12/26/14

12.26.14 Journaling

I haven’t written a poem about it. I feel bad about that. I’ve been trying to figure out my entry to it. the cognizant way I can talk about the throbbing pain in our hearts and minds. the feeling of waking up another morning to another dead son, another dead daughter lost to the churning cycle of systemic violence. a few weeks ago, I couldn’t escape it, not even in my dreams. the cops at my job all of a sudden didn’t recognize my face. the old white people shopping my section took my messy hair and oversized hoodie as threats. the fear had infiltrated my safe space, and I couldn’t escape.

the ideas I’ve had, the prompts I’ve created to help bring voice to this hurt and anger have only produced more hurt and anger. the things that I do know are exacerbated by the sickening facts. ‘every 28 hours’ is an incorrect estimate. an unarmed black man is killed by a law enforcement officer around twice a week, but that still doesn’t leave enough time to bury our dead. to mourn the life before another is stolen just as fast and heartlessly. these lynchings executed by the government-sanctioned mob are still following the blueprint created hundreds of years ago. no, we are not hanging from trees for hours. they prefer to use bullets and to leave the body where it lands, even as the victim struggles to hold onto this life. no, they do not cut off body parts to take home as souvenirs. they try to co-opt our dying words, our empowering statements. it is very much business as usual in the land of white American fear. it is the same ‘ol quicksand for black folks. but now, everyone can see that we are all sinking.

that is probably why another aspect of our struggle has not left my mind. I have never been able to separate my blackness from my queerness, my race from my gender/gender identity. that’s why in the spirit of this renewed fervor against the institutions that hold us all back, I am still genuinely appalled at the beliefs that some black folks hold onto that continue to reinforce sexism and homophobia. it’s amazing how often my brethren and sistren uphold problematic viewpoints that reinforce values that destroy their own people. i.e. I plan to carry a child one day. I know some people are gonna have a problem watching me waddle around, all big belly and boi swag, with my partner in tow and wonder how I got that way without a working penis. there are people that are not okay with aspects of me now, but fuck with me because I am a good person, good poet, good enough to not have crossed them yet. I fear for the gay men finding themselves in the movement and knowing that they won’t be accepted if their physical presentation doesn’t match up to someone else’s adopted idea of masculinity. we talk about educating our own children, but do not talk about how homophobia was brought over with Christianity, how the kings and queens of our tribes had same-sex partners, how we worshipped transgendered gods.

at the one protest/march I attended in the last couple months, there was a woman marching with her interracial partner. she was commenting on the white protestors who were obviously detractors, young white kids looking for an opportunity to destroy property, to make their voice heard over other black people in attendance. suddenly, a young black man came up and swung at her, attempted to silence her with force. they were separated (she justifiably went after him, she wasn’t no simp; he disappeared), but the rest of the march was tainted. she chanted, ‘This is what MISOGYNY looks like,’ loudly over the crowd, and separated herself once we arrived at the police station. it became a divided movement in that moment, and it showed how solving the problem of white supremacy does not automatically cure patriarchy. or homophobia. it is all connected and killing people without prejudice. as someone who lives an intersectional life, I can’t just comment on one thing.


and so, there is no one poem.
--
Here are a few links to information on African sexuality, but feel free to find more.

8/25/14

being with beauty - Princess





Check out my new video, being with beauty!

8/15/14

8.14.14

my body is at work
my mind is in Ferguson
my heart is under my shoe -- between her teeth

my body is at work
my mind is on standby
my heart is in fragments echoing different voices off the walls of

my body is in Ferguson -- tear gas and rubber bullets
my mind is with the children unlearning the Constitution
my heart is in the half written poems I can’t sew together

my body hangs by a belt
shares the same three wishes in my skin as the Genie I grew up with
my mind is heat-seeking safe & familiar
my heart knows those places don’t exist for my people from the sun

my body is onstage for as long as I can breathe
my mind is in the hands of a woman who can’t believe I’m still alive
my heart cries because I don’t get to make that decision

