Poetry, world observations

Confessions of a Dark Mind: Suicide Prevention Month

I have brothers not of my mother

grew up with a family like no other

with so much love I could smother

but none of that stopped this crime

I still grew up in a mental bind

welcome to the confessions of a dangerous mind

surrounded by people I was lonely

coveted by girls, I felt homely

flirting with death had become homey

I lived life feeling second best

never afforded a moments rest

not if I wanted to ace that next test

I went to college to paint a collage of ill will

self depreciation increased as I grew in skill

every reflection I saw, I only thought kill

graduation got close, and suicidal thoughts came to a head

permeated with rage, I was only seeing red

all roads were leading to me dead

pat of me felt like there was no help, no one to turn to

I felt like someone you could burn through

but that changed when I met the girl with eyes of brown hue

no more panic attacks and pills

just love unfurling and thrills

simply thinking of your kiss gave me chills

For the first time in a long time I felt okay

I had to question was it right to feel that way

often fearing that feeling wouldn’t stay

a weird feeling going from shroud of darkness to the veil of light

its like going from blind to sight

but not everyone gets that same ending to this fight

Many fight alone and fall from grace

leaving loved ones behind as they take a suicidal end to the race

a lot of times because someone told them to “Man up” to their face

many often need help but are afraid to cry out

Someone yelled for me, now I’m going to shout

Seek the healing help you need, this isn’t the final bout!

You are here with us, not alone

you have a place to belong to, you aren’t without a home

if you need help pick up a phone!

I know this world is sick and sadistic

at this point it needs intervention from something mystic

but get the help you need, don’t become a statistic!

 

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached at 800-273-TALK (8255)

you have people who love you, if you need help call someone and confide in them. each day is a blessing, don’t cut them short!

Love,

LeTavious “Poetic Ice” Hemingway

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My life after 30

On October 14th this year I was blessed to turn 30 years old. I can’t comprehend all the blessings that came my way, but I’m choosing to embrace them in the face of all the pain, adversity, and rage I felt this year. This year on my road to 30 I cried, I fought with my family, I argued with my wife about stupid stuff because my emotions ran high, we went through levels of pain I didn’t think were possible with my wife going through a miscarriage. That alone reset my mind and made me solely focus on being s support system for my queen. I needed to make her happy again, and the main way was to get my mental back in a great head space.

So I taught myself to smile again. I started to look at the positives of my world around me. Everyday I wake up with a chance to make my future better. I chose to revel in the fact that I have an amazing family and group of friends for support. Take pride in the face that I gave the talent to write poetry and novels. Lastly, but most importantly I have this amazing woman in my life that will do anything to make me smile so I have to in turn to do the same for her.

I have other things to focus on other than a feeling of loss and depression. I made it to 30! I never thought I would have gotten this far since I had battles with depression in the past. I’m happy to be alive and moving forward in life. I’m working on my new novels and poetry books. I’m changing my health for the better, and I’m smiling more!

We’re focusing on our YouTube channel and on other ventures that I’ll talk about in the future. I’m glad to have made it to 30! Long live the Libra king!

Peace and love,

LeTavious “Poetic Ice” Hemingway

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Politics in America: Desensitized yet Overly Sensitive

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For the past ten years of my life I’ve been paying attention to American politics and the response people have to the people in positions of power. It started when my mentor at my college, Senator Maggie Glover, took me under her wing and started to guide to academic greatness. Through her she ensured that as many of her students as possible had the chance to meet Senator Barack Obama as he was touring and gathering support for his first election. It was awesome to meet someone who made history. At the same time he turned this nation on it’s head in disbelief. From that point on I really started to take note of peoples behaviors and words.

After Obama’s election I had a few teachers, at an HBCU, Not show up to work for a few days. These teachers advocated for the opposition. I was young, but I was never naive enough to think that it was just because they were republican born and bred. They were opposed to an African American being in the greatest seat of power in this nation. Since they needed a job, they danced around how they spoke about him, eventually choosing to not speak about him at all. When you locked eyes with him though you could still see the rage and disgust though.

Fast forward to 2018 and the world has literally gone to shit as some would say. This is because people have become Desensitized yet overly sensitive about civil, moral, and political subject matter. It seems the art of debate has been lost, and the act of having screaming matches has taken over.

Desensitization 

The Desensitization has come about in my opinion due to the explosion of social media. Now everyone and their mother can rant and rave about what they don’t like and find thousands of followers who believe the same. Social media has done wonders for giving the masses a voice and a platform to SCREAM OUT LOUD about how they feel. Now we have entire Facebook and Twitter pages dedicated to opinions, whether they be laced with facts or not.

Now this platform has been turned volatile at this point, and it gets worse because every single day an act of violence, murder, hate crime, racism, prejudice, etc gets shared on there multiple times. After seeing that much pain, suffering, and just immoral behavior constantly the masses get desensitized to it. It is almost expected now every time one logs into their social media accounts.

