Book Excerpts

WHOSE SHOES ARE YOU WEARING?

So you say you're comfortable with the skin you're in?

Who am I to judge? Whose shoes am I wearing?

I'm yielding, pliable, and eager to take a chance.

But you, you're afraid of this thing called romance.

So we dance a jig around our pasts.

One is guarded, the other is yielding

All the while, each is fielding

Questions that have never been asked.

Excerpts from A Swan Song by Janette Owens

ORDER MY STEPS

You're always talking about how tolerant you are.

Saying how folks have the right to raise or lower the standard bar.

But you never take a stand,

Regardless of the position

To help your fellow man

Improve his or her condition.

You talk too loud

And you always want to be heard.

But you're just another face in a crowd

Mouthing the same old words.

Excerpts from A Swan Song by Janette Owens

"WE THE PEOPLE . . . "

Snatched from the nurturing bosom of the Motherland.

Stripped of all ancestral beauty.

Made to suckle from the poisonous breast of America.

What say my brother?

"We the People . . . " echoes silently in my mind.

We are the second indigenous people.

Displaced soldiers fighting for survival in a land that decreed that all men

are created equal.

"We the People . . . " echoes hollow in my mind.

Excerpts from A Swan Song by Janette Owens

YEARNING

I feel hopelessly bound by some primal need to learn more about you.

This weekend was like a tomb without you.

My fears are ever growing.

I can't rid you from my thoughts.

You invade my dreams with your omnipresent smile.

Thoughts of you are clouding my mind like cobwebs in an impenetrable heart.

Fond memories of you are tucked away in my heart

To be unlocked only by you.

I crave you. I want you. I yearn to be with you.

"Yearning" from A Swan Song

A Swan Song fuses poetry with prose in an intimate collection of poems and revealing short stories. Janette Owens depicts the nuances of contemporary love and relationships while addressing the social ills that plague our community. She explores:

How to love a black man and a black woman
Why our faith inhibits our spiritual and personal growth
How social customs teach intolerance
The unhealthy lessons we're teaching our children, and how we can stop it.