my bucket list

the term bucket list of course is inspired by the recent jack nicholson/morgan freeman flick about two older dudes who make a list of things to do before they kick the bucket. unfortunately i haven't seen the movie but tiffany, kimpossible, and a. hill inspired me with their bucket lists so i thought i would come up with my own.

we all have ideas of things we dream to do if the world were perfect, if we knew we couldn't fail, if we had an everlasting supply of money. something about dreaming of these things brings the true desires of our heart to the surface. makes things seem a lot more possible than they might at first glance. so dear readers, here is my bucket list, in no particular order and definitely not exhaustive. i'm hoping to add more to the list as life goes on...

1. experience questlove deejaying live
2. get published in essence magazine
3. get published in o magazine
4. get published in urb magazine
5. write and publish at least two books (hopefully more!)
6. travel to italy for at least a two week trip
7. travel to africa for at least a three week trip
8. attend a jay-z concert with my brother robert
9. travel to israel
10. take a cross country road trip when i really have time to take my time and enjoy it
11. research my family origin on both sides similar to african american lives
12. be a part of a mentoring program for young women
13. go to the u.s. open with my grandma and family
14. take my grandma to a real scrabble tournament
15. learn how to salsa dance and chicago step (instead of that fronting i do when step in the name of love comes on :O)
16. finish the scrapbook of all these pictures, programs, tickets, greeting cards, notes, letters etc that i've been saving all these years
17. check out eric roberson's night at SOB's
18. marry somebody i love, who's my friend, and can tolerate me getting on his nerves and vice versa and have some babies
19. organize a girlfriends trip for my close friends, esp the ones i rarely get to see
20. learn how to cook at least 15 dishes very well!
21. make it through 80 minutes of yoga without having to lay down for a few minutes
22. take better care of my health
23. see earth, wind, & fire and frankie beverly & maze live
24. travel to the caribbean
25. take my mom to the schomburg
26. leave life with little to no regrets
27. not let fear keep me from doing anything
28. be real with myself and with God

10 Favorite Spike Lee Flicks

my mom got me hooked on spike lee flicks starting with mo better blues. this is when I became oh so well acquainted with classic spike technique. first, the jazz score. no spike lee joint is complete without some sort of jazz seeping right out of a scene as if it is a character in and of itself. second, is the spike lee shot, used in nearly every spike lee film…I'm sure there is a technical name for this, if you are a film head help me out here. now on my top ten spike lee joints…

1. mo better blues
2. malcolm x



3. four little girls
4. do the right thing



5. jungle fever
6. bamboozled
7. school daze



8. when the levees broke
9. she's gotta have it
10. get on the bus

10 Things a Single Woman Hates to Hear

a few weeks ago, kimpossible and I traveled down to orlando, fl for the fusion experience. sponsored by Rightnow.org, fusion is a conference that encourages 20 and 30 somethings to live their faith out of the box and this is my fourth year being a part. along with co-emceeing the event with marc mccartney, I do some poems, and facilitate a breakout session.

as an opener for my session, "for single women only," I emailed some of my single female friends to poll them on the things they hate to hear. after receiving humorous emails and ignorant stories I siphoned the list to 10 things. shoutout to all the ladies who attended my session in Orlando and those who attended the first "for single women only" in dallas. for your reading pleasure…

10 Things a Single Woman Hates to Hear

1. When am I gonna have some grandchildren?
I actually just had to deal with this question recently for the first time. for the most part my family encourages me to pursue my dreams and I don't get too much pressure. but in the not too distant past a loved one who will remain nameless recently inquired of when I might be getting on this grandchildren train. I of course shifted focus to other family members who are married with kids, but no such luck. it's clear that this conversation was not about grandkids in general. it was specifically about grandkids with half my genes. lol I told said loved one…let's work on the getting married part first then we can talk about grandkids. lol

2. When is your boyfriend going to propose?
some of the ladies who are boo'd up said that they get the proposal pressure from the family and friends…may be worse around holidays. :O

3. There is someone out there…
I've always wondered about this one. On my most cynical day I was like really…have you seen him?!

4. It'll happen when you least expect it.
Raise your hand single women if you have tried to "least expect it" just so "it" will happen! LOL Dang…but I would have to say every time “it” happened to me, it happened when I least expected it. Okay, maybe there’s some truth to this one! :D

5. I know this really nice guy you'd be interested in.
I would tell my worst "let me hook you up" story but it cannot be blogged about. I must tell it in person. lol all I can say is be wary of letting your co-workers set you up! if you see me in the street I'll spill the gory details.

