Monday, October 8, 2012

Re: Why I Love Ratchetness



“If you use ratchet or ghetto in any other context other than positive, unfriend yourself right now….As someone who grew up in one room apartments, shared with other families sometimes in poor neighbourhoods, my experience of the ghetto is resourceful, persistent and so clean. Folks who are poor or have been poor know how expensive it is to be poor, how creative you have to be to survive. I am not sure how that fetishizes my experience by recognizing the value of the the work that poor communities of colour do to stay alive. I am not suggesting that we romanticize poverty, but that we give credit where credit is due”
— Kim Katrin Crosby

In response to my girl Phoenix Rose: "Ratchet comes with a new level of ugly"



I think too often black folks have a tendency to see alot of what we do to survive, to feel good, to feel wanted, to feel desirable, to love ourselves, to express ourselves and to be self-determining in a negative, judgmental way. I think this is especially true for a black woman or gender-non-conforming person's body. I think we are too quick to shame each other, especially for not embracing a middle/upper class or white aesthetic. When I see a black woman with a skittles wrapper in her hair and her weave looking like a rainbow fountain, I am aware of just how much rebellion that is against EVERYTHING that says that she has no right to express herself, or determine for herself what she deems to be beautiful. And then I see Sara from Sex in the City make door-knockers hot, and everybody an they mama rockin em, and all of the sudden vogue is doing a fashion shoot on ratchet hair styles and now it's haute couture. Among afrocentric or African-centered folk, I see people who rebel against a so-called 'eurocentric' ideal, only to impose another form of oppression on people by attempting to enforce a standard of aesthetic that does not speak to their everyday experience. 

If you look at many African proverbs, you will see that much of well-known African philosophy is centered around the rhythms of daily life. I understand that Africans in the forced diaspora have had to be extremely dynamic and creative in order to survive, and this means creating culture no matter where you happen to find yourself, much like a dandelion- most think of it as a weed- will do. Dandelions have hundreds of variations in order to adapt to environment, whether toxic or healthy, but it makes it no less a dandelion, just like if the culture stems from the hood it doesn't make it less of a culture. one must question the toxicity of the environment that the culture sprung, but saying that one is less of a person because of the adaptations that one has made in order to survive toxicity doesn't mitigate the toxins in the environment, it just stomps on the person that is attempting to survive or even flourish. 
As another example, take names. I think it is absolutely brilliant for a person to name their child something rhythmic, something melodic, something one can dance to. black folks name their children the most ridiculously beautiful names and get called ghetto or ratchet for it. Flks talking about they don't know what their name means. But folks don't know what Suzy or Ted or Rachael or James or Brad mean either, they just pick those names because they are acceptable. But really, what is morally wrong with La'Quisha, Ba'Jonya, or Beyonce? Cuz,, lets admit it, if Beyonce wasn't famous, her name would just be another ratchet name.
So I think it's important to discuss maybe, and I'm reading your comment now as I type.. what even makes ugly? Who has defined those values and those roles for us? And how much of what is 'ugly' is unmitigated trauma, or folks trying to survive in a system that deems every part of us unvaluable, unwanted, undesireable and unloved? We need terms that speak the truth to power about what the conditions of our environments are. How much ugly we have to survive in order to express ourselves. We need terms that fucking love on us. 
So I'm appropriating Ratchet. I stand by ratchet. we don't need another term that is used as a weapon of shame. we don't need another word that tells us we are not enough. If ratchet is hood, If ratchet is black, If ratchet is ghetto, If ratchet is woman, then I am ratchet. And i love me, so i must love ratchet.

Friday, October 5, 2012

why write?

for dear fucking life, by god!

I fucking hate destiny and shooting stars

Write the story that you were always afraid to tell. I swear to you that there is magic in it, and if you show yourself naked for me, I’ll be naked for you. It will be our covenant.

I am so scared of what I want the most. I swear to god looking in her eyes makes me stop breathing for a second. And I'm like, did she just see me, I mean like really see me?