That is a little broad so lets dig a bit deeper. Now the members of a race/ethnicity/sexual preference will be constantly shown negative acts towards them and subconscious accept that this is their world. On the other side of that people see that happen all the time and accept that it is happening to them constantly so it must be their fault, since they aren’t like me. Surely, they have done something to deserve this. Now this breeds a culture of people who just don’t care when injustice happens. We just keep on scrolling. (I don’t mean all people are like this, but we are starting to see more and more people who are.) 

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Overly Sensitive 

This is a category of people we all know too well. Its the people who instantly take whatever you post about and tell you that your are wrong for posting it or hurting their feelings for it. Every act the world does is an act against them. Have you noticed that they only feel this way if their beliefs are infringed upon though? They become charged if what they view as right is spoken ill of.  Now lets take into account what I said earlier about being desensitized to certain things they see, and it gives you the full scope of the people we have to deal with on the regular.

These people won’t bat an eye at something that doesn’t directly pertain to them or mock the values that they hold dear. The moment you say anything to them, or just post something on social media that goes against what they believe they will cry out as a victim and retaliate. In recent times, we all can agree that most of these fires are started when peoples political, racial, or civil rights views are in question. People fight for their political parties all the time. We all it bickering, they call it congress. At the same time people will always stand and fight for Racial equality, but the other side of the coin is people fighting for racial injustice. You’re naive if you don’t see that.

Its just taxing as hell to deal with in our daily lives. On a personal level its hard to walk around with all my views and passions and have to keep them bottled up because I have to be strong, or I don’t want the atmosphere around me to be charged. I have to keep my mouth shut so I’m not stereotyped as the Angry Black Man, or the Woke Negro. I don’t claim to be either, I’m just aware of the world around me. After a while I will break and say something openly about how I feel on a situation. Once I do it will be backed with facts and said in a none aggressive way, but even that is seen as an attack and a battle will erupt. That is the part that kills me, that’s why I’m writing this now. Politics and other things have turned Americans into Desensitized yet overly sensitive beings of emotions. Those emotions are usually rage served up with a sizable dose of judgment.

I honestly don’t know if anything can be done for us as a nation. We’re encouraged to have opinions, but apparently it better be the “Right” opinion or you’ll be condemned for it. I have to walk around devoid of most emotions, play the part of the smile with sarcasm just to cope with the world. With the way that the world is set up if I do much more than that I’m frowned upon and told that I’m a problem. But am I really? Or is what I have to say just different from what you believe, so you’re lashing out at me? Think on that…

-Poetic Ice

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Poetic Ice lives! (And is on YouTube Now!)

As the title implies, I am alive and back to writing again! I have grown a lot in my absence as a man, a husband, writer, and vlogger now. I posted a poem a few weeks ago, Can I Live?, and it was a relief to my psyche to be able to express myself as well as tackle a social issue that still plagues this country. I missed being able to write and share my feelings with the world. As an author/poet/blogger I want nothing more than for the world to see and feel something from my work. This is the start of me reclaiming my former talent and share it with the world. Expect more from me and hopefully by the end of summer (September or October) I’ll be pumping out a poetry book!

Another large part of my life now is the YouTube page that my wife and I run! You can check it out here: Dee & Lee: Married Couples Chronicles, mukbangs, pranks and more

This YouTube channel is all about a couple having fun together and loving life. we also had out relationship advice in a fun and often funny way, on your show, Married Couple Chronicles. I implore you even if you aren’t in a relationship to check out our YouTube page it has something for anyone looking for a laugh or out to try something new! Please go Subscribe to your channel and join our family!

Thanks for following my blog! It means a lot to me, Expect more to come asap!

love,

Poetic Ice

The Hemingways

The love of my life, my reason for living

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Mukbang: Jjajangmyeon (Black Bean Noodles)

Hey all, I know it’s been a hell of a long time since I posted. It’s been hard to write through all that pain we went through last year. So this year we decided that we will overcome the negative with new experiences and having fun!

First things first we are reviving our YouTube channel and doing new things. We started doing Mukbang videos. Mukbang is Korean for eating show basically, so it’s self explanatory. Our first one was Jjajangmyeon, or black Bean Noodles. They were awesome!

Here is a link to our video!

Mukbang #1 Jjajangmyeon

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Growing Pains Pt.2: the Eternal Morning

For all those who actually read my blog when I update it I’m sorry for not posting this all at once. I really can’t write it all down without being over come with emotion and mentally shutting down. I do this to grow and honor the man who stood before me so I will push beyond it and finish, thank you!!!

