Category: Blog Post

You Remind Me of the Rain

Posted on by Warren Dalton

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Summer Showers and Fall Downpours

Hurricanes, Tempests, and Late Night Rhythms

You Remind Me of the Rain.

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Fresh Chilled Lips and Love Soaked Clothes

Unexpected with a Lightly Kissed Nose

You Remind Me of the Rain.

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Show My World in a Brand New Light

Shuffling People Indoors, Under Coats and Covers

You Remind Me of the Rain

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Tea in Hand and Windy Hips Swaying

Words Seeping Out A Wide Brim Smile and Babbling Giggles

You Remind Me of the Rain

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Hands Over Head Cheering

Relief in a Deserted Dream Fearing

You Remind Me of the Rain

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Bleak Repose and Warring Tumult

Tropical Storm Sinking, Inner Thoughts Streaking

You Remind Me of the Rain

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In Your Many Forms

And Everything that Comes with Them

You Remind of the Rain.

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The Act of Loving

Posted on by Warren Dalton

When the act of loving is missing,

you can really feel it.

It’s sweet words and squishy feelings

Without thick walls and drawn curtains

Its sex without foreplay

Or pulling teeth to get the

one thing you thought you’d both like to do… done.

It’s loneliness

Giving more of yourself then you can stand

It’s “What do you want me to do?!”

Yelled out while someone just

wants to you to hold them

It’s not being able to share your day

Your month

Your year

Your life

It’s walking around on egg shells

because if you put into words

the things that are really wrong

you’ll break things

and that might break you.

It’s the threat of leaving

Hanging over and spoken out loud

Drilling into your insecurities

But you know what you need.

So leave

Go and get it.

Passenger

Posted on by Warren Dalton

The car waits at the intersection way too long

The rhythm of the blinker keeps tick tick ticking

I come to a stop on yellow

And drive just a little too slow

But, it’s all to make the drive go smoothe

Check the mirrors a bit more than is expressly necessary

Don’t honk when that red truck cuts me off

Terrified by the swerving semi

White knuckles on big black hands

But it’s all to make the drive go smoothe

Glancing at you out of the corner of my eye

While streetlights paint your sleeping face

Not even singing when my song comes on

Filling my heart as each mile passes

Whispered “I love you”s under my breath

But it’s all I can do to make the drive go smoothe smoothe.

Self-care

Posted on by Warren Dalton

I got my hair done on Tuesday and it feels great. You know that feeling where  you don’t feel like yourself unless you’rein your favorite sweatshirt or jeans or everything just isn’t right until your make up is done? Well that’s me. I love my braids. When I picture myself as a successful person/writer it’s with braids. Maybe it’s weird but, it just makes me feel at home in my own skin. For me having them in is self care.

I have spent a lot of time this year on taking care of myself. Trying to lose a bit of weight, incorporating a skincare routine and, even bought a watch for trying to work through the ADHD time slippage. I want to come out better from this terrible year.

Self-care is so important. I know myself and without it I kind of just subsist in the world. The depression hits and I just spend all day playing games or something just to try to relax. I’m not saying videogames aren’t effective self-care but, I think for me and just the types of games I play there just isn’t always that same sense of accomplishment I get from just making sure I did two face masks this week. I’ve realized besides writing it kind of just makes me feel like I got something done and I am overall better for the ten minutes I took to do it.

I began throwing out a bunch of the old mess in my room leftover from a previous person and donated some clothes too. It’s odd sometimes what throwing a bag of trash out will do for your mind. ( I should probably clean up more often. It’s not gonna happen but, I probably should.) I have been feeling a little freer in this past week and I’m hoping I can keep up the momentum. Keep changing enough small things to make me a stronger more well-rounded person. To me, my self-care is trying to improve minuscule things over and over again to eventually create a chain reaction of positive change.

Rest In Peace Chadwick Boseman

Posted on by Warren Dalton

I have spent much of this day mulling with my feelings of grief of what exactly I wanted to say. We lost a king last night. A man who through his own determination he lived with cancer and became a hero to millions of people. With his ability he helped to start a movement, shatter a long held myth in Hollywood. All of this while fighting for his life. All of this while fighting for his life. I will always look up to Chadwick Boseman.

I know he had other impactful roles, like Jackie Robinson, James Brown, and Thurgood Marshall; I also found him one of the best parts of Da 5 Bloods but, Black Panther changed my life. For the first time in an extremely public way I was out and proud to be Black. Not just with my family but, on social media, on the street, in my friendships. I felt proud of my skin, my culture, my history, and our culture. It healed some broken part of me. I’ve become way more outspoken on Black issues and began fighting for them in my every day. Thank you Chadwick Boseman.

When I see all the art and the pictures of people crying I can’t help but to share their pain. I was foolish enough to believe death couldn’t hurt me anymore but, last night showed me I was wrong. My deepest condolences to his family and everyone who’s in mourning. You gave us Wakanda,you will be missed, Chadwick Boseman.

Rest In Peace to our King. Rest In Peace to our Black Panther. Wakanda Forever!

I wrote a blog post a while ago about Black Heroes. He is one and he will always be. I borrowed this artwork from Vicbazaine. Thank you.

1:37

Posted on by Warren Dalton

It starts.

At 1:37 am it starts,

A tightness in my chest that starts like a bulb.

It spreads crawling, winding all over me until

Chest, shoulders, upper arms, neck.