my body is at work
choking on the stares of old white men
my mind hears them thirst and salivate for everything but
my heart is in the streets – people weary of feet
losing family to concrete and tin badges folks wear like licenses for target practice

my body is a target
my mind is a target
my heart is a hollowed out bull’s-eye empty from the truth of my existence in this country

my body has a malfunctioning self-destruct button
my mind can’t bring itself to see what you see
my heart wants to believe in something about America that doesn’t involve the death of my every demographic

my body is at work
my mind is hiding from the shotgun blast of my own self-loathing
my heart breaks

my body wears a straight face
my mind wants to be selfish today
my heart is in Ferguson

my body is a shell
my mind is a formless hermit crab outgrowing my heart
is too sizes too small for my mind
is too revolutionary for my body
is at work

my mind is in Ferguson
my heart wants it to all be over
my body aches at the injustice

my mind searches for resolution
my heart can’t stomach
my body is at work

my mind is a heart pumping life into my beaten body
it’s all connected
it’s all too real

it’s all here in this body of me

5/13/14

dear home

dear home
dear sweet peace
i still remember the sunflowers that grew on our balcony
how the sun always felt so strong through the sliding doors
the heat never overwhelming but
enough to let me know you were here
i was home
i've been so mashed up
abbreviated
can't complete a full anything lately just
half poems
half posts
half arguments
half outbursts
each dividing me against myself
i know she cries
i saw the day coming that tears wouldn't move me and yet
it hurts just the same
the world's words always been enough tide to move my oceans
i feel it in my bones and then
nothing but drowning
dear home
i don't know if i'm drowning
maybe that's not the thought when you swallowing water
may be you think about all the shortcomings
the spaces between who you supposed to be and who you are
that's what i think
i always thought myself a revolutionary
people call me hero
that's what i hear when they say my name
what can a princess do but save?
reign sovereign and just
do the right
i've tried to
loved whole and true to the best of my ability
see folk for what they are
but this a cold keep following me
every time i think i feel your sun
clouds, huh
dear sweet, sweet peace
remember the ivy?
the playful altar and the green
remember how hard days soften on a couch you paid for?
beautiful thing
the world you create
never the same as the one you in
this world full of vultures and vampires
full of regrets and i'm sorrys
full of not enough and too much
equal parts unequal
i'm just trying to be someone to be proud of
not a good enough case
i was never bottom rung
never will be
the weights in my mind, they heavy
i don't too much mind that they switch around
take shifts different hours
i just don't know if they get how much time i'm actually not here
how i'm always there
in my hamster wheel darkness
when i'd rather be with you, dear home
just with you

4/25/14

to the white men on the train

do your ancestors visit you?
do they tuck you in at night?
do they lullaby cradle you into sound sleep
with European dreams of the country they stole for you?

do you search for them?
do you branch by branch back in time to see how strong your nose is?
if your chin arches true?
do you wonder how pure your bloodline is?
are you as scared as me?
I know we fear different things
you, finding the man with a whip that’s been whispering from under your pillow
me, finding the brick
the mortar
the dirt road 100 times over with no tracks or trace of where I really come from
I know
there is technology to find a cousin in Cameroon
but who has money to spend crossing an ocean where they may not welcome you back home?

did they tell you you got the wrong last name?
no, you’re not jewish
no, you’re not irish
no, there ain’t a drop of oppressed in you
you are the fruit of puritan ancestry
you son of a misguided outlaw
you daughter of a scorned wife
great great grandson of a businessman
dealing in flesh
trading melanin for green

how easy is it?
to walk around and feel that false power
to feel nothing
leaning against rhetoric like my great great grandmother didn’t raise you right
even without bedsheets
we still lying on the same straw bed hoping the moon stay a little bit longer

do your ancestors visit you?
do they remind you of why you’re here?
do they tell you of the way it’s supposed to be?
do they show you pictures of the black animals you’re supposed to fear
even though you’ve only seen black men cower to you and fight themselves?

