 Go get my pistil.
(Bring me back my power) All I see to the right of me is a sharp tusk (Like skegee) Relics of a before time When power was mined for profit (Like prison where Pete lay) Please rock with me Yarrow Wood was first aid I found her 25 years later in a forest And placed her directly on the wound The dew looked like tears on her petals Her due was tears as she pedaled forward (Cry about why don't you?) As they came to clip her She made it clear I am not a pick me She screamed Go get my pistil! Bring me back my power From a rooted place She can go anywhere Her beauty attracts a buzz To do her bidding From right where she is sitting Her progeny travel the world His story tried to wreck me How can you be leading In college degrees Beauty pageants And hysterectomies? (Fuck that) Go get my pistil Bring me my power back Save your glass vases Like curio cabinets For onlooking I live in the dirt (Did you know Black women live in an invisible matriarchy? We are the mothers of the nation, somehow deemed unfit to mother our own. When we care for white folks we are Mammy. When we care for our own we are too independent, too masculine, too strong. When we care for ourselves... Black women you better go get your pistil.)  The grief had lodged itself in my shoulder and caused my jaw to clench leaving little room for the breathing that longed to be deep. I put the flame to all that old hair hanging around, hoping and praying it might burn up some of the pain, that I could bear witness to the smoke and it's leaving. So much leaving. I pushed the walls far away-to the freeway and the arterial-so that what they housed could be driven, or rather forgiven, a way to love. I rested my right hand over my shoulder, hovering and feeling the heat of emotions stuck in traffic. I wondered about what had gone unseen, what eyes were peeking out of me waiting for me to return their gaze and innocent inquiry as to why I could not stop disappearing myself. I wondered and I hovered as that heat began to rise. I begged my heart to open and promised not to judge it's contents. There were just so many pieces and even as it pertained to my own heart, feelings of unworthiness left me asking, am I allowed my own brokenness?
I continued to wonder and to hover. As my breath searched for the pit of my stomach, my joints began to release deep and resounding cries from the caves of my insides popping and unlocking a well of tears that sprang forth like crude oil from this earth. Fossils of hurt so old they had liquified and could now be used as the fuel to drive me home, some place where there are no stories other than the truth of this existence. To the question of how, and the doing of being I admit I am well, that I am grateful. I have been loyal to strife before and felt the crushing weight a lack of grace can carry. I question myself as to whether or not this is true, this wellness and this gratitude and see the same questioning in their eyes, like how can you be? I can't afford to not be. Today, no bomb was dropped on me. I have shelter. I have food. I can walk. I can talk. Some days, I even feel safe enough to feel this sorrow we've all got bubbling just below the surface. I have learned that grief and joy are not mutually exclusive. They must, in truth, learn to share the road. If they don't, neither one will carry you home as they both have the capacity to do. I can feel your insides like they are my own. I don't want to lie anymore, about what I felt in there. I cannot pretend I did not hear every whisper, and how loudly it landed in my heart. That time you wished me place-less-ness and said I was from nowhere. That time you refused to see me in you, being and breathing just as you do. That time I treaded water long enough to see the sunset melt into the horizon, and found out you love me most when I am drowning. I heard your love too but I cannot drown for you. I stay driving on roads paved with waves and swimming in oceans of dry Earth. I pray for buoyancy. Fluidity. Clarity. Grace. Please teach me to love freely, to give and receive with ease. Some ghost in me laughs silently at all we've built around the soul, as if it was ending. As if it had not been traveling the stars for longer than there are words to describe. This mirage world of fading, vibrating together just enough so that we do not see the seams of things and their falling apart. Maybe we all need to fall apart. Unravel and reveal our true colors, in all their brilliance. In all their running and bleeding, every hue. Green grief and yellow yearning. Red rage and orange onus. Blue boundaries and indigo insight. The clear color of what is beyond sight. Mix and muddy it all together and black become us, an aliveness so close sometimes we forget, what we mistook for no thing was something, a sum of things that totaled you and me. This is what I found wondering and hovering as I coaxed my heart open, , heat rising, breath deepening, and shoulder releasing . The grief was like an eraser taken to a blank page, drawing back that blanket of disappearing to reveal a landscape worthy of inhaling. Worthy of releasing. Breathing, being and letting go.  Let them cry
Holler and shout Let the rage be theirs As it makes it way back To space and time Undefined Let them cry With gas and lighting Sad enough to challenge any spirit Let them cry Like joy Resting And eating vegetables from mom's garden Let them cry Whilst doing you Cuz crying is what they've been doing And putting you through The wringer The jailhouse The less than and not true Let them cry By how tough You do you Be inspired by the discomfort Let the broad side of your grief Soak up some sun Expose the blue veins running hot To the light that nourishes Let the melanin reappear Like back from a long journey home Let the melanin enter Like inheritance Like wealth passed through generations Let them cry by loving you Let the salt of their tears Purify, cleanse, and release Let them be still Let them do their work Rest and be easy Let them cry With no thank you Or please Let them cry by defining your own emotions And setting theirs on the curb For pick up Let them go Let them be And be free in your wisdom Be free in your skin Being passed the past like a hot potato The glucose is not for us Drop it like it's