PMS Maybe? Thoughts

"There's this tree. It sits across the street from my house. I admire it's humility. it reminds me to reconnect myself to the source."

- Erykah Badu

My Name (In the style of Sandra Cisneros)

Where I'm from my name means I'm surprised if you can pronounce it correctly. In Nigerian it means honor confers your crown.. It means chance, it means haphazard. It is like the number 3. A shade of fall. It is the jazz my mother plays every morning, songs that feel like triumph and failure, love and fear.
It is The British singer, Helen Folasade Adu's stage name and I feel like she and I are connected sort of like we, because she feels that "Sade'" is special. She is an ingratiating character in her music, smooth jazz, quiet storm, soul, bellowed like me. Like how easy going I wish I were. 
My parents. 17 and 18 didn't know that I would be Sade' until I arrived here. Everyone was expecting Aaron.
And the story goes, I wore boy's clothes for my first month or so. 
I wasn't planned for, like those babies born to trying, older parents who wished, and prepared yellow nurseries, and wished that they could until a doctor professed their miracle. I wonder if my mother made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn't be all the things she wanted to be.
Sade'. I wonder if my mother was thinking of a sad song when she named me.

Almost everywhere they say my name funny. Sometimes I am "Say-dee," or "Sayd," and I get angry because They don't know how to announce my name like it is royal, like my mother does. I wish my mother would have named me something different. But I am always Sade'. I know some girls with names that sound like mine. But they're names are more revealing more loud. S-H-A-D-A-E, spelled more phonetically. With their snapping fingers and rolling necks and loud, revealing mothers. I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Sade' as Nicole or Alexandra or Tatum. Yes. Something like Tatum will do.

- Sade' Miller

Thoughts Of Relief

"Thank you maker. I feel like we were just being worked through.. I can listen and I'm inspired all over again."


- Sade' Miller

The Liar, Me

   For a while now I've been having a hard time being completely honest with myself. I live in a society where censorship is key; interaction is at the mercy of the politically correct, of what may or may not offend people. It's what fuels the never ending cycle of victim and transgressor. How can I be honest with anyone, when every  principle or ideal that I may believe in has to go through some sort of filter before it is deemed appropriate to be revealed to the public?
   Dishonesty dictates my life. No, I am not a fan of flat out verbally telling lies but I believe that we can be liars in our actions, in how we live our lives. As for myself, it has gotten to the point that I'm not too certain of who I am, what I am, who I want to be. And now I feel obligated to search for meaning and understanding of my life and it's purpose, of life and it's purpose. It's driving me crazy because in life, we are given such a limited amount of time and an infinite amount of information is accessible but it is impossible to attain it all. I have created false passions and then feel stuck in their pursuit. I don't know what I want. A lot of the times I feel powerless, like my life isn't in my control.
   I don't know when it got so bad. Maybe when I was three and my parents would argue. They made no effort to hide the fact that I had to pledge an allegence to one or the other. I never wanted to disappoint. Or maybe it was when I learned that your best friend could lie to you and talk about you behind your back. Or when I learned that family could betray you. Or that your mother could love someone more than she loved you. Even in writing this, I had to think, stop, rethink, write, and erase all over again until line by line what I thought I wanted to say came out.Why can't my thoughts and feelings be so honest that they just come out on demand because I am certain of them?  And I'm not even sure if it's uncertainty or me being so dishonest with myself that I can't decipher the two. What is real and what is imagined, what is rudimentary and what is derived, what is of God and what is of this world.

- Sade' Miller

Time

Five Things, I would say to my grandmother:
One, Your smile reflects love from the sun
The moon feels neglected and
Two, Somewhere between the
bowing field of wheat and the boastful tree trunk
You are beautiful, beautiful brown
Three, Like the plight of a leaf love sailed in your wind so that I, might, live.
With the strength of the Earth you bore refreshing stress
Through the bows of your legs
From the anticipation of your stomach
Butterflies and cravings
With the assurance of your heart both beating and feeling
Your smile says "I am sure"
Four, In your arms I am home
Spread to me wide as horizons
My nest from which I must take flight and
Five, Your love;
Makes my chest feel warm and opened like,
Embracing me is their sole purpose
Like loving you I know there is a God

- Sade' Miller

Most nights, most dreams, most nightmares are, trippy,  psychedelic, heart jerking, arousing, breath taking, depressing , intense, too much, too real... Most nights I'm not able to sleep through the entire night. I worry. I worry about life and death. My life. My loved ones death. Hell. I worry about hell a lot. I worry that I'm not good enough for God. I pray, wish, my life depends on whether or not I am. Most nights I feel the worst feeling in the world. Inadequacy. Worried that I am inadequate.

