From Where I Sit…

Coming home late on night after a business trip I was locked out and had to wait for someone to bring me a key. As I sat on the porch I started listening to all the night sounds and this poem came from it:

At half past eleven…I am keeping an eye on…Over-stuffed, alabaster clouds…On a merry chase…Dancing nimbly on a backdrop of inky stained linen sky.A solitary brightening…From a lone-star on this balmy nigh.I enjoy the engagement of spring…Husky, endearing sounds of hope.Could it be possible?From where I sit.That peace-ness can reign supreme?Though off in the miserly distance…Staccato popping shatters the still.Aie! For a few seconds…Peace-ness was denied.Yet, from where I sit.Among the gardenias, oaks and honeysuckle’s.Peace-ness flows again…From rivers to stream.At half past eleven…And from where I sit…It is all I’ll ever need.All rights reserved JHM 3-8-02 ©

Listening to the Children

Poems belong are snippets written by children at that time who were ages 8-11 who are in their late teens today. I was teaching at a summer art camp for the New Orleans Contemporary Art Center a clss on quilting & poetry and these are some of their prose in honor of National Poetry Month...


Shhhh...Listen! Can you hear it when they saying?
Veronique's poem...

What's wrong...
When will it be done?
Senators and mayors don't pay attention...
They are in another dimension.
When will we see?
It just won't be?
We will never be important...


Because we are forgotten...
We need something new.
Who will it be?
Me?
Or you?

Brandon's poem...
There is a man...
Not the man up above.
He glows...
He glows like a light bulb.
This person is funny.
He gives me money.
And makes me laugh like the Easter bunny.
I hope he doesn't bother...
That I call him Father.

Shhh are you hearing...
Keutrall's poem...
When I think of my picture ...
I think of stars.
Rotating in the direction of moving cars.
I think of the solar system
and how it changes each and every day.
I look up in the stars...
And wonder all the time.
And that's how I got this beautiful rhyme.
So if you came to be free...
One lovely night.
Look up at the stars...
You'll see they are alright.

Brian's poem...
I made a flower...
Because I had nothing better to make...
But everyone thinks its great,
though I think it stinks....
Oh well, I'll live!

Shhhhh... Listen! Can you hear it?
Brian's poem...
Who is to say a face is normal?
Who knows what normal anyway?
Is it, so wrong to have different color eyes?
It doesn't matter if your nose is round.
Or your mouth is multicolor.
The only thing that really matters...
Is what in your heart.
If it's love...
You'll know that,
you were normal from the start...

Conga

Griot (storyteller) mesmerizing children at Stagville

Footprints Quilt at lecture I was giving at Stagville Plantation 06

t

Drumming Circle at Stagville Plantation Horton Slave Row,NC JHM©03

Conga

I hear the beat of a different drummer…

Whose hands are callused from a continual call that too often falls on deaf ears?
It entreats you to listen, pay attention, and heed the call.

Yet the drummer continues to send out the message.

And sometimes, so faintly caught in the wind are snatches of the word heard.

And reverberates, piercing the marrow of the one whose heart’s ears hear.

And the rhythms’ sounds begin to pound.

Like rain shining down on the river’s water.

And the aching heart responds to the call of the drummer’s relentless pounding.

In the interior of the walls of their heart something long ago stirs up.

And impels them to move, despite the resistance of a world who’s prized jewel…

Is the ability to diminish, to tear down and deny the freeness of the ones to shine beyond all light?


I hear the beat of a different drummer whose hands are callused from a continual call.
But my ears are unstopped and despite it all.

I get up and move toward the sound

All rights reserved JHM 3-11-03©

I Wanna Send to ya…

"Love Dem Arts"©00JHM

By Jacquelyn Hughes Mooney©02


I wanna send some swing to ya…

My solitude is not a millstone imbibed in a gilded cup behind translucent shades.

Ya see…

I’ve been rocked by the wind and warmed by the sun.

Is my green blued?

As in a finely tuned riff?

Or did the purple immersed samba graced a sienna sky?

I wanna throw some rhythms to ya…

As you incline on the red leather de-vine…

With…

your…

Main…

Squeeze.

Sharing the sanctuary with my moments .

That will groove and then settles behind my right shoulder waiting for the muse…
To begin.


I wanna hold the be-bop for ya…

Straight ahead to the road…

Where purple moons will come and purpler heavens to meet ya.

Incline your ear toward majestic sharps…

That grabs and pull ya!

Grace the tunes…

Is my green blue?

Or my round up?

Now swang will ya?

So the funk can get to ya!

I wanna groove the soul to ya…

Suspended, I am.

By the crooning in my heart.

The in-between submerged right behind my left ear where all my hopes and dreams…

Begged to begin.

Love-ness in the yearning-flower, seeking the right words to explain itself.

Showering the scope.

And then…

I wanna exude the blues to ya.

I was born by the rivers and the whistle-walks.

Where the wind ran at liberty and there were no enclosures…

For the spot between my eyes where all that I will be dwells.

And the blues continues.

I wanna flow the jazz to ya…

With silvered sculptured treble clefs…

Washing over curried brick clay.

Enchanted with…

Yeah it was…

Mellowed afternoon sun showering over a red leather de-vine.

Toward mellowed days and mellower nights.

And that is what I want to send to ya.

All rights reserved © 3-7-02 JHM

Stole away Quilt

"Stolen Away" Quilt photo shot at Horton Slave Row, Stagville Plantation, North Carolina. Quilt was actually stolen when on display in Greensboro,NC event. I had purchased from an elderly woman from Mississippi who was being exploited by her "rep" at an exhibition in New Orleans in 2003. I could not stand to see her not being paid well for her labor & paid the asking price but slipped her a few hundred more. it broke my heart when someone decided they wanted it more then I.

It is just now I can speak of it...

Stole Away Quilt
By Jacquelyn Hughes Mooney©09

When you stole away the quilt with nary a thought
of its grieved away heartbreak/ you took with you/ snatching away/ a something that was not yours to have/ when you stole away that quilt/ of 88 years of living/whose breath/has now been stolen/when the life/was blown away/lost now/ with Katrina winds/in a Mississippi rising/when you stole away that quilt/wrinkled hands/
matching brow/with sounds ‘n symbols/of kidnapped lives/ that were seized/when you
stole away that quilt
All right reserved JHM 4-1-09©

In the month of April

April is also National Poetry Month. I will be posting a poem a day for my joy and I trust your pleasure...

Just Today

By Jacquelyn Hughes Mooney©09

It was virtually nothing except bare walls when I moved in.

And now I have trees to sit under with sweet smelling jasmine and honeysuckle and honey birds…

Any time now my golden shower is going to break out as an absolutely magnificent mural raining…

I am back in my peaceful centre and all is well with the world.

And even be able to conjure up the energy to dance at the edge of dawn in my garden…
If it

was only just today
All rights reservedJHM 3-31-09©

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In the Midst

"What you Say?" quilt 06JHM for Ray Charles

April is National Quilt Month. Remove the word "just" a quilt from your vocabulary & read about how the laying of hands to cloth has be a huge contribution to the recording of life for milleniums.

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