July 2023 - Featured Artist - Navah the Buddaphli
About the Artist
Navah The Buddaphliii still strives to overcome the challenges of being a mother of five, poet, and author; to find the balance between raising a family, and spending quality time with her life partner, the father of her children. She is determined to continue being a slayer of stanzas and a provider for her family.
Additional Works
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Cocaine-Colorless-Butterflies-gatekeeper/dp/1734610654
Featured Poem -
A Poem for Prince Rogers Nelson
Dearly beloved it, I believe it was the sawdust of summer when I found your voice in a shadow of a song. Prince you sang so beautifully of lilacs and photogenic water, you built harmonies powerful enough to save angels or demons in a storm. Quickly I caught on and held tightly to your butterflies' cleverly named lyrics. You spoke of love like you had a doctorate. I thought, for men, love is a learning curve and there you were in all your Ruffles in lace proving me wrong. You did not just create music and magic with the sweat of your brow, nooo you birth an ocean of colors out of sound and called them stories, and your highest I got caught in the reign
So when you perished, I faced a hurdle my heart couldn't jump. I felt like I was treading water and didn't know how to outswim these many tears, and at one point I swear to you, I was seeing paisley hallucinations. You've always painted pictures that seem more real to me than life itself. In my mind, you were a limitless rainbow. You were something familiar something from both worlds
Prince you are the definition of fluidity, you blurred the lines between gender, genre, reality, and fantasy. So when it comes to you, I wear your songs in my ears like heirlooms. And from what I can hear your music is similar to how God speaks, and I bet you discovered a guitar inside of a black deity and the piano inside of a white devil's broken heart.
Prince, I bet you can play anything, even strumming the petals of fossilized flowers. So tell me, did you just get tired of playing love songs and where was your accountability partner the day happened? And did balancing the moon and the microphone become too much for you? Prince, who choked the life out of your distinctive vocal cords? I would give almost anything to hear you live again. Oh wait, I think I get it. Going back to the interview are you trying to teach us that dead silence is music too?