In Remembrance & Our Embrace

for the love of being  now and then flesh and phantom  me and we,   let’s stay here in the shade slowly swaying saying nothing  beneath this tree we were left to be  finally alone each swing erases a worry erases a thought we wither away in the wind together  black turned blue skin to blue skin our sins lay buried beneath us waiting for our bodies...

My Blackness  My power It’s beautiful  My flower  No matter how the world is dark  You’ll never see me sour  Even if I wasn’t perfect You can never say I cowered  From the power    Always ready to fight My fist in the air  Clutching onto hope so hard  It’s like I’m gripping the air  As reality hits hard like  A kick and a snare...

I have scrubbed my soul for a failing to remember    When the bells of reckoning chime Where will you hide I’m dancing in the streets  Lighting candles along the middle passage    We’ll flood a field with light For our sisters to swim across It be a beacon  To the promised land   I have visions of bloodlines  Drifting from the bank shores ...

dear death we come together to trance faced up locked insidelong  it will take we long for this dirt submit to suffocate to stillness  salvation seeks out many deities  we hold all the way down hole  plant the body precision  a soul of seed  will see light again...

Is a list of those forgotten  Pressed beneath a tongue, the paper  Soaked until the words remember to run    Into the back of the throat, ringing the bell  Of the uvula on the way down, coating  The esophagus with music until the stomach sings    A digestion dirge that marinates memory back  To the swallowed taste. Today it is a mix of bird wing  And burial. Your name finds a final resting ...