Pendulum chest met with a wrecking ball the weight of 1000 moments of trauma traveling through membrane nonstop the silence doesn’t live here the silence is done fighting to be heard. where the light trapped the shadows and kept them in the dark glass stood erect on the pavement black on the concrete, slate, on the brick it felt like knives made for tiny hands Children running the damage when all it took was to fall. What the inside of me feels like the kind of damage Against a wrecking ball we can only collapse we’re a house fire — bricked and broken it would take learning what we’re not taught to be, raised the opposite of weak and defeated of chaos of noise - of giving up, of power being the moment the pendulum received the wrecking ball of knowledge being the force that could have stopped it all of knowledge a lost ledge of the mind of our youth societies use of the word mental and health, an asylum in itself an asylum of ourselves we keep each other between wrecking ball and broken homes we’ve been taught our minds are meant to be something of beauty, of of, of how to live, of of, of who to love been the result of the all the trauma we experience, we are all a result of, we are all an affect the wrecking ball lives in our homes to begin with our heads begin the pendulum swing when we’re pulled against ourselves by a society that thinks we’re all lead by the same thing We are those who’s hearts are lead by their hearts, feet by their dreams some wrecking balls hit the front doors of our youth, the weight of 1,000 moments of abuse before we even know ourselves we’re told to ignore ourselves told to control ourselves the silence is working it way back louder than ever if knowledge is power n power is noise and silence is self, then where do we go for knowledge of self.

the jail bars were white this time, I was still the gorilla.

this light coat kept me a little warmer through the winters though

the winter’s were the hardest to distinguish ally from the ignorant

there was two feet from me and the microscope

two feet of deep deep snow, a whiteness that has already taken the lesser clothed

each lens focused on a different expectation no matter

where I went in this pen -

if I had been captured any earlier in life, I would not have had the luxury

of being able to write - to speak above ground

pen is a blessing, a blessing

this pen is a trap - single handedly holding this script full of cues

to do exactly what they tell you to

do exactly what they tell you to

electrodes, fastened just below the neck line,

down along your spine, littered at your feet like land mines

so when opportunities for improvisation present themselves

you’ll know that making a choice is not really a choice you can make.

I never thought that the difference between ideas of freedom

had less to do with being free than have to do with how many

square feet we’re given - to live in.

how much surveillance,

how much violence is concentrated.

how much madness there is.

what we define madness as.

what price is put on us for market.

we are very much enslaved

literally and in the consequences of how complicated we’ve made living to be

you can’t, expect me to be complacent with the reason I’m tied to this post,

fed between bars,

given a script of knowledge while being stripped of

any worth, community, sense of self

was birthed from the fact, that you are white, and I am black.

I’ve never been to jail but I’m told spring never comes.

snow up to their necks, incapacitated,

incarcerated, immobilized to the point

that it shakes the young family trees roots as thin as twine

shivers until any promising fruit is left to be eaten alive

left to only leave seeds of loss and struggle and rage

until other poverty thin lines of twine are shaken loose again.

privilege is where I hail from

middle class my coalmined throne..

all this and a light weight coat got me through 22 winters,

though never spare of frost bite I’ve lost

whole limbs of myself when I was given the choice to stay trapped by the leg until the hunters came

or knaw myself until I was free.

the winters, the winters, will never be easy

under these many lenses, of these many threads

attached to this pen of a place, where scripts are dangerous,

writing is power, and choice isn’t always a choice.

the jail bars have always been white,

it’s the coal from the men inside, without coats

all branded “gorilla”, all hanging to their hope.

I was born White
the Coal mine of my father, the forest Fire of my father’s mother lost 
In the sheets of wet paper skin I was held in.
Until she hand over hand over handed me over.
White hands to white, handed me over.
She swept the Red and Black back into her womb.

White borrowed mother raised until I could speak,
Hair grew in knots, my skin grew in shade
She hand over hand over handed me over,
The Sun of a caregivers bare open arms,
Did the best she could but still, could only chase the shade
She was no ones mother, she said
And so continued the days.

They called me colic until my voice box fell into my lungs
Heartbroken until the pieces floated out amonst the 
God they told me about,
I would pray that someone someday
Would stop giving me away.
As the white sheets severed the love
For the soil of my skin.
No longer could I weep, nor beg,
As Sun mother set,
For the first, the second, the third time.
I was born a White lie, a lie I had to keep
As past land walkers held to my dreams and said,
Here are the truths you may hold to instead.

Red the name of the blood that was shed when White made us walk a Trail of Tears, she said.
Black, he said, the sureness of the night that I was made of both coal mine and lighthouse, and the struggle between both of us existing in the same moment would end.
My fear of the dark came from the years of not knowing who I was and why
Wherever I went I made shadows on the skin of all the shadowless children when I laid my arm against them.
I need no longer fear.
I was not the first in my family to be hand over hand over handed over from mother to father to care giver to the unknown of stranger, both Red and Black mothers had their arms forced open and wept until their voiceboxes fell and their hearts collapsed.
I came as a handful, and still no one thought 
that the lack of roots and earth and rock could be found 
In the red and black clay that you pulled me from.
You pulled me from. 

White mother, we are all scared sometimes.
White borrowed mother, your love will last lifetimes,
I forgive you, for passing so young,
It was no ones fault.
Yellow mother, your hands, so rough and torn
I know now we both once fought and lost
Ourselves
Black father, here is your voicebox back,
Red father’s mother, you always knew I was here
In life there is truth that is not as simple as the colour of our skin.

All of us are born groundless.
All of us. 

written in response to “Women in the John: a collection of graffiti from the women’s room”

Women in the John’s of this society,

Taking back the small stall that’s named after the lap of patriarchy with every graffiti painting in the women’s room:

A public seat for consent to sit uncomfortably, and changing present tense to formally.