I was having a discussion with a friend
about how much i've been fucked
how much i've fucked
and how little I have made love
been made love to
and how i want that so bad

that when she looks at me, i feel this sun rise
in the back of my throat
and my womb jumps,
not butterflies, womb-somersaults
and its just sweetness, her face is sweetness
her mouth, honey
and i ask myself if she just saw me,
and i don't know
it's just my imagination probably

but some part of me feels like its gonna die
i mean wither away and blow like dust in the wind
if nobody ever looks deeply at me
and is like i see you

this is so human of me,
so fucking human
and i don't like being human
i want to be a superhuman
but i want her to look at me with them eyes just like that
smile curved just like that
hands feeling the contours of my body just like that
mouth kissing mine just like that

and i don't know what to do
because she can't
she knows better
says what she should do is 
put her hands in her pocket and walk
away, 

i fucking hate precarious situations
always feel like i'm dangling on a spider's web
over a cliff
and why i always got to be the one
to be so damn complicated?
will any of this shit ever get easier?

just kiss me. 

Jesus,
Jesus,
Jesus.




Thursday, September 6, 2012

PSA



I'm tired of having to put on a vacant ass stare when I put my glamour on. Because, sometimes, i would like to both have minimal clothing and interact with people as humans, witty, beautiful, zany, a little risque humans
...at the same damn time...

(I know I know, She doth ask for so much)

But enuf about what I'm tired of. What I want is so much more juicy, and yummy.

next post. 

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Association (I exist-- *Sexual Assault Trigger warning)

every inch of my body has been divided; a claim staked into it, judged, quartered, weighed, and thrown away on one level or another.

When I was growing up, the girls were called meat; the boys would see me and say,
'that's so-and-so's meat'

When I had sex one time, I heard around the block that I had a pretty pussy
actually I heard it from my mother's boyfriend's
brother,
my Uncle, so-to-speak,
at least that's what we called him,

I sucked dick for the first time
I think when I was about six or seven
he was a teen,
he said it was me or my brother
so i said me

The details aren't important
but they are
and there are things that have happened
things that i've done
that i may never say

The details aren't important:

because we think this shit is normal. because almost every woman i know got these stories, stories we might pull up occasionally in deep discussion, with the whiff of a scent, the flash of a screen, watching Colored Girls With Rainbows. because nobody seems to give a damn. because it should be a subliminal poetic line. because none of it is supposed to be a big deal. because we are supposed to be ashamed to say it. because we are all supposed to be over it. because the fact is, we'd rather villanize the symptoms than deal with the cause. Because, i'm supposed to act like it wasn't me in that room, I'm suppose to act like it was somebody else, it was one of you, but it wasn't one of me, but also because it was all of us. I'm supposed to be stronger than tears.  I'm supposed to be anonymous.

anonymous body,
anonymous face, mouth,
anonymous ass, pussy,
anonymous breasts, budding,

and also because the rites of passage in the hood means, subjectively:

killing that little girl inside
strangling her of any hope
of joy, just laughing bitterness
shards of glass as small as sand
stuck always just under the surface of
your skin
and you never grieve
because that's just the way things are
that's what happens to little black girls
so they can become women
at nine
at ten
and nobody gives a damn
because that The Way Things Are Supposed To Be. and why
are you stuck in the past?


but they are:

because the details make the life, weave the reality, shape the world, make a difference, bring you together or leave you stuck mired in shame for never having had any
body show you how this thing
called life, called love, called self-worth works. and black girl lost is a slur, meaning: you can be pitied, pimped, desired but never loved, tolerated but never seen. But the details
mean you exist, mean you are important, mean you are alive, and your story has meaning
that your experience on this earth means something to somebody, somewhere, even if its just yourself,
even if its only yourself,
and the details give you permission to feel because
a bitch got a reason
and feelings don't come from nowhere so they are not irrational even if untimely, unseemly and embarrassing. unravel and trace the roots to the origin, mend. repeat.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HOW DO WE honor our ancestors,
and honor their experiences

WITHOUT honoring the living culmination of experiences
that we are, without honoring our scars, our joy, our pain, our beauty?

