Right About Something

“Thus, when her enemies came to kill her, she knew more about surviving than they did about killing.” — Octavia E. Butler, “Wild Seed”

This is how I feel moving through the world today. White supremacy keeps trying to destroy, erase, and wipe us out, but survival is a deeper knowledge, a wisdom they cannot hold. May we sit with devastation, waiting for our fire to rise. Because I don’t want to each a healing that’s absent of rage.

This poem comes from sitting with that truth: that anger, when embodied, can be both a weapon and a shield. Holding the gun doesn’t always mean destruction — sometimes it means survival. Sometimes it means creation. Sometimes it means restoring power to Truth.

Right About Something

Something about writing

Brought me back to base

My lover is militant

I could make love to weapons or make love out of weapons

Something about writing

Deployed me, broke a complex

Freed many

Crossed borders, eradicated industrials

Something about writing

Or maybe something about weapons

Or maybe something about what I was writing about

I don’t really have a home here

My home could be pass a port or beyond an imaginary line

I could see a sea split and see salvation as a path

But something about writing

Armored me, enabled me, gave me global entry

When everyone picked up arms, I picked up a pen

Something about writing

Freed me, gave me paper, validated me

I’m not green to the cards they play,

but I see red every time there’s a white board

Something about writing

Opened doors, lost keys, dug tunnels,

painted scriptures, spoke in tongues

Something about writing

Tilted the world, demanded portals

Laid grounds under for the ultimate escape

Something about writing

Road rails only the eyes in the back of my head could

See, feel, hear and They said

Write about something