I can’t draw breath.

But, I know what I must do!

I stagger bleary-eyed to my computer

Why didn’t I just go to bed!

My mind screams at me

Tight, Tighter, Tighten

It’s over my clothes now,

Into my seams

The only way to rid my self of this poison…

I bleed it out,

The cold knife slips into to a well-worn vein.

On the keyboard,

Splattered on the walls,

The light from the screen is tainted.

Showing lifeless blue through scarlet life

I am free.

Bloodlet from creativity

Maybe now I can turn over

Maybe now I can get some sleep.

Stand Tall

Posted on by Warren Dalton

You’ve stood tall and I marvel in your shadow

I watch seige engines of hate, vitriol, abuse, and harrasment hammer at your defenses.

You aren’t strong because your perfect,

Crenellations designed by a genius hand,

And not because you’re always okay

But because you’re still here.

You’ve stood the test of time.

Maybe to you it’s not a real accomplishment,

And it’s not worth celebrating.

Others have crumbled under less

But you still stand tall

And I look up to you everyday,

seeing in you peerless strenght

Your Truth

Posted on by Warren Dalton

They starved you at a feast.

Tied to a chair and watched those around you

Stuffing faces and

Having over full bellies,

Rubbed.

While you cried,

 

Died,

Wasting away until you couldn’t even be tied with ropes.

 

Hopes,

Put on someone who could save you died

On dried and cracked lips

 

Hips

Only thing you thought you were good for was cock rocking and moaning

And groaning you did away with their pain

 

Rain

Came down torrential

Unintentional but, it’s all your fault,

Right?

 

Plight

Goes on unanswered everyday,

everyway you asked and pleaded

They stood up and retreated,

defeated you cried,

died felt the pain,

the rain,

and like a current you were dragged again and again.

They weren’t enough, much too rough.

They got cut,

And you were the one to bleed.

Their need the same refrain.

 

Remains,

You gathered them up in fragile arms.

A magpie in the wild,

A raccoon in the woods,

Collecting and erecting the skeleton of a life you could love

 

Shoved

Down, drowned in rivers of your own fears

Gasping for air

 

Hair,

You cut just to divest from the stress of a world closing in,

Hoping that a change on the outside

Will rearrange you inside

 

Ride it out,

Breathe it in,

Quell the storm that rages within,

 

Kin

Never loved you,

When you needed them they abandoned you too.

Shamed and Blamed you too

 

Withdrew,

Into yourself,

Into your art,

Into your head,

To your core.

 

Ore.

You found a prize behind the pain.

Didn’t get better,

You got even!

Decided to soar higher than anyone’s expectations

You believed in you,

Got through.

Thrived.

Striving to be more,

And greater.

You smashed the ceiling

 

Unfeeling,

As the glass cut you

Because you learned long ago,

That success didn’t happen without a little discomfort.

Your life started out tough,

But you know that terrain.

Here’s your refrain.

It’s all uphill from here.

You’ve kissed the sky.

And Helios touched you!

 

Used to be a victim of your own mind,

Reflect, directed it back and

Now…

You know your own truth

 

Spark

Posted on by Warren Dalton

I feel at times like a dark room

Full of possibility, promise, and a hint of threat

A match struck

and revealed in me something

I wasn’t aware I needed.

The red light seared my weakened eyes

And then I beheld it.

 

Dimension, volume, and purpose

And when it left

I’m left with more woe than was ever known before

As if light itself was always meant to be…

Fleeting.

 

With just one flash it solidified my walls

threw away nebulosity

and because of that,

I feel,

I can’t return to the void again.

 

Should I wait

Hold my breath and suffer

or am I subsisting on nothing more than a blank promise?

And if were to come another time

instead of merely beholding it’s quenching glow

I will find my own light switch

and shine the light that was always meant to be mine.

Permanence

Posted on by Warren Dalton

I have a weird thing about writing in notebooks. It’s weird I can put pixel to pixel but, pen to paper seems too permanent. I have tens of unfinished notebooks and none of them are filled. I don’t know what about it screams like once you finish it you can’t get it back… I mean I can go out and buy a new notebook but, it always feels like my words aren’t good enough for the page. Like I’m taking this space up from someone else.

I was cleaning up some of my old stuff and I found a few notebooks I hadn’t gotten to more than halfway with. Honestly, that’s a whole lot for me I mean halfway? Me?! but, it was a shock to me that none of my old childhood notebooks were even full. Did I even know back then that imposter syndrome would hit me so hard?

It’s crazy looking back on the things that I thought were important. The things that I wrote down. What girls I liked back then, my idea for Black Widowman, (This was of course before I: Knew that Black Widow existed and B. Before I knew what a widow was. So please don’t judge me too harshly.) scrawn ideas that flit through my ADHD mind while I was definitely thinking of other things except for school work.

I think besides just the imposter syndrome I have trouble taking up space. I have trouble just existing in my fullness. I have become unapologetic in the parts of my personality that’s not toxic but, I still feel like I don’t deserve the space I take up.

It’s a sobering kind of thought, really. I mean I don’t understand the people who can. Do they just decide one day that the space they take up is their own? Or is it a more gradual thing? Am I being polite or just subservient? I know it’s something I have to change about myself but, I don’t really know how so I’m just sitting here. Trying to fill this old notebook I got from an ex.