More importantly why?
Is it bcause we are scared to say that we
are all carrying so much
because we are afraid to look, to be
a certain way
because then we will be shunned?

I have been shunned for my ugly, my unseemly, my bad girl.
But anyway, it feels like the pop, the pulling apart of all of your joints, and lying there in a pool of your own
weakness, unable to move until you mend
and then when you do, at least a bit,
wearing a scarlet letter of 'fuck y'all' bitterness
so that you are never tender,
vulnerable,
exposed again.

I don't have the answer
besides to be yourself
and do you.
be myself and do me.
and maybe we will knit ourselves back together
in love
maybe that is what i will have faith in
the weaving
or maybe i'll never completely have it all together;
who knows?











Thursday, August 23, 2012

lost my ankh: re: abortion (from Yona's workshop)

I've been on a journey
from fundamentalist damnnearquiverfullchristian complete with pro-life bumperstickers slapped on the back of a rusty buick
to mother of five
on my back
on a doctor's table
listening to the whir of a vacuum between my
legs
right in the center of me, right at the core of me

afterwards, trying to make some sense of this life of mine I'm trying to piece together, I pull a piece of copper from the ratty nest my children had made of it and formed it into an ankh

trying to ground myself in some sort of meaning, save myself from this existential crisis, pull on
my ancestors for some hope.

Another, thinner strand of copper
I'm stringing citrine, tears and garnet
wrapping and asking whatever was greater than me, "what
does all this even mean anyway?"

It's a heavy piece of jewelry, unraveling from carrying
and touching
trying to remind myself
that I exist
and there was
is
some beauty in me anyway or else how could have made
something worth keeping?

These questions about loving myself make me cry.

Friday, July 20, 2012

...and more rambles....

so he would just sit there
weighing on my right shoulder
smacking in my ear on a plum or whatever
swear to god he was my good angel
righteousness oozing from between his gripped teeth
he gripped me, vise-words
his holiness choked me

i liked fantasy too much
i was not a phoenix
just a handful of ashes trying to 
be something more than
a handful of ashes trying to be
and he would remind me
scatter me with every word
between smacking

i wished to god words broke bones
sometimes. then i could point and show you why
i hurt and why a fury of bile

rises when i try to speak and leaves me breathless 
choking on the earthquake
quivering in my throat. 

Thursday, July 19, 2012

random vignettes (between here and bracey dr.)

it's nights like these, restless nights with moans and sobs bottled in my chest that I want to swallow smoke, take up fire eating as a profession, swallow censers and censers and censers of catholic smell-goods and witches won't stop riding me even though i'm not sleep yet...

butterflies. a wasp sits on my hand. i concentrate on nothing, think of the fragility of its potential malice, i'm personifying and we are at an impasse; my hand as big as a mountain, it leisurely pacing my greenish veins as if it is for a stroll at some tourist destination

last night you were in my dreams.poet.wunderkid.  you were pressing my palm or i was pressing yours. i sang like mahalia/motherless child/i never
felt this close to you in real life
you were so high 


i spoke in tongues just to say 
hello


there is a turtle in my belly, drinking my tears, sour in my stomach. somewhere this turtle holds up a world where the tears would mean something. but not in me. my grandmother was from mississippi or alabama
black as black as black as black as black
my grandfather a polack
my last name is suzensky
all my teachers wondered how a bad ass black bitch from the projects
got a sweet little european name/like the sound of cowbells and girls with flowing hair
only one had the balls to ask me
Only Ezilie Danto might understand
bad ass holy black bitch from poland and ayiti
heaven help me
only in pittsburgh


you tasted like tears to me. I wasn't afraid of you, scared of myself;


 I wasn't seven again, somewhere dying on a dirty blanket between 
me and the ceiling
and I'm looking down on
me like I put my own eyes in my mouth
and swallowed them


but the scrolls are sweet to the lips and sour to the stomach;
death lives in the beginning;
forgive me, my mother gave me a morbid mind-
her name was babylon


i was seven.


