject. The milk-first school can bring forward some fairly strong arguments, but I maintain that my own argument is unanswerable. This is that, by putting the tea in first and stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk whereas one is liable to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round.
Lastly, tea — unless one is drinking it in the Russian style — should be drunk without sugar. I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true tealover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt. Tea
is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.
Some people would answer that they don’t like tea in itself, that they only drink it in order to be warmed and stimulated, and they need sugar to take the taste away. To those misguided people I would say: Try drinking tea without sugar for, say, a fortnight and it is very unlikely that you will ever want to ruin your tea by sweetening it again.
These are not the only controversial points to arise in connexion with tea drinking, but they are sufficient to show how subtilized the whole business has become. There is also the mysterious social etiquette surrounding the teapot (why is it considered vulgar to drink out of your saucer, for instance?) and much might be written about the subsidiary uses of tea leaves, such as telling fortunes, predicting the arrival of visitors, feeding rabbits, healing burns and sweeping the carpet. It is worth paying attention to such details as warming the pot and using water that is really boiling, so as to make quite sure of wringing out of one’s ration the twenty good, strong cups of that two ounces, properly handled, ought to represent.
(taken from The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 3, 1943-45, Penguin ISBN, 0-14-00-3153-7)
.random thought 1.
photography is about the keeping out of light, until that perfect moment when you let it in, just for a fraction of a second, versus the studying of light over a course of time and recording the sum of its duration as in what is drawn. photography is the extraction of a denominator of time. the drawn, an aggregate of a sequence of time.
.because, food.
.poets, read poems.
Have you ever found yourself wondering what you’re really reading poetry for? It feels as if more of the reading is for finding out whether or not one measures up, if someone writing similar to you (or you similar to them) has said something that causes the “I wish I had written that!” moment. Or maybe the fear is of not having an original voice or thought. Reading online journals, poetry blogs, books in the vein of your writing, in order to see if your project can be let out of the vault and hopefully, be accepted. Maybe even guiltily swiping of a concept here and there to push your creativity along takes place.
All in all, it’s no longer reading for pleasure. It becomes task.
While the reasons I mentioned have some level of rationale, we would all hate for these to be reasons why someone else would be reading our work, and they would be honest, something that we typically are not when greeted with something to read. The aspect of reading for pleasure takes a back seat to how we can either top what we read or be destroyed by its brilliance and incinerate any attempts at writing we have ever endeavored.
I say we fight that feeling and simply read for pleasure. We tend to be so severe and take ourselves and our own art far too seriously. The more serious the more comedic we become.
The writing will come. Pleasure is better received by the body than toil. We should read to learn poets, which in turn help us learn ourselves, which in turn informs our process, expands our concepts, maybe adds on to another’s ideas.
poets. just read poems…
.temples, bells.
there are temples. these, our temples,
bells rung, until gods shiver from the walls
blending in with the cadence
men, women of different tongues
make for different ingredients
making for a different simmer
to their cook
rendering off the empty hymns
During my blogging hiatus after NaPoWriMO, I’ve had time to think about a few things; some of which are what the meaning of our lives truly are, how that meaning plays out in the lives of others, and how we, ourselves, interpret that meaning. These bodies we have are not our own. They are on loan and much like anything lent, we are to take care
This world tells us what to worship, what to aspire to, what to attain, where to go, but it’s all rooted in self, in what one can get out of it with no regard for others. These bodies are temples, a meeting place for all things wise, temperate, giving. That bell (heart) within us, it must be in tune with those things and ring loudly, shaking off any of the ‘gods’ that we are tend to bow to.
We’re all very different yet so very much alike. What we want and need, intrinsically, is all the same, how we attain it, from what source, and when we attain it, are the places where variances lie. It all tastes different, smells not alike, yet renders down the same. What we are left with in the end, once we’ve cooked off all of the impurities, once what we thought was the right flavor shows itself to be but a layer in the taste profile, is the end goal.