do you search for them?
do you google scrapbook open records request diagram genealogy?
do you hope your family tree turns crest before the papers have yellowed beyond recognition?
are you as scared me?
I know we fear different things
you, finding a relative who renamed all his property
me, finding truth in the words “I don’t know who I am anymore”
I know
there is power in defining yourself
but everyone likes to have a place to start

did they tell you you got a famous last name?
that there’s a town
a marker
a winning lottery ticket under your tongue every time folk call you sir
that you could never be royal
cause America ain’t for kings and queens
they made sure of that
you come from a line of businessmen
of fast guns and faster deals
of life as usual
of don’t rock a boat you’ve never been on

how easy is it?
to see with eyes and not with heart
to see us as so different even when the harvest takes both our crops
knowing either way the odds are still stacked in your favor
that it was set up that way
it’s called the American dream

do you search for them?
do you stop before 1860?
or do you look?
do they tell you?
do you know?

3/17/14

grapefruit juice

in the long list of do's and don'ts while on my first anti-psychotic medication
printed next to 'DO NOT OPERATE HEAVY MACHINERY' and
'MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS' read the words
'DO NOT CONSUME GRAPEFRUIT'

do not drink your happiness personified
do not indulge in the one fruit you aren't allergic to
do not flashback to the days of sugar and spoons and bowls on the couch watching cartoons and PBS
do not wash your sorrows in the bittersweet, ruby red glow of the sun

those words to me were sadder than the days I'd spent feigning sanity inside pastel prison
planning my escape into the arms of my former self
my true self

i obsessively researched 
the why
the cause
the how come i can't
does grapefruit release a hormone that makes love and reality obsolete?
does it cloud judgment?
does it water irrational creativity n' action
holdin' root in your brain?

grapefruit is not my first choice
but on the days when other juices sound like second class concentrate
taste like the easy way out
grapefruit makes me feel rebel
risperdal isn't synonymous with individual
free-thinking
me

two months and i stopped taking it
i wasn't sure how i'd operate in the world clear-eyed
when it was so scary before
but, sitting here
belly full of delicious childhood concoctions
glass full of forbidden fruit
i'm reminded that the cure for life's weight and 
its unexpected dark
is beautiful memories both made and remembered

*written while in Austin, Texas, and eating PB&J french toast :)

2/7/14

Snow Day

*freestyled while on the way to work, February 6.

I let the six-year-old me go out and play today.
She woke up to a wintry wonderland and though the snow hadn’t hardened enough to make cannonball, she was still able to make a pretty good splat on the concrete next to the stairs.

 I let the 21-year-old me come out and play today.
She woke up to a wintry wonderland. She opened all the blinds on her balcony and set a beautiful backdrop to dance to Michael Jackson with her girlfriend in the living room. She didn’t mind that instead, they just held each other and talked about when her seven-year-old self made her first snow angel with LaNell in the back of a trailer park.

I let the 30-year-old me come out and play today.

I let the 25-year-old me come out and play today.
She awoke to another end routine, X amount of hours before work. Read a book written by a man considered genius who considers himself a regular man. She ended her chapter where he described how he made his house into sanctuary, into safe space for budding musicians that eventually made up a family. They now call themselves the Soulquarians. She tried to hold back the tears, but they fell because all she’s ever wanted was a family of peers who will challenge her in the open. They would duel fight with their belief systems and cut each other with evidence. But it was ok, cause they were just kendo sticks and we’re just sparring together, readying for the next battle.

I let the nine-year-old me come out and play today.
She woke up to a wintry wonderland with enough fire and bristle in her toes that she just washes the dirt off of her reality. She balled up her fist and got all ready to fight Stephanie on the front steps of her apartment building but let the rage subside when she realized that her moon cycle had begun.

I went out to play today. There was snow and it was cold. But I laughed like God kept the machine going for me. I’ve never experienced a winter like this. I’m not completely mad at it. I just wish that I could always be as happy about the sunshine.