Crying Diamonds: 11 Years Later: A Sample in the New Prologue

2019. 2.4. Pataki. In this moment, I stand on a personal mountaintop, and reflect on climbing out of a valley…

        Reflection is never easy when the path of memories you visit is a dark one, but its the strongest thing one can do. It makes the flickers of light more precious, and the moments of hope stellar. This collection of poems made me a published author before a college graduate. The fondest memory of this work was its night of completion in the John B. Coleman

Library on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. Right outside was an emotional and festive block party on the campus of Prairie View A &M University…Obama had won the election. First black president, my first published work. It was a heaven of an evening of firsts…and the day vibrated on a 16/7. Divine completion at its finest was in the crisp night air that night. I still remember hearing the car horns blaring, and impromptu choirs singing the Negro National Anthem as I uploaded the draft to LuLu.com to publish. For the record, I was a published author even before a college graduate.

        I chose the title “Crying Diamonds” because it spoke to the unspoken testimony of my life. It revealed glimpses of the tears I hid under my makeup, track weave, and campus celebrity persona. It was my first attempt at vulnerability,

 mixed with the adrenaline that scorched me since my first open mic night performance. I was thankful to find an underground society of poets, people like me who saw and felt below the surface. This volume would allow the readers to read what I had yet to bring to the mic, to turn a few of my sorrows to testimony. Many of the poems were coping mechanisms of deeds already done, but little did I know what was written within was also prophecy. Others poems in this volume were written before the content even materialized in real life, and they did just that over the last 11 years. This volume also birthed what would later become my signature poem, “I Goddess.” Another clue to my higher path, still a mystery to me at the time it poured from my heart’s fountain as a freestyle on a reefer ride. My grandmother’s tape recorder was the cup. When I read it to myself, I realized it was also the first revelation of my supernatural. I would later discover that that supernaturality would saturate every fiber of my being.

        Crying Diamonds would go on to have almost as many revisions as my name, all aliases created in attempt to bring an identity to she who was longing to emerge. That essence would later be named iiiYansa by two Ifa Oloyes (Chiefs). Perfect. The many revisions were not because I was such a perfectionist, but because I was fighting to make safe a voice birthed to bring discomfort to bring change… I was bombarded with a course of life events that ripped my already damaged sense of self worth to tatters, and I got tired. Tired of the scrutiny for a light I was unaware I had. Tired of being called a whore for seeing nudity as art, and/or doing things I’m not proud of to stay in school. Tired of going in the corner and crying to myself, as I was taught to as a child, taking shit off of people to be accepted by them, or worse. Crying to keep from losing my faith, flying off the handle, catching a case, and ruining it all before I would find the point of it all. Tired of betrayals from those I loved most. Tired of being lied to and on. Tired of my poems being nit-picked by unpublished and insecure boyfriends. Tired of people telling me who I was instead of learning who I was. Tired of grieving in secret. Tired of the stereotypes, being seen as someone to try it with, because black women, or women period had no right to feel. Tired of fighting without really knowing what I was swinging at. Tired, tired, and tired. Was it possible that all of the fear and hatred I received influenced me to hate and fear myself? Even worse, it blinded me to all the love and blessings that were present on my road, although dark. I never gave up on God/ess  In frustration, I took “Crying Diamonds” out of print until now. I went on to publish other works aligned with my spiritual path.  I figured my current works of wisdom could bury the rebel I was…she who was too wild to shoot at. Meanwhile, the review copy of this book lingered around like a neglected child I was ashamed of, as many people tend to dismiss themselves from who they were out of fear it may taint the image of who they’ve become. How dare I?  I realized in doing that, I was punishing myself for falling in traps I had no wisdom or knowledge of. I realized that, all that made me weary was nothing but the diamonds I cried on these pages being grinded in their coal state. In receiving this epiphany, I decided to re-release this work, infused with the beauty of never-before-seen images of my life during the time frame this was written. I decided against editing out the provocative flares and curse words, as doing so would silence its truth. Instead, I decided to preserve it as it was written as much as possible, the voice of my firstborn  expression. In doing this, my inner child could not only be heard loud and clear, but respected as the foundation of the iiiYansa J. Muse you see today. The rebirth of this work is a clear message to the world that no one would could receive the healing arts of iiiYansa J. Muse without Zeta Big Sista”PoiZon,” “Vree Solomon,” “Ivory T. The Smooth Operator,” and “Poetess Xtremihties.”You don’t get the wise woman without the rebel with a cause, tainted with fool, but survivor. Many of her tears are the diamonds I hold and share with you. With that said, let’s time travel 11 years back into my poetic archive.

Poetically Yours,

iiiYansa J. Muse