Several months ago I attended the Afrofuturism Conference at The New School. While due to my other work I didn’t get a chance to do a recap of the event right after, it had a profound effect on me. I took all the notes I had from it and wrote a series of poems inspired by the different panels and workshops I attended.
This is my holiday present for you! I posted Part 1 yesterday and I will leave the poems up for a few weeks. Then I will probably make a small e-book chapbook out of the poems for you to buy!
Enjoy! See you in the New Year!
Day Two
What is black love?
(Inspired by Shannon Shird and Alexis Sueme Mena’s workshop about their polyamorous relationship. You can view their presentation here )
God in an infinite sense
God in a plural tense
Time stretched beyond
our known beginning and end
Love is a strengthening of the muscle
of the heart to hold
the many loves
the many voices
the many gods
into one body of beauty
Love as in boundless horizon
the continuous expansion of the mind
the universal fragmentation and
the single ship connection
the relation ship connection
the friend ship connection
the exploration of gray matter
the revealer of the skin’s mask
the question and the quest
the courage to leave, to die, to grow
and sometimes it is to return, to stay
the embrace of spirit and earth
like the way clouds love a mountain
not as possession but a finding of freedom
in knowing each other
knowing yours and another’s space
the state of grace
in being
together
Next poem inspired by “Reimagining Gender on Afrofuturism, Abolition and Liberation” panel featuring Joshua Allen, Jamal T. Lewis and Kiyan Willams
I Am Who I Will Be (or I Will Be Who I Am)
What would I be
if I wasn’t told what I am
if I was not categorized
Would I be sun
Would I be earth
Would I be rain
Would I be a new growth
of the universe’s imagination
Would I be able to stretch
into the far reaches of dreams
beyond the cages of this world
beyond the illusions into the
possibility of dark body
into the spiral dance of dark body
into the creative flow of dark body
Would I realize who I am.
The Constant State of Imagination (Rage)
Dia(gnosis): Rage
The Righteous Anger. The Madness. The Why You Mad? The Mad Scientist. The Fierceness. The Fiery Passion. The Furies. The Bandit of Birthright. The Robin Hood of White-Collared Thievery. The Dreamer. The Ecstatic Spirit. The Out of One’s Mind. The Doesn’t Quite Fit. The “Too Black.” The Not Black Enough. The Cup Flowing Over. The You Too Much. The Marginal. The Peripheral Vision. The Hallucinator. The Revelator. The Wanderer. The Migrant. The Exiled. The Reject. The Bastard. The Illegitimate. The Mocker. The Jester. The Irrational Storm. The Blown Fuse. The Circuit Breaker. The Illiterate. The Multilingual. The Decoder. The Mute. The Mutator. The Ego Tripper. The Fugitive Slave. The Drapetomaniac. The Escapologist. The Battler Forcing Movement.
Motherfuckers,
Dance! Dance! Dance!
Revolution!
Black Girl Magik (with Harriet’s Apothecary)
What is the meaning of our names
Did you know Harriet was a spy
that she changed her name to her mother’s
to hide, to flee, to find freedom
the lineage of name, the stretching of body
the survival of self beyond the (k)now,
beyond the wound
the medicine of dreams, the medicine that calls
dreams into being, medicine woman help me
remember them
My body
My mind
My feelings
My spirit
My others
Others’ me
All the me’s
From the reaction
to a state of being one.
Peace.
To end my stream of poetry, enjoy a song from Jojo Abot, who performed at the conference, and a compilation of singer Daví’s keynote performance at the conference:
Sherese Francis: Futuristically Ancient 