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.