I'm Wayyyyyy Up - Blessings [CLEAN] (ft. Drake)

I have issues, but I'm blessed
I have problems, fears and ailments but I'm blessed
Some days I'm a mess
But like Alicia Keys I put that S on my Chest
I'm still blessed

Sometimes life becomes a tougher journey than I feel I can handle
Life more in shambles than the series Scandal
I feel sad, angry, confused
Remembering all the times I was used
I'm still blessed

Feel like I'm going no where
and going off a cliff the same time
working every darn day
but can't save a dime.
I'm still blessed

Feel like I'm going backwards into quicksand
can't stand - no escape plan
handcuffs would be more freeing, redeeming
I need a change but no sight of it revealing
I'm still blessed

Blessed and Thankful!


Many aspects of our life may be on target with goals we've set but then there's that one thing that won't match up so it haunts us.  I understand those feelings,  I get it.  But let's not forget that no matter how bad things seem we are truly blessed.

I remember listening to a preacher saying that you will be blessed, you're blessings are coming in a form of a new job, a new car etc...and I thought about this.  I thought we become jaded and disregard the other blessings.  Blessings happen throughout our daily lives but that yearning, that inevitable yearning for more (which is fine in some regards) we don't take the time to acknowledge the fact that we woke up, we saw, we placed our feet on solid ground, we took a bath, we probably were able to kiss our mother, held the hand of a lover - those are all blessings, think of how losing anyone of those examples would take away from your life.  So this post, the above poem - it's all just to give thanks.

Thank God I'm so blessed.

69th Murder

True Story
A gun shot to the head...dead.
He's just laying there, in a picture sent through Whatsapp: DEAD.

Everything in me says I should feel something.  I should feel more than I do. He was my little cousin. The cousin I barely knew.  I do feel for my aunt, she's one of my favourites, the sweetest soul you'll ever meet.  I feel like I want to embrace her and make sure her pressure stays stable.  She's away, so I'm unable.

Other than that, I feel nothing.  I am not lost for words.  No tears are shed.  But my little cousin, he's dead.  I thought of one of the 2 memories I have of him - his mother was alive then.  A time when I thought all my cousins and I would remain strong friends.  We were by my grammy, affectionately called "Mammy".
He kept farting, as kids we just laughed.  Then his mother spanked him with a big rubber scissors - I think it was Christmas; for passing the stink gas.  I was shocked and angry that she beat my friend but here we are today, someone took his life away and I struggle to remember the sound of his voice.  Not by choice. By circumstance.  We all lost touch some how, and cousins I lived to laugh with, I barely know now.

Maybe I'm a little selfish cause I'm thinking about me, and my inability to cry while those closest to him, are trying to figure out why. They cry.
What I do feel is compassion, for those who saw him in the street, with a puddle of blood, pooled at their feet.  What I do feel is fearful, that the murders continue while grandmothers, mothers, brothers and sisters mourn.  What I do feel is anger, another black man, gone.


My reality
After 11 pm last night, while electricity was off and all I could hear was the generator from the Mall, my father told my mother the way my cousin sounds - she should call her sister, Ann.  Then I got the news: my cousin's body laid in the road dead, while people snapped pictures and the police took forever to arrive.  To know we live in a world where it almost seems easy to take a life it's mortifying, I guess the saying is fitting.  He's in a better place now.

RIP D.A.

Lost You

they want me to believe that the emptiness will go away

that it will get better, it will be easier in time

but this pain

the pain that stretches from the back of my neck
to the tip of my tailbone, tells a different story

this pain has me paralyzed

I am numb but my heart feels so much
pain, disdain for myself

how can I believe this will get better

even the weather says differently

this love fickle as a thunderstorm during a summer  day

ended by a bright sun ray

rain like tears of an angel

did they lose him too

tapping on my window sill

silly me because I wish it were him

I suffer from anxiety, separation 

apart a part of me gone, and Lord knows I long for it

they all know I long for him

they say deny myself

hard to do when it was just you two

but easy for them to say while I lay

tear stained face, face it
its only been days but I miss him

it is evident, evidence everyone can see

that without him, I am not me

©Tia L. Clarke 2015 (revised)