i am faced with extermination
so of course i breathe life
and the enemy will never sea my rain tears
so of course my brown-skin baby
holds me and collects them
on the falling side of a shoulder
and hands them back to me when i hunger
to write poetry
rain drops on guns' fire
i lay my head on a cloth stitched at gunpoint
brown hands quiver and
heart thumps in the global south
and mine syncs
to the rhythm of guerilla survival
across the world in the belly of the beast
the worker and i are one
i sleep with little pills the medical
industrial complex sells me with a smile
in a house built by slaves
on a land soaked with Indigenous blood
growing red trees
and all the Black babies are strange,
shrieking fruit
only white people have a home on this earth
the material world drowns the wretched of her womb
and Black mommas follow suit
the rest of us are all houseless, stripped
nakba
making collage homes of each other
doikayt
laughing at the bottom of the sea, free
before ship touched green
las sirenas
or scratching ourselves down to bone marrow
with poison
black skin, white masks
where do the brown ones sleep?
since baby my own blood molested me
twenty times around the sun i lay my head
under my abuser's gun
a fetus grown in the belly of her beast
just like the brown skin boiling in the sun's ghettos
breathing in exhausted waste
and treading in dying seas
well, born from Ancestors and Spirit
i became a shape-shifter
who fears death?
found my way to Yemaya
and crawled into the eyes of found family
sword-fought the ones who first hurt Sade
with the roots of gaia's medicine
pulled the black rope out my burning throat
alchemized her, writhing snake shedding skin
into the body-butter of self love
held myself, lathered, up to the moon's light
never losing the poetry
but how do you tell your inner child
that although you made it out
and now float in the current of purpose
nurturing your light into an orb
between your cheeks
diving into Black matter and planting it,
cradled in water's fire
in the forgotten fertile fluid on the dark side of the moon
carried on sage's smoke
to the hearts of the beasts of your lineage
te kā is te fiti
and all the unborn babies watching from
Spirit's hands,
that you will never be safe
because the abuse is way bigger
than mommy daddy pain;
centuries ago,
the beasts' ice-cold belly
birthed our collective chains
so how do you tell your inner child
that although you saved yourself
found the majyk burning sweetly
on your Ancestors' tongues
and now eat it like honey from the
palms of bodies whose mouths chant
lost songs
feet dancing freedom,
and give it back in herbs and bone,
that you still sleep trapped inside
the belly of the beast
kicking and screaming behind babylon's
shut eye
chained to hospital beds
by amerikka's slave catchers
nodding a yes massa to the board
of regents at your uni
while a people who wear the sea
stitched on cloth
are ashes and whispers
screams smothered by the beasts'
tentacles
and her robots
jumping from the sky
(did you know heaven
fired missiles?)
well, my love
standing hands on hips
between eyelid and third eye
luchamos así:
piercing the veil
and tasting the skin of Black trans kin
spilling poetry, love, and majyk
all over one another
until you can sea.
placing solidarity in the humidity,
sticky and dangerous
writing, organizing, loving, resisting,
crying, creating, laughing, guerrilla-
fighting our way to one another
cradling water in our bodies
setting ourselves afire in the belly of the beast
from the first c.s.a tear on my seven-year-old's cheek
until well after Palestine is free.