I was seven.

i could never remember the 
faces, names either
people walk up to me
remember me from some dream a long time ago
ask me how im doing, 
my mom
my brother
call me that other name
and i smile
and nod
they don't know it was all just
figment anyway
they want me to remember
too






Wednesday, April 25, 2012

I might be a traitor


This chest cavity,
this black female body
donated to the movement

this black fist raises one flag,
this one wears her 'fro
her 'turban', her three-
quarters, her Afrika so well. 

this one is a wet dream
this negress farts rose petals
and fucks and bucks and
cooks eggs and grits
and carries a shotgun
with the butt to her
pregnant belly

this one might snap
in the kitchen with the beans
burning on an electric coil
and their ain't enuf speaking
in tongues or pleading the blood
to pull the pieces of her spine and
ribcage together so she can 
stand and smile and
regard her testimony 
as less than a crucified man
whether blue-eyed
or dreadlocked

so this one might open her mouth
and spit the only 
salvation she knows
and cuss a motherfucka out
back ten generations
for her mama, nana
and great-grandmother

light a cigarette and circle up
with other female bodies donated
for the sake of blackness
and talk about

these tits
this ass
this coochie
this nigga
these bastards
this heart
this rage
these tears

this wound
right here
this wound
right here

ends me




(written in response to NO! The Rape Documentary, which I viewed today courtesy of CVVC)

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

NO Blessings

You have no idea how much my unfettered NO is a blessing to me, and a blessing to you. The obligatory cords of toleration in Spite have snapped and now my mouth is free to smile at will and not just when I am called to do so.

It means I can actually feel your touch on my back and absorb it and want more of your warmth tracing the pattens of my skin, rather than waiting  as a future spector for you to not see me but your ex while you find some rememberance of her in my pussy.

It means I can write this and love myself. It means you can not speak to me because you thought I owed you something, because you thought you had me by the throat because you know 'all about me' and I know your penchant for cruelty by the thinly veiled glimmer in your eyes when you gossip. It means no weapon formed against me shall prosper...

It means it's possible for me to look in your eyes and see possibility and not dead-ends. My NO means hope, it means my yes is juicy, luscious and authentic. It means acknowledging that I hold infinite multitudes, and what I express, choose to create, desire to embody...

Is UP to me.



00000000010111010101011101000000000

Sunday, April 1, 2012

objectivity

Sometimes I ask god
what's the point of beauty
and then i know,
i am dead
but not born yet.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Rage/Grief

I never want to go to another rally where we play the same rhetorical political games with the same mouths that speak the same language as the system that can justify 

justify, justify.

I want to build a bonfire. And I want the drums to beat. And I want ululation instead of words. I want to call on our backbones. I want to watch skittles simmer in the heat. I want to wail

for every gunshot that's ever carelessly left its home and found tender flesh in a black man

I want to scream for every black woman who has left pieces of her soul on the ground. I want to

hear a silence so fierce it mirrors the
tension I have in my shoulder
blades from being an agreeable negress.

I want to slice that silence with a roar that echoes in the past so loud that my ancestors bones wake 

from the bottom of the ocean and come dance round the bonfire.

I want to split the world open a million times for every girl 
 cut
and sewn shut with razors, glass or words

I want to pound the earth with my fists until the moon trembles

I want words that don't mean shit to become extinct

I want the core of the earth to spew lava on every lie ever told about
black folks

I'm fucking pissed

I want all my children back
and in their right minds

I want to roll in the ashes of the fire and wail
until this grief floods the world 
and we realize what the fuck is really going on

I want us to stop being spectators to real hunger games
and get real intimate with the depths of our own souls
so we can be fucking human
instead of input/output machines.

This is not an extensive list of my demands. more later. 


Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Mother of a black boy

My son told me, when he was four
or five, that
If I threw my heart in the river
I would change
the world. I guess 
I really don't have a choice 
in the matter, my son is 8 

now, climbs mountains, fences,
stays away from gated
communities and the like, 
I have yet to tell him that I am not so
concerned about his cavities
while I instruct to get a bag of plain
chips and no drink
when he, big man,
walks to the store half-
a block from my house
I haven't taught him how to

defer, politely, yield, stop
my son goes hard
and so I question
If I fucked up
if I made him think 
things were like a skittle commercial
though there are no
random gun fights in 
skittle commercials
and there are no frightened black boys with hoodies
and my son, 
middle name Courage
is often frightened
tugs his hoodie round his face
like a security blanket
trying to hide

vulnerability from me
when he asks me
if that is
another gunshot
and should he stay away from the windows
and what is death like
and what is it like to get shot

and why isn't it safe?
and he trembles just a bit and draws in on himself like a wind just chilled him and
now even if I hold him real tight
he still trembles a bit
cause the wind speaks to him
like I'm not even there.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Karma

You let Karma beat the shit out of you when fuck that... no really, fuck that... feeling bad about being celestial...

Guilt is quite paralyzing. Most of us got some sort of addiction to some sort of destruction of ourselves for not fitting into some dumb predetermined cultural meme.

That goes for the subsets of culture as well as the dominant culture in this society.

What will it cost for you to be yourself? What is it costing you not to be yourself? And what are you willing to lose to gain your soul?

Blood Lotus: An Online Literary Journal: BL #23

Blood Lotus: An Online Literary Journal: BL #23: In This Issue... I'm in here! Yay!

Monday, February 6, 2012

Lizzie Unicorn

i have an alter ego. her name is lizzie unicorn. and shes fucking awesome. and rainbows make her cum. cuz theyre fucking pretty as allllllllllllllll hell. and chocolate. and pink feazther boas. and boys and bois. and gurlz. and liiiiiife and fuck you if you can't fuck with the yummy vibration of the yummygasm/godgasm and go find your own bitter/hell vibration. cuz im ridin this cozmic feathered rainbeaued orgasm of a snake bitch gawdess to the finite. or the beginning. so muah!!!!!! love you. and fuck is my favorite word. cuz it goddam is. period.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

spontaneous omens, sortilege and augary

it means you will break your heart over and over again
on an understanding rock
until you can breathe without the assistance
of a black and mild, wine flavor
plastic tip.

it means you will gather the pieces of what-you-are
and what-you-are not
and sift them over and over again
until this holographic feed
back loop makes sense
to your I-
computers.

It means you will speak
until the corners of your mouth crack
and you realize silence
tucked between
your words

It means you will handle ribboned winds
still katrina-bitter
and hope the flesh
in between your fingers
doesn't get brush-burned

It means you will fold your legs around Shiva's back
and collapse time into an 0
while trying to decipher the meaning of your grandma's
fish dreams at a copper T-crossroad

it means you will get lost
in the weight of your own story
riding your back while you sleep
until you at least attempt
to wake up

watch your mouth

we tend the avatars of
god with such cruelty.
perhaps we have all
been stoned 
in one way or the other

but this is no way
to grow people. we
hold time in our
bellies 
medicine or poison
flies on our tongues
a dove
or a nightbird for the entrails

what bitterness
reaps, its hard medicine.

on nights like this
our hearts are important
so don't smash another's flowerbed,
tend your own jasmine garden


Thursday, February 2, 2012

Simon Says Genocide

genocide puts chemical burns on your scalp. geno
cide puts ulcers on your lungs in a
newport and black and mild way.

genocide is a language that hates you and everything
that looks like what
you might be
without
genoc

ide makes you scared of mirrors gen
ocide makes you wanna erase yourself
from the inside out

genocide teaches you you began with slavery,
had a hey-day with Lincoln,
and reached the promised land with King.

