1. |
i am
03:48
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i am a flowerpot sitting on the subway platform, dreaming of a southern sky i am the southern sky
bruised hues of blues and inner city, with an ocean front view
a holy ghost tongue possessed between the pews
sleepless in the twilight
a vision board invisible to eyesight
loose hips humming under summer porch lights
i’m the djembe drum
rhythms spun between love drunk knees
i’m a runaway river
a sawed off shotgun creeping through the leaves
a kiss that quivers
a machete that bleeds
i’m the bananas on Josephine's skirt, a brown liquor flirt
the gardenia in Billy Holiday’s hair
i’m a blues song in a cigarettes glare, a beaded zulu hat on Makeba’s head
Bob Marley’s loc, a natty dread
i’m Marcus Garvey’s last microphone, ancient lady of grace Nefertiti’s royal throne i’m a poem
i’m a poem handwritten by La Lupe on the Malecón
a grassroots meeting of orishas in the basement of a brownstone
i’m a homegirl homegrown made of magic
a mermaid of memories swimming through tragic times
i’m the one, that got away
i’m the love, i’m the love
i'm the love i never had
a cipher of butterfly wings
i’m a little girl who had big dreams, and prayers in my mothers purse
i’m the color of Saturday, bouncing off the walls
i drizzle in the wind like a sun shower shawl
i’m the final hour, before the moon rests
i’m what a day looks like, honest and undressed
i’m la cascarilla on the door, windows and vents
a protector of realms
a protector of realms
i’m a Bwiti shaman who ascends
i’m the mirror
i am the mirror
i am the mirror, i’m the root and the end
i am
i am
i am not that i am
i am and we are
we, we, you and me
i am
i am because of you
we are here together
there’s no me without you
i am
i said there’s no me without you
we are we x 2 ix3
i am
i am, because we are
we are
i’m only possible because we are you and me, we are
i am
you made me possible
i am x 2
i am, because we are
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2. |
why my love?
04:37
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my love be a front line
my love be a fighter
a shade that sisters and saves
my love survived the middle passage
waded the waters
my love be grassroots
organises movements, the birds the bees
my love be butterflies beaming
my love be indigenous, ocean wide, sky deep
my love listens to the land
all natural no preservatives
my love be homemade from the scratch
scribbled handwritten notes, adoration
my love be scripture
be ritual, baptism, revival
a cathedral built from bare hands
a taj mahal, all the temples
my love creates new ways to worship
serenity, sorcery, hieroglyphs across your chest, tongue tied
my love be sacred geometry
past life premonitions
revelations and gratitude
prayer hands
my love be call and response
praise the eyelashes and the eyes
my love be a river like the Nile, ancient and long
my love be a crowd of shyness
secret messages in the rosy red of deep dimples
my love be a reflection
a looking glass
magic
a song we only dance to
my love, my love make no excuses
my love be compassionate
forgives but not stupid
be backbone, be ass whooping, accountable
my love
my love be love
abundant
limitless, endless, giving, make no mistakes ‘less they lessons
my love be book smart
be Google
be Google ready
encyclopaedic, soul listening, kindred twin flame, seeking, questioning, answering, demanding, aggressive, hugging, consent, candle lighting, that tarot card, psychic healing, intuitive
my love be brave
my love be brave
be heavyhearted, lightheaded, woozy, clumsy, knee wobbling, butterfly, belly dancing, floating and fluttering
my love be goofy
be goofy, be silly, trusting, foreplay, aching, tempting, tasting to savour, weary, wounded, ridding ghosts
some things cannot be saged, but must be faced
my love
my love be partnership
be collective
don't leave when things get tough
be flawed, stretch marked, pudgy, bold
my love squeezes pimples, tweezes ingrowns
memories
my love
my love be a lighthouse in the middle of storm
be light
why every time we tell man about himself, our love gotta come into question
who said
who said loving you would be a walk in the white section of the park
who wrote the poems that made love in to a door mat, doorbell, pornographic, wet dream, male gaze, nonsense romance film
who done turned love, into a battle of the sexes
say I can't love my man and tell him where it hurts or how
or when to stop or when to slow
treat me with kindness
who say, who say, who say I can’t teach you how to love me
how to tender tug and touch
how to witness and watch
who say, who say love gotta humiliate me
gotta turn me into a victim
into a damsel in distress
if i could tell you ‘bout yourself to your face, i wouldn't have speak to strangers
