Blackbutterfly Soul Songs Read online

  Blackbutterfly

  Soul Songs

  Dr. Queen Shamala Sykes

  BLACKBUTTERFLY SOUL SONGS

  Copyright © 2017 Dr. Queen Shamala Sykes.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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  ISBN: 978-1-5320-2538-9 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-5320-2539-6 (e)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017909055

  iUniverse rev. date: 11/10/2017

  Dedication

  First, a heartfelt dedication goes to my ancestors, the Creator and my soul who led me from darkness into light. This book of soul poetry is also dedicated to my grandmother Queenie Graham Miller, the Graham, Miller, Davis and Smith families and all their descendants. I honor my mother Mamie Lee Miller Davis, who was my first teacher. She encouraged my love for reading, writing, learning and soul songs. I also recognize all family members and experiences, which caused me to dig into life and daily question its activities.

  A special acknowledgement goes to my daughter Chef Yealang Jarrice Odutola Fayemi Smith. I honor her for choosing me to be her mother. She has been in lockstep with me on my spiritual path from the beginning. Her birth catapulted my life into undreamed directions. Yealang made me grow up quicker into my powerful self.

  I recognize my spiritual teachers and the attendant communities who participated with me in my individuated personal soul journey, especially Meri Ka Ra, Chief Priest Obafemi Ifayemi and Sensei Eugene Imai. These seekers and speakers of truth provide the instruction and motivation in my life that inform my soul journey. I salute the sistafriendqueens who claim our queenship together in sacred spaces And the beloved masculine world community who help us hold up the world!

  I give thanks to Dr. Maxine Thompson, a widely acclaimed author and editor who, from the very beginning, taught me how to “show and tell” my stories. Attending the Saturday Literary Writing class under Lorene Calhoun’s leadership gave me the courage to take my writing public. Kudos go to Dr. Shari Randolph, who assisted me in submitting a marketable product and Mercedes Brown, who offered her head and heart to me during the whole process. I render overflowing love and glowing amazement to Sheila Shaw for her insistence that “we are eternal souls-never born and never die!” I am grateful for iUniverse Publishing and their editorial staff for their patience and commitment to this writing project.

  Lastly, I honor Granville Arnold Hakim Ifatokoun Fayemi Sykes, my lead cheerleader, most avid supporter and now deceased husband, who made his transition July 19, 2013. I appreciate the love, encouragement and nurture we shared for eighteen years. My soul flourished in the safe, loving space where I could heal, write and paint, uninhibitedly.

  Contents

  Part I What Is Soul?

  Got Up

  Soul Talk

  Soul Journey

  The ABC’s of Gratitude

  Grateful

  Part II The Call to Soul Love

  Love

  My History with Soul Songs

  Opening The Way

  Blackbutterfly

  The Calling

  Initiate’s Song

  The Higher Calling

  Sankofa

  The Healing Stream of Love for Sister Ruby

  I Understand

  FYI

  Committal

  Sowing Seeds of Love

  ABC’s of Love (The Abecedarian of Love)

  Freedom Song

  Part III Soul Awakenings

  Awakening

  Meditation

  Childhood Memories

  In Retrospect

  Queendom

  Let Go

  Prognosis

  Kujichagalia: Self-Determination

  If Educate

  Stop and Begin Again

  Reflections

  Part IV Soul Awareness

  Evolution

  Meeting the Ancestors

  Home at Last

  Sanctuary

  Gladden

  Healing

  Relax

  Communion

  Sounds of Freedom

  Soul Laughing

  Soul Secrets

  Sun Son

  Soul’s I AM’s

  Nina, Girl on a String

  (A note to T. C, a prize-winning writing student from Fremont High School)

  Soul Daughter

  Jimmy Swimmy: The Hero’s Gift

  Oriki (Soul Praise Song) to Obatala

  Oriki (Soul Praise Song) to Oya

  Oriki (Soul Praise Song) to Osun

  Oriki (Soul Praise Song) to Meishusama

  White Butterfly

  In Memoriam: Tina Cachelle Bogan

  Artful Soul

  Part V Personal Declarations of Soul

  Followers

  The 5 Scrolls: Five Organizing Principles

  Declaration of Beauty

  Foreword

  Libation

  For African peoples

  Nothing important happens without a libation

  An honoring of the ancestors who came before us

  And made it possible for us to be

  For this very important poetic offering

  It is my pleasure to provide a libation.

  To our first ancestor, that hidden one who, though hidden, manifests in all things as all things, that God/Goddess idea in the universe by any and all names.

  We pour libation…

  Asé!

  To our ancestors, first people on the planet mothers and fathers

  of all mankind, flashpoint of the human family.

