WATER
Dying be all up on our tongue like it must be done today, all in our vocabulary like it’s a job for the lifers
We not ready to die-- for real we don’t want to --we just keep getting started it feel like over and over again-- keep having to rise from ashes and dismantled neighborhoods, keep having to build back up from scratch
Our audacity surfaces as the blueprint
And the blueprints are the maps
Domestic & internationally
The faces of everyone who was killed--are surfacing everywhere
--as the blueprint to rebuild with bricks and rebuke the opposition
Breath...easy
Breathe
Easy
These answers are for the questions we can’t afford to be scared to ask no more
I saw my greatest grandmother for the first time in a dream last night
We had the same pair of eyes--kinfolk
She fed me without fire
She armored me--adorned
ordinated me without a needle and thread--but water and air--and real tight hugs that smelled like aged molasses
After going to sleep off ginger water--
She reminded me of living-
divine protection and clear speech
That we are the new --we are the improved
that we should do something about staying here a little longer
“Y’all be so gung-ho-to go”
grandmother water speaks
“You have never belonged on the bandwagon--anyway--the ride been too full--of an emptiness too foreign to the map and design of you. Woman-Child, eagle, fire bird,, way maker flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood that disguises itself in the crevices of the wind--winter is blessed--you are chosen-and you should do something about staying here a little longer--there’s honor in dying for something bigger than you but you become a different giant when you’re supposed to lay there and die and you don’t instead you live for something bigger --when it’s written--ain’t no eraser. ”
I spoke back:
“It’s not that we really ready to die--
it’s just sometimes a lot goes into breathing—a lot of us aint done catching our breaths--a lot of us don’t know how to--a lot of us just know how to run --how to catch up
if we not together in the circle holding hands--the magic won’t work
The broom will beat us up and the doors will open & shut “handlessly”-- the windows will break on its own the curtains will tangle us all up--
“That’s what happens when you try to catch up somewhere you aren’t in the running for”
She said worry about yourselves --worry less about the other
She reminded me that we are the alchemist of the sun--the function of the moon
the highest and the lowest points of truth, illusion and earth
She asked, “ever seen a watermelon destroy a volcanic fire?” We control where 92% of the water goes.
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I’m from this
Round
Yellow
Brown
Crown
Oak
Purple
Heavy
Dark Brown
Dark and Black
Dark and Bright
The brightest, the ocean, wide and blue, the fittest
*x2*
Never see through
while burning--never the same when shit hits the fan
Or a son hits the ground--or a daughter who doesn’t make it home when she was on her way--or when all she was doing was laying down, sleep
Olu, I think of your face every day I look at mine in the mirror or in the wind when it’s late and I’m walking under dark trees--praying---God I just want when that black man sees me, he sees the best parts of his mother
I’m from women who speak in the color: calm
Raise their voices purple and love
While with a head full of chaos like a bullet bubbling in a barrel of an automatic rifle
Palms sweating--jittery off cheap coffee, making it happen, making it with no sleep just the babies cries memorized
Somehow the coolest women maintain
I come from this
Stepping out of women
Spread thick across their own worlds like blue lotuses
Who on one shoulder?
had the world on it
Who
On the other shoulder
Balanced the heaven in her head as simple as a “goddamn break” from trying catch up & the one Jesus tells her has pearly gates
--balances hell
like imaginary shapes she hides from herself to keep herself
never lost, for as sure as her hands stir the pot--there’s food
Sweet potatoes 36 ways
We are the women of the sun and the moon--we are the belly of a compass
Pickpocketing stars & rent money
We make a way out of no way--
10 dollars stretch against her bra & breast & lasting for weeks
Born into--
Women who use improvisation to become masters
Born into challenge and victories
Women who sit themselves out on cliffs to jump
and not die
Women who talk to God in classrooms
And practice him on athletic fields--and in the parking lot
We get audacity from grandmothers.
Working up the nerve as grand as 10,000 armies like a grandmother
Pot full of beans filling us for weeks --like Charlotte
Grandma would buy 1 whole chicken
Cook it and we’d have soup, lunchmeat, chicken & rice
And Andre would come get a plate--Charlotte would spread it thin like she had 8 legs
Turns out she just has powers
9 lives like porch cats
My grandmother means, or what you call audacity
but she’ll give you and your kids her shirt if it’s cold
a house if it’s raining
if you are standing outside barefoot
she’ll give you her shoes
It's audacity that makes up our rarest form of magic and magicians who look like us
Are handmade by Gods disguised as Grandmothers
Mine made home fries & salmon cakes with sardines
Easy like water
Hardly ever baked, goods from scratch
Just payed home insurance
with formulas and rubrics in her sweat glands
Ever-y uphill--fight--counts more than any downhill fall
She is made up solely of deliverance for self and others
Mother
saves them all
Mother
Mother
save them all
I am from who gets scared of her own reflection
But remains a fact
up front
At attention
These mothers don’t take orders
But scriptures
And surahs--not in bonded leather but in blue skies and blue waters
Fingertips stitched with electricity and intuition
‘And that mine eyes are ever toward the Lord; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net’
And that “All dominions of heaven and earth belongs to Allah; he gives life and causes death’
Before hash-tagged, women who are
Yemaya and Oshun in spirit and in flesh
They are the tabernacle where the scriptures were stolen
They are the land where the scriptures were stolen
who
creates justice,
gives justice,
is justice in the eyes
Of herself, without verdict or flash
Women who revere on foot
Who don’t know nothing about counting no money
but makes it all the way to three hundred and sixty
On foot--not using her hands & without a shadow of a doubt
The first one to choir rehearsal
And they all; always the last to leave--caught up in the ritual of praise; the holy ghost of the music who lurk in foyers & tambourines where the mural speaks
When the lights go out
The women I come from rub their hands together like Birdman for fire, heat for the house
laugh and sing until there’s a rumble in the walls; in the belly of the infinite lasters
Wash each other’s feet in lukewarm water
Chant,
Quote
Dance
Pray—
Sing loudly
while steadily bleeding
They laugh loudly together
Cause the blood falling on them
Woman, I’m grateful for your mothership
Your chariots of rainbows
Whether in black and white or in color
Woman, your colors have turned darkness into day
I’ve never gotten the truth from the bible that I didn’t have to cross reference
With you as my study
You make me believe in the glare they said wasn't mine, but I know it belongs to me
You are the reading rainbow of common sense
I’m breathing in your sacrifices
inhaling your truth -- I’m not just making it through
My life here, is an ode to you
I have turned into God, for you
I will challenge everything I do not believe as the truth
I will follow myself into any abyss--if the spirit uses me so
I will combat what was taught me— find it for myself
I will bring back what I have gathered and teach you to let go of the cross
And except your winnings as the ones, you worked for
Challenging you to see yourself as God
Because woman you are my source
One could only create another
You deserve more than flowers woman you deserve to live
I will, in your honor, reach higher, lotus
For you--I will make a paradise out of birds--gamble everything where truth sees fittest
I will stand statuesque like two moose making love where plain eyes see fighting
She asked:
If a circle is solid, is it full or empty?