@jesse (#blacklivesmatter)

Zqvrcli1_400x400  @jesse

a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do …

its basic mathematics, the more we learn about who we are and how we got here the more we will mobilize….

this is for also the black women in particular who have spent their lifetimes dedicated to nurturing everyone before themselves

we can and will do better for you…now

what we been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm and not kill white people

every day

so what’s gonna happen is that we are gonna have equal rights and justice in our own country or we will restructure their function….

and ours…now

yesterday would have been young Tamir Rice’s 14th birthday….

so I don’t wanna hear about anymore how far we’ve come when paid public servants can pull a drive by on a 12-year-old playing alone in a park in broad daylight, killing him on television and then going home to make a sandwich…

tell Rekia Boyd how it’s so much better to live in 2012 than 1612 or 1712, tell that to Eric Garner, tell that to Sandra Bland, tell that to Darrian Hunt…

all of us getting money, that alone isn’t gonna stop this

dedicating our lives to get money just to give it right back for someone’s brand on our body when we spent centuries praying with brands on our bodies, and now we pray to get paid for brands on our bodies

there has been no war that we have not fought and died on the front lines of, there’s been no job that we haven’t done, there’s no tax that they haven’t levied against us and we’ve paid all of them

but freedom is somehow conditional here

“you’re free….” they keep telling us

“but she would have been alive if she hadn’t acted so free..”

freedom is always coming in the hereafter but the hereafter is a hustle

we want it now!

the burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander

that’s not our job, stop with all that

if you have a critique for our resistance then you better have an established record of critique of our oppression

if you have no interest in equal rights for black people then do not make suggestions to those who do….

sit down!

we’ve been floating this country on credit for centuries and we’re done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness

uses and abuses us, burying black people out of site and out of mind

while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil

black gold, ghettoizing and demeaning our creations than stealing them

gentrifying our genius and then trying us on like costumes

before discarding our bodies like vines of strange fruit

…..just because we’re  magic doesn’t mean we’re not real

search

bluebill (for my dad on fathers day)

imgres    bluebill

If I could take the pain away

I would paint you

blue

like the tears

and teach you to swim

like you taught me

to laugh at

the things that hurt you the most

I would sing

the blues

and change the key

to unlock

the door that

leads to eternal life

I would

color the sky

to tell the world

about your

new wings

bluebill

please keep

the color

in your memory

for me

dear anonymous black woman

 

images dear anonymous black woman

I’m writing this letter to you on a Monday because of partly cloudy skies partly because I know why the caged bird cries and why the hummingbird flies

I’m writing this letter to you Anonymous Black Woman

Because I remember your maiden name
Because I bathe in your reflection
And I hear your song tap dance on the airwaves

When I see your face in a movie scene
It has the word slave scribbled across the screen

I’m writing this letter to you because I hear you scream
You are suffocating my Africa

When you read between these lines I hope love is what you find
I reach for you but your end has no beginning
Your mane is now blonde and stringy
Your complexion blended to peer perfection
Your beauty bargained with Photoshop tricks
My lips and hips still thick built like a brick
My crown and glory contained in corn rolls, braids or Afro
Sometimes curly and sometimes kinky

Some say nappy

I’m writing this letter to you because you don’t look happy

Seems like the rules of engagement have changed
You married a system and he martyred you a victim
Your taskmaster traded chains for fame
Frame by frame and page to stage
Your identity is starting to fade
Sooner or later you anonymous black women all look the same

I’m writing this letter to you
So at least you can remember my pen name
You used to call me soul sister

The one that looks like you in a forgotten picture