hot Let them cry Like you ain't gonna tend to their feelings And dealings with the devil Let them go And leave them be To figure a way into free Let them call upon their own emancipation Because it was never for us It was them freeing free Like owning land with documents and treaties We have no loyalty or allegiance To these delusions, mis-dealings and mis-leadings let them cry the tears They hide so free Let them mourn their inherited loss of humanity Without lifting your beautiful finger Let them weep for love Let them weep for life Let them weep for connection With so much gas and sad lighting Let their longing fuel correction Of mis-direction and mis-stepping Into lanes meant for other How they must uncover that grief That feeling That sorrow Let them cry and replenish All the rivers of the soul That have run dry The soil depleted And skies full of rage Let them cry And use their tears as astringent To cleanse the clogged pores of the heart Let them cry Let them weep Let them mourn Let them grieve Let them And leave them be To their own devices Let them heal And when they have watered The world for positive growth Offer tissue In the form of welcome back to humanity Help to rehabilitate Once progress has been shown But until then Like inmate to parole board Let them sit And think And be corrected systemically Spiritually Before re-entering The general population  Dulband
Tulbent Tulipe Tulip All kinds of currency to invest in. The turban of flowers arising gently from the Earth (what does it call itself?) like a jewel adoring a crown, reminding us of the royalty this planet is. Pure poetry for our senses, how it says so much without ever uttering a word. A well-fed bumblebee played courier to this exchange of funds, a low drone of a buzz tone as it floated to and fro making withdrawals and deposits, being fed in the exchange.... Giving and receiving. Pollinating progress. Let’s have a long distance love affair, I’ll be Iris and you be Pistil. We’ll open towards the sun exposing the beauty of our being until we catch the buzz, this is how we’ll make love-giving and receiving, being fed in the exchange. Novemeber 25th, 2014
America Full of fear Eats it for breakfast lunch and dinner I see war in their dance and like Frankie Paul I worry tonight America's soul is afflicted conflicted and caught between itself and freedom A crazy place where truth is contraband and i don't understand when the mirror broke when did we stop seeing ourselves? who greets us in the broken shards as we piece ourselves together? who is there to hold your gaze as you muse on murder and weave lies into the truth of you? The biggest middle finger I've ever seen America The biggest goon on the scene America The one who steals hearts and dreams America Watch us melt into you Watch our blood spill into you mix it up stir it round pour sugar on top and drink it down without a sound fall into the ease of oppression and settle for something less than humanity less than the best thing settle into the sediment of black bodies fallen now bedrock in the waters America will one day call its grave we are witnessing the birth and death of an imagined... an evil empire playing... the good ol boys club cloaked under the white hood of... NATION burning crosses on the dry grasses of hope riding bareback through our dreams terrorizing we reminding me once more I am a stolen African Today's hot flavor but watch out! Tomorrow they might be coming for you... I have traveled this land felt her breathing heard her singing and one thing I know for sure we are not in America but we are together in some kind of solid-heir-ity of confusion not recognizing we are one body we are one spirit we are one breath we are one sound I stuck my ear to the Earth and heard the war march of us closing in ourselves the drums spoke and destruction is what they said Harness power
In the name of freedom Like chains broken And noose loosened from neck May my spirit slip Through and shackle And ride With the wind on my face As evidence of ascent A sonic crossfade in time and space to honor the deep wisdom of night giving way to a merciful dawn.
Lines that have been drawn in the name of fear, let them be crossed. Magnify, intensify, and move toward your horizon where the darkest of nights still carries the hope of dawn. Dwell in the true nature of your light, unhinged from color, can you see that feeling? illumination requires the optics of the heart, to see what the eyes alone could only dream. Darkness is light in a form we are still learning to perceive. Trust what is cloaked, generally being, specifically unknown and somehow intimate. Somehow, be intimate. Be close with the darkness, do not leave her lonely. Sit with her. Be still with her. And dance when the time comes. Cross the threshold of sight as stars become visible and nuance returns to your senses. Burn the midnight oil and celebrate the shortening of this wick. Let these new eyes become you revealing a world somewhere between knowing and being. Exist in this shadow giving birth to an impending light. A sliver of change is unfolding you into a new reality. The tipping point is upon us. Describe to the still, the shape and texture, the tone and color that comprise your arrival. Compose your emergence and let there be space, like foreplay for phenomena. Let there be space for inhale and exhale to make love. Let there be space for the sun to come home to us. Trust his return. The revolution and the distance travelled to be still. Incubate and ponder your germination. Curate your rebirth in sleepy prayers for letting go. The upswing can share face with the downturn, but the body knows what it knows and cannot tell a lie. Let it rest and hibernate. Let your cells regenerate and listen to the wisdom they are whispering. Tune your ear to their frequency and allow them to transmit with ease. Let them be calm and clear, accepting their truth as love. Thank this darkness and its leaving. Bear witness and give testimony to its healing. |
AuthorI am a poet, for better or for worse. It is a way in my being that, ironically has no words. It is a way in my being that finds me when I, and helps me to, forget. I am a poet, for better or for worse. Archives
January 2021
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