Searching for my desire
I had to let go
I know you know
Searching for my desire
​This is the let go

Touch and tease me
Don't deceive me
While I'm
Searching for my desire
I had to let go
​I know you know

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

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

TRANCE
ASAP
FOR
MUTUAL
LIGHT
SWEET
EPIC
BEAUTY

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