A reclamation of a bathroom door emblem that can be a mindfuck in ways that the mainstream focus doesn’t have in their peripheral vocabulary.

All of us have a role in societal normativity fuckery to play.

Why? Because the room which holds a women’s throne is still called a famous white middle upper class name of which at one time or another took over everything while

Jane Doe is on the toe tag of all the women who’ve been beaten, battered and raped to an unidentifiable state – and those were only the bodies found.

Graffiti in the women’s room like an ever-expanding bible and confession stand confined to one small.space. that ever elasticizes in necessity by the bar fights, home life, abuse tolerance since the alternative is more life threatening against the safety of women’s rule over her own body, the bathrooms are the only public places where they aren’t watching you – eye herding you to the middle or corner of the room.

Naming and claiming the skirt on the washrooms you’ve gendered woman. The reason men and the reason gender variant populations are excluded are very different. The former being a societies fear of the known. The second being a societies fear of the unknown. The “John” has the air of a room that uses way too many chemicals and triple filtered water in attempts to wash away the filth - an anecdote for the filthy treatment of women and how forgetful and forgiving an unconscious culture can be when man can’t remember what they’ve done, and women worry what’s been done to them in the morning. A room that gets flushed of responsibility all the time but the seats never cleaned – men playing aiming games while women tear off new paper made seats to deal with it.

Looks a lot like rape culture. Teach a women how to deal with the concequences of HER actions, or “how the world of men” is - instead of teaching men not to feel entitled to and terrorize. Don’t talk to me about terrorism if you’re going home to your wife or other lovership and expecting something tonight, don’t talk to me about homophobia if you’re expelling what’s been internalized by you - about it, don’t tell me I look great if you think anyone in this room ugly, I don’t want to hear about it.

You expect my skin
to raise like a carpet
every time you fuck up
and need someone 
to sweep the blame under.

To take it.

Well I’ve backboned
to hardwood spine.
I’ve played the fall back plan
enough times.
This time
When my skin cracks under
your boiled dry temper,
I’ll leave fissures
all through the floor;
As evidence, finally

of what you’re responsible for. 

A three year old over the excitement of being a cop one day because excitement comes from the moment you realize your dreams could be reality, but she had always been sure. She wanted to change everything. Being a cop was good enough… supported by certain family members, they saw title and not purpose. And she saw purpose but not problem For others, being a cop wasn’t respectable enough Why, she was such a smart pretty girl, could do better, should be a go-getter… a job at that stature didn’t measure up to the goals set by other…people.  She made it to college on the not so comfortable back of white middle class just black enough to not be offensive privilege.. she walked into a school to a classroom of folks who for once looked like her the only one, proud to be so close to law enforcer Until she learned the factory of jail time, the institution of handcuffs and hand guns To be convicted of living in the clouds this was her gravity check…denial came just as quickly as the defense.. That the faults one by one of a failing system were ones that just needed new minds to fuel the reason in people, that those in control just didn’t get it, but no one’s perfect, they just so happen to all have money power and white privlege but regardless..good and bad cops are to be expected… surely in realizing that upholding unjustified laws that only benefit the rich money makes off prison cells, less for social benefit forever meaning risking the lives of the ones trying to keep it together would spark, fundamental changes? That mental health broken families single mothers black prison bar cells are not even close to the explanation of why this marginality is present in the first place and evidence enough that this system isn’t working… one race the face of crime? whole communities marginalized, living below the poverty line? Police patrol, find what they’re looking for ignore those who afford white powder by the barrel while they racially profile arrest for the dime and you just outlined $100,000 per head in a high security prison worth of reasons why that the cost in dollars alone is sensible when a remarkable amount of the public will never live on a salary like that. Every cent spent for what the privilege call justice the cost of fear tactic for the rest, division concept, preaching that black men are more prone to crime or that the first peoples of this land have a genetic drinking problem they can’t be saved from since you’ve tried and they’ve failed time and time again or that kids in the system are there because they’ve done inconceivable harm to a society that told them exactly what they’d grow up to be like useless angry good for nothing. Until their over 18.. then they’re good for life. Being a cop wasn’t good enough, by any measure, not for what I was prepared to bring to the table, the law as a vessel cannot bring only take away.“It is no measure of good heath to be well adjusted to a sick society”, so I refuse to believe in a safety that mason jars the strong fumes of fear A phobia I will no longer be made rule of, nor will i idolize the hero and his gun for protecting my good Samaritan life Being a cop, bishop side stepping due process or any thought of transformative approaches for so called criminals, people who identified as so much more than that. Pawns keep being gentrified, their incarceration payed out in his honours paycheck, our people in projects, “couldn’t do betters”, made bad choices, deserve to be put away people of colour poverty and histories of pillage and rampage, but we’ve still got the most men on the board… protecting an unworthy king, Its time we take over, your majesty.

Evening,
My name is: shoreline,
Tide swelled still cast
Open ocean lonely.

I’ve heard what the birds say about me,
Never stable, always waining,
Always chasing after the waves as they leave me,
Forever falling to pieces,
I hear what they say.

Every message comes in plastic bottles,
You are worthless and shameful and
Your sadness is your fault and
Your water is a woman I’ll have my way with,
They say.

Moon pull me closer to you, 
Stop leaving me behind.
Oh, the treasure I’ve lost from sister river banks,
Erosion runs in my bloodline.
A moment of stillness, drop-off slips to depths a shoreline can only
Fail to reach.
Evening, this defeat is too great.

Tide swelled shoreline, weeps
When the gulls perch
And the sand pulls
And the shells run
And the lover finds deeper love to reach
And the seaweed is left to bake…
I hear what they say 
I hear what they say,

As I sink, and dry,
And lay, and wait.