It's a free world I won't hold you hostage with my pain Nor bless you with my covering We can make it through life On different paths We will meet up At the end I do think It would be better Together

 We groan to hold them up While you pump from their pain And gluttonize on their tears Demand agony in their sobs As in their love, they cannot be convinced That your love is poison As you salve one wound And cause the other As you soothe the inside You rip the flesh of you Beloved And ask her not to ooze So subtly But beg her to show you How your power to drain Life Looks Coming out of her

 My hair was meant to expand Not be straight It was meant to raise up To seek moisture in air To be playful Forcing me to chase it with my fingers, brush, and gel And still defy all three It was meant to have curls, strands racing around in a wave or coil that often changes And demand that I accept all of them My hair now reminds me of Joy Of teasing Of resistance Of demanding to be free And I get to wear this growing expansive crown It is Black, and it is Me. 

 Bury me somewhere where the sun shines often Bury me not far from the water Bury me where fruit fields and flowers create A beautiful sanctuary around me Around my people Bury me where my children will visit me in the bush And remember our first home Before our souls became homeless Several times over As we look at those we love Let's bury ourselves In their eyes Their tongues Their hearts  Let us become one another Not letting our resolve truly die or disappear Let us figure out where we can foresee our deepest rest Let us be buried together there

 We can't afford not to feel We can't afford not to speak We can't affort to live in a daze of "seen it all before" "it will never stop" If we are to survive We must learn to look ahead And walk forward Without ceding the torch They crave To light their own lives And to burn ours down Be relentless.  Be forceful. Be glaring. Be ready to burn it all To refuse to be tricked into pity Make them think you've forgotten And you've given up And shock them  Without grace And with all the strength you have Call back your power without apology And intend to use it Fuel one another Create plans of Never-Ending-Days Where they must beg you For your permission to breathe And then you decide

 How did you still your breath When the sight of your body Brought forth rage and terror against you When your children Made a mistake In public How did you still your breath When you spoke your language And they heard you How did you still your breath When any noise Meant the end When a cry or pain Could not be afforded Hod did you still your breath When you body and womb Were invaded How did you keep the children quiet How did you still your breath And gate your tongue When you knew  Every declaration Was against  Your freedom? Your worthiness? Your safety? Your children't longevity? How did you still your breath

Is all of this really happening right now? I struggle to feel as if time is real and outside is happening. Human senses are experiencing a shift. A global grief, a tense and raw, maybe even primal reaction to the threats happening around us. As the human species, I am more convinced that we are beings that feel on a visceral and subconscious level when there is an unsettling of ways of balance. When there is a forceful disruption to harmony that causes pain on a cellular level.  I cannot remove the visions of scenes of raw pain and grief that we have seen because of social media giving us a visual lens into the ethnocide of the Indigenous people of Palestine. One nation who had a immense part of their own ethnic population decimated due to racist and ethnic hatred has repeated the history of their oppressors onto the Palestinian people. What an odd thing nations with power do. Destroy and dehumanize their subjects and plot to exterminate them.  I have also been listening to th...

Sometimes when I want to be mad I just laugh Sometimes I just laugh When I need to be mad When everything says Now is NOT the Time But the Laugh chose me If I can't laugh I can't live Because Hell is outside Sitting across from your sidewalk, always watching To learn how to ask you out Or offer you a job Or be your parent Or that kid from (x) grade Laughter is survival.  It is victory over that which would take you out.  Shit, let me laugh. 

 I don't know  If you know I know  But I figured out  Something about people And that is  That I know that part is still inside of you 

 It has never hurt so much To tell myself  "This isn't good for you."  I have never felt like so violently screeching  Making raw, bulging cords That might snap and gut My throat   A sharp hiss Of outward air Being the extent of any scream I might still have inside  my belly And all my veins in between  Because you decided to be the judge Of what I deserved When you knew you chose darkness But called my light brujeria  Gestured widely at the plants on my altar As if I was tainting you  Holding you here When I was just gifting you  What I've already given to myself Acceptance, understanding, tenderness, a free heart I will never regret that  Like you will Because you couldn't receive it.  

 I just remembered How we are supposed to honor the ancestors Continue living as if They are near and here.  Do the things for them They can't do anymore. Remember them. Speak.  Send your devotions.  Touch the Earth that is holding them. Love the good ways they loved you. See their face in your head. And their smile. Talk about them.  Help your kids to know them.  Make sure to know what being alive means.  Respect the time you have. 

