Years of a sun loving us, solitude is
in the wrist of a magnolia tree, hung or lynched
in a rose-throated croon of liberty and justice for all
except blues people live in the smoke
at a crossroad, what really happened that day
robert johnson brought his guitar
to meet an evil of all hues
play with magic
and be ready for it
to play with you
some folks fear death
others know better
fear the devil
don’t sell no soul
to spite dying
we all have to go
someday or another
death is a family member
you hear of but never met
until y’all meet
some thing is meant for tellin
other things just is what they was.
I have faced worse things than being forgotten
tho you call me woman whom you do not know
i am a daughter of sisters
of pillaged offerings
an afterlife of secrets
scores of lustering light
i summon you bravely beside me
marching onward
move not for reason
but love
any law that deviates from this is as cruel
as it is ancient
let your words be soothing terrors
never mind what was written
we will rewrite it
an idea of freedom is all we know.
Our inheritance is to lift one another
we shift into a gust
or bristles between strands of hair
ashes of breath raging in quiet
what land is ours to toss and turn over
if not our bodies, the dunes across chests
the legs on all roads,
arms in a meadow of marigolds.
We survive and regret surviving
we are descendants of the end
we see the end
fences, barbed wire, stone walls and iron gates
do not impede the truth.
nations can not forsee our being.
Here in this vessel of marrow and sweat
having made it across
the bayous of a dark mother’s womb
and all that tried her
pushing through treacherous attempts at our lives
fear not what of me resides in you
a shawl of waiting hankering to be felt
what ails is what ails.
Wild visions leave doors unlocked
dazed veterans returned from combat,
injured arms slung close to chest,
loyal to a beat or nub.
i am a country within a country
retire rest a while
woke and whirring, my beloved
we take to the streets as a sort of rain
descending atop roofs of all those who make
laws to define the absence between us
peculiar spirit who aspires for such things, to posses a people
what sin hunts hearts?
the birds, the fish, the cattle
the islands of what is kept sacred.
to nurture is to resist. in all forms we heal.
we must work the land before we make claims to it
what endures the body is the body
when we left our mother’s belly
we did not take any land
only thing we took was the weapon of her smile and the elixir of her love.
[1] Inspired by Mahmoud Darwish.
