i am fasting from food and water today. i’ve been tidying my house, listening to records on my new little turquoise victrola, burning frankincense and sage and reflecting on this week.

what kind of surrender is necessary to become a prisoner? to surrender to each day, and continuing to build connections and relationships and ideas even though society will not make room for your freedom? to surrender to the work you can still do?

i feel the limits of this time. the limits of us in movements, how we cannot grow beyond our trust of each other, but we still refuse to offer each other more trust. the limits of analysis, how once we have it we don’t want to welcome those who don’t share it to our table. the limits of communication, we are calling each other on compromised lines, making our plans on corporate ground. there are cages of body and cages of mind and connection and our movements are operating inside all of these.

i love black august, both for the foundational intention of remembering and uplifting political prisoners, and for the ways we reach for each other as black people all month in poem and practice. i think we grow in this month.

i’m practicing many things this black august, including writing to political prisoners, mostly from this list. i’m also practicing writing haiku poems, a collective practice i believe is 10 years old now.

here are some of the poems from this week.

reclaiming my time
singing it out: surrender
precious black hours

reclaiming my time
dancing inside boundaries
feeling small and free

– so happy #blackaugust #blackaugust575 is here! thank you congresswoman maxine waters!!

…

we cannot ungrieve
the black death experience
it walks with our bones

we weep like icebergs
drowning the world in sorrow
boiling but so slow

we lose tender minds
broken inside the onslaught
spilling everything

we only have us
we only have this thin love
to start the fire

we are not yet dead
we can still do anything
never forget this

we are not dead yet
do anything we still can
let’s break everything
– #blackaugust575

…

may every cage
you build up, and go fill up,
capture your own dreams

may each wall on earth
block your food come from the sky
no door, no window

may your circling feet
step on wolf tooth and shark jaw
a bloody stumble

may each innocent
punished long for one mistake
crowd your memory

when you glance back, may
you finally understand
we were always free

– #blackaugust575 #blackaugust
thank you Harriet Tubman for the spell “my people are free”

…

Baldwin, Lumumba
are you in conversation
and can you hear us?

Baldwin, twenty three
when Lumumba came to us
y’all became massive

now, tributaries
flow from you, flowing through us
onwards to freedom

– birthday haikus #blackaugust575 #blackaugust

…

you are terrified
that what makes you man is glass
already shattered

you are deluded
think control is in your hands
and can be taken

you crown yourself king
punish the non believers
who can taste your heart

you can’t erase us
you can’t subject us to myth.
change, or disappear.

someone lied to you
for centuries, forever
but we are still true

we been loving you
and we’re no longer martyrs
no longer afraid

become relevant
uncage your self, surrender
let yourself be held

divine masculine
disarm yourself, surrender
don’t get left behind

– #blackaugust575 #blackaugust

…

we learned to eat wrong
to think all the time of nothing
we learned not to want

black girls go hungry
in a million bleeding ways
black girls underfed

I disappeared me
I ate to erase myself
to tidy the mess

I ate my questions
I ate to soothe the fire
I ate to ghost me

we starved since we came
who can eat without welcome
without dignity

we starved since we came
full up on acidic rage
appalling longing

we learned to eat wrong
now we swallow each other
word by sacred word

we learned to read stars
we stopped looking down, or back
you beaming you lead

we learned to eat wrong
we learning to feed ourselves
our mouths wide open

– #blackaugust575
dedicated to Tchaiko, Roxane and Meshell for an inspiring night.

…

your heart might get caught
not a feeling but a state
a cage of longing

your breath can be trapped
in a flutter of kisses
promises, questions

I never give up
I get tiny, then I grow
be patient. I am.

– a love haiku

…

I start with my love
traverse wild interior
and end with my love

build you an altar
black skin, black longing, black heart
cast you all my spells

I come from my love
impossible and still true
my miracle love

I fight from my love
I don’t know right from wrong yet
I am learning, love

freedom is in love
when the whole world is the cage
I see your freedom

freedom is your love
the whole world is made of bars
only you hold me

– love song to black people
#blackaugust575 #blackaugust