January 2024 - U.S. Machine

What does it feel like to have to go to work after rejection…

To compartmentalize the hears drippings of a response to no

That spills onto my face as salty water.

Spills into memory as brain cells transmit intense energy.

Spills into the air as heavier, faster breaths.

What does it mean to hope for the no to be a yes,

Knowing the love is a one way street.

And to accept honesty, truth, and transparency…

Knowing the work must go on.

The email show has begun.

The organization needs your input and ideas.

January 2024

My yes treats me great.

My yes is a beef steak. Of love, honesty, respect, and laughter.

My yes is ambitious, motivated, and grateful.

My yes is loving, thoughtful, and not envious or hateful.

He is tall and wraps me in his arms tight.

I admire his charm. His warmth, his friendly demeanor.

My yes is hopeful about his future.

June 2020

Dismantle systems of oppression today.

Massive country refusing to acknowledge

Operating off free labor that generated

Unimaginable wealth for a ruling race.

Class means nothing when affluent black mothers die, 

At 2x higher rates when given 'identical' care. 

The stress and trauma is exhausting, exhausting,

And it's killing, killing

Our sons, daughters, cousins, souls.

Not a professor of racism,

Books, articles full of lynching stories, 

And laws that fraud over 250 years fill the Amazon store

But the privileged class prefers blindness 

Booze over library visits

Kindness over changes

So I teach and relive the pain.

Knowing my cousin #DelricEast didn't die in vain.

Say his name. 

#BlackLivesMatter

August 2020

What is the rush?

What are we racing toward?

What is a just system?

Is it forced labor?

Is it a ruling class and a poor class?

Aren’t we all one race, anyway?

Or is it work that blossoms and blooms earth and wildlife.

Will we have wildlife?

Are we inadvertently killing ourselves?

There’s surely a lot at stake.

If breathing gets choked.

So choked that your kids worry.

 

Isolation. Loneliness. Grows.

People risk lives to

Ritual. Tradition.