6. If you just _____, you could get a man.
This is an interesting one. Now, I'm not denying that all of us could probably use some growth, maturity, change. But if your only purpose for changing or growing is to nab a man, i venture to say it's not a good look.

7. I'm not ready for a committed relationship, but I still want to hang out with you.
This one received terrible reviews from my email responses and I quote "This is called: Trying to have their cake and eat it too....HECK NO!!!"
8. You're such a cool girl, why can't my girlfriend be more like you?
Dang, I don't even have a comment! lol

9. Why are you still single?
This was the response I received the most from my single female friends. No matter who's asking, something about this question is highly frustrating. Like if I knew why I was single…wouldn't I change it?! But I think a guy's perspective may help on this one. My friend Caleb shed some light. He said when a man says this to a woman, it's normally a compliment. Like he thinks you're so great he wonders why you're still single. Not like what in the world is wrong with you. LOL So before you answer this one, take a deep breath and have some positive thoughts. :)

10. We're never gonna get married.
At a roundtable of girlfriends, powwowing on the latest dating/relationship escapades this statement is likely to be tossed around. I've said it and I've heard it said. It's the fallback from your last dating experience, the defense mechanism many single women hope keeps them from hurt and disappointment.
Now…I'm not gonna get on my soapbox…at least not in this blog. lol But I firmly believe there's no use in bemoaning where you are in life in hopes of being someplace better. Enjoy wherever you are and live life to the fullest…I'll be covering this topic more in future blogs. I gotta end with a quote that inspires me no matter how many times any of these ten things.

"And don't be wishing you were someplace else or with someone else. Where you are right now is God's place for you. Live and obey and love and believe right there. God, not your marital status, defines your life." – Paul (The Message)

Single ladies…did I miss any of the things you hate to hear? Fellas anything you want to add? A blog with the male perspective on this topic is coming soon…

10 Favorite Movie Scenes

this blog is inspired by the movie that thing you do. every time this movie comes on tv I literally sit there and watch the whole movie for a 30 second scene, which is one of the ten scenes here. liv tyler's lines in that 30 seconds stick with me every time! I also admit dear reader that the color purple appears more than once in this list. if I thought about it I probably could have catalogued 10 scenes from the color purple alone! :O for your reading pleasure…

1. God is trying to tell you something – the color purple


2. you a liar and you a cheat – the jacksons: american dream (check in at 3:00)


3. thousands of kisses – that thing you do


4. follow the drip – house party


5. kills your brain cells, son. – lean on me


6. When you figure out you want to spend the rest of your life with someone you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. – when harry met sally


7. the last scene of fatal attraction

8. did I ever ask you for anything?! – the color purple

9. "sista" – the color purple (including "harpo, who dis woman?"


10. proud mary – what's love got to do with it?

Excerpt from CS Mag Cover Story

Here is an excerpt from the CS Mag Cover Story, March 2008. I'll post the full version of the article in June.

Hear Me Say…
by: Amy Jacobs

Spoken word artist Amena Brown finds her voice in unlikely places

“Are you a night owl?” Amena Brown asked as we exchanged a string of e-mails in hopes of finding time to talk. She’s a night owl – and there’s good reason. Amena juggles work as a spoken word artist, a music journalist, a poet, and still manages to hold down a corporate America day job. So, a phone interview at 11:00 p.m. was a matter of necessity – quite frankly, there aren’t enough hours in Amena’s day.

While we spoke at length, Amena probably should have been packing her bags for the back-to-back conferences where she would be speaking and performing during the next few days. Instead she gave me her undivided attention as she told me what it is to be Amena Brown.

BEYOND THE RHYME

Amena is most commonly known for worshipful poetry she’s written and performed at gatherings such as Passion and LeadNow conferences. Her gift for spoken word led her into the thick of ministry, but that was never Amena’s intention. She simply loved poetry, and was willing to walk through each door God opened.

Amena’s mother instilled in her a love for words, and from a young age she found writing to be her greatest form of self-expression. Years later, as she sat in Atlanta coffee bars and clubs, Amena was exposed to a world of performance poetry that changed her life. “I encountered so many people who are great poets. I heard people who are darn good at what they do, people who knew how to say what they wanted to say. I was inspired,” she shares.

