am i done...
nooooo....
am i still posting it anyways...
yeeeessssss
"the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it"-James Baldwin
where do you exist?
I.
He
Doesn’t swallow any of his sounds
18 and Black
Beautiful
Second generation
Grew up in Maine, somewhere
He doesn’t know his tongue
they are not acquainted
its strange in all its lack of foreignness
He doesn’t know his tongue
Doesn’t know the lick of his language
There is no flag
flapping from his mouth
the way he would want
(Cuz)
Language lies heavy upon
culture and loyalty
(and)
He has neither
So he has lay his tongue to rest
its still,
flat…
doesn’t lie,
Speaks truth
only knows
one truth
only knows
one word for truth
saves clumsy sticky slips over syllables
for the 'knot in his throat' okra that
washes away
everything that had ever been in its place once
Those moments
when he is back home
back whole
are halved
are had half halfheartedly
don’t match up
to the reality
his eyes face
and seeing is believing
so, call him false, or faking
or faker
but this is real
no silent mumbles of vernacular
signal
He is trying to remember himself
into the past somehow
He is trying to re-member himself
into his culture
He is trying
not to remember his
culture
Excavating ancestry
With the strongest muscle in body
makes a mess
Sitting on his own stage
at the back of an open mic
(at the back of a poem)
Listening to someone else recite his story
II.
If you are not your past
what are you
what be you
are you
anything
do you exist
do you remember
that in your language
GOD
is said in a cacophony of collapsing syllables
dedicated
to when the earth cracked in half
spilling eternity at the smell of our birth
You are the silent
shell of what was
don't speak your language
walking image of burned homes and
deserted villages at the hands of colonialism
the thrash of “Lord” Lugard’s lessons
how men came and forgot that you already had a God
lash like whips, your tongue.
the slavery of your voice.
only know yourself
and your name
and your people
in the language of the oppressed
lash like whips
your tongue
your slavery is
your voice
beautiful left
Laughing lines like if
your people made marks in the sky
when they flew from their own oppression.
do you know yourself
like how your people built pyramids 1st,
forgotten
like you standing
a crumbling and ancient one
you have forgotten
Sitting on back of an open mic,
At the back of an
Open
Mic
dormant and voiceless
at the back end of a poem
(still)
Letting someone else
tell your story