- Sade' Miller

Rain. Autumn Thoughts

"Rain beats like percussion. And I'm tired. And I'm tired like, like an infant; rocked in my mother Universe's womb. And the percussion rain beats steady, and for a moment I believe that I am steady too."

- Sade' Miller

Amygdala

The love child of our rhythmic labor
Your sweat seeped into my skin and,
Lived there.
Lives there.
I smell your satisfaction,
Your exhales.
I smell your, fast and slow, and faster and, slower.
Exclamation.
Even the clouds swollen with rain
make my loins grow uneasy
At the thought that they might explode
And be satisfied.
Or as the Earth becomes black with night
And the sun lies down to rest
And day is satisfied
I smell your sweat in my skin
Sticky with dew.

- Sade' Miller

Sunkist

We loved on yesterday with summer eyes

And hearts like great oak trees.

Our love was Sweet, and, free.

But that was yesterday.

We shared kisses on cheeks.

Smiles with peaches in our teeth.

And sun kissed lips.

And then the clouds grew salty with tears.

And so did we

The thunder roared.

And so did we

The rain fell

And so did we.

- Sade' Miller

Rhythm

Babymamas;
Hood rats, naive, or both
Trifflin niggas;
Good dick.
Empty pockets.
5 kids
Baby got the sniffles so
Whip out that Medicaid card
And sit and wait for the African doctor and his Latino assistant
To be finished with the baby who's nose dripped like a faucet
Dripping with that cough that has made his throat so dry
His whine is kin to the sound of one of those
Old Toyotas painted yellow
With racer stripes.
And that trifflin' nigga
With his empty pockets
Won't feed the "family"
He'd rather sit on the couch playing his XBox 360
So for dinner, the specialty is served;
Easy Mac or Chef Boyardee Ravioli
What a feast.
But the baby is picky
Ungrateful
Even if he is just a baby
Anything is better than bread and welfare cheese.

- Sade' Miller

Hypothetically Thinking

Oh boy, how you've changed me.
We watched the seasons change together;
I met you in January and we decided to kick it in mid-spring
Oh... boy I've loved you since I was twelve and you were thirteen
My mother couldn't tell me nothin'.
And boy, I've watched you grow into a man
But I feel kicked to the curb
Under appreciated
For all those nights i risked my ass
To stay out 'til 4 in the morning
All to love you
Don't you remember?
And now I. have. no. clue
Who I am without love
This world doesn't make any sense
Because I don't know what it means to be alone
Boy I need you to help me to understand
The purpose of the other half of my body
You were my right hand
My best friend.
But now my arm has been amputated and there is no more we
But boy, I must admit
There isn't a moment that I don't wish
That you would come back to me
Even if it was all my fault
Even if it was all your fault
Hypothetically.

- Sade' Miller

September Thoughts

"I feel over stimulated, but in the most bittersweet capacity. Pure panic in my hands. Excitement. Shivering. Brain collapses. Brain surges. Sweaty Palms. Breathlessness." 

- Sade' Miller

In Memory

"In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing." - Robert Ingersoll

So Many Women's Disclaimer

   Please, don't call me beautiful because I'm human and I react irrationally in far too many situations, because I'm moody and my emotions aren't stable, and because I'm afraid that in 10 years I won't be able to recognize myself due to depression induced binge eating.
   No, don't call me beautiful because flowers are beautiful and I'm far too perplexing. It's impossible for me to be beautiful because love is beautiful. And I can not love because I'm too young to be selfless. I never gave you the chance to breathe the same air that I breathe, or to fall asleep comfortably on my breast, or to wake me up at 3 in the morning and though I'm cranky, I smile because you're beautiful. I gave up on a chance of discovering real love because the world wouldn't find Us beautiful. I never gave you the chance to get to know me and maybe, just maybe think that I'm beautiful too.