Continues from the previous post:

After having an amazing dinner after an amazing graduation ceremony my father and I parted ways after exchanging the words “I Love You” to each other. As every day goes by I value this memory more and more because it’s the last thing I ever heard my father say. 

My wife and I stayed up a little while longer watching movies and editing footage of the graduation then hit the sack pretty hard.

BANG BANG BANG!!!

At first I was too deep in my dream to realize it was my cousin, Doug, beating on the door.

It came again,

BANG BANG BANG!!!

My wife and I woke with a sense of urgency and rushed for the door. By the time I got there he was down the hall already. He came rushing back at my call and my heart began to race. My cousin is a man who when dealing with me has always had a cool head, even tone unless I piss him off. He is my big brother basically and always protected me. But in this moment for the first time in life I saw that he didn’t have the strength to do so. His voice cracked as he spoke to me. With each break in his voice I had to swallow back fear and anxiety.

“Uncle Roy had a seizure, so auntie called me to help get him up. He wasn’t coming out of it so we called the paramedics. GET DOWNSTAIRS ITS NOT LOOKING GOOD!” He said with fearful urgency. I turned and finish getting dressed and my wife and I followed him downstairs. 

All I remember from this point was my heart was gripped with anxiety and I knew it was early in the morning, the sun hadn’t risen yet. My family was pacing about downstairs and paramedics were in my parents room. I was ushered in to find my mom on the bed shaking with worry. My sister pacing but not going too far and saying “C’mon Daddy” to try and bring him out of the seizure state. The last thing threw me into a state of shock and/or awareness.

Everything around me began to bleed together except for the image of the paramedics trying their hardest via CPR to recesitate my father as he lay on the floor of the bathroom, lifeless. That’s such a jarring thing to see especially when your mind works the way mine does. I’ve earned my degree in biology, and been working in Veterinary medicine for over 5 years so I’ve picked up on a few things. So now in this moment I’m picking up on words such as cardiac arrest, no pulse detected, epinephrine isn’t working… and so on and so forth. It only got worse when I see my sister and mother holding on to a hope of him shaking this off. The moment I saw my dad there on the ground I locked eyes with him and forced myself to stand by his side and fight back tears. 

The first responders worked tirelessly for over 30 minutes trying their best to bring my dad back. They never stopped with their chest compressions the entire time. I never moved from that spot. My cousin Doug tried to get me to move away from the situation and I refused. My wife kept checking up on me, but I wouldn’t let her take me away. I barely blinked as I stared at them working. I stood firm as I fought back the urge to scream and cry out for him. I fought back the urge to jump in and perform chest compressions myself. I just didn’t move at all. This moment became an eternal morning, a hell in and of itself as my entire family suffered in hopes of hearing my father laugh about this later.

Hope… a funny thing really. Sometimes hope in the face of education and realization is nothing but a harmful ideal. It was for me in that moment. I knew my dad wasn’t getting up. I knew that the chest compressions would have worked by now if they were going to. I knew that they pulled some fluid out of his air way but I don’t know how much. I knew I was not going to leave him on that floor alone, and I knew my daddy was gone. Even with all that I knew, I still hoped. I hoped I was wrong. I hoped he would get up and we’d take him home. I hoped that eventually we’d build another grill together. I hoped we have more arm wrestling competitions and make more mix cds. I hoped he would one day see my first child if I was ever that lucky to have one. I hoped… I hurt… I still hurt…

The head paramedic finally after a long battle decided it was a loss. He was pissed off, spouting “I knew this wasn’t a damn seizure!” He was angry with the world at his defeat. He took off his gloves and looked at his watch then called out the time of death and I went blank to the world around me. I didn’t see anyone else but my lifeless dad on the cold bathroom floor. I wanted to go to him but he paramedics told me I wasn’t allowed to touch him until the coroner came. Simultaneously it was announced to my mother and sister that he was gone from this world and I became aware of my mom on the bed when she cried out. My mother and sister are strong people, the strongest of women, so I rarely see them cry. But seeing their tears that day felt like someone running my heart through over and over again as I choke on my blood. I couldn’t do anything for them, I wanted nothing more than to comfort them. But I couldn’t move. I wouldn’t move from my dad’s side. I wasn’t allowed to touch him. It I was going to be near him.

After waiting another eternity for the coroner to get there he performed his exam of my dad and gave us his cause of death in his opinion. It was a heart attack he deduced until further investigation. After he was done I finally spoke again, asking him, damn near weakly begging him to be able to take my dad’s watch off of him. My dad always wore this watch, it was Many, MANY years old. I needed to take it and keep it. To me it was like keeping him with me. Another piece of my hero that I could preserve. A watch I wanted protected more than life itself. After transportation came they readied him for transport and rolled him out on a stretcher. One of the hardest things I’d ever watched was to see them carry him down that hall and through the doors. Watching my sister cry as she was held by my brother-in-law is another pain in my heart I’ll never forget.