why my love, why my love always gotta be in question
gotta go through tests, relay races, obstacle courses
gotta hop on one leg, and bark like a dog
why my love gotta do backflips
and learn rocket science and speak mansplain
why my love x 2
why my love gotta wait till you ready to love you
why the world ain’t
why the world ain’t got my back
and I always
i always seem to have
yours
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3. |
black joy
06:16
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black joy
joy is the will
is the dimple that has endured
a dance so deep in a dark cheek
a wound without a scar
without a trace
the humour of hurt
is the hell of being healed
joy daps death
lives in the grin
singing from the blood
bathes in a smirk
testifies tenderness in a tear
it is a smile silhouetted against the face witnessing the want
the flower in the grenade
a rose in the concrete
a pirouette beside a barricade
is the butterfly in the battlefield
is disarming
the swing set in the middle of a gunfight
is dodging a bullet
hopscotch and double dutch
a fierce gaze, the side eye, the shade
the sass, the snap, the head nod
is the turn up, the swag
joy is righteous and ratchet
joy twerks and taps, jooks and jives harlem shakes, electric slides, dutty wines salsas on twos and rumbas
joy is rhythm and repetition
rhythm and repetition
hums in harmony
is the blues
is a song in a cotton field
or central bookings
on a crowded subway
joy is a song anywhere
joy bes in the trap
is a dilla beat in the middle east
is fly
is finger-licking good
is pasteles with black beans
or a patty and coco bread
is fried chicken
with bbq sauce
or buffalo sauce
or hot sauce
or any damn sauce
joy
is a recipe passed on
a language that survives
savoury and sweet
toe curling
knocking boots
the fight and the fury
is making love to make up
is the glow
is an entire day in a lover’s arms,
a carton of ice cream and a bed of books
is illuminated in the aftermath
is wrinkled lips, a pouted kiss, the shivering hips
the theater of our thunder
joy
joy is a story traveling
a rocking chair on the front lawn
a wind chime in a window
is a barbeque in the backyard
subwoofers in a hoopty
melanin gathered in a room
is the entourage
is getting your friends in the club
joy
joy is all about vibes
is a roof over your head
is clothes on your back
is free 99
is having the rent when its due
or having no rent at all
is no debt or no credit check
joy is shooting dice in a stairway
it’s getting a hand in spades
or a double six capicu in dominoes
is hoops in a crate
is opening a fire hydrant in the heat
joy
is a six-block willy through traffic with no handlebars in the rain
is the catwalk
is the voguing
is the coming out
is the crackhead with a dime bag and a dream
is a fresh pair of white kicks with the check
is bottle caps glued beneath dress shoes
is three dollars in the tank
is catching rain water in a tin cup
a firefly in your palm
buying sunflowers for yourself on a cloudy day
is a moon in the sky as if in a school play
is your father in the audience
joy is skipping school or recess
is a screen without static aluminium foil antenna
is when the belt buckle snaps or the switch breaks or your mom gets too damn tired joy
is waving down the ice cream truck
a fresh line up and a clean doobie
the perfect coil to a curl or a loosened nap and an afro pick is the gift of gab
is rapping yo ass off
is roasting or wrestling a sibling to tap out
joy
is yo mama jokes until it’s yo mama
is the first foot out the jail, the homecoming, the graduation
the step show at the probate
joy x 3
is hugging the self, what conquers the heart and captures the blame
is the madness of our meaning
is the maturity of our memory
is the irony of our forgetting
is a helicopter four days after the hurricane on a roof with no water or food is a mother picking her daughter up from foster care
is smoking a joint and a cop car switching lanes
is food stamps on the first of the month
is no snitching
no snitching
is loyalty, perseverance, protest, resilience, resistance
is the food after the funeral or the parade
the blessing and the curse
the call, the response
the prayer, the pulpit
is evidence of things unseen
is the hallelujah, the amen, the holy ghost
is speaking in tongues
is when the santo say you don't need no cleaning
is genetic heirloom
is the portable promised land
it is the diaspora x 3
making it overseas or making it over the mason-dixon line
joy
joy is family
is brotherhood
is sisterhood
is feeling another’s dimple in your face
is together
joy is together
it's together unified on the frontlines
our joy
our joy will astonish the world
because joy
true joy
has always been
and will always be