- Sade' Miller

When It All Falls Down

Self inflicted war wounds
While they laugh at us buffoons
Shooting needles at high noon
Making pennies from sweeping brooms
Religious prostitution
Poppin' coochies at the alter
Any man's fear of having daughters
Head held high in higher waters
And the water bill is high.

No endowment for our children
So we keep searching for excuses
Keep searching for excuses
But we all know that it's useless
The lies that we commit
Adults being adulterous
Where is God when you need him?

And my grandmother keeps trying to explain to me
What seems impossibly 
The tale of my forefathers being kings and queens
I do not come from a dynasty of,
Emeralds and diamonds
Because my mother's uncles hoarded crack rocks
Spreading their seed to 6 or 7 bellies

Ego trippin'.
Self evaluation. 
Stabilization. 
Stability. 
Avoiding all euphemisms. 
Embracing reality.
Where are you God?

Some may consider me blasphemous
Because I, get high and
Contest His Greatness
With marijuana eyes.
When it all falls down.

- Sade' Miller

Pretty Please

Today I woke up smiling and it felt so..
Organic
I had to cleanse my pallet and take a larger bite of life
Because my past left it bitter tasting
Like limes
But you,
You served me lemonade
I need to know
Are you mine or are you mine?
Like the earth is mine?
Or like those crinkled one dollar bills in my pocket?
I do not wish to rape your heart of its love
But a gift would be nice

- Sade' Miller

Morning Thoughts

"I woke up with life at my bedside.
Empty handed, it bore gifts.
I am grateful for whomever God may be. Good morning."

- Sade' Miller

So...

Today it's raining, and i can't help but think of how nice it would be to cuddle and watch a movie with my significant other (as if). But what the heck is love anyway? Poets, philosophers, playwrights and pop singers from Socrates to Beyonce have had a great deal to say about love. T'is a red, red rose; it is a battlefield; a drug, a delusion, a lunacy, the sunshine after a rain storm. I'm not certain of love's biology, but it has the tendency of becoming chemically insane, to the point that you can no longer tell if what you feel is really love, or if it's just an illusory need. Being as young as I am, many of my peers believe that love must be displayed in erotic fashions. The mysterious thing about real love is that it does not make you want to rip the beloved's clothes off at inappropriate moments; it is nothing to do with the wild urge to create a universe with only the two of you in it. Instead, it is the kind of profound affection that makes you smile at idiosyncrasies that anyone else would find pointless, or get the joke that nobody else will understand. This kind of love is built of the bricks of a hundred small memories and moments in time. The deep steady love that gets you through rainy days and financial crises and the small quotidian tasks that make up a life. This is why couples who have been together for 50 years always talk about marrying their best friend. Maybe it's not for me to understand just yet.

- Sade' Miller

When We Were Genus Apis

I...
Am in bliss
Every time we share erogenous kisses
Baby.
Don't wake me up 'til our love jisms smell like honey
And are sweet to taste
So when the winters are cold,
And the flowers have withered
We can feast like fat kings off of the fruit of our labor
And smile.

-Sade' Miller

"Lust For Life"

Virginia Thoughts

"I think the first time I lost my mind and fell in love all at once was when I realized that even silence had a sound. At the ebb of life's urgency, I heard GOD."

- Sade' Miller

Pots And Kettles

My family, who barely has any food to eat, is beautiful.

My family, with our array of beautiful skin tones and wavy hair is dying.

The very same family that can't even afford to live now has to pay for caskets  and flowers and earth to be thrown.

But first, I have to buy a new outfit because I wouldn't be caught dead wearing the same dress that I wore to the last funeral.

There Must Be A God Somewhere

I heard Heaven stirring above my head
The angels singing jazzes
Trumpets sounded;
Reminiscent of Wynton or Dizzy or Miles
They danced smooth
Too cool to be watching like
Emerald-eyed monsters outside of perfect,
Golden or pearly gates
And I listened to Heaven in awe
Sounded like sin;
'Cause the righteous and holy
that I learned of, slumped down in the pews of
prophetic churches;
Was serious and threatening and-
Sometimes put me to sleep if my mother wasn't watching too closely
I listened.
And wished that I could die
If that's what it took to be able
To dance till the first blush of day
Of everyday without blisters or
Callus on my feet
Jesus,
Swing low on your saccharine chariot and carry
Me
Home

-Sade' Miller