It’s all in the eyes; The language of life that rejects the promise of death from a four-hundred year-curse. Black onyx and hickory syrup brown. The language of life that rejects the promise of death from a 400-year curse. The sounds of cries and laughter.

the echoes of cries and laughter

transcending barriers of access to books and outgunning English language like

BOOM

My grandmother’s eyes have taken place, shifted into some mark of territory.
(It is us, we that have chosen culture over canon. We have landed.)

–

Some trumpet, loud, commanding, alluring, and like

BUUUUUP

And you don’t speak this double language this unclipped dancing mother tongue.
You may have access to the finest minerals of the earth, but you have no access to a language that connects a people far gone from identity. Our tongues take away the power of your neglect. A revival: these chords are measureless. And just when you think you’ve dehydrated our stems, at the end of the measure of resistance,

comes the repeat: a dialect of resistance.

Because we’ve learned the key to your invasion is the ability to keep up.

–

Are you embarrassed at your lack of stamina?
Is it the range of laughter that makes your cheeks flush?
What does a beautiful language of resistance sound like?

We told you
what we needed
We told you

no one likes an offbeat song.
We told you
we needed

to be watered

to be tended to.

We told you.

–
And now my mouth is a drum (and now you hear the bass)
the piercing percussion of rebellious vernacular.
(It is us, we that have chosen culture over canon. We have landed.)

Now listen to these eyes and wonder how the hell is this happening.

What is a whip to an endless chorus?
What is teargas to a language that waters?
My story is a thousand separate tongues.
(that have chosen culture over canon and watered a garden for centuries to come.)

And have you ever heard a horn like this one?
Do you know what gold sounds like? What brass sounds like? Wait.
So, you mean to tell me you don’t know what road maps through
kinks and coils on greased scalps
sounds like?

–
When I say unapologetic, what I mean to say is that you will never truly hear me. A language of resistance is what forms when obedience doesn’t make things grow.

When I say magic, what I mean to say is thank God for water, dirt, sun and a Black woman’s hands.

When I say Grandma’s eyes, what I mean to say is that my silence is strategic and that every sound isn’t heard with ears. This language of resistance, you cannot find. You cannot take. You cannot legislate.