justice
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4. |
unhurt
06:36
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hurt was here before we were
someone you love will eventually disappoint you
maybe even break your heart or hurt your feelings
this will happen
accept it
sometimes repeatedly oftentimes
repeatedly
we will be hurt
and it will feel lonesome and sickening
and you will wonder what has gone mad in the world you will question everything
beginning with yourself
you may even wish you owned a rifle
a knife
a proper fist
the perfect word to scar an inside
but you will cry
someone will hurt you today
tomorrow
the next day
three years from now
and you will love them one day
you will love them for it
there’s this thing
this twisted appreciation for suffering
you can only know love through the lens of neglect joy though the lens of pain
and it’s fascinating actually
how we wound with our wounds
and call it humanity
the first time you hurt someone you love
you will question the last time you tended an open wound you will vow to never do it again
you may even pray to some god
some yemaya
some universe
anyone listening for forgiveness
or the greatest death
you will not care at all
be prepared
be prepared for a hurting is coming
and it will come and it will take you suddenly
and maybe you will be dancing
or laughing
or remembering
maybe you wont even notice it at all
and you will hurt yourself
you will hurt yourself with all this hurt thought
and you will love
hurting
and you will love
no one really wants to hurt, you will say no one really wants to hurt
and it will turn from blame
to revelation
i don’t really want to hurt
and you will love
did you know that?
did you know you will love?
never mind the who
never mind the when
it’s of no importance
you will love
and it will unhurt us
all
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5. |
weathering
05:41
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when the earth shatters beneath us and we are broken open
picked apart by the silence
let me tell you
you are unrehearsed laughter sleeping between the murmur of my lips an unconscious love
a man dipped in midnight lightening
i will fix my body for you
and fold in the bend of your arms a tortured jewel
you are a freedom song
humming in the shadow of my soul a healing heartache
that kisses wounds and sets free tornadoes on my spine such a crippling tongue
my spirit is dancing in the gospel of your chest
and i have found music
glowing in the whirlwind of your eyes
may we create new skies to fall apart under together
the sun bent its head on my skin this morning
and i could hear the bones of butterflies creaking in the breeze the breath of birds heaving into the heart of my ears
my eyes
whistled open
the air still smelling of lavender smoke and wet leaves
i turn to you
staring the lids of your jarred pupils
your face
your face is a naked desert at dawn
an ancient heaven at horizon
your mouth slightly caved open like an owling cow
i smile
blooming
because somewhere before i remember this
i remember this silence
you sound of a starving angel when you sleep
you snore like a wailing forest my love
i think of you like a waking dream
of your spine’s grip melted into the sand dunes of my palms last night
last night
your hands sprinkled across my flesh like rainstorms
and i can feel the sun this morning
he is strong and gleaming
your eyelashes splinter from the blow of my lips
rise
and shine
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6. |
the perfect storm
08:02
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aja monet:
the perfect storm empties a country of abuelitas padres
hermanos
mujeres
y niños
a disaster that doesn't seem so natural
waves of wind
damaged homes
hovering roofs made of tarp
if you wanted to take land from a people bent on resisting colonialism insert mcdonalds
walmart
or the jones act
or blame it on a storm of a woman named Maria
who grew up in spanish harlem
who reminded us of the western story
that as the rich are getting richer
the poor are getting poorer
never mind the wealth
that ain’t so common under the foot of US force
the way loss runs through steep hill sides
or
rivers swell the veins between vacant towns
we blame the thirsty but not the corporations that tax water
the shocking doctrines of profit over people
exploited tunes and tones of rhythms Taíno for tourists and escapism por la isla de encanta
we, we lament the boriquen tongue
in power outages of spanglish
cursing the companies of settler colonial conditions
for the prayers and litanies
tears like rosary beads
in the sewers of sorrows
where fantazma sing
from the sore throat blueness of blood
the border between refugee and nomad