At this point none of us are really talking, and I’m sure my family really thought I was a heartless asshole at this moment because I didn’t cry. In fact I wouldn’t cry, I blatantly refused to cry because I felt I needed to be strong for my mother and sister. I willed my self into a perfectly stoic wall and tried to be there for everyone. So, I’m sorry to my family who reads this for that moment if you thought I was heartless, I was just trying to be strong. The key word is trying. My wife, my rock, could see that I didn’t need to try right now and got me back to our room once things were somewhat settled.

She tried to comfort me, talk to me and get me to talk back. She knows I will bottle things up until it sickens me. So I got to talking about my last conversation with my dad and that stoic wall broke. I just remember feeling immensely weak, like my soul would leave my flesh if it wasn’t for my wife holding me as I crumbled to pieces. Tears left my eyes with such ferocity as if offended that I held them back. I cried, I yelled, I felt utterly helpless and like an abandoned child. I just didn’t know how to process this event, this loss. My wife just held me, crying as hard as I was. My dad was a dad to her too, they bonded immediately and this crushed her, but because of me she held it all back because she wanted to be strong for me. I love her more than I can ever quantify for the admirable strength she has. I don’t remember much more from this moment on, I’m sure I cried myself to sleep in my wife’s arms. But there was no rest to be had…
To be continued 

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Growing Pains pt. 1

 

It’s been a while since I wrote anything. It’s been hard to pick up a pen and create when such a huge part of my life was was destroyed…. Destroyed is such a strong word, but its fitting with how I feel on the inside. If you are close to me, work with me, or simply know me you know that on May 7th, 2017 my family and I lost my father, LeRoy Hemingway. That weekend was one that took me on an ultimate High, and then an ultimate low. I had the honor of watching my nephew graduate and get his second post high school degree. That kid fills me with pride.

After taking him out for his graduation dinner I had the honor of taking my mom and dad back to the hotel in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Once we got mom settled in, my dad wanted me to take him to the local gas station so he could pick up his “winning” lottery ticket and a few snacks for him and my mom just in case they needed it throughout the night. Without hesitation my dad and I jumped into the car and turned up the music. We critique the modern music and appreciate the melodies of the past as we travel less than half a mile to the nearest gas station.

My father has a routine when it comes to out of town gas stations,  he usually looks st the hats that they are selling, if they are selling them. Anyone who knows him knew that he wore a cap all day everyday when he could. He would get his snacks, plain chips, Pepsi, and a bag of salted peanuts to put in the Pepsi. Lastly, he would play his numbers and get a lottery ticket or two. Playing the state lottery seemed to fill him with excitement. My dad didn’t miss an opportunity to possibly win millions of dollars. Sadly, he never did but he did more often than not get his ticket money back. It was all in good fun and a hobby of his through the years. At this point in life with me leaving the nest and moving to another state it was a nostalgia trip whenever I got the chance to do it. Something I’m going to miss more than anyone will ever know. 

When we got back to the hotel I walked him to his room and told my mom and dad goodnight and that I would see them in the morning. They said the same, and I gave my mom a hug, and kiss telling her that I loved her. Dad walked me to the door and I told him that I loved him, and he said “I love you too.” Before closing the door. These two gestures are forever burned into my eyes and memory.

I’m lucky enough to have this, and I’m grateful, but the gesture of closing the door still hurts, I’ll explain why. The words “I love you too” are the last words I ever heard my dad say. That was our final day and conversation. I’m blessed with that, that’s more than others for a chance for. Closing the door took on the meaning of closing the chapter on our journey together. I was shut out, and he was taken from me. I know I have a writers mind and I create scenarios, but this wasn’t fictional. This was what it actually felt like hours later after I replayed the memory in my head. This is what it felt like after the coroner left us there a wounded family not knowing what to do…

To be continued next post.

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My Novel is for sale!

On sale for $2.99!!!

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N3VEDB6

The Candy Shop is an urban drama set in the fictional city of Chamberlyn, New York. Jordan Jones is a young black woman who is the object of many a man’s fantasy is working hard to finish college during the day and as a stripper at night for The Candy Shop Strip Club to provide for her three year old son, Grey. With very few friends to rely on and a basically nonexistent family she’s become skeptical of the world, and very cut off. She wears sarcasm and a bad attitude like body armor as she deals with the criticisms of the world. The father of her child is a successful lawyer who is more underhanded than he seems to the public, and he’ll stop at nothing to achieve his goals. But a messed up family and a demented baby daddy are the least of her problems as a new sinister figure moves into town to take over the seedy underbelly and sets his sights on her. Sex, drugs, and danger leave very little room for love, but even love finds Jordan Jones in Chamberlyn, New York. Welcome to The Chamberlyn Chronicles

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