I began in the below

where it's hot

like Georgia heat

more sticky and hot than crying eyes

with cotton needle lashes

in the deep, deep south

deeper than pots made for collards to be cooked in

deeper than boats slaves

got shipped in

swallowed like ancestor tongues burned with hot grits

stinging and screaming

whips cracking

a great crevice in the ocean's floor

something must have planted me

abandoned me there

just a pain filled seed

growing in the dark walls and flesh floors

of the universe

cradle rocking in its wound

feeling pretty sad

cause being that deep

that down can feel

pretty damn bad



Quietly searching misery for the

song of myself

listening to hear

what I should become

stillness whispers

"every good feeling starts with a heart beat"

like a loose drum

seeking repentance in the wind

I start with the pound of myself

playing sorrowful riffs

in rounds

that fill me and this earth

with an umbilical sound

is Black

with every color

trapped inside

dancing

I said dancing inside the hums of my mind

I decide

I must be Music

and squeezed from the earth

like oil from the peelings of good fruit

rubbed my essence into the skins of the

Black people

I found digging and cropping

my birth lands for salvation

these slaves

turning fields into church lands

dripping tears like libations

shoveling and plowing Shawshank tunnels

to a place where they can belong

they needed nature nurturing them

safely home

they needed me

this music in their songs

If you stir something long enough

it will spin on its own

life comes and lives and goes

life comes

and lives

and goes

they moaned me to death in dirge

only orphans could sing

buried me with the breath of life

in cremation ashes more fertile than the soil I sprang from

and I grew into

a tree

whose branches stretch into bridges that bring together

soul sounds that ring together

freedom hymns

telling stories of survival

like the mother I never had.