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

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...

Yum Temple of Healing Fundraiser

http://yum.chipin.com/yum-temple-of-healing

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

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

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.