  We pour libation…

  Asé!

  To our ancestors, builders of the first civilizations from the Deep South to Kemet, leaving unmistakable evidence of these great civilizations along the way, carving instructions on the walls of temples and tombs so we will never forget.

  We pour libation…

  Asé!

  To our ancestors of the first exodus who, after millennia took all tenets of civilization: the sacred sciences of language, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, astronomy, geology, music, and spiritual principles-out of Africa and peopled the world.

  We pour libation…

  Asé!

  To our ancestors who chronicled the first global human experiences that became our collective lives, the discoveries, the joys, the redundancies, the sagas, the rejoicing, the obstacles, the dancing, the trials, the inhumane treatment, the enslavement, the singing, that learning that all things come together to become the mosaic that is life, who became Mbongi-
the praise singers-singing the praises of life in its full spectrum.

  We pour libation…

  Asé!

  To all of you who are privileged to experience this poetic offering, to read the words, to vibrate at their frequency, to absorb the light and love that they are.

  We pour libation…

  Asé!

  To our children and those yet to be born, who are the living will and testament of the ancestors, the repository of all we have learned, all we have experienced, all that we are, who carry the imprint of the first ancestor, and will call our names for all eternity.

  We pour libation…

  Asé! Asé! Aséo!

  Thelma Cameron

  2014

  Preface

  Who AM I?

  I was not born nor do I die

  I AM a hologram of the Soul’s desire

  To bring to Earth the spiritual plane

  Paradise on Earth to rule again

  I AM the conduit full of love

  Expressing God’s will for the above

  Conscious of the need to surrender

  The illusion of life gone forever

  I AM waking all the Souls

  Caught in the web of lies…unfolds

  Being present when the veil is lifted

  As Truth of Self is Divinely gifted

  Big Change is happening as expressed

  By Divine Masters knowledge that now exist

  Mystery Schools are open wide

  No more secrets to hide

  I and my Father are ONE

  Spoken by a Master of Spirit well done

  I AM and Mother Mary come forth

  To give divinity a feminine course

  Gods and Goddesses are We all

  As We recognize ourselves anew

  I AM not the body with a name

  I AM Divinity playing a different game

  This world Being a Co-creation

  Allows the Human vibration to manifestation

  Seeing the Self on a conscious level

  I AM the spark at the Quantum level

  God said each ONE of Us will hear

  The Truth of existence on this sphere

  I AM made a contract coming to Earth

  Paradise was the Energy to give birth

  On awakening at Eighty-five

  I AM is very strong and very alive

  The light is magnificent in its Truth

  As the words are magnified in the youth.

  Goddess Sheila Shaw Energy Voice

  Introduction

  When I was twelve years old, a multicolored butterfly landed on my extended right arm. We exchanged soul secrets and I fell in love with the butterfly and its soft fluttering wings. For my 50th birthday, my gift to me was a butterfly tattooed on the same arm. My grandson Malik argued with the tattooist about my pain and my discomfort, “Leave my grandmama alone!” Malik and I had not learned the ‘no pain, no gain’ principle in life. I became intrigued with the butterfly as the mystical creature continued to show up in my life. What did it mean?

  My search for truth about the mysteries of life led me to the Guidance Church of Religious Science Metaphysical School. Metaphysics deals with any activity outside or beyond everyday knowledge or experience. A burning desire to know about the esoteric (secret, hidden) symbolic nature of life, signs and symbols characterized my life questions. Like, “Who am I?”, “What is my purpose?”, “What is the soul?”, “Why can’t I tapped into my talents?” and “What is that voice speaking in my ear that seems to know things about me that I don’t know?” I soon discovered that the butterfly, an ancient symbol of the soul, is connected with transformation and renewal.

  Studying the concept of the soul and the butterfly’s metamorphosis, I recognized that we all have a soul. And like the butterfly, we are all on a path of re-birth and re-awakening to a new creation. I realized that awakening to the soul is similar to the changes that the butterfly experiences as it births itself.

  A butterfly has four stages in its life cycle: the egg, the caterpillar, the chrysalis and the butterfly. Although the butterfly goes through these stages to become a butterfly, the inherent nature of the butterfly follows its soul’s course of development. While the butterfly has no identity crisis, it has natural enemies, like the spiders, ants, parasites, birds and wasps, that threaten its survival. Our soul journey provides us with many opportunities and crises that teach us life lessons that awaken us to our divinity, our gifts and our true identity.

