ASSIGNMENT IS INKED/THE INK IS WET
Assignment is Inked
I carry a passport that’s sealed in rapist semen
and bleeding boundaries with bullets as cover
Concealing all weapons formed against it
The slave dungeons a sign of rage and
radical mourning
A message gashing against the shorelines
The voice ravaging against the wind
and wild waves
I must be from the Poets, Musicians, Visionaries, Seers,
the liberation Knowers who arrived
on strange lands
To hand me this pen.
We Resilient
We Resilient by Dr. Tasleem
They want to see us silent, sleeping, sunken, drunken
They want our spirits blistered, battered, broken, lynched and choking on years
of fears fractured
The clanking cracking of the chains imprisoned brains and some remained stained to this day.
No longer do we hunger for others' approval. It’s a removal of the shackles off our souls.
We are righteous running, radicals rebels
We are resilient love, brilliant love, the fulfillment of eons of expansive light.
We are sunlit cosmic walking miracles
African skylines camouflaged in Babylon's lies.
We carry torches with heart purifying energy
We come marching; legs spiraling like deep tree roots embedded in ancient soil
Fingers leaking dripping with our inheritance of enlightenment
We’ve been battered with backbones shattering for thousands of years.
The only silence we seek is the sweet solace of serenity savoring soul food from saints and sages in night time seeking spirit fire for ammunition.
Our actions and voices are still roaring but with volumes off the pentatonic scales.
Carrying forces of freedom in hollering hurricanes with whirlwinds as worlds spin from spirit realms so steep; go deep
Lifting up Atlantic Ocean tongues untangling
from algae and seaweed
We see seeds bloomed from concrete providing substance to an entire ecosystem in a system
designed to try and redesign not elevate the divine in our existence as the clever mystics
I pray for my ancestors in tongues that were
erased and now resurfacing in my genetic
coding holding onto that which was and
new infinite openings;
Opening to necessary
narratives navigating true
.
Mother
It All Begins Here
She holds her breath as gun cocks
loud outside her windows
Streets cloudy from war remnants
Her heartbeat echoes freedom
Her grandmothers now only dream
in soil buried
Waiting to rupture
again in the wind
Her feet heavy
Burdened
But Brilliant
Resilient
Headwraps Hold Hymns
Ancient coded
Giving instructions for resistance
Cosmic realms flooding down
Absorbing blood stained sidewalks
She is storm whirling
Soul vocal
Vicious
Treacherous damage to be done
She is thriving
Running
Prostrating
Dua Praying
Conjuring
Conducting revived realities
That may not reach full term