migration is the art of fleeing sad songs for blooming in suitcases la gente fuerte
and mourn wondrous
we belong
we belong to each other
before any notion of a nation
no one will understand
the tangled trues
of being from here and nowhere
the beaming cocqui that still visits in dreams
they wont write us in history
if we don't write ourselves
the uncle who drowned in coronas
and ham sandwiches
visions of never playing pro baseball
or the aunt
who claps the roof of her mouth
when she speaks
asthmatic and always, always, always high
who lost 6 children to the government
or
abuela who is always working 2/3 jobs
to make up for the guilt
of coming to america
and how she couldn't face returning to no running water
and still there are spirits
there are spirits
who know every chupacabra has its day
it is time x 6
for us to take the red fire of our wounds
and weapon our mouths
toward new movement songs
remember
remember Campos suffering in silence
separated by an ocean, and a language yet still free
free
in the love of a people fearless and unafraid
always
always a hurricane
it’s always a hurricane
it’s always a hurricane before the grand exodus
before the grand exodus
the fight for dignity and independence
San Ciriaco
rattles
rattles, rattling in every roar
every roar of revision is history
pa’lante people
pa’lante
milagros de movimientos
soar x 2
because if we are to live
if we are to live with the fierce force of knowing anything anything that is sacred x 2
is worth fighting for x 2
bienvenido
bienvenido a la lucha
we are worth
fighting for
Eryn Allen Kane:
worth, fight x 9
aja monet:
we are worth fighting for
the perfect storm
always precedes great miracles and we are worth fighting for did you know x3
that you are powerful
did you know that you have everything you need that every, everything you need is within you that you
that you are worth
you x6
i mean you are worth fighting for
and that everything
everything you need
everything
i mean everything
everything x 2
everything you need x 2
is within you
that you are so powerful
great storms precede great miracles
remember that
great storms precede great miracles
-The Young Lords-
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7. |
the devil you know
09:58
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Novena Carmel:
if wine was a river
and i was a duck
i’d dive to the bottom and never come up
but since wine ain’t no river
and i ain’t no duck
imma drink this wine
til i’m fucked up
now dig all you cats and kitties out there whipping and wailing and sucking up all that ole fine juice
well imma put a lady on you
she is the coolest
the sweetest
the poet-est
and the worldliest
and she from new york city
and this gal
her name is
aja monet
aja monet:
the devil you know
taxes the air we breathe
privatises the water
profits of homelessness
strangles the land and injects hormones in animals rapes the people and rewards the rich
charges you
for being sick
sends a bill to your loved ones with interest when you die laughs at us coughing up our lungs
gulping water, lead dripping off our chins
buys private ships to the moon
dancing with your demons
the selfish, individualistic part of you
the one who rather not have a foot on your neck
or who shows up to the rally
after sipping sweet comfort at a corporate gig
that pays you just enough to die a little slower
tired and community fostering care
how being black
or woman
or queer
or trans
or other
or human
or inhumane
computer or code
able bodied ten fingers, ten toes
running
or right or wrong
how none ofitmatters
when the earth is a hand written letter from the past
a ghost sculpted in blood, city sweating bitter memories
flooded by crawling maggots and swollen hurt
how, how the sewers sing of old sidewalks
and cool breezes are our fairytales
we spoon feed our children in the heat
and we were never ourselves, had we known who we are without greed a world decorated by betrayal
if we had a sense of humour x 2
we’d be more radical
more migrant than citizen
we’d breathe the air clean and ration our resources
gathering hugs and holds set to bloom
and pebbles of rain reasoning with riverbeds rinsing in daylight
ridding pipelines and fossil fuels
we would melt all the guns x 2 (melt all the guns)
the moist in the back of our knees
the lick between knuckles mocking evil
and all its ill designed destruction
we would choose the scar
we would bulldoze the walls
and plant windows where widows weep
beautiful green lakes hushed in our cradling arms
we’d become
the tiny brooklet kissing creeks
we are, we are near a point of no return
a wounded woman scorn
temper sharp as a thousand shards
aimed in one direction
i am weary for weeping
“me too”
she whispers
“me too”
the earth said.