Week after week as she looked around the places she went to hear poetry, she saw people crammed into rooms, shoulder to shoulder. Amena noticed that the audience came seeking something – they wanted to hear truth. The topic didn’t matter as long as someone spoke with conviction and talked about the truth of his or her life. “When I realized that’s why people come to these clubs, I remember telling God that I wanted to go into rooms like this and share who He is,” Amena recalls. “Maybe the audience would identify with it and eventually respect that it’s true.”

Although she comes from a heritage of ministry, Amena never had any ambition of performing in church. In her world, people who performed spoken word did it for the love of poetry. Sure she might write a piece of poetry about God, but she would perform it where all the poets were, not necessarily for a congregation of believers.

Today, most of Amena’s Christian audiences want to hear her poems, and lately she’s been asked to perform and lead breakout sessions at conferences. “From what they hear, they think I’m a worship leader,” Amena says. In her eyes, she’s far from being a worship leader. She’s just sharing a gift God has given her, and she’s as likely to do that in a smoky bar as a church.

Made the slam team!

it's 1 am and i should be asleep. monday awaits. but i couldn't let the night pass without blogging. :) the java monkey slam finals were tonight and i made the team along with gypsee yo, chas, and shannon leigh, with bryan patillo as slam master. it was all in all a night of great poetry. from the sacrificial poets courtney and jon goode, to the final round.

shoutouts!: thanks to kimpossible, tim, kwajelyn, celita, ashley, drea, my lovely sister keda, my beautiful mom jeanne, kyana, jon goode, gypsee yo, ebony janice, byron, asha, and myra for showing a sista so much love and support.

this is my third try at making the java monkey team and through the process i have learned that slam is a tricky thing. it's not something to base your value on as a poet. it's a competition, it's numbers, scores, strategy, with a lil entertainment mixed in. i like it because it challenges me, pushes me to take my work and my performance to another level. so at the end of the whole thing you gotta feel good about what you do, about what you say, and at least be able to walk off stage proud of yourself.

kudos to each poet that made it to the finals, the abovementioned and a.p., mista funn, chiara, lady, and stefen. i'll keep you all posted on the prep for nationals.

10 Quotes about Poetry

I wrote my first book of poetry in the fourth grade. mrs. perry’s class. mrs. perry was a large woman, jovial with glasses thick like microscope lenses and curly salt and pepper hair that had better body than many of the chicks in the pert plus commercial. it was January and we had read poems and quotes about dr. king.

mrs. perry armed us with white copy paper, markers, crayons, colored pencils and freed our eight year old minds to write poems and draw our own illustrations. once we had written the work, we did what we had no idea many writers must do. we self-published. we were responsible for writing, illustrating, binding, and coming up with cover art. my friend porsha had the genius idea of using old hand towels as the cover. my hand towel had a blue butterfly spread across it which matched perfectly with the electric blue duct tape that would become the book’s spine.

mrs. perry encouraged something that my mom had started in me before I was born. a love for words. mrs. perry’s book assignment showed me the power of not only honoring my own words but that words can be a gift that you leave for others. like an inheritance. today, I don’t have that blue butterfly hand towel or the duct tape, but I’m still writing, illustrating, packaging, hoping that someone will happen upon these words and find encouragement in them. in honor of national poetry month…ten quotes about poetry.

1. Writers don’t write from experience, although many are hesitant to admit that they don’t. ...If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.—Nikki Giovanni

2. I always write a good first line, but I have trouble in writing the others.-- Molière [Jean Baptiste Poquelin]

3. But all art is sensual and poetry particularly so. It is directly, that is, of the senses, and since the senses do not exist without an object for their employment all art is necessarily objective. It doesn’t declaim or explain, it presents. – William Carlos Williams

4. All poets, all writers are political. They either maintain the status quo, or they say, ’Something’s wrong, let’s change it for the better.’ – Sonia Sanchez

5. One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

6. The trouble with America isn’t that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy. – Louis Kronenberger

7. My role in society, or any artist or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all. – John Lennon

8. I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests. – Pablo Neruda

9. At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet. – Plato

10. Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing with wanting, with denying with avoiding with adoring with replacing the noun. It is doing that always doing that, doing that and doing nothing but that. Poetry is doing nothing but using losing refusing and pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no matter what kind of poetry it is. And there are a great many kinds of poetry. – Gertrude Stein