The Heart of Poetry is made of Chocolate and Vodka.
Let me share with you, my poems, my life, my humor (sometimes wicked), my knowledge of poets and the art of poetry, and my prompts for writing your own revealing poems.
Chocolate’s
Latest Book
"Muddying the Holy Waters by Chocolate Waters is a deep dive into the psyche of a woman who has suffered and grown for being different than her small-town Christian Republican family. As a liberal and a lesbian, she is an outsider in their world but owns the misfit that she is and tries to come to terms with how her family shaped her into becoming who she was intended to be. It is a journey filled with rage and desperation but also with compassion, healing and wit. And it sometimes takes “1 biggest fattest bottle of Tito’s Vodka 6 packs of smokes 2 weeks Poems Poems Poems” to get there..."
What People Are Saying...
“Chocolate Waters' new book, Muddying the Holy Waters, is poetry, but it's more than poetry; it's an autobiography in poems, an open and honest account of a person coming into her own through a tempestuous childhood. It's conversational and humorous… It's funny and heartbreaking…It's edgy and rich with humanity and compassion…This book will captivate the reader, from start to finish.” ~ Bertha Rogers, Poet, Artist, Wild, Again; Heart Turned Back
More praise.
Muddying the Holy Waters is a wonderfully honest memoir in poetry, prose, and photos of a street-wise warrior woman navigating life, the poetry scene, and love. Written with her characteristic gum-snapping wit and easy charm, Chocolate Waters never shies away from what it feels like to lose a lover, a pet, a family member. These pages ache with memory and, at the same time, fill you with its connection to your own life and losses. Beautifully told.
~ Francine Witte, The Theory of Flesh
It is to the great benefit of the world that Chocolate Waters has brought forth the bounty of her work again after a long, silent fast.
Chocolate’s poetry is for reading aloud. Take her words in your mouth; chew them through. Savor their flavors, suck the richness out of them, taste their saltiness and their sweet. Here is poetry that is meant to be devoured and shared with others, celebrated for its proclamation of life.
And in the falling evening, alone by a lamp amidst the growing shadows, take her words in your mouth again, and let the aromas of self-reflection upon the bitterness and sour of life fill your soul, and find in them the remembrance of your own days.
Do this for yourself: read Chocolate Waters’ poetry, and be nourished by it.
~Edward Schuldt, Novelist, forthcoming The Diary of Veronic Rose