The Fatherless Tribe

A beautiful poet/songstress by the name of Tangent frequents VERBATIMondays, my monthly open-mic in Baltimore, MD. She sings this song that touches on the same sentiments that I feel in my persoanl life in relationship to my father's absence and what I desire for myself as a mother and a wife (when that day comes). She inspired the following poem: The Fatherless Tribe.




We learn to love differently/Through disappointment, through absence/Patience be granted to the undeserving/We love while hurting/We are the fatherless tribe/Daughters of the unwed wives/We gain strength by witnessing how the matriarch plays her hand/She will either falter or stand/She will learn to do without or spend her lifetime looking for a man/-to do everything that he didn't/We see her cry with raised shoulders/And as we get older, we make the decision to either search for daddy to fill the void or to seek his opposite to avoid the cycle of abandonment/ We move forward through strange territories/Through uncharted waters/Daddy left us no footprints in the sand/We are the forgotten daughters/Souls slaughtered/No blueprint on what creates, what sustains, what constitutes a good man/But we press on/We journey through the terrain blinded/Searching for a man to guide us but unsure of when we find him/Keeping the wrong ones and pushing the right one away/Who or what are we searching for anyway/After we've learned to open our own doors and carry our own loads/Who do we need then/after we have battled through our first boyfriends and another male reminds us that we are not worthy to be kept/After we have blamed our mothers and ourselves...after the tribe has wept?What does he teach us then?How does he reach us then?When we've convinced ourselves and the world that we will be alright/Unsure of how to carry our weapons/But too familiar with the battle cry/We dry our own eyes...equip ourselves for the less than/Afraid to demand more/Wasn't the mere expectation of responsibility what pushed Daddy out the door?We could fight but what for?How do you miss something that you never had?How dare we ask another man to love us like no one else has/To fulfill needs that we don't understand/To fill the impossible shoes of the unidentified man/We stand with our backs to the past/But we constantly glance over our left shoulders/Thinking that the journey gets easier as we get older/But it doesn't/Thought Daddy would return a few times but he wasn't/We march forward, move toward healing/We war our way through inappropriate dealings/We paint our face with battle paint and find strength while concealing/We are the fatherless tribe/Daughters of the unwed wives/we take charge of our own lives/Not because we want to but because we have to.

Welcome

Mark your calendars!!! Join me for my performances on June 25th at Warm Wednesdays and June 27th at Be Free Fridays. My sophomore album is finally complete!!! It's been "Long Enough!" I know- The album will be available both nights. Also, it will be available via cdbaby.com by the end of this month. The album is narrated by Raquel Rizan of Morgan State's WEAA...19 tracks!!! Listen to a few at myspace.com/rebeccadupas.