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my #blackaugust575 haikus

This was my third year participating in Black August 5-7-5, a black liberation spiritual practice month. Here’s what I created:

Aug 2

Sun all up and close
Warm your broken heart on us
We are all black love

Moon when night has come
Let the violent tide roll out
We reflect all life

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Aug 6

Took my black out wild
Set her free on the mountain
She won’t stop howling

Bare black and cold sea
Before and after scorched sun
She can’t stop howling

Rode waves and forgot
To be cautious or withheld
She howls with laughter

The universe knows
My name, my gifts, my shadows
She has been calling

I’m naked, again
Beginning it all, again
First: my life matters

Then: our lives matter
Our failure and forgiveness
Opens the future

Then: our time matters
Go wilder, go in on joy
Massive black love joy

– #blackaugust575
From British Columbia

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Aug 7

We grieve babies
Braid their names into our hair
Sing them new stories

Memories don’t sleep
We tell our grief to the moon
She gives us ocean

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Aug 8

Always Anyanwu
Telling Doro ‘be gentle
You’re killing your heart’

We swallow the years
We learn to heal from within
Our children will win

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Aug 9

We wish you were here
We wish you were a stranger
August always child

We love you so much
We remember your story
We send you on home

– for Mike Brown

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Aug 12

Arrested black girl
Head high, hands high, deep center
Walks with dignity

– for Ferguson

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Aug 13

Sitting in silence
And then sun salutations
Now I am ready

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Aug 14

Stand in the circle
Let your dignity shine bright
You have that blackness

Stand in the circle
Cast yourself wide as ocean
You of these people

Stand in the circle
Place yourself in the lineage
You are right on time

Stand in the circle
Tell me what you came to do
With your black body

Now move, change, center
Change change change change change change change
With brilliant blackness

– towards a Black Somatics
#blackaugust575 #blacklivesmatter #blackbodiesmatter

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Aug 16

Now Julian Bond
Becoming ancestor now
Get that deep rest now

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Aug 18

Black love remembers
Outside of this time and place
Our miracle selves

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Aug 21

Black girls in the woods
Naked again in daylight
Sun and tree love us

That hippy ass shit
Will get us all the way free
The berries are sweet

Don’t forget the earth
When you have a prayer to lift
Press all the way down

Don’t forget your skin
When you have to carry dreams
Cast them into black

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Aug 29

Swamp heat knows our names
Trees remember our black weight
The water our taste

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Aug 29

Let go with the moon
She moves oceans, she’ll move you
She’ll lift your burden