So – I was being a bit flip (but completely serious) during a recent email convo with a client (we’ll call O) and proposed a prayer of sorts:

Please Lord let there be no trouble. Let your blessings fall in abundance upon my and my new friend O’s [web-related] deal. Thank you and continued blessings upon the American dollar.

So O responds with:

I appreciate your thoughtfulness and your prayer very much. Now if you don’t mind me asking, what do you believe about God? I’m not asking this in a threatening way or trying to pry in on your personal beliefs. I also can’t see a persons emotions through email, but if a neighbor asked you the above question, what would you answer?

And I being the bit of a loudmouth could not refuse the invitation to opine on religion… I hope this note meets you with an open mind and open heart, both of which are open to the possibilities of everlasting love and peace.

Interesting question and I could discuss it for hours on end… I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness actually. Strict doctrine to be sure… Too strict.

Let’s just say that I believe in a higher power. Whether that higher power has a name (God) or whether it has a gender (He) or any of the myriad questions we’d think to ask of the higher power when/if confronted face to face… All that stuff is really immaterial.

So, to my mother’s dismay (lol), I’ve chosen to keep my affiliation with higher power away from the strict and often hypocritical religious domain, but more on a spiritual level.

When I think of all the Christian “sects” (Catholic, Protestant, Methodist, Baptist, etc…) sort of “in-fighting”, contemplating with powerful words and sometimes fists, which will have the closer seat to God in heaven… It sort of makes me sick. And we’ve yet to discuss Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddism or other religions.

I think sometimes we as a society forget what each of these different religions have in common: a Creator whom wants the best for those living amongst the creation. We forget — concentrating entirely too much on the differences — and then we fight amongst ourselves, telling each other that our own faith and our own God is “right” and that our neighbors’ faith/God cannot simultaneously be right as well.

Then war.

I believe in a higher power that would want the minions (us lol) to be empowered with and by and through love. Love and Peace. Not war. And for me personally: religion is totally unnecessary for us to achieve this end. In fact – religion sometimes is what keeps us as a humanity mired in the murk, unfocused on the principle of doing good for the ultimate goal of achieving everlasting love and peace.

I know ==> very cliche and I’m rambling… But anyway – that’s my short answer.

What about you?

Feel free to join the opination!

hmmm – is that even a word…?!? o.O Indeed it is ==> The act of thinking; a supposition. Immensely brilliant word for free-thinkers world wide.

Anyway – you get the gist – And this my friends is the last Jacquii Cooke note of 2011

Happy New Year! May your 2012 be blessed and your health good!

Jacquii.

Jacquii Cooke is a Black American Poet from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Her writings have been featured in both online & print venues. More of her writing may be found at JPiC Forum For Writers, an online Community where open-minded writers of all backgrounds can freely share in the joy of creating literature. Jacquii’s JPiC profile can be found at MsJacquiiC.

That’s the question that inspired this write. It’s interesting how one question can inspire such introspective blather  hahaha

Hope you enjoy it. Hope it makes ya go “hmmm”

And I Was Sober

 

The sky opened up earlier today
and sprinkled a delicious rainbow
into my mind. The colours were
dizzying, the greens and yellows
so vibrant, a kaleidoscope of utopia.

 

I nearly came in my pants.

 

And I was sober.
But it’s dark now.

 

The moon tonight is so rotund,
a bruised cataract on that midnight-cerulean
air. I gaze at the one shining
orb and think of his solitude
as something stunning, a chameleon
amongst black holes; Is this how
a spotlight feels? I want to smoke
four hand-rolled, premium blunts. That
or howl at the fat moon.

 

I imagine my neighbors would
think me mad.

 

Though earlier…That sky…
It opened exquisitely. For a moment; just
two briefly-splendid seconds of awe.

 

The sun ray stabbed through the day
and made magic and I witnessed
a miracle for the first time
through my own tear.
One melancholy tear.
A proud tear. A foolish tear. A
vibrant tear, color: clear.

 

And thus a rainbow formed.

 

But why do I feel
so empty?

 

 

Copyright © 2010 Jacquii Cooke

Jacquii Cooke is a Black American Poet from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Her writings have been featured in both online & print venues. More of her writing may be found at JPiC Forum For Writers, an online Community where open-minded writers of all backgrounds can freely share in the joy of creating literature. Jacquii’s JPiC profile can be found at MsJacquiiC.

So every once-in-a-while I like to express my gratitude to Madam Poesy. Perhaps in this piece, Poetry is the “she” and I as the narrator (having experienced writers block) is wondering if my lover misses me.

This piece can be read in a myriad of ways – double entendre is a close friend

That Nagging Feeling.

 

I love her so much
it hurts the back of my
eyelids when I think
about her. The old souls
of my feet feel
punished. I’ve walked eternities
on coals of scalding temptations,
of knuckle-rapped buttocks that smell
of cinnamon-colored jasper.

 

I’ve walked them all.

 

I’ve succumbed. I was wrapped
up in leopard skins of precise enchantment,
up in clouds of sanctified orgasm,
up in a throbbing so melancholy
it nearly broke my brain. I wear this pain
like a concussive migraine
pounding sorrow-songs,
crucial crucifications of the heart. Perhaps

 

we reminisce upon an old St.
Louis Blues? I wonder
if she misses me.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Jacquii Cooke

And just for the heck of it…
Here’s Ms. Bessie Smith singing St. Louis Blues (circa 1929)

Jacquii Cooke is a Black American Poet from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Her writings have been featured in both online & print venues. More of her writing may be found at JPiC Forum For Writers, an online Community where open-minded writers of all backgrounds can freely share in the joy of creating literature. Jacquii’s JPiC profile can be found at MsJacquiiC.