Genocide makes your name sound dumb.

genocide makes you smack her, slash her, attack her, cut her
womb with words and razors she look like
you though geno
cide means you don't care inside sometimes
cause you aint worth it

Genocide gives your baby a proper name.

genocide even wears kufis sometimes,
locs sometimes, afros sometimes,
my face sometimes,
your face sometimes,

genocide aspires to white femininity.

genocide means your music makes your ears bleed nigga/bitch/smut/slut/snap/jumpoff/whore/ho/ but
you hard enough to bear it
genocide means you dont mind the
bullets or redblue redblue redblue lights
geno

cide means you don't think about tomorrow
and you don't think about yesterday
and you try real damn hard not to think about today,
either,

genocide says shut up.

genocide tells you this is the way it's supposed to
be, this is life, this is in your blood, your birthright is
jordans and jailtime, geno

cide is sweet as a honeybun, from a corner store
selling chips and blunts and pills gen

ocide is a trap house on every corner
and the trappers trapped like the snaps is trapped
and this whole life's a trap, o snap!

It's genocide!

____________________________________________




It is our obligation to love ourselves
It is our obligation to heal from oppression
It is our obligation to strive to see ourselves for who we really are.
 It is our right to be gentle with ourselves.
It is our duty to practice self-care.
It is our right to know ourselves as divinity condensed
It is our choice to see ourselves as whole
It is our struggle to see ourselves as worth it
we are worth it, and worth our struggle
there is nothing more worth our breath, our blood, our tears, our sweat, our joy, our love
than our lives

Thursday, January 26, 2012

How to keep yourself from crying to randomness...

stare into the sun
and roll your eyes
three times,

 laugh
while pinching yourself numb

now close your eyes
rummage in the back of your head
for some life you forgot back there, some
reason your lungs still move air
and the earth hasn't swallowed
you whole. believe

you are not in vain
and this too shall pass 
<insert self-help statement here>

we have all seen the glory of
each other. I despair
my fear to love
you vast
as the ocean inside of me
with all the humility
of this star-born body

you may need to touch me first
and much
and often
and deep
and say 
these tears
don't last forever homie
this terrible.
ain't really even real, homie...

Friday, January 13, 2012

So let me Say This

The hardest thing for a traumatized people to do is look in the mirror and love themselves, and their reflections. I say its revolutionary to open your heart up to your fam when you've been told it's seditious to do so. But you know what?

Let's love each other on a real level. That means we gon' get down in the mud with each other, and we gon witness each other and reflect each other til we see each other and we see ourselves.

I'm talking about a quality of love that I can't describe in this language, cause all this language give me is some jesus shit or some romance shit, and that ain't what i'm talking about. 

I guess that's why i call myself poeting, cuz I was born with a tongue that ain't mine, but that's not my point.

There is something fiercely beautiful about the strength of black women. and when i say strength, i don't mean the hard mean ass fuck the world attitude that we put on as a cloak to hide our tender hearts from the pain of being too other in a hegemonic world. 

i mean the strength of a black woman reflecting on her body-emotional,physical,spiritual,energetic,-body and tracing the scars of imperialism and oppression and abuse and neglect and self-hate with her fingertips

and finding herself. and sharing herself and sometimes its like a river

that's been dammed/damned and she floods all your gates and your defenses and you can do nothing but acknowledge her as a force of NTR.

and worship this reflection of self. because look,

i'm talking about myself here. and when i am connected to the flow of all that i am and am sure in what has spanned the breadth of time in me,
ain't nothin quite as beautiful but
i know the pain of tracing those scars like a puzzle
you tryna solve so that the devil
will give you back your soul only
you don't even understand why it's worth it in the first place cuz the 
greatest lie the devil ever told was that
you 
didn't exist.

and so when we trace it and unlock it, 
and unweave it and spiral back to 
and struggle for our own worthiness
in our own eyes
and strive to not only accept but celebrate
 the divinity of ourselves and our paths and our destiny

and when we cry, and grieve
when we laugh not in spite but in delight
when we show up as our black selves unafraid to 
shine a light 
when we speak to our core knowings
and know the circle is unbroken
and only an illusion will tell us otherwise,

it is then that we resist
it is then that we revolt
it is then that we begin to fight

when we begin to love ourselves
when i begin to love myself,
then we, you and i have already one/won
cuz an army of lovers 
cannot be defeated.