Interlude
the most important election is in the heart
a campaign of soul
a candidate measured by their courage
in the midst of the enduring strength of love voting for the inner standing
how we make a way through no way in a basement church or a high school auditorium
a family living room
these days
these days insanity is the sanity stifled sobs, despair, distress, thrill p r a i s e the people x 2
praise the peoples power
the poet laureates of the poor
care warm anthems sawn from the keyholes of closed, shut doors the whistle of who and why
the architect of self-determination
if you gon’ vote x 2
vote with your spine
a head held high
vote x 6
with the way you love
a gut singing soft city sleep dreaming of protest
the ballot
the ballot is not a bullet
but it can be a border or a bridge
you choose (she got make me vote)
how you gon’ vote
pour into each other
how we mourn those we’ve lost
how we all hold the grief
vote x3
with childcare
how you nurse the sick
lending someone your heart
pay fair wages x 2
thats the least you can do, is pay fair wages
vote
vote by listening
resist the artificial division of our deaths
held together by a common thread of
concerned, self-determined, reliant
respect
the body is a ballroom of grief and despair
we the life
we the chosen
we the freed migrant rebel workers
we the word workers
we the shoeless and standing tall
we the houseless and housing parks
we the teachers still students
we the farmers in the field
we the shamans being healed
revolution
revolution is not a spectator sport
silence
is a noise too
somewhere
somewhere there is an incorruptible spirit
re-remembering a time when we voted with the thoughts in our minds it begins with you
it begins with you loving you enough to me as i am you
we are the country’s consciousness rising
and we are only as powerful as our vote made in the flesh our voice
our voice bravely raising up
reverberating
new visions
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8. |
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aja monet:
what makes you feel loved
Lonnie Holley:
loved
love is like a liquid of agape
and i died within it
and each and every day
if i don't get but a single drop
from the tip of a leaf
that was caused by the morning dew
that what makes me say i love you
because love is a natural
love is everything
so in the wonders of love
I feel wonderful
I feel full of wonder
and mysteriously in my abstract motion
and my notions of abstractness
they will never figure me out
because i am of love
born for love, created for love
the identity of love itself
love has been hued into stone
and scattered like dust in the wind
love
hmm
love
that love has been so funny
and that love has been so serious
until it went with the ancestors in their grave
that love
has been given
over and over and over and over and over and over and over to every generation
that love has be given and reliven
reliving it
hmmm
can’t you feel it?
