Where I Come From - Softcover

Redd, Asia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1491857404 ISBN 13: 9781491857403

Publisher: AuthorHouse, 2014

Synopsis

Where I Come From Asia shares her childhood experiences of riding at the back of the bus. As well as, other experiences that were considered normal styles of living for a sharecropper on an old abandon farm. Inspirational poems of wisdom and encouragement are birthed from the lessons. Created with every intense moment and struggle that was a turning point. Asia had to discover her own path and destiny in life with many unknowing hardships.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Where I Come From

By Asia Redd

AuthorHouse LLC

Copyright © 2014 Asia Redd
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4918-5740-3

Contents

A Better View, 1, 
A Boy, 2, 
A Brown Shack, 3, 
A Colored Bunch story, 4, 
A cricket offer, 5, 
A Curious Men, 6, 
After Dark, 7, 
A Message, 8, 
A New One, 9, 
An Experience, 10, 
Anger Out on Me, 11, 
An Opportune Time, 12, 
A Normal Friend, 13, 
Another World, 14, 
A Plan, 15, 
A Rabbit, 16, 
A Sip, 18, 
A Soldier, 19, 
Attitude, 21, 
At War, 22, 
Baker's hand, 23, 
Beans and Rice, 24, 
Before You Get Old, 25, 
Better, 26, 
Black, 27, 
Black Cat, 28, 
Blessed, 29, 
Bus, 30, 
Caution, 31, 
Chance, 32, 
Charitable, 33, 
Chilly, 34, 
Come Home, 35, 
Cotton pickers, 36, 
Disconnect, 37, 
Do Not, 38, 
Excuse Me, 39, 
Fitting, 40, 
Flowers, 41, 
Forty Years, 42, 
Free, 43, 
Fussy Red, 44, 
Gentle, 45, 
Gigantic, 46, 
Girl, 47, 
Green Leaves, 48, 
Hands are Pens, 49, 
Heat wave, 51, 
Hidden Knowledge, 52, 
How Hard Can It Be, 53, 
I am, 54, 
I Carry, 55, 
Identification, 56, 
I Do Believe, 57, 
I know, 58, 
In addition to that, 59, 
Indefinite, 60, 
In The Middle of April, 61, 
I remember, 62, 
Iron Pan, 63, 
I saw a bird, 64, 
I tilt my hat, 65, 
I Was Told, 66, 
I Wish, 67, 
I Would, 68, 
I write, 69, 
Judge, 70, 
Labor, 71, 
Learning, 72, 
Lies, 73, 
Love, 74, 
Me and Mama, 75, 
Meet Me, 77, 
Milk can, 78, 
Mine his Ways, 79, 
Moving forward, 80, 
Mr H and His Ladies, 81, 
My Country, 82, 
My Pet, 83, 
My Story, 84, 
No Clue, 86, 
Over A Farm, 87, 
Pain and Grief, 89, 
Pappy, 90, 
Precious Love, 91, 
Rhymes Come at Me, 92, 
Sand man, 93, 
Scattered Words, 94, 
Shadows, 95, 
Silent, 96, 
Slightly Bitter, 97, 
Small Birds, 98, 
Success, 99, 
The G Train, 100, 
Thursday Dinner, 101, 
Wealth, 102, 
When, 103, 
when I grew older, 105, 
Will I See, 106, 

CHAPTER 1

    A Better View

    I use to think I was
    Able to solve
    Every problem in this
    World when I was
    young and bold.

    When I had laughter
    through the years
    and there was no such
    thing known as fear
    whispering in my ear,

    I am not the same person
    I used to be
    Rewind.

    Captivating the good times and
    dispelling the blue, as I
    cheerfully reach out to refocus
    on a better view.


    A Boy

    Where them underpants at little
    nappy head boy?
    I don't know I haven't never had none.
    where your walking shoes at?
    I don't know I haven't never own none.
    got anything else to say other than them handful of words?
    I don't know he replied I haven't never learned none.
    where have you been all the while?
    been in the corn field all the day,
    trying to pick corn to earn my way.


    A Brown Shack

    Over mountains that touch
    the sky,
    that extends far above the
    natural eye,
    a brown shack built to house
    cows, corn stacks, and dried
    farmer's hay,
    stands north of the foothills,
    of the American Cherokees.
    after the demolishment of the
    native teepee hut,
    now sits a brown wooden shack
    guarded by a long-eared dog
    named Mack the mutt.


    A Colored Bunch story

    Here comes the black soldiers riding six beautiful brown horses on
    a
    security patrol,
    circling around a little brown wooden praise church
    like they have been told.
    from the bible the preacher was
    teaching too much, and that was
    against the law for the colored
    bunch.
    the preacher man said he was
    going to teach the love of God
    until the day he die, and he
    would be willing to look the devil
    straight in the eye.
    One Sunday the black soldiers
    did not attend, and that was when
    the devil came sneaking in.
    to cut off preacher man's fingers and
    when they were finished his face was no longer black, when the
    black
    stallion came dragging his limp body back.
    making the announcement that
    church had officially came to an end.

A cricket offer

A cricket came to
My bedroom window
And offered me
Something that

My mother said I
Could not have
But I remember it
Was better to be
Obedient than to
Not to obey

So I ask him to
Leave and come
Back When I am
Much older.

    A Curious Men

    Down in the back woods
    underneath thick trees
    beyond my understanding,
    sits a curious man who doesn't
    seem to know what to do with his
    hands.
    So he keeps them tucked away
    in his pants half the day.
    with the other half he plows the
    fields.