.deux. {NaPoWriMo 2015 Day 30}
.bury the illusion.
text in sub verse and
complete is oxidation
covertly offered diatribes
deep-space precipices
overlooking once angels lyrical
on spent time gained
illusion in professed confession
manufacture deeds masked in divinity
intoxicating dervish spins
until here and now diminish
songs of nowhere from
geometries sacred to lineage intact spiritually
to light of life given
deny not
do
♦♦
do not deny given life
of light to spiritually intact
lineage to sacred geometries
from nowhere of songs
diminish now and here until
spins dervish intoxicating divinity
in masked deeds manufacture confession
professed in illusion
gained time spent
on lyrical angels once overlooking
precipices
space-deep diatribes
offered covertly
oxidation is complete
and verse sub in text
©jcs
It’s the 30th and final day of NaPoWrimo. How do you all feel? I don’t know about you guys but I’m staying away from all things literary for a week or so, at the very least! It’s been a great experience and a difficult one, at times. I’ve stretched myself a good bit this month and have learned much about improvements and changes I need to make in my writing and in my life. I’m nowhere near where I can and should be and have a ways to go, which brings me to the point of my poem.
As I wrote this piece I started to ask myself what the true substance of it was. What was it really saying? Within all of the embellishment was maybe one or two points but they were lost within the whole of the piece.
The words are a bit distant and I don’t let the reader in to who I am, which in turn could be who the reader is. The cryptic and internal nature of what and how I write is a way of not allowing access to me. What we search for in reading poetry or a book, or listening to music is to find a piece of ourselves in that work. To know that we aren’t alone in who we are and what we feel. My feeling is that I’ve been detached from all of that from the very beginning. My writing has revealed itself to be selfish. I guess that’s an indicator of who I am if I dig deep…or if I simply pull away the thin top layer.
I find that I have been writing from a place that doesn’t help the reader. I make no room for consolation. I offer no help for your ills, offer no advise. My poems have been speaking to speak and that’s all. It’s time to evolve.
ghosts like me elude whispers, sometimes/
sometimes, whispers elude ghosts like me
©jcs
Robert Laurence Binyon had a long and successful career in English arts and letters, managing to produce almost a book a year in the span between 1894 and 1944. His father, Frederick Binyon, was a clergyman, and his mother, Mary, was the daughter of Robert 
Benson Dockray, resident engineer of the London and Birmingham Railroad. Binyon showed an early interest in art and poetry. After attending St. Paul’s School, he attended Trinity College at Oxford, where his poem “Persephone” was awarded the Newdigate Prize. In 1890 he took a first-class degree in classical moderations, and in 1892, a second-class degree in litterae humainoires. In 1890 he also published four poems in a volume called Primavera: Poems by Four Authors, which included the work of three other young Oxford undergraduates, one of whom was his cousin, Stephen Phillips, who would also achieve a measure of fame as a poet.
He published his first book of poetry in 1894 calledLyric Poems, and he followed this publication quickly with two books on painting,Dutch Etchers of the Seventeenth Century in 1895 and John Crone and John Sell Cotman in 1897. These two interests would govern his career, as he alternated between poetry and essays on the visual arts. He was also interested in Oriental art and culture: books such as Painting in the Far East (1908) and the book of poems The Flight of the Dragon (1911) reflect this interest. Ezra Pound was highly complimentary of the later work, and thought of Binyon as a pioneer in the Western appreciation of Chinese and Japanese art.
Binyon married Cicely Margaret Powell in 1904, and they had three daughters together. When World War I broke out, he became an orderly in the Red Cross, and managed to visit the front in 1916. He turned this experience into numerous books of verse that took the war as a subject. The Winnowing Fan, The Anvil, The Cause, andThe New World, published from 1914 to 1918, all dealt with the war as a noble cause, though his work became progressively less sentimental.
During his career, Binyon became interested in experimental versification. He had been influenced by John Masefield, who argued that verse should be spoken aloud, and, at Oxford, Robert Bridges had shared with him the complex rhythms of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s sprung verse, whose poetry could not yet be found in print. His experiments were not as radical, however. Mainly, he was skillful at manipulating verse within narrowly defined limits. Read more here.
Ypres
She was a city of patience; of proud name,
Dimmed by neglecting Time; of beauty and loss;
Of acquiescence in the creeping moss.
But on a sudden fierce destruction came
Tigerishly pouncing: thunderbolt and flame
Showered on her streets, to shatter them and toss
Her ancient towers to ashes. Riven across,
She rose, dead, into never-dying fame.
White against heavens of storm, a ghost, she is known
To the world’s ends. The myriads of the brave
Sleep round her. Desolately glorified,
She, moon-like, draws her own far-moving tide
Of sorrow and memory; toward her, each alone,
Glide the dark dreams that seek an English grave.
Source: The New World (1918)
.i am, therefore, i think. 
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