thats what I'm saying x2
all you gotta do is listen
and then what you feel from that, you ride it
because love is gonna be the one that push an opinion
love is gonna be the one thats forcing the ink
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9. |
for sonia
07:04
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as if we did not lose another
as if life were never so convenient
and guns so easy to reach
our country’s so trigger happy these days
or sad
depending on who's dying today
depending on the touch
the moon raises my rivers yesterday
i leaked all around the house
a bad cough
and a cloud looking over my shoulder as i wrote and though i cry
i am celebrating a woman i love
who loved me before i knew myself to be
what blooms in the blood, what scratches the voice trembles words
every day is a new mourning
another fight we live to dance between tears beating on our faces
i am tired of strength x 2
when i first showed up to the community organizing meeting i uttered the word ‘poetry’
and their faces sunk with confusion
who's got time for poems, when the worlds on fire
and your brother’s body on your front door and your sister’s been missing for weeks and your dad got laid off
and your mother gone mad with mothering and your uncle locked up
and your aunt need a fix i mean, i mean
life can get you down and out
but when the organizers was weary
and all the marching wore them down
and all the meetings ended in arguments
and all the foundations bought out the snakes and all the trauma piled up on their desks and all the campaigns ended with politicians
i offered, i offered
poems in their palms like petunias revolutionary and blushing shades of plum
i fed them Sonia
and
Jane
and
June
and
Pat Parker
and
Carolyn Rodgers
how every poem still pierces true
like yesterdays battlefield is tomorrows front yard
still
still, all my hero’s is fighting depression
some live to see what they fought to prevent
and we ought to keep our hopes high
but all this comfort and security got our institutions kidnapped in broad daylight treaty torn
and tricked
bamboozled by the beaming brilliance of greed
got our babies programmed for numbness
content is
and what is an enemy if we do not know who our friends are
and who is a comrade these days when the poems are good
depending on who reposts them
depending on who's fetching for awards
and who will feed our activists, our organizers freedom, if not the poets?
we are losing our front line warriors to suicide
and is not choosing to fight a sort of sacrifice
a kind of offering
all our children have become alters to the liberation front
the other day, the other day
we lost Amber Evans
baby girl found in the Scioto River
she was 28
and before that it was Erica Garner
heart full of storm and lightening
she was 27
and before that it was Marshawn McCarrel on the steps of the Ohio statehouse haunted by the hunting
he was 23
Bassem Masri, Bassem Masri
our Palestinian brother from another mother
what about,
what about Ferguson
and Edward Crawford
and Darren Seales
and how dreams still smell of teargas and milk
we cry
we cry trumpets and turntables in the corners of our hopes
we rhythm and blues
and though i cry x 3
i am celebrating
a woman i love
she who turned the pen in her hand to a grenade
haiku homegirl folklore florist
flung
stories into our minds
planted orchids
and daffodils
sunflowers
she who, she who shivered the sky
rain showers and sunsets born of her blessing
the flesh of her words
kindred sister who wrote for daughters
of a movement
who say, do and act
the call
response
resist
riot of our rebellious laughter
as we readied our reasons for writing
we armed ourselves with her poems
a strategy for organizing the heart
prophetic prayers
a smile made of spirituals and birth pains
these days
these days, it hurts to write
every sentence is a false promise
is we, or is we not
trying to get free
and when the poems do what they do
they get it done
Sister Sanchez
eternal fellow fire spitter
bad
i mean bad
i mean bad to the bone
i never met a poet who loved us like you do
all of us
and when my anger knocks the wind out of my weeping
i sit on the hills of your humming words
and feast of all the ways, we got to get to where we’re going in the quiet mirror of a poem, how to be human
how to shake loose arms outstretched
summoning us, uncool and truth telling care
how to heal in the cathedral of hands
this is a poem for you
and for us
for all the poems that sistered us in this ancestral war
all the lines
somersaulting sister
Sister Sanchez
you are
our North Star
in our darkest nights.
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10. |
yemaya
12:38
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i went to see someone about my pain and he told me
that i had to meet the warrior at the edge of sea “do not carry anger that is not yours”
says el brujo
and just like that
the sand is a quiet prayer rug under folded knee deep washed ashore
rain passing the cheek
a lick of salt from the lip
longing for the wide arms of wind
woozy and restless
i rushed toward the deity of living sea
horse of my heart
running to the teacher of tides
wet whisper of all that swims
breathing beneath blue water color
i’m here to heal my hurt
i fall into the black mermaid of miracle and pearl
mistress of moon and star below
seven glittering waves, splash aqua marine
a flamenco skirt dancing on the sky
lightening fast footwork
heaven on my shoulders
arms flirt the clouds, a migrant bird outstretched
el brujo rubs my body with the fruit
and tears the shirt from my back, mumbling a tongue that teases me faint tell me you can hear those thrown overboard
teetering on the plank
the drowned out screams sink each shriek
a shimmering
shimmering face
i bury my face in the chest of the ocean
weeping for the voices remembering me
god of cerulean scales and gold fins
temper of turbulent rivers, roaring
cleanse me of sadness and sorrow
in this grandest lakes, lagoons or streams
yemaya
yemaya
i offer
i offer you papaya
coconut and cotton flower
deep labyrinth of worlds sunken under
lady who levels the land
queen of atlantis
guaraca beneath Arabian sea
the spirit of depth
the mapless mountains inward
how light goes to rest
vanishing in the opaque
largest body without borders
lines fade
nations
navigating fishing boats filled with dreams that never dock guardian of the glistening ancient graveyard
ghost gossiping with our tunes
fortune teller of shivering shells soothing these stranger times i do not know
i do not know which ancestor gave me this rage but i am ready
i am ready
i am so ready
to lay it down i’m ready to lay down
asé.