It was written in my blood that one day the dead
lovers that have fought
and been buried defending
their rights to love
would be born again.
they are here now
we must stand
the winds are strong
we will stand
remember who you are, lover
here we stand



Friday, January 6, 2012

Call For Submissions: It is Better to Speak

Submissions now being accepted for It is Better to Speak. This is a Zine focused on Women of Color and Emotional Justice. We are looking for personal narratives, essays, intellectual musings, poetry, black and white drawings and other creative expressions from women of color that reflect on what emotional justice means for women of color individually, collectively and relationally speaking. We are also looking for reflections on intersectionality between emotional justice and other justice movements.

Email submissions to yejidekmt@gmail.com Deadline for submissions February 28th

Monday, January 2, 2012

Some randomness and what I mean when i say fuck new-age imperialism.

All spiritualities are created to support the ethos of a people. When spiritualities no longer align with the ethos of a people due to change in society or environment, the people will adjust their spiritualities to support their self realization given the dictates of the mental-emotional-societal-physical terrain that they are embedded in. This is the way humans interface with reality in order to self-actualize and support their purpose individually and as a people, a culture. when the spirituality of a people is no longer aligned with these things, for whatever reason, it becomes a dead spirituality and it is incumbent upon the people to determine an interface that will support them and their needs. When the people fail to do that, it becomes a religion that enslaves instead of serves the people.

With that said, fuck new age imperialism. To cut a practice of spirituality away from the roots of that practice without honoring the egun~creators of that practice is commodification of spirituality and I reject that. i do not mean to say that folks should not be able to support themselves through offering spiritual services. I do not mean to say that people of varying ethnicities should not be free to worship or practice spirituality as they wish.  I do mean to say that folks should honor the earth/ancestors on which they tread and KNOW WHERE THE PRACTICE CAME FROM AND THE HISTORY OF THAT PRACTICE!

 Know the history of the people whose spirituality you practice, at least a little bit, k? The commodification of spirituality leads to the practices of indigenous and people of African/indigenous decent left without access to the practices of their ancestors while these practices are bought and sold to cultural tourists. It leads to people with the means to do so being able to buy the spiritual and cultural practices of a people without regard to the spiritual necessity of why such practices came to be. It is to practice a spirituality while also dishonoring it. Heritage is everybody's birthright. To deny it is cultural genocide, and it is the same practices that exploit the material resources of peoples across the globe and leave them not only with nothing but actually in debt to those doing the exploitation.

So again. Fuck pink faux-suede car potpourri dream catchers.

Fuck it all.

Fuck universalism. Fuck anything that denies self-determination. fuck not being seen or heard. Fuck short-term memory and historical whitewashing. Fuck New-Age imperialism and brainwashing. Fuck it. Fuck it All. Fuck  Niggas disguised as Master Teachers. Fuck my own hypocrisy. Fuck my own silence. fuck my own acquiescence. Fuck me not tearing it all down with one bare black fist. Fuck my tears and my lack of tears. Fuck my appropriateness and fuck my awkwardness. fuck you for not giving a fuck. Fuck me for giving a fuck about small shit and swallowing razors for politeness sake. Fuck me never grieving. Fuck all the dying I've done. Fuck not having enough joy at the end of my day to feel like waking up in the morning. Fuck dying. Fuck feeling worthless. Fuck not attempting to have compassion for myself and this journey. Fuck feeling bad about my saggy breasts and chubby stomach and stretch marks. Fuck feelings of futility. Fuck this dirty ass house. Fuck overwhelming feelings of inadequacy and incompetency that sometimes feel paralyzing. Fuck the bullshit. Fuck the internal cops and negative self-dialogue. Fuck cowardice. Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it all. Real shit.