can we get much higher?
Our world is different
We live on an island of cotton candy and barbed wire
Able to retire
on wit, and rhythm and sweet nothings
This shit is everything to me.
I know where we stand,
never questioning the sanctity of my two feet
I am here with roots and vines around my ankles
like buckles,
strapping me to your lap and your lips and your lineage
I am here
Don't push
Don't make it anything but worth it
Not easy but worth it
Rock me real slowly
I am not here to cradle you.
To strangle you
To baby you,
I expect you to show up growed up,
and with the architectural skill
to build
The house of hope and sovereignty we need
Laughing in the face of our oppressors who cannot decode when we speak
Who plaster hatred with the brains of our babies in the street
drawing us closer with every trigger pulled on their screens
That's why we winning every time we wake up and we breathe
Audaciously.
With precision, pride and power
Every minute is our hour Love.
This is the birth of a revolutionary Love.
A revolutionary, Love.
A revolutionary, in Love.
We are a statement in love
We are poetry.
We are rooted.
We are slated.
We are destined.
We are fated,
to rise and to roar louder than hatred
This love is louder than sheet and stick
and cross and Ks
and badge and blame
and fear and flame
We here
Been here
Abolishing abandonment
Abolitionist, handle it
With care, my heart baby
Handle it
I am certain you'll handle it
You can cradle and contextualize this sharp tongue be it daisy or dagger,
can cherish the twist and bend and dip of my curls,
Can see me as Beauty and see the beauty of my world
and know my conviction
to paint prescriptions with poems,
the calling that lives in my skin to end rifts with the fullness of my lips and my mind,
and my art and behind,
With our bloody toothed smiles and barbed wire and cotton candy and audacity of breath,
With that swag in our step
This melanin in our dress,
We will never die.
In love we will never die,
We were born to rise
Teaching as Toni taught me
To never say that I fell in love with you,
For all that it implies
but that I rose in it,
born,
destined to live and to rise
We are the hope and dream of the slave
So naturally, baby, we don't hide
We fly high
We get by
We ride
We are love
We are lifted
And this Revolution, it lives
in our pride.
August 2015