  Reading Blackbutterfly Soul Songs, you will find that the awareness and cultivation of the spirit and soul are important spiritual practices to align the inner and outer life. Spirit means the great causative, creative power of the universe and the soul is the individualized expression of the Absolute Being. Spirit is pure awareness and soul is the evolving consciousness of being spirit. Soul is also the God part of us that is expressed through the mind and body. Meditation is a medium that allows access to the inner world of spirit and the outer manifestations of soul. The practice of silence is a process that provides direct contact with soul. Meditation and soulful writing can open the deep path to your inner wisdom.

  Gentle cultivation of the soul and self-awareness can help you to molt, shed and crawl out of your limited conditions - fears and rigorous programming - as you evolve. Negative beliefs and emotions about racism, paternalism, love, life, incest and not being good enough can be dis-created and released. This negative way of seeing the world can be replaced with more supportive beliefs. The years of seeming disjointed discourse and repetitive rhetoric eventually flow into more coherent, concise and relevant ideas. Practical principles for living a more soulful life will emerge. The awakening wisdom and the voice of guidance thrust your world into higher creative realms of consciousness. Intentional communication with your soul can lead to a greater inflow and outflow of spiritual in-formation and energetic in-sight. Your books, poems, art, money and creativity will flow when the gates of your life are flung wide open!

  Blackbutterfly Soul Songs is divided into five parts: In PART I the meaning and the journey of soul are examined. The question “What is the soul?” and its connection to purpose are discussed in the first section of the book. The highly expressive poetic work, The ABC’s of Gratitude, reflects the great appreciation for life experiences that accompanied my soul awakening.

  PART II includes the personal history of my gift of soul songs and the awareness of love.

  PART III deals with the awakening to the inner call, the voice of soul. This phase of poetry deals with releasing the old and making space for the new through meditation.

  PART IV looks at awakening to the awareness of the ancestors’ voice, another facet of the soul’s journey.

  PART V, the last section, declares my personal soul awareness on five scrolls. It answers the question, “Who am I?”

  All sections contain poetic expressions that deal with re-current themes of soul love, soul awakening, soul recognition and coming home to the higher self (soul). The collection is a juxtaposition of lyrical verses and autobiographical narratives that elucidate the soul journey. Blackbutterfly is also the divine voice within me singing its soul songs.

  The tanka poetry reflects and honors my being a member of Shumei, a Japanese organization dedicated to the well-being of the world by cultivating spiritual values, the appreciation of beauty and art and the development of a way of life in harmony with nature. Tanka means, ‘a short song.’ Traditional tanka poems contain five lines with a 5-7-5-7-7 syllable scheme. Modern tanka poetry allows for variation on the number of lines and syllables. I followed the traditional syllabic form and used no capitalization nor punctuation in the tankas. I modernized the tankas by giving each poem a name and capitalizing each tanka’s name for placement in the table of Content. My challenge was to make sur
e that each short song contained only 31 syllables. Soul itself provided the rhythm, the rhyme and the energy of creation.

  As I sorted through my poetry, an awareness developed of my being on a mythical journey to re-claim, re-frame and to re-name my life experiences. Journaling/journeying back in my life helped me to take a penetrating look at my experiences. Deciding to write my own book of poetry – in spite of self-doubts and inner resistance – highlighted important insights of the journey. My soul, forever seeking freedom, expression and enlightenment, leaped and rejoiced at the grand idea of me writing a book. I finally recognized the writerly voice as part of my soul journey.

  “My life has become a song”, rang through me as I sketched my soul journey out in rhythm, rhyme, verse and memory! Ase!

  In my practice of the West African Yoruba Ifa tradition, I learned that Ase is the belief, perception and intuition of a vitalism, or conscious energy in all things. This Yoruba term is spoken to express complete agreement. Its root word is “aliwelase”, which is part of a class of strong words that brings things into being. Its use signifies that all are on one accord. At the end of a gathering, the congregants, in unison, say Ase! Ase! Ase-O! This is affirmation of the highest. Studying and practicing living from soul is an act of affirmation, empowerment and unity of creation. Ase!

  Part I

  What Is Soul?

  got up

  soul slept, awaken

  no longer life’s sad victim

  up with risen sun

  shining over creation

  new day on the horizon

  Got Up

  Soul Talk

  Knowledge of the Soul opened me to the divinity of all life. Many people believe in a concept of a soul, but they have little knowledge or awareness of the soul as being part of their makeup. I made a deliberate decision to study and practice spirituality in my daily life. I believe in the spiritual authority of the inner self which I call the soul and sometimes “intuition.” Intuition is an inner feeling of knowledge or an immediate insight. Spirituality deals with the search for meaning and purpose in life. As I studied the concept of the soul, I began to overstand (understand completely) that my soul is the life force energy that links me with my divinity and God.