 There's a raw space that I went to  When I started to feel that pull-away It was a place I was fighting not to feel  It was a place I had to face every night  Even after facing you in my fury at the way you dared to ditch me In the wildest hours of one's life In the most crazed of places that exists inwardly I crumbled I melted into agony I cried Abandoned tears I wept for my mother For my father For my embryonic self For my son For my granddaughters For my lineage And that's really why I'm angry Because the next seven generations Will feel what has happened here  And I wanted them to feel love I wanted them to feel togetherness I wanted them to feel peace And I have passed your pain through my pelvis Because those days changed the way I see the world The way I feel my feelings And it has made my love for my son  Impenetrably sealed  Around the inner children we will continue to heal  Love is the energy that cannot be broken

 Aniin I had been asking you to visit, because we never got to be together again.  I was wondering, what would you say to me? How would your hug feel?  I've heard so much about you, and you are talked about with so much love.  I want you to know that once I found out who I was, I dedicated my life to honoring you Because I knew Indians were honorable but I didn't know what it really meant to be one To live through everything that we all did And to still be here? I didn't really know we were still here, even though I was here.  When I started speaking the language, I thought of you. Did you remember how to speak? Did you ever speak Indian in your mind?  I know that Grandmothers are special people, predecessors of us with so many stories to tell, so many triumphs to share And I wouldn't know what yours were I was so glad you left the journals. I can hear your voice when I read it. You're funny.  I liked what you said. You always wrote down when someone o...

 I'm writing this as a tired mother of a newborn...for the sixth time.  It's something I'm enduring gratefully and graciously, as I asked for this from a deep place of longing and desire to nurture a baby human again, to have another chance at remembering this time and space again of being vulnerable and closest to the primitive being-ness of being human. Of smelling the smell of a human that came from me, and welling up another sum of love to last him for the rest of my life.  And it is with pregancy, and delivery, and breastfeeding, and be-ing as a mother-this need for food. Food is the life-source that allows us to take once-living things, reuse them as our fuel, and partake in this practice several times a day, hopefully done often with others that we love and that we like as we maintain our own place in this life by our need to feed. I'm grateful to have fond memories around food, not that the food was always the best, but the memories of it's surroundings leav...

 When there is no space For a pain one can't articulate There is no space For the healing that is needed When there is no help For the pain one can't articulate There is no holding That child in need When there is no space  For someone to see us There is no space For someone to know us Space Is Required For Love

*A poem about the fear of loss of children* I used to think that nothing would tear me down Like taking away my fingers Or my hands Which I use to play Which helps me give Which helps me live But I realize even deeper than that That my children are my fingers And my hands And without them I would never play again.

*A poem about the stigmatization of those of African descent living in America, descended from those enslaved, who cannot trace their roots to their original country, and who receive the abusive attitudes of anti-Blackness from others, especially towards those wearing deeper and richer skin* They think that our Blackness is a dark hole Where things go to disappear and be ravaged To never see the light again But when I am gone, make sure that you force them To admit That my Blackness was the deep well From which they took Every Good Thing That filled them That defended them That covered them and the Earth In a love so pure that there was never any absence of light In My Blackness For in My Blackness Are great and marvelous magics Healing, soothing, and redemptive oils That would you not know any better You would dry up And crack Not knowing why you had so much pain in your body Because you thought My Blackness could not offer anything of value to you When it...

*A poem about sexism and unworthy men* When the men call to me I look at them coolly While I feel rage bubble Because they will never know how giving them my heart Would only trip them Cause them to dash against the rocks Of my Oya spirit So that they would never see clearly Or recover Again

*A poem about when the heart and body need to stay separated* He touched every part of my body And made me feel like None of it was bad He came to see it every week And it always felt like He left too soon And never filled me enough And I ached for him in the meantime When he collapsed on me afterwards Shaking his head in disbelief Of the power he witnessed And gave way to I knew that he had found his home And I ask myself "Why does he keep running away from it?"

*A poem about the grief of the loss of the original mother-child dyad* She liberated me when she told me That she loved me But she didn't have the tools To see me And so I regurgitated the tools One by one Until she had built herself up so strongly That I could do nothing But crawl back inside And curl up Re-enter the womb And wait to come out Again