Jadele McPherson:
vocals
aja monet:
me traiga su bendición me libre de todo mal reina del mar
madre de chango guerrera de mi corazón bendice a cada oriente bendice a cada oriente
Jadele McPherson:
vocals
Assata Shakur:
i hope that I can live up to my mother’s example
and i hope that I can live up to my ancestor’s expectations
because I really believe that I have a duty
to all those that have become before me
to all this who lie at the bottom of the ocean
to all those who lost their lives
whether it is in the cane fields, or cotton fields.. or you know, hanging off some tree to continue the struggle and to continue to love
and to continue to believe
and to continue to try to be human
to be giving
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11. |
castaway
04:33
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castaway
i did not want to write a poem full of corpses
so
i wrote a sacred pink blue sky
jewelled on the horizon
laughter as the loudest star sleeps
humour hugs every ache whole
how heavy heads lay after a long day in the humid heat carribean moon size and joyous dreams
i did not wish to speak of what should not be spoken
so silence breathed into all the words
a haunting
i come from a language that does not write itself
our ancestors speak hurricane
a thunder tongue shivering tides and a petty revenge
the mid atlantic is a vexed auntie rattling rivers and roofs ready for reckoning
knocking at the chest of men
on the other side
on the other side of now there is a door where we return every island is a hip swaying between here and there
a float in the dance to belong
rocking in the arms of the edge
where the sea is an emerald flag and palm trees praise the air every shore is an alter of remembrance
embraced on purpose
pickney of the sun ray
where prayer trembles the light
or how a storm retreats
we marvel and move eternal unfawned and unlost
hips hollering, elbows flapping like fanning flames
bare feet chant in the sand or in a concrete jungle
love taps quake the nape of the earths neck
where daughters of the diaspora dream
and inherit journeys of flesh
where a smile is also a scar
or how my grandfather came to see about us
years after he died
wearing my uncles face
dimpled and shining eyes like two wet black beans
baptised by a spirit
rum slapped on his breath
charming man and all he was
checking on his grand babies
fear not death x 2
we visit kinfolk there
lingering in the blood where the ocean hums
tribe of the great abyss
a not knowing from where or what we come
and still to arrive before they could conquer us
we came by shipwreck
by wind and wave
pushed into the water splashing and shaking
the wound
the wound teaches us to remember where tomorrow glows listen
listen to the animal clawing within
a rooster calls directions between this world and the next there are roads that cannot be mapped
and there are streets that do not have names we ran
we ran
we ran away into the ochre tinted mountains seeking maroon hills
i was born borderless
mounting a dollar van like an orisha scribbling visions on a train or in an airport travelling
ritual voice and time
i was born of distance
in between now
and then
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12. |
give thanks
06:28
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13. |
for the kids who live
04:56
|
aja monet Brooklyn, New York
Aja Monet is a poet, performer, and educator from East NY, Brooklyn, best known as the youngest individual to win the legendary Nuyorican Poets' Café Grand Slam title. She is an internationally established poet, recognized for combining her voice and powerful imagery on stage. Aja Monet has captivated audiences across the United States, Europe, Bermuda and Cuba. ... more
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