    After Dark

    After dark is a scary place being at night.
    If your skin don't glow in the dark,
    there is such thing with teeth sharp as fangs
    and carried a tail as long as a trail,
    drunken with wine.
    It flies through the quiet
    Trees and hides in the silent woods,
    and walk down long diet roads
    during the night time
    tip-toeing into wooden broken down shades
    left behind with no hinges
    on the doors or windows on the walls.
    With no one to hear when you call,
    only an echo bouncing off the walls.


    A Message

    Don't cry everytime
    When the rain must fall.
    Instead keep silent and listen to its beat,
    There is a message when the rain drops fall and go
    Pat, pat, pat
    You can hear the rhyme
    down in your feet.
    dancing to the pouring
    rain making music to your ears.
    As nature sings the best
    Song to mankind,
    soothing human fears and tears.


    A New One

    I found a new one,
    wearing a white lambs jacket
    and a pair of raving wolf's black
    church going shoes.

    when he kissed me on my forehead,
    then he slapped me on the back
    of my two sugar brown ships carrying
    a load, he scratched his
    head continuely.
    He asked to take a quick ride upon my ship
    until he could
    figure out how he was going
    to cross his sea.


    An Experience

    Learning is an experience
    that you might have
    to do over, and over
    and over until you finally
    see what it is you
    have the need to
    learn.

Anger Out on Me

A ragging bee takes his
Anger out on me

I like to send him to
Anger management
Class if he would attend

I bend to the left
I bend to the right
He keeps the beat and
Stays With me on every step

I don't understand why he
Frantically keeps diving at me
From each side as if I have stuck
A finger inside his honey bee hive

Is it the honeysuckle flowers?
I stopped alongside the pasture
To pick
Or perhaps his wife kicked him
Out and he misses her honey sweet
Scent

Whatever the reason maybe
Every summer this angry bumble
Bee come chasing at me


An Opportune Time

I get these sprouts of desperate
Words dangling through my
Peace of mind.

At opportune times speaking
To me in a loud tone
They yell hello! Hello! pick me
Sometimes
I see rhyme flying like a flying
Saucer coming directly towards
My face
As quickly as I can I reach out to
Capture them
I dash for a pen then I rush to
Get a piece of paper


A Normal Friend

I have asked a milk cow to play pitty-pat,
But instead he cried moo
And flopped down on his spotted back.

I have packed him a ruby red apple inside a picnic basket,
He reached for the apple and slinged the
basket and swinged until he trashed
The basket.
Although he did not understand,
He placed on me a high demand.
When all I seek was a normal friend to hold
My hand and eat with me from this tin can


Another World

The ocean is another world
On the earth
It is the for bitten berry that
Men dare not eat of

The ocean is an alien to man
And not yet discovered
By brains too small to know
The function of every creature
That dwell in the deep
Of the deepest where brains
Larger than man dwell

The creator has not equipped
Him with the knowledge to
Make the voyage nor with a
Body strong enough to survive
Where bodies larger than he
Can only survive

    A Plan

    Life was not
    about me growing
    up in a barn,
    it was about me
    having a plan to
    leave that farm.

A Rabbit

A rabbit
Ran astray
He was called A run away

He ran through
The breeze way
Out the doorway
Down the roadway
Into the subway

But he did not
Have the money to
Pay the toll way

He did a quick survey
Of the ship way
And ran up the
Stairway

Between crowds
Waiting at the thruway
With no passé
To enter the pass way
He knew that he could
End up on an entrée tray

So he dashed onto
A sleigh sitting in his
Pathway

Someway
Somehow
With help from above

A man wearing a
Toupee, yells
Let him stay
I'll pay his way to the UK.


A Sip

Water came up from a outside well
In front of a little brown hut
In the middle of a deserted
Cornfield

To quench my thirsty tongue
After I fold my hands into a
Little brown cup

Before I take a merciless sip
From the little cup
I separate the swimming
Bugs from the brown water then
I form my thankful hands into a ship

I wonder if the little bugs notice
The change when I make the
Shift between the cup and a ship


A Soldier

When a soldier goes to war
He contributes two helping
Hands,
Two working feet
Two physically fit legs
Two watchful eyes
Two clever ears
Four crafty fingers
And two skillful thumbs

At the end of the day
When the war he has fought
Is since then long gone
And the war in his mind carries on
When he arrives back at home
With tied aching feet
Particle hearing loss in both ears
Two slipping knee caps that use
To be working at high performance

Now jumps at the sound
Of a book falling to the floor
Or the slam when someone
Closes a door

Or the noise coming from a
Plane flying thousands of miles in
The air
But he don't care it makes him
Nervous just to know that it
Is there

Why should this soldier
Have to hold up a sign?
Tell me if you will
Begging for help
Because he now has
No where
To live


Attitude

Be wildering brutal
Boisterous attitude

Did anyone tell him he
Was rude

Bragging about anything
On any day

Bossily boring in everyway
Bleakly bulling all those
He do not know

Cold-blooded commonly
Concurring from hand to hand

Closely passed to a collective few
Do not bother with him his name is
Flu


At War

Me and my in pen is at war
It looks like the pen is going to win
I believe I have no chose in the matter
But to surrender.
I give up my words both bold and humble
Some Strong and weak
Here is my dictionary the core of my meat.
What am I going to do when I have no
Limits on adverbs, nouns or adjectives
Clauses and phrases?
I will sit here in
My thinking seat, and wait until the midnight
Hour in hope that we can still meet.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Where I Come From by Asia Redd. Copyright © 2014 Asia Redd. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1491857404
• ISBN 13: 9781491857403
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 116